The greatest culinary concoctions of the ancient world

To my mind, there are three food inventions that rock so hard it's not even funny. The first two were invented by the Greeks. Number one is toast. I know, what's the big deal, but think about how much other foods would suck if they weren't served on a nice piece of toasted bread. I don't think I'd ever eat eggs if it weren't for toast. Even a burger is better when the bun is toasted. Not to mention croutons are toasted bread. This might just have been a way to make bread last longer, but it's really a great step forward in terms of flavor and preservation.

Number two is mayonaisse. Yes, the Greeks invented mayo. Take an egg, some olive oil and a bit of lemon, whip it together slowly and you've got an emulsion that does what the individual parts could only dream of doing. Mayo can be used a number of ways. Putting it on a sandwich might be most common today, but it's probably only the latest use for mayonaisse. It's used for salad dressing, as a base for sauces, as a baste for meats. You can even dip your fries in it. If you've only ever put it on a ham sarney or in potato salad, I encourage you to put a tablespoon of the good stuff in your California dip sometime or maybe a jot in your mac and cheese. Try using it anywhere you might use one of those nasty cream soups and see if it isn't even better.

But first and foremost of the greatest culinary inventions of the ancient world is cheese. How they came up with this one is a corker. After milking cows and goats for a time, some farmer just have noticed that the extra bits that sat around in buckets separated into curds. Cook milk just right with some salt and any number of enzymes from mold to rennet and you get thousands of varieties of cheese. Screw this pepper jack nonsense. If you've never had a nice piece of gorgonzola, stilton, emmentaler, Jarlsberg, gruyere or queso enchilado then you are missing out. The world of cheese goes so far beyond cheddar it's not funny, but even a good sharp piece of cheddar is so good it's hard to fathom a world without it.

Recently, a new Hy-Vee food store opened and it's got this cheese shop in it that is no joke. I've literally tripled the number of cheeses I've tried just in the last three months. I have no regrets. But be warned, cheese has its costs. It's expensive, but the real cost of eating good cheese is that even I can smell it coming out of every pore.