Simon "the Rabbit" Rosenthall

Editor's Note: This post was written by my friend Suzanne a few months ago, and since it was about her family's beloved rabbit, I thought I would hold on to it for an appropriate occasion. Today I learned that Suzanne and her husband recently had to put Simon to sleep. This post is in memory of Simon the Rabbit.

Okay, I know the blog is "people and food" and that technically I'm not a person. But it seems like the rest of my family is going to get a blog entry so I think I should get one too. First of all, let me get something off of my dewlap (look it up!). We hate it when you refer to salads and greens as "rabbit food" in that tone you take on - you know the one I mean. As if there were something wrong with rabbit food. I can tell you first-paw that it is quite yummy. I get very excited for each of my three salads a day. As a matter of fact, when I was younger and more agile I frequently had to remind my people that it was time for my evening salad. I would subtly bring their attention to the fact that they had missed my usual and preferred feeding time by positioning myself under the dining room table by the entry to the kitchen and the foody-fater (at least that is what the boy Adam calls it).

Just like humans, rabbits all have different palates and prefer different foods. I'm especially fond of carrot tops (even better than the carrot), dandelion greens, kale, and collard greens. I also like a variety of lettuces from simple romaine to frisee to chicory to endive. Radish tops are great but beet tops - no thank you. Fruit is a really special treat - I run in circles for bananas and apples. I also like grapes and strawberries. When I was a baby and had just been adopted by my humans I was exploring the house and sniffed out a bit of pear in the garbage bag. I made a mental note of that pear and it's location and when no one was watching a while later I went back for it. I had to dig a hole in the garbage bag, but it was worth it. Yummy!

Speaking of garbage bags, another thing I love to eat is paper. My favorite paper (non-glossy) was the paper they used to print that list of doctors covered by my humans' medical plan back in Boston. The best glossy paper has got to be People magazine. My predecessor, the late, great, and sorely missed Rubin Speyer (also a rabbit) was particularly fond of very fancy paper. One time he jumped onto a bed to get to a night table that led to a desk where a diploma lay and made a nice snack of it. That is a lot of work for a piece of paper.

In addition to my fresh veggies, I get rabbit pellets made of timothy hay every day and of course I can eat all of the fresh hay (timothy, orchard grass, oat hay) I want. I've lost weight recently so my humans have been letting me eat a lot of alfalfa hay as well. It is not a grass hay like the others but at this point in my life they think I deserve to indulge a bit. Fresh wheat grass is really good, too - it isn't just for cats!

Sometimes the boy, Adam, will give me a special papaya tablet as a treat. And lately I've been getting something called Critical Care mixed with banana twice a day. I'm not sure, but I think my humans might be hiding medication in it. I always mean to check but I get so excited when I smell it that I gobble it up really quickly.

I love my food but most of all I love the love with which my humans feed me!

Jacquelyn Evans Jamar

I can't read The Gingerbread Boy to my grandchildren without picturing Christmas of 1967. My husband would soon be home from Viet Nam, my grandparents were with us, and the family would soon be rid of me. What better way to celebrate than to make gingerbread boys. Tripling the recipe would be the order of the day and then the order of the night. We all began to hope they would jump out and run away. The line I remember was my Grandfather saying late into the night: "It looks like I'll have to help Ethel." That was the only time he ever helped in anyone's kitchen - at least as far as I know.

Another story is that my grandmother baked every minute of every day (or so I thought) when I was a child. When I had my own kitchen I called for her spice cake recipe. I decided not to tackle it after asking about how much milk to use. When she asked, "How much milk have you got?" - it squelched the effort.

Zelma Blachman Goodman Rivin

Food story #1:

Traveling in Yugoslavia and hungry for dinner- a narrow road in the country- we see a farmhouse with a food sign- EUREKA! We are delighted to find a really ethnic place- but no English is spoken there and the menu is in a foreign language. No way to communicate. Finally, after many frustrating exchanges, I raise my hands to my chest and flap my elbows up and down- cackling all the while. Great grin from the famer's wife! And we were served chicken.

Food story #2:

A charming restaurant in Portugal. Excellent food. Waiter speaks broken English. Entree is excellent- we ask about dessert. He recommends "Flan Sinotre" which sounds to us like Frank Sinatra. So in a voice loud enough to engage the other diners, I laughingly exclaim "I'll have Frank Sinatra" which provoked wonderful merriment throughout the cafe. And incidentally, another American tourist joined our table for the fun. He has remained a friend.

