Sunday, June 24, 2007

on which note: a meme, or something.

Saw "Sicko" the other night, and been meaning to write about it.

For now, though, cheap and easy, either your place or mine:

What's the most affecting meal you can remember?
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17 comments:

A White Bear said...

Once, when I was really poor, like scavenging-poor, like all-I-ate-this-week-was-a-bagel poor, my mom sent me $100 for my birthday, though she couldn't really spare it either. Her card said, "Please take your roommates out for a nice dinner." I thought about saving it up, using it for groceries, but the possibility of having a really great meal won out. We went to Oznot's Dish and I had the veggie mezze, curried root vegetables and a cocktail with fresh ginger. Looking at the menu now, I realize it wasn't that pricey--I go to places that nice twice a week now--but at the time, it seemed unbearably fancy. The food tasted better than anything I'd ever eaten. (I don't think I'd eaten anything in a few days at that point.) I nearly burst into tears in the middle of it, knowing I wouldn't get another meal that good again for six months.

I've been back twice in better times, and it was still really good, but never as good as that birthday dinner in 2004 with my two roommates. Apparently, it's closed now, which makes me sad. I was recently thinking about going there.

June 24, 2007 7:41 PM
Anonymous said...

Lately, the ash mole at El Naranjo in Oaxaca.

June 24, 2007 9:17 PM
Hahni said...

the first breakfast I ate with the first woman I ever loved after the first night we spent together. She made me fried rice with eggs and hot, sweet mint tea sprinkled with cayenne.

It's been almost 30 years and I can still remember the taste.

June 24, 2007 10:38 PM
Deoridhe said...

This is going to sound totally spoiled.

The second five star meal I had. It was with both of my grandparents, who took us, and in honor of their anniversary - the adult, local version (the child friendly version involved Florida and Disney World). I remember the lobster most clearly - and the first time I had caviar. The thing that stands out for me, though, is that I asked if they had a virgin strawberry daquari (I was eighteen or so) and the waiter said it wasn't on the menu but he'd check with the chef.

He made one from scratch.

Best damn daquari EVAH.

I love passing plates (we pass our bread plates to get tastes of everyone else's food) in a 5 star restaurant. 8D

June 25, 2007 3:32 AM
Rootietoot said...

Grilled venison cubes wrapped in bacon and ramps, with grilled squash and tomatoes from the garden. We made a chickweed and dandelion salad with wild blackberries. It was 5 days until payday, and all we had this half pound hunk of venison and 2 strips of bacon,the vegetables from a tiny plot I'd cultivated in the back yard, and whatever I picked wild.. We cooked it over pearwood scavanged from the woods behind the house, and ate it with a bottle of wine our landlord gave us for our anniversary. To this day I always cook venison with bacon. And yes, I felt like Mrs Daniel Boone.

June 25, 2007 8:49 AM
belledame222 said...

I'm sure I can come up with something better foodwise--in many ways-wise.

right now though what comes to mind, possibly because i had the same meal last night (macaroni and cheese, made with butter and Kraft slices as i loved as a child) was the same as what i -wolfed- down after being told that a friend of the family had died suddenly of a heart attack. We were at my maternal grandparents' house, a place that was always associated with comfort and safety for me. I was eight or nine. I think it was the first person I'd known personally that had died. Or maybe it was the death of an ill aunt, who I'd briefly tried praying for. In both cases there was a flood of tears and then ravenous appetite. curious.

thanks for these stories, please keep them coming,

June 25, 2007 9:12 AM
belledame222 said...

("ash" mole?)

June 25, 2007 9:13 AM
Anonymous said...

They are small rodent-like blind things who burrow under ash trees.

June 25, 2007 1:36 PM
Anonymous said...

Oh, and, you make them into soup. Elevating soup.

June 25, 2007 1:37 PM
belledame222 said...

i don't think that's right, somehow.

June 25, 2007 2:45 PM
Anonymous said...

Yes, I have moral qualms about it myself. The poor moles.

June 25, 2007 4:30 PM
Octogalore said...

Deoridhe, never fear, you're not the only one who will sound spoiled (and I don't think you did).

My favorite meal was in January 2002. My boyfriend suggested we go to the Four Seasons after dinner. We typically went to a funky coffeehouse and got hazelnut lattees and muffins, which is my all time favorite dessert. I figured I'd be flexible and find some other dessert item as I knew the bar would not have muffins. We got the 4S, ordered Frangelica and cappucino. Then someone came out from the dining area into the bar bearing a bran muffin which was presented to me. It was a pretty great bran muffin. My boyfriend then told me we were staying over at the 4S and we went upstairs, whereupon he proposed.

June 25, 2007 5:34 PM
little light said...

It's funny, I adore good food and I have it often, these days, but when you say "most affecting," I think of something entirely other: the first time I ate out of the garbage. The brown-bag of apple, cheese sandwich, hard-boiled egg and elementary-school-milk-carton they gave me the night I spent in jail, where I swapped my hard-boiled egg for someone's orange like a little kid at recess, and nothing tasted quite right. The stone soup I used to make most days during the time when my parents cut me off post-coming-out and I was in college, and I'd sneak things like extra packets of crushed red pepper and put 'em in instant ramen with a bit of carrot there, a bit of potato here, and made it good, made it stretch into multiple servings, and got by.
Maybe I'm just...strange, I don't know. I don't think it's self-pity. I think I just think of the things that made me tougher as "most affecting," maybe.

June 26, 2007 4:13 AM
little light said...

kh, there are not a lot of better things ever than a good mole. Oh, man.

June 26, 2007 4:14 AM
little light said...

And RT, that sounds like possibly the most painfully delicious ever. You guys are making me *hungry.*

June 26, 2007 4:16 AM
midwesterntransport said...

most affecting. hmmm.

back in the heady days of 1999, i went to austria for an opera program, where my appendix nearly exploded. my mom flew over as soon as she could and stayed with me for two weeks. i figured while she was there, we might as well go see the host family i'd stayed with when i was an exchange student in hungary a few years prior.

so we got into a rental car and mom drove us through parts of austria (where neither of us could read the signs) and into hungary (where i COULD read the signs). we arrived to a happy, tearful host family who hugged us and scolded us for not coming to THEM when my appendix nearly exploded (never mind the five hour drive), then treated us to the biggest meal i'd ever seen.

we started with soup: beef broth, add-your-own homemade noodles and paprika. we moved onto duck, potatoes and cabbage. there were scores of small meat hors doeuvres, vegetables, and piles of desert. when mom and i left a day later, we took plates of food with us.

seeing all that food, all the care that they'd put into our visit, nearly made me cry.

June 26, 2007 4:39 PM
muebles baratos madrid said...

So, I don't actually suppose it will have effect.

March 27, 2012 6:45 AM

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