The Holiday Eater's Guide to the Christmas Shmorgasboard

Blogger's Note:  In this installment of our 12 Days of Criticismas, my very good buddy Josh Carrillo will be sharing his tips on stuffing your face for Christmas.  Josh, a youth pastor, food enthusiast, and all-around good guy, is especially qualified to share his foody thoughts, as he once had his picture taken with Alton Brown.  And I've seen him eat 20 McNuggets, a quarter-pounder, large fries, and a coke all in one sitting, with room left for an apple pie afterward.  Of course, that was many years ago and his tastes have matured some.  So without further adieu, Josh!

As most of you who are reading this know, the holidays are generally a joyous time of gathering with family, friends, fun, and food to be thankful for what God has done in particularly sending His Son Jesus Christ to live, die, and rise in our place so we would be rescued from all our nastiness. Each one of you has holiday traditions that you look forward to and memories that will last your entire lifetime. If you are anything like me, one of the greatest parts of the holidays is the food. From turkey to Christmas cookies it is a month long expedition of partaking of some tasty goodness.

It is that goodness that we will focus on. It is the goal of this post to help you maximize your holiday eating. With that, here is this holiday eaters guide to a spartaculous Christmas eating extravaganza.

Appetizers: If you really want to wow the crowd with your appetizers, make sure they involve salt, meat, and cheese. Great ideas would be Wavy potato chips with onion dip, salami and cheese platters as well as some froofy cheese and crackers (you know, stuff you find at Oliver's Market, Trader Joe's, or whatever specialty market is in your town). An underrated appetizer would be salsa poured over cream cheese. It sounds weird, but it is delectable!

Drinks: No Christmas party can be complete without some Martinelli's Sparkling Apple Cider and some Egg Nog. I know what most of you are thinking about the holiday nog. You either love it or hate it. I personally enjoy it. It is rich, creamy and full of fatty awesomeness.

Main Dish: I understand that a lot of peeps partake of ham and turkey on Christmas. While I am down with these dishes, to me Turkey is reserved Thanksgiving and Ham for Easter, but that could be the traditionalist in me. If you really want to bring out the big guns, you must go with... wait for it.... PRIME RIB... BOOM! It is this man's opinion that a great prime rib destroys any other cut of steak. It is juicy, succulent, and full of flavor. If you really want to go over the top with it, serve it with some horse radish sauce. You will be the talk of your neighborhood.

Side Dishes: There a bevy of side dishes that you could choose from, but for this guy the greatest compliment to a good prime rib is... potatoes au gratin, creamed spinach, and some homemade mac and cheese with bacon. These side dishes are so booyawesome that you might be tempted to not get seconds on the Prime Rib. In other words, these dishes are the bomb.com.

Dessert: So many options, so little room in your stomach. If you are going for fancy, a nice peach raspberry or apple pie with crumb topping and ice cream on top would be great. If you are going a little more finger foody for your dessert, may I suggest the candy cane JoJos from Trader Joe's (Oreo-esque cookies filled with candy cane cream filling. Need I say more?). In addition, cream puffs and cheesecake bites would be a great compliment here.

One more thing. Make sure after you partake of all this goodness, that you spend part of January detoxing on smoothies filled with fruit and spinach. They will really cleanse you. Also, a little gym time or running never hurts. Just think of it as preparing yourself to be able to eat for the next holiday season. That my friends is your guide to a great holiday eating time!!

Ike's Place

When John Montagu the 4th Earl of Sandwich had his servants bring him a slab of meat squeezed between slices of bread to quickly satiate his hunger during marathon gambling sessions, he must have realized what he was onto.  Such a simple concept, yet it took until the mid 18th century for someone to figure it out.  But boy am I glad he did.

I love me a good sandwich.  It's something so simple, and yet difficult to master.  Any schmo can layer cold cuts between a couple of Wonder Bread slices, but that doesn't make it a good sandwich.  My uncles contend that my grandmother made the best sandwiches.  Using the exact same ingredients, could I not make an equally great sandwich?  The answer is no. I've had my grandmother's sandwiches.

What is it then?  Is it the meat to bread to cheese to condiment ratio?  That is of course part of it.  And then there is the quality of the ingredients themselves.  A sourdough roll is great, but if its too hard it'll cut the roof of your mouth and all the guts of the sandwich will squirt out the sides.  What's the best mustard; spicy brown, honey Dijon, or plain ol' French's yellow?  Which meat and cheese combinations are the best?  Lettuce or sprouts?  What is king of the meats:  turkey, salami, ham, bologna, olive loaf, head cheese?  The options are endless.

Whatever the secret to a great sandwich the folks at Ike's Place--namely Ike Shehadeh--have got it figured out.  There are several Ike's Place locations in the Bay Area and my family and I ate at one of the newest ones in Santa Rosa.  A couple buddies of mine, one of them a sandwich connoisseur such as myself, recommended it.  And now I have to kill him because the sandwiches are so good I may eat them too often and will soon sport an unsightly spare tire.  Or a slightly larger, more unsightly spare tire.

Ike's Place menu's vary by location, adapting themselves to the local culture.  For instance a sandwich featuring pastrami, bacon, and Swiss is called a Say Hey in San Francisco, but a Charles Schultz in Santa Rosa.  This particular sandwich--on a freshly made dutch crunch roll--was my first at Ike's and it blew my mind.

Like the stupendous dutch crunch roll I had--and have had several time hence---all of Ike's bread choices are freshly baked, with their super secret and delicious dirty sauce baked right in!  You can get bread without the baked in sauce, but why would you?  I have no idea what the dirty sauce is, or why its called dirty sauce, but I frankly don't care.  It's awesome.

Among others, I've also had the Jaymee Sirewich, named for Comcast Sports Network reporter Jaymee Sire.  Consisting of fried chicken, pepper jack cheese, Ike's yellow BBQ sauce, and ranch, its as spunky and sweet as Jaymee Sire herself!  I'm speculating there.  I have no idea if Jaymee Sire is spunky or sweet, but I figure the odds must be pretty good if she is the namesake of a sandwich this amazing.

I've also had the Jon Lum.  I have no idea who John Lum is--and am apparently too lazy to google him--but if he's got a ribeye and cheddar sandwich with onion rings named in his honor he must be one incredible individual.

Needless to say, I have yet to be disappointed by Ike's.  To me, they've lept to the top of the heap when it comes to chain restaurant sandwich making.  In this blogger's book the order goes like this:  Ike's, Togo's, Quizno's, and Subway and their lettucewiches a very, very, very distant fourth.

If you're in the Bay Area, chances are you can find an Ike's near by.  If you don't love whatever you get, I guarantee to reimburse you.
(Guarantee will not be honored)