Kurt Phillip Caminer

World War II, Wales, British Islands, Food shortage, Rationing

I am a Jewish refugee from Germany, eighteen years old, working on a farm in Wales, since this is the only work I am allowed to do. Recently released from an internment camp as an enemy alien, just as the Japanese were dealt with here.

Farm work entails getting up at about 4:30 a.m., milking the cows (no machines yet) mucking out stalls etc., feeding the livestock, other necessary labor, 4:oo p.m. milking cows again. Day in, day out. Seven days a week. Pay: about 5 shillings a week. Just enough for maybe 1 movie and a serving of fish and chips on the rare day off.

One would think that working on a farm, one would have food galore and would not be affected by rationing. However the Welsh lifestyle is just not conducive to this. Most farmers in Wales live on potatoes, fatback and if available some cabbage or turnips from the garden. Bread is home baked and sometimes available at more than two slices.

Food is plentiful and delicious when the neighbors come by to help during thrashing time, once a year. Every farmer's wife competes with each other as to who cooks best and serves the most luscious and nutritious meal. Desserts are served and consumed with vigor, and then back to work.

And the eggs: There are a few chickens in the yard, and their eggs are prized highly since once a week a man comes by and buys them for six shillings a dozen to sell them on the black market.

Now fast forward to what happened in the winter of 1942. Snow has piled up in and on the lane from the farm to the highway and is stopping the farmer from getting his main product, milk, to the road to be picked up by the distributor. For days now, income is lost since there is no way to get our product to the market. We work feverishly shoveling snow from the lane to clear our way to the main road. There is no bulldozer, I suggest that I will work all evening, night and next day, if needed, until we can clear enough to get the horse and buggy through. I suggest that I want an extra shilling or two for my labor and that I would like to have two soft boiled eggs for breakfast in the morning if successful. Eggs for breakfast was unheard of, but under these circumstances it is agreed upon. I work tirelessly until morning, with shaded light, since there is a black-out all over the British Isles. Unbelievably, I manage to get enough snow removed to get the full milk cans to the road. They did not believe that I could possibly be successful by the next morning and was celebrated and praised to high heaven for the endeavor.

But I was never forgiven for having asked for the eggs. It must have been an insult to the farmer's wife. Eggs were a commodity, not food. Our good relationship seemed to be at an end and it was not long before it was time for me to change my place of employment.

Janine Marie Serresseque

Uh-Oh, SpaghettiOs. Such an aptly created slogan.

When I was a little girl, my favorite thing to eat was my mom's spaghetti with meat sauce. In retrospect, it wasn't anything gourmet-- just hearty and comforting.

imagine my enthusiasm when I saw a commercial for SpaghettiOs! My favorite food, redefined in a cute circular shape! And you could eat them with a spoon, for heavens sake. They had a little song with the tag line, "Uh-Oh! SpaghettiOs!" I had to have them.

I commenced to beg and beg and beg. Of course my mom knew they were total crap, and repeatedly said NO. I don't remember what made her finally give in, but she probably said something like, "Well if I buy these SpaghettiOs for you, you better eat them and not turn your nose up at them!" or some similar mom-like decree. The day she served them for my lunch, I was filled with a sharp anticipation that I can still remember like it was yesterday.

My mom places the steaming bowl of SpaghettiOs in front of me and I am immediately accosted by their puke-like aroma! I mean, the smell of this food was truly funky and unnatural. I vehemently expressed my disenchantment with the SpaghettiOs, but after all that shameless begging, she was having none of it and insisted that I eat this crap that I'd spent the last two weeks pleading for. It was a big showdown, with lots of tears and protestation. I finally did lose the battle and forced myself to eat the whole bowl, all the time threatening to throw up if I was forced to finish my lunch. That's how repulsed I was.

After finishing the SpaghettiOs, I promptly vomited them up all over the place. So lets see...I won the battle, then I lost the battle, then I guess I kinda won the war.

But, for what it's worth, Mom, you were right!

Theodore Mazur Bonk

In 1980, Luciano Pavarotti performed for the Virginia Opera at a sold-out Chrysler Hall in Norfolk, Virginia. I was asked to cater a post-concert fundraiser at the the Chrysler Museum a few blocks away. It was quite an honor, as Pavarotti was in the prime of his career (and a great connoisseur of food). For the people who paid thousands per seat to charity for the concert, we set up two 60-foot long tables- one with an elaborate array of anti-pasta including salamis, vinaigrettes...everything you can think of (we didn’t want it to be ordinary) down the center, with plates scattered all along the way and the other table overflowing with beautiful desserts, displayed similarly. For Pavarotti and his entourage, a total of 12 people, I prepared an elaborate, multi-course meal- including fried baby artichokes, Roman style. In 1980, they didn’t sell baby artichokes in markets like today- we had to get them flown in from a farm in California. The main course was a superb veal dish, there was soup, salad- I pulled out all stops for this menu.

