Favorite foods

Do you have a favorite dish, special dessert, or go-to recipe? Where has this dish made appearances in your life? Is there a common thread? Why do you love it so much?

That I make? Or that I like to eat? I mean, I can put a hurting on some lobster macaroni and cheese. And before my food allergies, I could have just about eaten my weight in fried catfish. Maybe it goes back to what I ate as a child, so, comfort food? My go-to recipe are cheesy tater tots; basically, tater tots (or “crispy crowns” depending on what the grocery store has), a couple of spices, and a couple of pounds of cheese. Bake until cheese bubbles. Shove into your mouthhole.

Is there a food item that immediately takes you back to your childhood? What is it and what makes it so important?

Hmm. Maybe… snacks I ate, as a child? Vienna sausages. Black olives (off your fingers). Pringles and cottage cheese. Grilled cheese. Cinnamon sugar toast. Peanut butter and honey sandwiches. Hotdog pennies (take a hot dog, cut it into small round slices – like cutting a cucumber – and fry or microwave until outside of hot dog pennies are browned). I mean, all of those things make me think of my childhood, but I don’t know that I’d call them… important? Like, you can’t pay me enough now to eat a hot dog. Or a vienna sausage. Ick.
Holy cow, I wish I could unread the Google search I just did on “what exactly is in an American Vienna Sausage.” … uh …. “Forcemeat”…..? Oh, darn, it has chicken in it, too bad, so sad, darn my food allergies.

What were some of your family’s food traditions surrounding holidays? Are these cherished memories, or something you wish you could forget?

I’d like to forget Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners as a child; my grandfather getting drunk and telling the same three stories over and over again… my Stepmonster getting drunk and storming out of the room to go lock herself in the bedroom.
But in later years, for the years my grandmother lived with us until she died, dinner at 6 PM every night was fun, with a few hands of Poker or Oh Hell after.

If you feel inspired, take a day this week and recreate a dish from your childhood that you haven’t had in a long time. Write down everything you feel as you prepare, and then taste it.

No thank you. There’s a good chance that if I haven’t had it in a while, I’m either allergic to it (fish) or it’s too disgusting to even think about (veal; the only thing I so strongly refused to eat that I was threatened with spending as long at the table as it took me to eat it…. I wound up spending the night stretched out across the dining room chairs and the veal was still there when my folks got up in the morning).

Tell us the story about your best (or worst) food experience while traveling.

The best? How about if I just leave a picture.

If you cook, tell a story about something you made for someone else. Was it a success, or did the meal fall a bit short of what you had hoped?

I made Christmas dinner last year, the first Christmas after Tim died. I made lobster mac and cheese, steak, cauliflower, peas & carrots, and scalloped potatoes. Oh, and rolls, and bacon/corn/mushroom chowder. Like I said, it was the first Christmas after Tim died. And after Barbara died. Tim usually cooked, so I was a little nervous that people would be, like, “well, it’s edible, but it’s not Tim’s cooking.” But it was very well received, and for the first time in years it was a large holiday dinner with NOTHING that I was allergic to. I could eat EVERYTHING. I could do the dishes after. It was amazing. But weird.

Do you have a favorite restaurant? Tell us why it’s so amazing.

Uh, I think everyone who knows me knows that it’s Chopstix, and if you’ve eaten there you KNOW why it’s amazing. Titi (and her parents) and JD. The staff who’ve all been there forever. The food. The atmosphere. The view.