Happy Holidays and congratulations on grabbing that next to last hole on your favorite belt following a record setting season of stuffing your face with all of that great food and drink we love to ingest this time of year!  How are you holding up?  Yeah, me neither but the good news is that we are staring directly at the calendar and if you are anything at all like me and 84% of Middle-America, you have once again drawn the proverbial line in the sand where December meets January and we are just not going to take it anymore!

Right?

I mean RIGHT!  So here we are brothers and sisters in arms so to speak, as we collectively search for the willpower and motivation to begin yet another January exercise program that is guaranteed to work this year along with a diet that we promise to stick with and will change our lives forever!  We don’t need all that cheese and bacon and chocolate do we?  After all, it just takes twenty-one days of constant behavior before things become habit for most of us so three weeks of portion control, exercise and discipline is easy unless your wife is a fabulous pastry chef and your children continuously flaunt all of the things they get to eat that you can’t while referencing the additional chins you’ve added in the last forty-five days!  Awesome, “now break me off a piece of that cream puff while your mother is in the shower will you?”

 

So whether you’re preparing for a new you in the upcoming year or just as happy continuing to love yourself just the way you are, the mighty Basil & Chocolate, deep in the kitchens and pantries of TRR decided that it would be fitting for a year of food in review as we say good-bye to 2011, (and good riddance, for some of us), and hello to 2012 where we all get a clean slate and an opportunity for all of our goals and dreams to come true, like moving the other way on that belt big boy! I’m just sayin’!

 

“The Republicans are coming!  The Republicans are coming!”

 

Yeah, 2011 saw the comprising of the short list of GOP candidates for President gearing up for Iowa and preparing for eleven months of touring this country the likes of which we haven’t seen since Charlie Sheen graced us with his “Violent Torpedo of Truth Tour back in April.”

 

Mitt Romney seems to be quietly reminding us that he has the best smile; the best looks and his type of politics never go out of style.  Like gourmet, thin crust pizza in 2011, Romney remains a constant at the top of the charts and regardless of which way the wind blows, he will have plenty of innovative toppings with traditional twists on preparation in order to remain the most popular food across the country!

 

 

Newt Gingrich and his ego are becoming as popular as the gluten-free rage that has taken over this country and both show no signs of stopping which is great news for over three million of us who hang out with celiac disease and really do believe that Newt is this generation’s Ronald Reagan!

 

Bold prediction:  Gluten-free keeps climbing in 2012 because celiac disease or not, it’s just better for you and as far as Mr. Gingrich is concerned, without falling off the fence on one side or the other, let’s just say that his book tour and guest speaking appearances in 2013 are going to be “Gluten-Free-esqe!”

 

Best of luck to extremist good guy Ron Paul, Michele Bachmann and her dancing on air platform, Jon Huntsman, Rick Santorum and the always popular Rick Perry who is still trying to spell gluten-free!

 

With our economy still looming somewhere between the Kardashians and this past May’s Doomsday prophecy, lawmakers in Washington did a great job of publicly humiliating themselves in 2011 by getting in the way of such things as limiting French fries in school cafeterias and boldly declaring that tomato sauce on slabs of pizza is the equivalent of a vegetable!  Why do you all watch that mindless show?

 

Capital Hill also looked the other way this year while crafting guidelines aimed at toning down the marketing of junk food to kids due to pressure from food industry executives leveraging for dollars and better press for a wrong which will inevitably at some point, be righted.

 

This is all happening while the House of Representatives almost forced a government shutdown over the debt ceiling in April, (still no resolve on that by the way), overleveraged governments in Europe are starting to fall through the thin ice they’ve been on, the cost of food in this country is more expensive than ever and just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, the compact disc has been declared dead and Matthew McConaughey is officially off the board ladies!

 

As democracy spread like wildfire throughout much of the middle-east during the “Arab Spring”, independent restaurants here in this country began overtaking the large chains from popularity, healthy and loyalty standpoints as fare continued to move towards local and regional origins with $7 billion in sales in 2011.  The Organic train keeps on rollin’ too as it carried its growing trend through the year as well.

 

We said good-bye to Elizabeth Taylor, Joe Frazier, Clarence Clemons and Steve Jobs as we lost some tremendous icons and faces of Americana, along with Betty Ford, Warren Christopher, Peter Falk and “The Macho Man”, Randy Savage.  Jackass’s Ryan Dunn, Amy Winehouse and Jane Russell will also be missed.  Osama bin Laden, Moammar Gadhafi and Kim Jong Il will most likely not be.

