Search for new peak taste experiences and dazzle your taste buds on these exciting food possibilities.

Part of the great fun of Joyful Eating is exploring and discovering new and interesting foods to eat. Using Joyful Eating as your magnifying glass and you will gain endless hours of pleasure searching the world of food for new peak taste experiences.

On which foods should you apply your dazzling new tasting techniques? You will of course have your own favorite foods, but you will find many foods you might want try in this strategy.

This is a crucial strategy because by trying a large number of excellent foods, you start building up your unconscious database of foods and tastes. It is this internal database that helps you to learn and experience more from all the food you eat. Nobody can tell you what is good or bad. You must explore for yourself what tastes and textures you like.

Becoming an accomplished taster is all about building memories of a lifetime of different taste experiences for comparison. Deriving pleasure from tasting food is a skill that is developed over years and years of practice and experience. So start now!

So Why All the High Calorie Foods?

At first this strategy may seem out of place with the rest of the book. We will be talking about a lot of rich and fattening foods. The title of this book has “diet” in it, so how can I then turn around and encourage you to eat fattening foods?

It’s not that kind of diet. It’s not about telling you all the foods you can’t ever have for about the rest of your life. Joyful Eating is about finding a way for you to have the foods you love in a way that brings pleasure to your life, while avoiding the harm of out of control eating.

Food is not a poison. Food is a joy. Food is a path to happiness. Food is an adventure you should have for the rest of your life. I can’t and won’t tell you not to eat a food just because it can be abused.

If you haven’t tasted these dishes before, then get to it! It would be fun to make an event of it with friends. Try Joyfully Eating a new taste a week. It will be fun. And if you have tasted these dishes before, don’t you think it’s time to try them again?

Taste 1: Storm Wine

When the weather turns stormy, start by building a crackling fire. Pour a glass of your favorite beverage. Sit by the fire, slowly sip your drink, and experience the storm.

Taste 2: Hot Fudge Sundae Made with Mint-chocolate Chip Ice Cream

Together they are a spine-tingling pairing of tastes and textures: the hot of the fudge against the cold of the ice cream; the liquid flow of fudge against the solidness of the ice cream; the spike of mint against the constant deep flavor of the fudge. Perfect.

Taste 3: Icy Cold Water When You are Desperately Thirsty

Circumstance has a lot to do with how you experience food. To get a peak taste experience, you may want to consider creating a particular environment around eating. Hunger is the best spice. A meal always tastes better when you are really, really hungry. Even the plainest meal can seem like a feast in the right situation.

I have been on a few multi-week river rafting trips. After a long day on the river, you have to unpack the boats, put up your camp, and then fix dinner. When you get off the water you are starving, yet you still have to wait a long time for dinner to be ready. When dinner is finally ready you almost can’t help yourself from tearing into it. These have been some of the best meals I have ever had.

Plain old simple water can be a world class taste experience too, even though water has no taste. Try this. When you are desperately thirsty, I mean so thirsty you feel like you will shrivel up and blow away without a sip, chug down an ice-cold glass of water. This may be one of the finest taste experiences of your life. There’s something primal and eternal about drinking water. We take water for granted, but in the right circumstance drinking water can be heaven.

Taste 4: Oven-Baked Apples Sprinkled with Cinnamon

On a chilly night, cover a few apples with cinnamon and bake them in the oven. Almost immediately your house fills with the enchanting smell of apples and cinnamon. For hours this comforting feeling wraps around you like a warm coat. And when the apples are done, serve them in a bowl and top with fresh cream. Delicious.

Taste 5: Fresh Hot Bread and Butter

I vividly remember to this day a field trip we took in grade school to a bakery. The smell of baking bread was everywhere. We saw all the glistening automated machinery, but the highlight of the trip was eating hot fresh baked bread just out of the oven. Oh my, it was good!

Taste 6: Fresh Ripe Peach

Seek out a fresh peach that is just to the point of ripeness where when you bite in, the juice runs down your chin.

Fruits are under-appreciated miracles of taste. Don’t forget to experience them when they’re in season. Try fresh strawberries, cold watermelon, fresh nectarines, fresh blueberries, and fresh pineapple in Hawaii.

