When Chippy Met Salsa

Last night I was at the church building getting ready for band practice (yes, I am in a rock band called "Something With Mustaches"). My boys and I were eating some hot dogs when I came upon a jar of salsa in the fridge. I brought it out since salsa goes with anything (except ice cream, found this out the hard way). As soon as I walked out with it, Grant said "Hey, are there any tortilla chips?" It's just a given that if you have salsa you need tortilla chips and if you have tortilla chips you need salsa.

Some foods just have to go with a particular other food. It's like each food may be decent or good, but they haven't found a true home until they are combined. Then, it is like marriage, the two become one.

Now, I am not talking about combining ingredients. Eggs and flour and sugar making a cake doesn't count. It must be foods that really stand on their own, but have become married to another in way that is wonderful.

So what follows is my list of the greatest food get-togethers in all of history.

10. Mashed potatoes and gravy. Don't want to think about what's in gravy (grease and milk) but can't imagine mashed potatoes without it. Add chicken-fried steak to the mix and your talking an all-time classic meal. I mean, isn't Grandy's existence based solely on the fact that we like chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, and gravy so much that we will occasionally purchase a cheap, fast, sub-par facsimile.

9. Bacon and eggs. Especially a couple of fried eggs over medium.

8. Beans and rice. Most underrated on the list. Usually thought of as the pairing that poor college students live on, but a really well made red beans and rice is delicious.

7. Butter and cranberry sauce. This is personal. Most of you have never tried it. But every Thanksgiving I take some cranberry sauce (must be shaped like the can) and smash some butter up in it. Put it on a roll or eat it alone. I also enjoy a flour tortilla with melted butter and salsa on it.

6. Rotel and Velveeta. As close to breaking my rule about separate ingredients rather than separate foods. But come on. These two items existed separately first. Velveeta invented in 1918 (is it a food if it is "invented"?) while Rotel didn't appear until the 1940's. I would love to see a sales chart for each of these products. My bet is that nobody bought them. Then you see a gigantic spike. Somebody accidentally got them together. Now, I am sure that if one went out of business the other would cease to exist almost immediately.

5. Cheeseburger and French Fries. Now we know that eating a lot of this is bad for us. Too bad eighty-four percent of America consumes only this. (That is a true fact, I read it on the Internet)

4. Peanut butter and Frito's. Parker men dig this. My dad, my brothers and I can stand around the kitchen with a jar of creamy Jif (all other peanut butter brands are horrible and stupid, I don't care what you like, there is only one, and it is Jif, all others must bow before it) on the counter with an open bag of Frito's. Let the dipping begin. Have spent more time with my Dad doing this than any other activity. And for all you "crunchy" fans just know that if you dip enough Frito's the shrapnel eventually leaves the Jif (bow down) crunchy.

3. Cookies and milk. Whoever the first person was who said "you know, that Oreo should not just be eaten with the milk, it should be swimming in it", should be the fifth head on Mt. Rushmore. If they marketed a gallon of milk that came with a package of Oreos already in it I would so by it. And hide it in the church fridge so my wife wouldn't know it.

2. Peanut butter and jelly. In the lunch sack. Every day. For like ten years. And I still love it. Proof that the phrase "you can have too much of a good thing" is moronic.

1. Chips and salsa. The Brangelina of food couplings. Whenever this became big in America (late seventies, early eighties) caught me right as I was developing my own personal food tastes. Yes the eighties may have given us bad hair, parachute pants and Twisted Sister, but it was all worth it for the discovery that a fried tortilla dipped in a fiery tomato-based sauce will be the appetizer sitting on the table when God throws His great banquet.