Serious Eats - seriouseats.com

My grandmother's chicken and dumplings

potato gnocchi with butter and parmesan

My first cookbook was a Junior Betty Crocker that had an insanely creepy jack-o-lantern cake. I lusted after that cake (and its candy corn teeth) but, alas, I don't recall ever making it.

PA -- pretzels, cheesesteaks, corn, whoopie pies, shoo-fly pie

Fried egg sandwiches are nice. So are poached eggs atop black beans with dollops of salsa and crema. Egg salad sandwiches on sourdough toast are pretty tasty. Spinach and swiss cheese omelets are good. And sometimes, I'll even make deviled eggs and eat them all myself.

Vive the humble egg!

My first encounter was at a buffet and I was terrified! Everyone in my small Midwestern town had always warned me how spicy Indian food was and in that time (the 70's) and place, "spicy" was usually regarded with suspicion. . .

Now I think I could eat Indian food for every single meal!

Open a bottle of "Simply Lemondade" and enjoy.

Here in Lancaster, PA we have a wonderful downtown market -- in fact, it's the oldest farmers' market in the country. Whoopie pies, grass-fed beef, produce that was picked just a few hours earlier. My favorite stand is Hodecker's Celery -- a tiny little stand that offers the crunchiest, cleanest-tasting celery imaginable!

Really good Indian food

My grandmother and I would spend the afternoon picking blackberries in the Ohio countryside. We'd put bands around our pant legs and sleeves in order to thwart the chiggers that were waiting to pounce on us and then, later that day, she'd make us the best blackberry cobbler in the world.

gnocchi with a lemon butter sauce

La Super Rica in Santa Barbara, California. Still drooling at the memory -- a decade later.