Taste 7: Warm Chocolate Chip Cookies Dipped in Cold Milk

Take a deep whiff of the warm chocolate chip cookie. Then dip the cookie slowly into a glass of cold whole milk. It’s an awesome combination of flavors and textures.

Taste 8: A McIntosh Red Apple Just Picked Off the Tree

The McIntosh Red is a medium-crisp, tart-sweet apple that has a bright red skin that is sometimes tinged with green. You want to eat an apple fresh off the tree, partly because fresh picked apples taste better, but mostly because apple trees are so beautiful. The experience of eating an apple in the middle of an orchard can never be forgotten.

Taste 9: Vine Ripened Tomatoes Topped with Fresh Basil, Fresh Mozzarella, and Aged Balsamic Vinegar

The combination of flavors is truly surprising. A wonderful appetizer or snack.

Taste 10: Sit at a Sidewalk Cafe Sipping Cafe au Lait While Munching a Fresh French Butter Croissant

Make the Cafe au lait with French milk. French milk has more fat in it than US whole milk so the Cafe au lait seems sweet with out adding sugar. Absolutely scrumptious.

Taste 11: Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice in a Long Stem Glass

Drink your glass of liquid sunshine while overlooking a garden in full bloom. The beauty of light tinkling through orange tinted glass can not be matched.

Taste 12: Warm Homemade Chips and Chunky Salsa

Store bought chips cannot compare to home made chips. I first discovered homemade chips at a block party. One our neighbors made homemade chips and I could not believe how good they were.

Taste 13: Orange Cut In Half with Sprinkled Chili Powder and Salt

A unique combination of tastes presented for your consideration.

Taste 14: S’mores Made Over a Campfire

Toast the marshmallows until golden, the insides should be soft. Make the fire big and the night cool.

Taste 15: Fresh Guinness in Ireland

Guinness is thought by many to be the finest beer in the world. It is also said that the finest Guinness can be tasted at James Gate Guinness Brewery in Dublin, Ireland. A dream vacation would be to go on a pilgrimage to Dublin and take a tour of the brewery. After the tour you are able to sample fresh Guinness! Reports from dazzled tasters find the beer so creamy it is out of this world good!

Taste 16: Roquefort Cheese with a Dry White Bordeaux Wine

A fabulous food and wine experience is Roquefort cheese with a dry Bordeaux wine. Roquefort is a blue cheese from the south of France. It has a complex, creamy and soft taste. White Bordeaux wines are also made in France. Dry white Bordeaux are usually brilliant in color, crisp, fruity, and have a delightful, fresh finish. Together they are like a dream French vacation without leaving your house.

Taste 17: Sweet and Spicy Hot Chipotle Cherry Pie

This is a pie with punch. It brings together heat and sweet into one happy cross-cultural marriage. First make your normal cherry pie recipe then add to the pie chipotle (smoked jalapeño) that has been ground into a powder. The zing of the chipotle and the sweet of the cherry are a stunning complement to each other.

Taste 18: Thinly Sliced Prosciutto with Fresh Figs

Prosciutto is a salt-cured, air-dried raw Italian ham. Curls of prosciutto served with fresh fruit are a classic summertime appetizer. One of the tastiest pairing with prosciutto is figs. Figs are a soft and deliciously sweet fruit. Thin-sliced prosciutto adds a wonderful contrast to fresh figs.

Taste 19: Sweet and Sparkling Ice Kacang

A tasty Malaysian cooler. Perfect for a hot day, it’s made of sweetened dried beans, strips of jelly and little droplets of starch in bright colors, small dried fruit, preserved sugar palm fruit and seeds, and long slivers of grass jelly are mixed with shaved ice, sugar syrup and sometimes evaporated milk. Wonderful.

Taste 20: Outdoor Barbecue on a Gorgeous Summer Day

The secret of a good barbecue may be smoke and time, but no matter how you cook it, there is no better way to spend a summer’s day than having a big family picnic and barbecue. Load up the family, load up the dog, and find the perfect park. While your favorite meats slowly cook over an open fire, work up an appetite by swimming and playing baseball. Or maybe you would rather take a nap under a shade tree. The sensational aroma of barbecue will follow you where ever you go. That’s a good day.

We’ll always be adding more peak taste experiences at our website http://YourDesignerDiet.com. Please drop by to find new taste experiences and to share your own discoveries.