The aliens have arrived, donned human forms, and wish to feed.

[Greg Nog]

The other day, my lady and I were eating brunch, and I was having chicken-fried chicken with white gravy, which was fantastic.  "If I had to show an alien race what's so cool about being human, fried chicken would probably be how I do it," I said.

This led to a larger conversation about a hypothetical alien food-based encounter.  The scenario:

A few extraterrestrials land on earth and take human form.  They wish to experience delicious human food.  You have one day's worth of meals to show off the best of homo sapiens' culinary achievements: Breakfast, lunch, snack, dinner, dessert.  While multiple items can be included in a meal, try to keep the meals within the bounds of a standard everyday meal, and not like a gigantic feast of twenty different things.

So!  What do you serve them? 

As I was eating brunch, I came up with the following menu:

Breakfast: Sunny-side-up eggs with salt and pepper on nice crusty toast (to sop up the runny yolks).  Side of fresh mango.  Cup of coffee to drink.

Lunch: fried chicken with white gravy, side of french fries with a bit of remoulade to use as a dipping sauce.  Light cloudy wheatbeer to drink.  (maybe Sierra Nevada Kellerweiss?)

Snack: cheddar-flavored triscuits topped with tuna salad.  Glass of root-beer to drink.

Dinner: Chicken tikka masala and garlic naan, side of roasted vegetables (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauilflower, roasted in bacon-fat with citrus zest among the spices used).  Some spinach pakora with raita as an appetizer.  An IPA to drink -- perhaps the Bell's Two-Hearted.

Dessert: mint-oreo frappe.

I was a bit surprised to realize that chicken was in my list twice; no steak? No pork belly?  And ethnicity-wise, American-filtered Mexican and Chinese are two of my favorite kinds of food, but neither one made a showing.  No burrito? No egg foo young?  I'd also intially gone with tiramisu for a dessert, but was reminded that ice cream fucking rules, and felt bad that its creamy coldness would be unknown to a whole new species.  So, a pretty basic milkshake won out over all the rest of humanity's options, oddly enough.

You have five slots to fill; what would you choose?

[Thermofusion]

Take 'em to the pet store and let em go to town

[Greg Nog]

But then does a fistful of angelfish serve as a "snack" or "dessert"?

[Thermofusion]

Angelfish I see more as a dessert, snacks would be more along the lines of guinea pigs, hamsters or other fuzzy rodentia a la the original V miniseries. Whole cow for main course? I dunno, picturing kinda a prix fixe thing here. Only covers one meal though.

[Dick]

Breakfast: Full English.

Lunch: Definitely a sandwich.  I think a Reuben with dark rye, corned beef, swiss, home made sauerkraut and a Russian dressing heavy on the horseradish.  Served with french fries (condiments served: hot sauce, stone ground mustard, and I'll go with Nog on a remoulade) and a dill pickle spear.  Served with a tall glass of sweet tea.

The rest is harder.  I'll have to think about it some more.

[Thermofusion]

Okay, an actual reply this time, less a broad survey of global cuisine and more of a What If! instead of hovering menacingly over the great cities of the world they just crash landed in the swamp outside town:

Breakfast Two eggs scrambled, butter grits, hashbrowns scattered smothered, covered and diced. Buttermilk biscuits, gravy.

Lunch Choice: North Carolina shrimp, peel 'n' eat style, seasoned with lemon juice and Old Bay, served with low country "perlo" rice. Sweet tea. OR: Eastern NC bbq sandwiches, slaw, vinegar sauce and whole hog pulled pork between two sourdough hamburger buns. Sweet potato fries.

Dinner peck of South Carolina oysters, steamed "dry", sweet hushpuppies, fried green tomatoes, slaw. Cheerwine to drink.

Dessert blueberry cobbler

[Thermofusion]

Also I guess with the above menu I'm presupposing the aliens aren't jewish, in which case oops get ready for the death rays y'all

[Greg Nog]

My vegetarian ladyfriend and I actually did talk about possible dietary restrictions when genesising this idea; she was pretty sure the aliens would be vegetarian, like her, and I thought there was a solid chance they'd be happy to eat sentient beings (possibly including human, naturally).

[Thermofusion]

Also crossing my mind: what if the aliens aren't satisfied with your efforts to please their taste receptors?

[ellaguru]

My vegetarian ladyfriend and I actually did talk about possible dietary restrictions when genesising this idea; she was pretty sure the aliens would be vegetarian, like her, and I thought there was a solid chance they'd be happy to eat sentient beings (possibly including human, naturally).

Of course, the aliens might be sentient plant-based life forms, and might therefore consider vegetarianism to be horrifying and barbaric. Without knowing exactly which aliens are coming to dinner, we can't be expected to try to plan a meal around what we think their dietary restrictions might be. That way lies madness.

[Greg Nog]

Also crossing my mind: what if the aliens aren't satisfied with your efforts to please their taste receptors?

I imagine they'd go to a backup plan of rishathra.

