<p>Like the Food Network show. What’s yours?</p>
<p>Me: Jacques Torres Wicked Hot Chocolate on a snowy/slushy day in NY, after trudging across town, finally getting to the Chelsea Market and finding an empty seat. </p>
<p>That, and Dinic’s roast pork/broccoli rabe/sharp provolone sandwich in Philadelphia.</p>
<p>Home made dinner rolls hot from the oven with butter and brown sugar…</p>
<p>My husband once made veal chops with roasted garlic which were outstanding.</p>
<p>I also had a highly memorable potato and scallop salad at a restaurant in Nova Scotia.</p>
<p>I had a spicy dish made with orecchiette, mussels, capers, and wild fennel in a brown broth in Sicily a few years ago that I still think about.</p>
<p>Din Tai Fun in HKG (cheap dumpling house) - hand made dumplings and hot/sour soup. We’ve all had hot and sour soup at every Chinese restaurant in the US, but their hot and sour soup had such a fragrance and you could taste every ingredient in the soup. The dumplings were so juicy that when you bite into it hot juice would just burst in your mouth (sometimes that could be dangerous). The skin of dumpling was so thin you could see the filling inside.</p>
<p>Best snack - melt in your mouth pretzels in Philly
Best dinner - The best rib eye steak (juicy, tender and charred just right!) at Malone’s.</p>
<p>A really good seafood paella
Fried oysters
Bratwurst at Home Depot
Banana split at Dairy Queen</p>
<p>Creamed spinach at a restaurant in Auckland New Zealand. The Spinach had been grown within 6 miles of the resaurant and picked less than 2 hours before and the cream came from a farm just as close and that same day.</p>
<p>Macaroons and croissants in Paris (and no, there is no coconut in macaroons). The memories will keep me working hard so that one day I can go back. Seems like an impossibility now, but I know it will happen again in my lifetime.</p>
<p>Steak and the fresh grown veggies (picked that day) at Bern’s steak house in Tampa. Only went once some thirty years ago, but I am pretty sure the decor was red velvet. </p>
<p>Oatmeal at a deli in NYC near Herald Square on a freezing cold morning last December with a foot of snow on the ground. </p>
<p>Sharing a serving of hot sweet potato fries topped with vanilla ice cream and real maple syrup with my daughter on a college visit.</p>
<p>Turkish coffee (made by someone who really knows how to make a great cup of coffee) after a long walk on a cold autumn day.</p>
<p>Try these weird combos
Liverwurst and strawberry preserves (only if you like liverwurst) on soft white bread
or
Hard salami and peanut butter on rye.</p>
<p>They really are good.</p>
<p>I love Turkish coffee!</p>
<p>Good with a hunk of baklava too…</p>
<p>Many years ago I had Breakfast at Brennan’s Restaurant in New Orleans. Eggs Benedict and Bananas Foster. It was a splurge and it was by far the best breakfast I’ve ever had.</p>
<p>Caramel filled truffles from Eclat Chocolates.</p>
<p>A hospital turkey sandwich after 20+ hours of labor with ds1. I was soooo hungry.</p>
<p>This Turkish coffee had no foam and no sediment. I thought that was unusual for Turkish coffee, and have never had it served that way anywhere else.</p>
<p>Hmmmm.</p>
<p>Can’t do one , so here’s my top 5.</p>
<p>Ribs at Loco Coyote near Glen Rose, Texas. (Unbelievable.)</p>
<p>Chicken-Fried Steak at Mary’s Cafe in Strawn, Texas. (Don’t knock it. It ain’t what you think of Chicken-Fried.)</p>
<p>Shore lunch of “just caught” Walleye/Red Onion/Mayo on White Bread sandwiches on the English River near Ear Falls, Ontario, Canada. Just after the spring thaw. </p>
<p>Red Deer Filet at The Stein Erickson Lodge in Deer Valley, Utah. (Seems to be off the menu. Too bad.) </p>
<p>Fresh giant white asparagus, any style, Lucerne, Switzerland.</p>
<p>Ozer Restaurant in London has Turkish coffee like that - no foam or sediment and a rich, unique flavor. They have some sort of “special” machine that they are very proud of.</p>
<p>^^Now I know where I need to fly!</p>
<p>First day of summer, early morning, no one else is up yet. The sun is just up, I walk out to the garden in my bare feet. Under the leaves, lies a big, red, ripe, perfect strawberry, just warm from the sun. This is bliss.</p>