"I am coming over to RAID your fridge .. will your mom be there?"

Growing up, my friends always wanted to come over to my house to eat, even if I wasn't there. It's not as if they didn't have pantries of their own stocked up with groceries from our local Farm's Market. Or they didn't have kitchens basked with their own goodies, but because my house, even from the walkway up to the door, would radiate a smell of the array of home cooked meals that existed beyond the red brick. My mother always cooked for twenty, even when we only had a family of five, and everyone who knew her, was aware of this. 

Standing in our kitchen around lunch time was a scene my friends never wanted to miss out on. There would always be a pot filled with some Lebanese traditional goodness, maybe in the form of grape leaves, of which even my pickiest of friends could never resist. My mom would be dishing out food from the pot, even making some other ethnic cuisine on another burner for the friend that felt like Italian, or whipping up some homemade apple crisp in the oven even when I had insistently told her it was unnecessary. But lunch was never as good as it was at my house. The food always led to conversations about life and always clearly fed the soul. Silence would permeate the room when every ones mouths were full, comfort would seep through our energy from the edges of the table, and lunch was always this good no matter what was being served.

My family is the family that thoroughly lives to feed people and lives for the pure enjoyment of eating good food with good company.

As I have now emerged into my own woman, a little less of a cook than my mother, I inevitably find myself thriving for the satisfaction of good food. There's no wonder why I clearly enjoy being what most people call me, a "foody", or why I'd search the edges of a city for the best restaurant. As I now live in a thriving city, even at a time of recession, finding the best food with the greatest atmosphere is my quest. My search is to find that same reason on why you'd fit twenty friends in a kitchen, or you'd wait an hour in the cold for your cities best cappuccino and eggs benedict. The reason to feel the way I would feel if I was still eating lunch at home.