Two short hours before the concert, Pavarotti informed me that he was dieting, and requested only plain broiled fish. I had to scour Tidewater to find fish suitable to serve Luciano Pavarotti! I called a fisherman friend and he had some flounder in his freezer. We rushed to pick up the flounder, defrosted it, and prepared it the way Pavarotti requested.

After the concert, we knew that Pavarotti and his entourage wanted to be fed upon their arrival. He was seated and we carried out his meal of broiled flounder on a big silver tray, and started with the soup course of the meal for the rest of his entourage. They progressed through many courses with appreciative smiles and gestures. Pavarotti, of course, only ate the flounder, prepared plainly - the only flourish on it was a lemon wedge.

After savoring his flounder, Pavarotti walked up to me and thanked me, saying it was a wonderful dinner. Then he pulled me over towards him and kissed me on both cheeks. It was wonderful. I didn’t wash up for days.

Jo Manning

When I was growing up in Astoria, Queens, in the '40s and '50s, I thought everyone ate as well as we did. My dad had a backyard garden where he grew figs, zucchini, tomatoes, peppers, and basil -- his older brother, who lived in an apartment building, rented a space where he also grew veggies, fruit, and herbs. Their mother -- my paternal grandmother -- was a fabulous cook. (My mother learned to cook from her and we have her treasured tomato sauce recipe, which I handed down to my children.)

My father always said, "We may not be rich, but we eat a lot better than most rich people." He might have been right :-)

Anyway, the food we ate and loved -- fresh tuna, wheat berries, broccoli rabe, artichokes, cardoons (my father and uncle used to pick them outside of Poughkeepsie, where they went to hunt rabbits and squirrels), ricotta, mozzarella, and all manner of what Anglos called offal, these enriched our food palate. I still remember eating fresh ricotta on fresh Italian bread (my mother scoffed at what she called the soft, white, packaged stuff favored by Anglos "American bread") and breaded, fried cardoons fresh from the pan.

The French have their madeleines to remind them of times past (I bake a killer madeleine, by the way, following Julia Child's recipe), I have cardoons, fresh ricotta, and sauteed squash blossoms... It gives me a kick to see Anglos -- foodies and food critics -- "discovering" these delicious foods of my Sicilian childhood.

Jo Manning, http://www.jomanningbooks.com/, author of -- among other novels and non-fiction -- The Sicilian Amulet, which is a paranormal romance with a lot of food talk, too.

P.S. My cousin's cousin, Renee Restivo, has two web sites, http://www.soulofsicily.com/ and http://www.lemonsandoregano.com/, that you all might want to visit -- she also conducts tours of Sicily during the olive harvest.

Jonathan Ari Steinberg

Everybody has their vices. Women, wine, gambling. For my entire 36 years, I've been a slave to the green stuff. No, not money. Lemon-lime Gatorade.

When I was born with a milk allergy, our doctor in Miami suggested my parents feed me a new sports drink on the market, a sweet substance loaded with carbohydrates and sodium. Invented in 1965 by Dr. Robert Cade at the University of Florida for the school's football team, Gatorade quickly became the gold standard of sports drinks, which it remains to this day. The Gatorade brand is one of the most recognized in the world, and has even spawned the Gatorade Sports Science Institute, which studies the way athletes' bodies react to hydration. As for me, I became addicted early on. In my 13,000-plus days on this earth, I'd guess there are probably less than 50 of them in which I haven't had at least a sip. When I was a kid, I would get sick every summer at camp if I would go more than a few days without it. I'm convinced my body requires it for normal function. As I became involved in youth athletics, I drank more and more, and somehow never lost the taste for it. I'm convinced it even subliminally drove me into a career in the sports business. And the love affair continues into my mid-life. I often consume an entire small bottle with my lunch, and enjoy a tall, cold glass every night with dinner. In short, my comfort food is a comfort drink. I can't imagine life without it.

Marilyn Ethel Moore Moon

When I was in junior high school, my family lived on Merchantile Street in McKeesport, outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. One Friday night, my friend Myrna slept at my house. The next morning, my parents, Ethel and Bill, made us breakfast. My mother made six dippy eggs- one for each of us and I guess two for my father. My father made bacon and toast. When we were ready to eat, my mother passed the platter with six eggs to Myrna, who exclaimed, "Oh My Goodness! I can't possibly eat all of these!"

But she did. Nobody said a word. We were so startled, none of us knew what to say.

