Exotic travel is not necessary for a great food experience

Exotic travel is not always necessary for a great food experience to arise, and in fact, the person having the food experience does not even need to be the one traveling to make a great story. That is at the very core of this site to bring travel and food experiences into people’s lives. So today’s story is about a food tradition that happens when someone else travels.

Food traditions play a large part in my life and perhaps in yours too. We serve certain foods on special occasions, we have our favorite “go-to” comfort foods”, we may even have rituals or superstitions about making sure that we do or do not eat the same foods before we take a test, participate in a sport or some other significant occasion in our lives. Well my daughter and I have a very special food tradition when my husband goes fishing. I can’t tell you when we started, or even when it went from being a good idea to being a ritual to a food tradition…but it was this weekend that I realized what an ingrained tradition it had become.

So what do we do when he takes that first fishing trip of the season?
We clear our calendars; period. Last weekend I went to the movie store and rented 10 movies for a girls’ movie night, we hunker down for movies…and then…the food frenzy begins! Our traditional girls’ night meal consists of: crab legs served with butter, and cheese ravioli topped with peas, parmesan and butter. My daughter likes a squirt of lemon on her pasta, I go for the salt but that is the only deviation. We use our special crab platters, claw crackers, and our personal butter warmers, pull out rolls of paper towels and chow down. This is not an elegant affair and perhaps there are other reasons beyond being “our night” that we don’t invite others to join us…but it is ours…it is our time, and our food tradition that we stop the world to enjoy…together.

Right now, my daughter is still in high school and there are only a few years remaining for us to be able to freely engage in this high carb gluttony before she goes out into the world and clearing our calendars become far more complicated. But I do know that wherever she goes, this will be a story, a tradition, a food experience that she will always look back on fondly…and she will start the story with, “when my dad went out of town fishing….” and then she will no doubt smile.

What are some of your food traditions? I would love to hear about them – simply write your story in the comment box or send it to me at mamacaruso@yahoo.com  and I will post in on this site. By sharing our experiences with others, we bring our food and travel experience into other people’s lives and the world becomes that much smaller. Thanks for coming to my table today!