Chocolate-Covered Spice?

Which couldn’t you live without—cheese, chocolate, red meat or ice cream? For a plurality of respondents to a Food & Wine/America Online survey, chocolate was the sine qua non (cited by 46 percent). Cheese edged red meat as runner-up (22 percent to 21 percent), while ice cream was a distant also-ran (11 percent). Maybe ice cream fared poorly because it’s seldom spicy. Asked how spicy they like their food, 22 percent said they “crave fire” and 53 percent said they “like food with a kick.”