Arthur Zanville Steinberg

As anyone who has been around for a few years, I have so many great food memories that I’ll just have to choose among hundreds to share with you now. I hope to supply you with many more as time goes by.

Among my earliest of such memories is one that my maternal grand-mother used to prepare. She lived in our family home in Baltimore and, on occasion, would take over kitchen duties from my mom.

She made a casserole of mashed potatoes mixed with freshly cooked spinach, then baked in a 350 degree oven until the top was crusty, that was out of this world. I used to fight for some of the crust. It was simple to make and delicious.

Many years later, as students in Cincinnati, your “uncle” Arthur B. and I used to treat ourselves to an occasional dinner at two special restaurants. One was an Italian place called Scotti’s where we sat and dined with the owner and her personally prepared viands. I loved her pasta with both meatballs and meat ravioli. The other, La Maisonette, where our favorite waitress, Marge, would advise us of the best menu items of the day. Their rare steaks and bottles of Lafite Rothschild were truly memorable.

Another, from the much more recent past, is the bourbon turkey breast that your Kitty-Mom has been making every Thanksgiving. You’ll have to ask her for the specific recipe but, please do, because it is outstanding.

Mim Golub Scalin

We just returned from a trip to NYC & NJ where we ate pizza for dinner 3 out of 4 nights we were there. (Arturo's, La Bottega, Krispy's) The pizza was so good! This reminded me of the first time I ever ate pizza. I must have been about 9 years old. My older sister was babysitting for us younger sibs that night and had a friend over. They ordered pizza and closed themselves into the kitchen with it. I knocked on the door. It cracked open a bit and my sister thrust something out at me and said, leave us alone. It was a hot, greasy triangle that smelled good but didn't look appetizing to me. I peeled off the top layer (cheese) and looked at the bumpy dough underneath and decided this was not something I wanted to eat. I went into the bathroom and broke it up into little pieces and flushed it down the toilet. (Pizza was a new thing, back then.) Hope you enjoy my memory,
m i m

Check out http://mim4art.blogspot.com

Jill Bari Steinberg

There are so many great food stories in my memory. My family was lucky enough to have many, many meals together while I was growing up. And while I have fond family memories and recipes, I have also been lucky to learn different recipes from other close families. It is no secret to anyone who knows me that, fortunately or UN, I have had my share of boyfriends. Some say I like variety - like a good tapas plate that has a little of everything. Due to this I have learned some great recipes from the mothers of my boyfriends. Recipes that I would never have normally come across. You can say it was an added bonus. If love don't last forever, well, the recipes will and have. It is hard to pick a favorite but I will say one of the top recipes I was ever taught and still make to this day is Mrs. Organ's Cream Chipped Beef. This recipe fascinated and thrilled me. Yes, you heard me right. You see, Jews don't eat meat out of can unless, I suppose, they are trapped in a bunker, lost somewhere. Needless to say, I had never seen or heard of this delicacy but Steve kept talking about his mother's creamed chip beef like it was heaven drizzled on a biscuit. I try to be adventurous when it comes to food - at least tasting it if not loving it. My parents taught us to try everything once. I just wish I had realized then that they were talking about food. Anyway, Steve's parents live in an idyllic log cabin home on the side of a mountain just minutes from West Virginia. Visiting there was always a treat but -- on special occasions --it got even better. I was not sure what to expect when I sat down for breakfast with the whole family - the smell of the biscuits and the chipped beef were almost too much for me to handle. It smelled that good and tasted even better. It was creamy and salty and the biscuits were crunchy. I think I ate two full plates and fell into a food coma. So the next time I made sure to watch the whole process so I could learn how this magical recipe was made. She was kind enough to share this family recipe with me and gave me many helpful hints. Some of the things also apply to other recipes I have tried since then. For instance, the creamed chipped beef starts with a simple roux. I had never done that before and since then it has been in so many recipes I can't count them all. I am grateful to have had that opportunity to learn a recipe that I never would have learned. So, variety may be the spice of life, but it was also my ticket to the best creamed chipped beef anywhere.

Florence Roberta Krakower Steinberg

When I was a child, my family made the trek from Ft. Wayne, Indiana to Cincinnati, Ohio at least once a month. The high point of the trip was eating at a tea room which was located at the halfway point in Eaton, Ohio. It was called Mrs. Wagner's. They were known far and wide for their corn fritters, which were served with hot syrup. Everyone in my family looked forward to eating in Mrs. Wagner's and devouring the corn fritters. I can’t even tell you what other food we ate there, but I will never forget the delicious, delectable corn fritters.