[YojimboMonkey]

Goddammit Greg now you've brought up Larry Niven and the aliens have lost their appetite.

[jm]

Breakfast [...] Buttermilk biscuits, gravy.

See, this is what I found lacking from Greg's post.  I mean, if you're going to have gravy anywhere (and yeah, I'm jumping to the conclusion that aliens ain't mad at animal consumption), and only in one place, do it with biscuits, and do it for breakfast.  The lunch/dinner menu is so vast that you should really get the gravy in where it is a more substantial player in the meal than just a dressing for something fried.

and like, can we teach these motherfuckers about cucumber?

[ausdemfenster]

I'm just going to commit to the first things that come to mind before the six inevitable, "Wait, wait, I forgot ___!" that will follow:

Breakfast: Gordon Ramsay-style scrambled eggs and side items (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dU_B3QNu_Ks) with coffee and Florida orange juice spiked with vodka.

Lunch: Zaru soba and a few rolls of sushi to include salmon, avocado, yellowtail, eel, tuna, mango, and shrimp.

Snack: Steamed artichoke served with some mayo-based dipping sauce. The aliens need to work for the deliciousness, plus maybe they'll really enjoy the taste of the inedible quill-like part.

Dinner: Ribs! Full rack, dressed with vinegar-based BBQ sauce and served with garlic mashed potatoes, cheddar-chive scones, and that insane Barefoot Contessa broccoli.

Dessert: Caramel creme brulee made while the aliens watch; they'll be impressed with our dessert-related technological fuckery that involves tiny blowtorches.

[peacocks]

thermo wins wins wins for the whole meal concept and I don't eat the meat!

I have to think about mine some more but ausdemfenster is smart including the sushi and the dessert tech fuckery. Mmmm.

[FreddyKnuckles]

Fuckin' white pizza with big fuckin dollops of ricotta all brown and shit

[davy]

Yeah, there really ought to be a pizza in there somewhere. 2nd breakfast, Shire-style!

[peacocks]

yeah, and sushi would go in the elevensies slot

[dieblucasdie]

Breakfast:  Chicken-fried steak and eggs (overeasy), with sausage gravy and an English muffin, coffee.  They get a Bloody Mary with a beer back while they wait to be served (obviously I will have taken them drinking the night before).  

Lunch:  Tacos.  Soft corn tortillas, carnitas, cilantro, onion, tomato, sour cream, cheese, and salsa.  Simple margaritas (tequila, simple syrup, lime juice and ice, stirred)

Snack:  Hot dog and beer at a baseball game.

Dinner:  Greg is OTM with Indian, but I'd rather do Dal Makhani, with rice and naan.  

Dessert:  Bourbon.

And yeah, obviously pizza is the glaring omission in most of these.

[milesofsparks]

and where is the midnight snack?  that's one of the greatest inventions of civilization.  and tea?

let's see, for the given paramaters, I'd go with--

breakfast
fruit salad (including all kinds of things like passionfruit, mangoes, bananas, starfruit, etc.)
fresh OJ
macchiato
waffles, with homemade butter and real maple syrup
home fries
corned beef hash w/fried egg on top

lunch
enormous sandwich of deliciousness, thanksgiving leftover  style, with roast turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and just a touch of gravy
lemonade
I'm not sure about the side here...  potato chips?  a lovely salad?  

snack
since no midnight snack is allowed, I'll put cold leftover mushroom pizza here, with a cold beer

dinner
lamb tagine with tomato jam
orange slices with orange flower water & sugar
handmade bread with butter & honey
oatmeal stout

dessert
vietnamese coffee ice cream, oatmeal stout ice cream, vanilla ice cream (one scoop each...  maybe in a banana split?)
sprinkled with instant espresso
mocha
small cake rusks

[Greg Nog]

Oh, believe me, peeps, it killed me to not have pizza on this list.  Likewise garden-fresh tomatoes with a sprinkling of kosher salt.  I've been trying to figure out if I could put them in there somehow, but I'm trying to stick to realistic regular meals rather than everything-but-the-kitchen-sink affairs.  For this reason, I'm particularly charmed by Thermo's thematically-unified list.

[YojimboMonkey]

I typed up a little bit yesterday and had late summer garden fresh tomatoes on there (in the form of a club sandwich, which may be a bit pedestrian but if the tomatoes are right you can't beat that, or a BLT). But there's just too much, I'd want to feed the aliens everything. Which I know, that's kind of the point but fuckit. (also the breakfast I assembled was basically Thermo's sans grits and with over-easy eggs served atop the biscuits & gravy rather than scrambled on the side)

[dieblucasdie]

Yeah, I almost did BLTs for lunch for the same tomato-reason, but then I realized:  Tacos.  Tacos.

[coldforge]

Yo, I'm all about that eat drink man woman shit! Crazy chinese bugs and pig eyeballs!

[dieblucasdie]

Mostly I'm just surprised that this hasn't turned into a fight about what kind of pizza to serve them.

Because really that's the most important question here