 

 

 

2011 was also the year where it was reported that we said good-bye to oatmeal, “fine dining” and for a short time anyway to cantaloupe, bean sprouts, oysters, pine nuts, certain radioactive fish, ground turkey and anything coming out of China as the bad press poured in with health related issues during this past year.

 

Prince William, Duke of Cambridge and Catherine Middleton joined the ranks of wedded bliss in April as simultaneously, the cupcake craze peaked and subsequently morphed into cupcake pops!  Also, along the lines of royal weddings, we found that post-prohibition cocktails like the Shangri-la and the Lolita were resurrected this past year along with small plate comfort foods, “Tapas Style”, where one tastes a little of everything continued its upward march.

 

The Omega-3 boom where fatty acids are the new supplements of choice for those of you who don’t do fish has absolutely no correlation with Anthony Weiner’s “sexting” scandal, Arnold’s 14-year-old son out of wedlock or the demise of Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore’s marriage!  All of them however qualify as undesirable subjects and with the exception of the “Governator”, are no big surprises!

 

Some of the major storylines that graced our 365 days this past year included NASA’s successful landing of the shuttle Atlantis, officially concluding the space shuttle program, the massive earthquakes felt around the world, including the nearly 9.0 quake that rocked the country of Japan resulting in a seismic tsunami that took countless lives and left that country in nuclear peril in March and the nationwide protests against corporate America with “Occupy Wall Street”.

 

Food truck popularity has hit an all-time high in this country along with child obesity yet again so it’s no surprise that burgers are still one of the most popular foods in America.  Gourmet style burgers are here to stay folks with nothing off limits as far as toppings go!  Jalapeno Mac-N-Cheese made its presence known in 2011 along with green beans jumping to the head of the vegetable list.  We continued to embrace low-carb diets, fusion foods, white peanut butter, spaghetti, kale, (yeah I said kale!!!), exotic teas and is there anyone on the planet who doesn’t have one of those really cool Keurig coffee makers yet?

 

As we wind down the final installment of B&C for 2011 it is important that we all have the opportunity to reflect upon yet another year.  Yes, food and beverage is a wonderful way to relate to our communities and a great way to poke fun at the incompetence of our elected officials, however, can any of you believe that it’s 2012?  The big picture in each of our lives gets a little bit more in focus this time of year as the celebrations slow and the reality of January’s weather and responsibilities appear in plain sight for all of us.

 

As we bring on the New Year with the hopes of betterment in everyone’s lives, there are three things that happened in 2011 that need to be appreciated by all of us.  The first one of course is the tenth anniversary marking the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2011.  May we never forget that day, the one’s we lost or the impact that it will always have on the lives of every single one us.

The second event worthy of all of our thoughts and prayers was the official end of our actions in Iraq and the return of most of our military personnel to their families.  Our heads rested safe for over eight years while those brave individuals made sure of it.  As the son of a military man and war veteran, there are no words to express that type of gratitude and appreciation other than “Thank You and Welcome Home.”

 

On a much lighter note and with overwhelming pride and admiration it should be noted that 2011 saw the birth of an on-line publication founded on the principles of truth, bravery and honesty, with the idea of providing a voice for “Small-Town America” in order to place a emphasis on their issues and get them into the national spotlight.

 

Jessica Zummo along with her husband Tom have taken a vision, a passion and a laptop and have constructed a vehicle that continues to generate incredible momentum towards the interests of “Small Town America”.  The Revered Review continues to grow by leaps and bounds and 2012 is already allotted as the year this publication will explode so a much deserved congratulations to the “Chief” and the writers, staff members, subscribers and readers of a truly wonderful and necessary publication.

 

Comments?  Ideas?  Think you have the recipe that ends all recipes?   Trim the fat, portion it out, put it in the blender and do it for forty-five minutes on the elliptical machine.  Then mix it all up into your finest New Year’s Resolution and get it to [email protected].  You’ll be glad you did and we may just make you famous.  Well, for a few seconds anyway.

 

My wishes for the happiest, healthiest New Year to all you B&C’ers out there!

Until next year, do great things and eat well.

Food….  It’s Why We Live