Jenn DiPiazza (aka The Leftover Queen)

My food memories are almost always tied to my family. Those big Italian affairs with lots of food, people and hugs. Loud voices speaking over loud voices and hands waving with intention and enthusiasm, knocking over glasses and punctuating sentences. Most of what I know about food and cooking has come from this family too. I am not the only Leftover Queen in my family, either. This much has been clear from the day I sat down and thought about where my food inspiration comes from. I was taught by a whole generation of Leftover Queens. In reality my love of leftovers comes from the resourcefulness of the older generation of my family – people who lived during The Great Depression and know what it is to get creative with what you have. These people were also Italian immigrants or children of Italian immigrants and therefore had the tenacity to make delicious creations from the bare bones. Everyone in my family of my grandparent’s generation had a garden. The garden was a place of great pride, a place where one could go and see the fruits of their labor, quite literally. It was the place that provided for and fed your family. It was a way of bringing a part of the Old Country to America with them, a little bit of security. One of the pictures that held a special place at the forefront of my grandmother’s dining room was of my Pap and his brother, my great uncle Sammy holding vegetables out in the garden. It was an old black and white picture and they were probably in their 40’s, two brothers proudly sharing their bounty.

When I was young, visiting my grandparents in Western Pennsylvania, if we went out to eat it was usually either to Santoni’s or the Italian hall. My grandparents lived in a very small town in the hills so there really wasn’t a lot of choice when it came to dining out. However, dining options were ethnically diverse – the small closely packed together towns were full of immigrant families from all over Europe. Of course, there were lots of Italians. But there were also Poles, French, Greeks and Germans -it was kind of like a much scaled down version of New York City – all different ethnic groups living in their own neighborhoods, close to one another, sharing the foods of their home countries – a cultural exchange.

Each of these immigrant groups had their “halls” - little gathering places where they served the foods of the various Mother countries, where people came to eat, relax and socialize. Whenever we went to the Italian hall or Santoni’s, one of the mom and pop Italian restaurants in town, my Pap would always order me Spumoni for dessert. Spumoni is an Italian Ice cream treat that originates in Naples. However as I have learned, most Italian immigrants to America have been from the South of Italy. Therefore, most of what we think of as “Italian food” in America is mostly Southern Italian cuisine that has been adapted to the American kitchen. Then these dishes are served in all the Italian restaurants with perhaps some regional favorites from the owner’s family. Spumoni is no different – it is Napoletan however, it can be found in many Italian restaurants all over the world. It usually is comprised of three different ice cream flavors – Pistachio, Chocolate and Strawberry that is swirled with maraschino cherries and pistachios and laced with rum. Many times it has layers of whipped cream as well. It is sweet and delicious – a symphony of flavors in the mouth.

I really had not thought about Spumoni for years. But I had it recently at a pizza restaurant run by Sicilians. Isn’t it amazing how a taste of something can bring you back to the past? One minute you are sitting enjoying a sweet treat at the end of a pizza and pasta dinner and in the next moment you are an eight year old child sitting in the Italian hall enjoying the same sweet treat with your Pap-Pap. Sometimes, it has been so long since you had that particular taste that you forgot that it even existed. In that same moment that you are tasting this long-forgotten delight, moments in your life you had also forgotten come flooding back – now full of emotion because they had been forgotten for so long you did not realize how much you missed those simple, wonderful moments. Food is a very powerful tool, not only does it bring back memories, it brings people together, teaches you about other parts of the world, expands your horizons and creativity and sustains and nourishes us. Ah, the power of food.

Beth Anne Moon

Home for the Holidays

I have so may food memories growing up with my grandmother and mother in the kitchen that it was hard to pick just one. Both were great cooks and even better bakers. During the December break of my freshman year in college, I came home to not so much to do. My mother and I decided to put her baking skills to the test … a gingerbread house from scratch. This was in the days before the internet - so our blueprint for success was nothing more than a 1/2 page spread in Ladies' Home Journal. Needless to say, it wasn't much help. My major at the time was English - not architecture. My mother's was in business. We did what any college educated person does when confronted with an unknown (at least I do) - we put our kindergarten skills to work - construction paper, crayons and scissors. After several days of cutting patterns, shaping and reshaping dough, baking and rebaking - we finally had the makings of an outer shell for the house - all held together with an icing type glue and prayer. The decorating was probably the most fun - at least not as frustrating as the construction part. We used Charlie Brown, Lucy and Snoopy cookie cutters for the people and animals. Green gumdrops and cinnamon sticks for the trees and bushes, white icing for the snow on the ground and roof, and red cinnamon hots for the chimney. It was a success. I'm sure glad we took a picture because no one would believe us. Not so sure this would be my mother’s favorite food memory as I have my father’s temper. But we did have a lot of fun doing it after all was said and done. My mother and father join us tomorrow for the holidays. Little does my mother know, I’m planning another one.

