I AM A FOOD WHORE.

I LOVE food. I always have. Most people eat just because they're hungry. I'm very passionate about it. I eat because I love the entire sensual experience of making and consuming a meal. I absolutely love cooking for other people. Most of my life I've been teased because I ask what's for dinner while eating lunch. Besides the taste, I revel in the look, the smell, the feel, the sounds of what I'm about to stuff in my gob. Even though I normally bitch about having to do it, I like planning the menus and grocery lists for the week. And I LOVE grocery stores and markets. Summertime always makes me feel the nostalgia, though.

I'm lucky in the fact that I grew up knowing where food comes from. Most years, we grew our own produce, from a pretty big garden in the back yard. I remember watching Dad guiding the angry tiller through the dirt and that luscious, earthy smell that would fill the air. Buying the seeds and gently patting the soil over them after we planted was just the beginning. After a few months of TLC, we would complain and complain about having to waste a sunny day shucking garbage cans full of fresh peas, and snap bean after bean on the back porch, but deep down, I loved it. I loved picking radishes out of the ground, shaking the dirt off of them, then putting them in a clean sink of water to bob and dance in the cold water. I would run my hands through the water, playing with the veggies long after they were clean.

Nothing tastes better than a carrot yanked right out of the ground. Or a fresh green onion dipped in a little salt. There was corn and zucchini, green peppers and rhubarb. Cucumbers with their spike-y skin. Beautiful red slicer tomatoes, with the green ones left to ripen on the windowsill. Tiny little pie apples that Dad would convince us to taste right off the tree, even though they were sour as all hell. One year we grew pumpkins which was SO COOL. I remember driving out to this big field in the middle of town to dig up sacks of potatoes. When we played at a friends house, their Mom would send us out into the yard to pick raspberries off the bush for an afternoon snack. Lettuce came from Grandma's garden. We picked cherries on vacation, bought peaches from a farmstand on the road, and went out into the country to pick chokecherries to make into the best pancake syrup in the world. And then the weeks of canning would begin. We'd be holed up in the downstairs kitchen, with one of us girls grinding the food mill and another filling the jars with fresh vegetables. Green beans, corn, peas, sauerkraut, pickles, and stewed tomatoes. (I still can't find stewed tomatoes as good as my Mom's homemade ones.) We had pumpkin pie filling for years, off of just one season.

We knew the people who raised the beef that sat in the deep freeze on the back porch of our house. T-bones made such a regular appearance on the dinner table, that when I moved out on my own, I was shocked at how much they cost. (And I've had only 1 good steak since I left Montana 9 years ago. How sad.) I saw the chickens clucking in their little house, smelled the burned pin feathers, then tasted the meltingly good fried chicken that was put in front of me for lunch, knowing how it got there. Lamb was roasted for Easter. I've seen a deer butchered and hanging in the garage, still steaming in the cold weather. And then be kept awake at night by the dehydrator making jerky. We'd have a whole hog butchered, then grind the meat for sausage ourselves and us kids learned how to blow air into the 'casings' to make the links. I can still taste the salty flavor that would get on your lips when you blew them up. And smell them frying for breakfast. The local energy company mascot was a buffalo, which the company happened to raise out in the country and then EAT at the company picnic every summer. (SO freakin' good.) When we went camping, dad would bring fish back to the campsite that he had just caught while we were all sleeping in. Trout dredged in a little flour and fried in butter till the skin gets all crispy is something I'll never forget.

I've been bequeathed all these great memories, not to mention techniques and recipes. Some of it didn't sink in. I still cannot make rice, even though Mom makes the best seasoned rice on the planet. And still not a fan of beets. Or deer meat for than matter. I can make a mean pie, but don't really like pie all that much. But the caramel corn. The cinnamon rolls. The fried chicken. The mashed potatoes and meatloaf. The stuffing at Thanksgiving. The cucumbers. Oh, the cucumbers.

For all of this I am so lucky. And soooo thankful.

And ready for more. Standing in the middle of the produce section at the store here makes me so happy. Florida is seducing me with her availability of produce. Strawberries in January. Oranges in March (which we only got on Christmas Eve back home), corn in early June. Lemons that are SO cheap. Today for breakfast I ate western cherries that taste like they were picked yesterday.

I've met my food partner in crime in Brian. Together we've discovered the awesome beauty of the antipasto platter, the delicious-ness of home-cooked ribs, and just how easy it really is to make you're own pasta. We've unlocked the mystery of the perfect roast Turkey. His spaghetti and meatballs with homemade Bolognaise sauce is truly something not to me missed. Not to mention other adventures. Yum, yum, yum. All I say is, bring it on!

God, now I'm REALLY hungry. Happy eats everyone! And stop in for dinner sometime!