Toasty

I have come to realize that there seem to be three types of people:

• Fried. They like everything fried. It doesn't matter what it is, (meat, cheese, ice cream, shoe leather, etc) if it's fried, they're interested.
• Toasted. Everything is always better toasted. Toasted sounds exotic. They'd toast their clothes if they could, because surely they would look better that way.
  
• Neither. Room temperature "whatever" is best. No melted, no warmed, no whatever. Just serve it like it's just out of a cooler. And do you have some bean sprouts to sprinkle on top? Those just go with everything, don't you think?
  

I am descended from two Frieds. My mother's extended family apparently have southern roots (never seen any of them though since she grew up in California, paired with the whole Irish/Scottish thing, it's a bit scary) and that is her reason for loving all things fried. My brother was easily converted into the fried camp as well.

But not me.

I tried. I really did. I loved two dishes that my mother made (she only made three anyway, the rest were frightening experiments that had even odds for ending in the emergency room) so much that I used to eat, enjoy, and then hide so I could nurse a sick stomach for the rest of the evening. Those dishes were her homemade fried chicken and gravy, and her tacos complete with oil fried corn shells.

Everyone seemed to fry things where I lived, it was just the way it was done. I didn't know anyone who didn't have one of those fryers sitting on their counter, as fixed an appliance as the can opener. My mother did have a couple of tree-hugging friends (it's all right to call them that; they really DID go to a tree hugging event in Boulder in the 1980's,) who fell into the Neither category. But mom never went so far as to actually try their style of eating for more than a day - unnatural, she said.

Up until I was old enough to drive and visit restaurants with friends in high school, I thought that was how everything was made. Imagine my surprise when I got to try out some toasted sandwiches! Wholly-Cooking-Grail-Batman! They come toasted? Whoa, back up - explain this mysterious and wonderful toasting thing to me.

That's right. I'm a Toasted. If I can toast it, I do. This has not always resulted in the best outcome for the dish, and there may have been a few fires along the way that we'll just gloss over here, but the fact is that toasting rocks! It's so much better than fried, and I walk away without a sick stomach. Even better, when cheese is involved... oh, heaven.

However, being a Toasted while being surrounded by Frieds is a little tricky. I even married a Fried. I've been working hard on converting him, and I would say he is straddling the fence at the moment. But one has to ask if it's because toasted actually tastes good to him, or the threat of what his wife could actually do if he forced fried foods into the house (he currently gets them on his own, usually on business trips and when we go out to eat... which is rarely.) My daughter has shown signs of being a Fried, but I'm trying to beat back the urge and make her see the Toasted light. My son is already a Toasted disciple.

So where do you fall? Fried? Toasted? Neither?