Jacquie O'Connor

My Italian mother did not teach me how to cook. She was too busy raising three wild kids and going part-time to night school in order to obtain her master's degree in Social Work. Actually, even if she did have the time, I am not really sure that she even knew how to cook. The most creative she got was pizza muffins. So I entered adulthood not even knowing how long it takes to boil an egg. I did OK for a while...I mean who needs to know how to cook in college? Just order a pizza and call it a day. And then I toured with Theatre IV for a few years and discovered the FABULOUS world of fast food! Then I decided to stop touring, live in Richmond and get an apartment. That's when the problems started. My cousin John and his wife Bonni had just moved to Richmond and I finally decided that it was time to invite them over for dinner (they had me over MANY times and it was just rude not to return the invite). I went to Ukrops, thinking that something would jump out at me. Well, something did...a pre-cooked lemon chicken by Perdue. I figured what could go wrong? And the best part is they would never know I didn't cook it! I cleaned the house, put the chicken in the oven, lit some candles and they arrived. It started out as a lovely evening. Wine, talk...we sat down to enjoy the first course (salad in a bag) and that's when the smoke detector went off. I wasn't too concerned at first. I remember saying to John and Bonni, "Don't worry there's no fire, the stove just smokes a lot and the detector was very sensitive." I went into the kitchen to check the chicken and was surprised to discover that there was no smoke coming from the stove. The detector was at the top of the stairs, so I looked up the staircase to see what the heck was going on. That's when I saw the flames coming from the bathroom. I ran up the stairs screaming "There is a fire, there is a fire!" I had lit one of those big candles with three wicks and somehow the wick had fallen through and because it was resting on a wicker basket on top of the toilet (yes, I was that dumb), it had immediately caught on fire. Now to make matters worse, my mother had given me this tacky bird display made entirely out of twigs, which just happened to be hanging over the toilet bowl above the candle (YES, I WAS THAT DUMB!) So needless to say, that was up in flames as well! I am staring at this and panicked...screaming to John..."GET SOME WATER!" (OK...I am in a bathroom...do I think to use the sink water, toilet water or shower water...NO!) Bonni is screaming "Should I call 911?" John comes running up the stairs with a pot of water, pushes me out of the way and tosses it. Then he adds more water from the sink and the fire goes out. It takes us 2 hours to clean up the mess at which point we are STARVING! I did have enough sense to turn off the chicken during this and so we all go downstairs to re-heat it and finally eat. It still looks good to me...moist. We sit down (covered in soot) and John and Bonni take the first bite. I wish I could have taken a picture of their faces. I take a bite. It is the worst thing I have ever put in my mouth. Total rubber and the lemon...well, it was horrible. We got to laughing so hard. I picked up the phone and ordered a pizza.

It was a very long time before I invited anyone over for dinner...and John and Bonni, I don't know why, but they keep turning me down when I invite them over for dinner.

Michelle Denise New

Sometimes the thought crosses my mind that maybe I spend too much time thinking about food. When I am at work, I think about what I am going to have for lunch. After lunch, I think about what I am going to have for dinner and what I should snack on in the meantime. After dinner, I think about what I could eat for lunch the next day. Is this an obsession? An addiction? I suppose there are worse things to be addicted to.

I feel very lucky to have grown up in a family that loves food and cooking. I have so many food memories. On Sunday mornings I would wake up to the smell of bacon wafting through the house. This was my dad's sure fire way to lure us out of bed. He would make scrambled eggs, or dippie eggs (for those of you that don't call them this, I think you might call them sun-side up), french toast, or pancakes. But there was always bacon! My dad also makes the best blue crabs I have ever eaten. I have tried to eat them out at bars or restaurants, but they always pale in comparison to my dad's. They are spicy and sweet, cooked in beer with old bay, cayenne pepper, vinegar, and celery. My dad has made us a bushel of crabs every summer for as long as I can remember. It really wouldn't be a good summer for me in Philadelphia or at the Jersey Shore without my dad's blue crabs.

My mom makes several comfort foods that I have just recently started learning how to replicate. My mom worked throughout my whole childhood, but we would still have several good meals each week. Time consuming meals were usually saved for Sunday dinner. Some of my favorites are my mom's beef stew, pot roast, roasted chicken, homemade gravies, pork and sauerkraut, and macaroni and cheese; I am salivating now as I type this. My grandmother is a terrible cook. My mom tells me of the horrible things she was forced to eat as a child and I am glad that my mom didn't inherit grandmom's cooking skills or odd tastes. Some of the meals my mom told me that she had to eat as a child were liver and onions, pepper pot soup with tripe, kidney stew, and canned vegetables. I think this might be the first time I have lost my appetite in a long time. Nah, its back. I'm starving.

