Good food or good wine can, on occasion, move one to tears

[Stinky The Clown]

It can be an elaborate and expensive restaurant meal.

A lovingly prepare meal by our host at a private home

A perfect zinfandel made more perfect by the food with which it was paired.

A simple and ordinary sweet Riesling or Gewurztraminer paired with a fiery concoction, still sizzling from the wok.

A simple piece of perfect fruit, eaten out of hand when perfectly ripe and flavorful.

A meal prepared by oneself for oneself.

These are, each one, such a treasure.

And yes, I have been moved to tears by food and wine.

Many more times than once.

[hippywife]

1. Are there a few

prominent examples you can relate?

[Stinky The Clown]

3. Many of them have been cited here

I find myself often moved to tears by good food.

Some special meals got that way situationally. There was a meal in Barcelona like that. Four of my fellow professional society board members and our spouses. It was after a long, hard slog to institute a major change in the society. There was much wound licking, even in success.

We were a Brit, a Canadian, a German, and two Americans. The German chose the restaurant, having discovered it on an assignment he had in Barcelona.

The food was reflective of the new Spanish gastronomy, which is arguably the most cutting edge in the world. It was also where I first tasted an unoaked chardonnay, with the fish course. The other American, to everyone's surprise and delight, brought four bottles of a very special 1987 Rodney Strong (California) Cabernet. We'd toasted the start of our mission with ths very same wine several years earlier.

The tears, at this meal, may not have been only food inspired ......

[Tangerine LaBamba]

2. There are moments -

Proust knew the power of the senses. He was transported by a scent of a favorite treat baking, and who among us hasn't had a moment like that with a glass of wine, a bite of a peach, a moment over a meal with a loved one, that split-second when you look out at the grand table you've put together and all your family members sitting there, digging in, and you could weep with gratitude and happiness?

I smell apricots, ripe apricots, and I am with my brand new husband in 1969, camping our way across the country, stumbling across an apricot grove within Zion, in Utah, and the scent at twilight was heady. In the silence, we could hear ripe fruit dropping. We were in love. You know what happened next.

My cousin, hosting me at his new Japanese restaurant on the riverfront of Society Hill in Philadelphia, and he tells me to close my eyes, he puts something in my mouth, and it is so incredible, when I can talk, I say to him, "This is the taste I want in my mouth as I lay dying," and as he smiles at me, I realize that we really do look exactly alike, me dark, him blond, and my heart soars with a new kind of love.

I'm lying in bed, recovering from oral surgery, impacted wisdom teeth removed, and when I awaken, my small daughters are sitting beside the bed, the older one holding a bowl and carefully working a spoon in the bowl. I can't talk very well, but she and her sister, with all the wisdom of seven- and five-year-olds everywhere, had decided that I'd need to eat and so they had a bowl of ice cream, which they were dutifully mashing into a liquid so that I could sip it. Strawberry ice cream can still put tears in my eyes..............

[Warpy]

4. I saw that a few weeks ago

when the money guy turned up for a conference over the portfolio and I dragged him to my favorite but grotty combination Vietnamese restaurant and car inspection station. I suggested strongly he start with their soup and he did mist up at the first spoonful of it. He mentioned he'd never had such an amazing explosion of flavors before in his life, that on the road he was used to "hotel food," competently prepared but dismally bland and the same countrywide.

This is a strange town in that fine cuisine is more likely to be found in the hole in the wall, family restaurants while the expensive places with the silver chargers and crystal services serve that "hotel food" he complained so bitterly about.

There is nothing simple about Vietnamese cuisine, especially their soup stocks. However, the soup itself, with translucent veggies and a chiffonade of Thai basil over the top, is simplicity itself.

I have a feeling I'm going to have a hard time getting that guy to eat anywhere else from now on.

(How nice that you mentioned Riesling, my favorite wine. Most white wines are weak and pallid but Riesling is a smack in the face and the only thing better with Chinese food is beer)

[hippywife]

5. I can't say that I can recall

ever being moved to tears but I have had many OMG! nearly orgasmic experiences involving food. One of the most memorable was the first time I had Thai food. There were three of us and, after we had all taken our first bites, looked around the table in absolute amazement at how awesome everything tasted. And then the shoveling amidst much revelry began! :rofl:

I think as far as tasting things that evoke the memory of my gran and my greats, I am now thankfully too far removed from the loss for the tears that were once shed so copiously so I can now relive them with only joy.

It sounds like you and your friends braved the trenches together and came out on the other side with a new appreciation for each other.

:hug:

[kestrel91316]

6. Fresh Peach Kuchen (an Amish recipe) is one such for me.

Crockpotted pork roast.....practically orgasmic......