blog action day: food

today is blog action day, a day in which hundreds of bloggers around the world all write about a common theme: this year, it is food.

where i live, right smack in the middle of america, there is definitely no shortage of food. if you live in the united states, a respectable percentage of what you are eating most likely began its life within a 500 mile radius of me. we are beyond fortunate to have access to the abundance of food available to us 24/7, but such is not the case with much of the world's population. mercifully, famine is not my experience.

some of my fondest memories, be they of place, people, experiences or food, involve meals spent with others. in all cases something significant was happening: an engagement, a new adventure, a death, a birth. these are my top ten most treasured food memories:

10. baking cuban bread with gammy in her kitchen on west lane
9. drinking gallons of vanilla soy milk for gus...and later for sophie...because both of my babies were lactose sensitive
8. biting into a calville's blanc d'hiver apple from wilson's orchard and realizing i'd never truly tasted an apple until that moment
7. gingerbread every thanksgiving and every christmas at the houston club
6. lobster bisque at tony's on one of my first dates with rich
5. trying a bowl of duran's red chile for the first time and learning that food could indeed be "velvety"
4. sitting in a circle with people i didn't know (and one that i did), eating indescribably delicious, yet unidentifiable, food in a modified tent rock in central turkey a few hours after my first panic attack
3. drinking veuve cliquot for the first time at gammy's funeral, and then many times later with my friend julia
2. eating fettucine en carrozza at costanza in rome first with a group of new and to-be-lifelong friends, then with a friend from school (who died shortly thereafter), then with rich, and then again with rich, and then again with rich for our 10-year anniversary
1. running around the ile st. louis after rich asked me to marry him, eating a dinner of french onion soup at monte cristo

what are your favorite food memories?