About once a year, my family and I gather around the table and have beef fondue. Some people might shy away from this cooking method, since I wouldn't exactly call it a healthy meal. We sit around the table and fry top round or bottom round steak cubes in hot vegetable oil. FRIED BEEF! What could be better? We make a ketchup based dipping sauce and we serve no side dishes or appetizers or bread. This is just a simple meal of fried beef, and I love it.

If I am ever put on death row (hey anything could happen) it would be very difficult for me to pick a last meal. Is there a size limit? Is there a price limit? I think I would want a few of dad's blue crabs, a medium rare filet mignon, mashed potatos, a bowl of pork and sauerkraut, french fries, a juicy hamburger, a spicy tuna roll, fresh summer corn on the cob, macaroni and cheese, a couple of strips of bacon, a lobster tail, nacho chips with fresh salsa, buffalo wings, an italian hoagie and if I still have room, maybe a piece of cheesecake.

Bennett L. Ross

My most vivid food memory growing up is getting to make French Toast on the electric griddle. I got the basic recipe from an old cook book, but spiced it up with help from Grandma Grace (extra vanilla extract and cinnamon). I got to make the French Toast on a weekend or some other special occasion, and everyone usually enjoyed it (and the best part is that no one died after eating it). Mom gave me run of the kitchen and got me an apron that I always used when I was cooking. If this law thing doesn't work out, I figure I have a future at the Waffle House or Denny's.

Suzanne Speyer Rosenthall

I was excited when Jennifer told me about her new blog. I feel as if I’m constantly thinking about food and I love to talk about food with people. I have so many food memories and associations that stand out, I don’t think I can pick just one to share.

The most impressive meal I’ve had? Without question it would have to be my first meal at Matsuhisa in Beverly Hills. I agreed to accompany a family friend to dinner at a sushi restaurant he had wanted to try. As we were looking at the menu our sushi chef, Yoshi, asked if we had been there before. As we hadn’t, Yoshi suggested that he pick several dishes for us to try (omakase). How lovely. I was totally unprepared for the dining experience I was about to have. I thought we’d be getting the usual sushi and sashimi. Instead we were presented with small plate after small plate of beautiful, fresh, and absolutely divine tasting food. Some dishes were hot, some warm, and some cold. We had a salad with warm squid, ceviche, rock shrimp, yellowtail jalapeno, miso marinated black cod. We never knew what were going to get next but it didn’t take long for us to realize that we would not be disappointed with whatever it was that Yoshi proudly placed in front of us. Yoshi explained each dish to us and appeared to derive great satisfaction from our positive response to the food he presented to us. I called my husband after the meal and excitedly told him about it. The next night I went back to the non-descript, almost sleepy, restaurant by myself so I could experience more of the great food they had to offer. Yoshi encouraged me to try even more new dishes rather than repeat dishes that I loved the most from the previous night. The whole experience was so unexpected and so unlike any I had had before. Truly the most impressive meal I’ve ever had. See the menu at http://www.nobumatsuhisa.com

Other food memories:

Strongest food/memory association from my childhood: The barbeque made David and Dit Zager, the late parents of my closest friend since childhood. David would put some pork ribs (short legged-beef, as he used to say), leg of lamb, and pork out on his Weber and smoke the meat for hours and hours. During this time Dit would have a pot of her home made Memphis style barbeque sauce simmering away on the stove. The pungent smell of vinegar greeted guests as they walked in the front door. I’d stand by the stove sniffing the air, salivating in anticipation of the meal to come. I’ve always preferred barbeque sandwiches to ribs simply because it is less work to eat! After the leg of lamb and pork was done, David would shred it, pulled-pork style, and I’d heap the pork or lamb on a bun, slather it in sauce, top it with cole slaw and dig in. When I was in college, Dit included some of the pulled lamb in a care package she sent down with a friend. When I moved away after college, the Zagers would always make some barbeque for me when I returned home for a visit. I always used to joke (okay, I wasn’t joking) with Dit, telling her that I wanted her to leave her secret recipe for the barbeque sauce to me in her will. Although she didn’t leave the recipe for me in her will, I have to say with much regret that I am now in possession of that recipe which Jill and Dana, Dit’s daughters, shared with me after Dit passed away. I make the sauce myself now, the smell of vinegar now filling the air of my home, but it isn’t quite the same.

Best food on the fly: After spending a semester in the Netherlands while I was in college, my older sister met me in Europe and we traveled around for about 3 weeks. We got some great chocolate in Belgium at Leonida’s (http://www.leonidas-chocolate.com) which we enjoyed on the train on the way to Italy. When we arrived in Florence we came upon a vendor selling amazing fruit right outside of the train station. We bought a bunch of fresh strawberries and sat on a bench in the sun eating the warm, ripe berries with chocolate we still had left from the trip. During the same trip, we spent some time in France. In Dijon we bought some mustard, baguettes, pate, cheese, olives, cured meats, wine, and a “Coke Diet” for me and had a picnic dinner on our hotel bed. So good!

So this is what Lent is like: I gave up sushi made with raw fish during my pregnancies. A nice raw piece of fish is one of my favorite things to eat, so this was not an easy thing for me to do. Before I had our first child I told my husband, Sam, that I fully expected him to be standing there ready to hand me my favorite roll from my favorite sushi place in town (spicy tuna roll wrapped in avocado and topped with masago) the minute I pushed that baby out and the cord was cut. Alas, the circumstances of the delivery made it virtually impossible for Sam to go across town to get the sushi for me. When I was expecting our twins, I told my friends that I did NOT want visitors in the hospital after I delivered them. However I was more than happy to make and exception for my friend Helene and her husband when they called at 9:30 pm two or three days after I had the babies to say they were out for sushi and had a ton of leftovers and would I be interested in having them come by the hospital with the leftovers.

Who knew Diet Coke could be so good: The first summer that I was dating Sam we went on a camping trip together in Algonquin Park, a provincial park in Ontario way north of Toronto. The trip was four days and three nights of canoeing, portaging, sleeping in a teeny-tiny tent, going potty in the woods, and bathing in the same lakes we used as our source for drinking water. The trip was challenging, not a whole lot of fun, a lot of work, incredibly peaceful, beautiful and, at the end, totally rewarding. After 4 long days of drinking warmish lake water and eating freeze- dried food, we completed the trip and went to the park’s café for a bite to eat and a cold drink. It was there that I had THE BEST Diet Coke of my life. It was cold, made even more so by the ice it cascaded over as it was poured. It fizzed and popped and tickled my nose. (Diet) Coke is it! Aaah.

Adam Rosenthall

I'm Adam, Alex and Jonathan's big brother (see previous post). I have food allergies. When I was about 18 months old I ate some hummus, which was delicious, but it made me really sick. I got hives all over my face where the hummus touched my skin and I threw up A LOT. My mommy took me to the pediatric allergist and they pricked me all over my back and arms to see what I was allergic to. It was not fun! My first set of skin testing showed positive reactions to a lot of foods (sesame, chick peas, peas, lentils, chicken, eggs, dairy, cod). When my mommy drove us home from the doctor after our first visit, she cried in the car.

This summer I had another bad reaction to food, this time it was salmon. My mommy and I tasted some lox at the grocery store and soon after I ate it, I started to cough a lot and my face got red and a few minutes later I threw up. My mommy had to give me a shot in the leg (ouch) and take me to the hospital. I had to go back to the doctor for more testing and now we know I'm also allergic to salmon, perch, and almonds.

This is hard for my mommy and daddy on many levels. Of course their primary concern is my health - they don't want anything bad to ever happen to me, and it really scares my mom to think that something as seemingly innocent as a snack at a friend's house could really, really hurt me. My mommy loves to cook and is a 'foodie' so it also makes her sad that I'll never be able to enjoy so many of the foods she and my daddy love to eat most like most Asian, Middle Eastern, and Indian cuisine. Before my mommy had me, she always thought she'd introduce her kids to all kinds of foods from an early age because she wanted to have children who were open to exploring different tastes and flavors and experiencing different cultures through food. My baby brothers are now considered high risk for food allergies so mommy and daddy will have to be especially careful with them as well.

My parents are trying to teach me about my food allergies without scaring me too much. I know I can't eat sesame so if I see sesame seeds or something that looks like sesame seeds I always tell a grown up that I'm allergic. I know other kids can eat nuts and peanuts but that I have to wait until I'm five before I can try these things.

Food for most people is something they strongly associate with happy memories of their childhood, their families, places they've visited. It is something that is life sustaining and necessary. It is something that often provides comfort and frequently brings people together. My mommy and daddy are hoping that food will be all of these things for me as well. But ultimately food, for me, will always have the shadow of a monster waiting to rear his ugly head.

Raise your awareness of food allergies - check out the Food Allergy * Anaphylaxis Network at http://www.foodallergy.org/