The "My Favorite Meal" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just finished a story for an Internet site called Storyworth which my son, daughter-in-law and grandson gave me as a Christmas gift.  I am given topics to write about and after 12 stories, a booklet is made and sent to my friends and relatives.  Neat idea and a great momento for my relatives.  One of the latest stories I wrote was titled my "favorite meal."  Had a hard time coming up with just one meal, so I wrote about a dozen of them, some from around my hometown of Lancaster as well as favorite meals from the Caribbean.  For most of you who read my stories, you will not have the chance to read the "favorite meal" story, so I posted a copy of the story today.  Hope you enjoy it.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.

Trying to determine what might be my favorite meal is a tough story to write.  Thought about it for a few days and finally decided I needed to list more than one meal in order to be honest with both myself and those reading this story.  I finally got it narrowed down to ten which was a tough job to do.  Almost as tough as writing the story!  Goes way back to when my Grandpap would make his famous Chicken corn soup.  Tough to tell you just how good it was unless you had a bowl or two of it.  After the first spoonful, you knew nobody could top it.  As a youngster Grandpap would have me help him prepare the ingredients and help him make his famous soup.  While peeling the sweet corn, both white and yellow, if we happened to come upon a silk worm, we would save it and add that to the batch of soup.  Grandpap always enjoyed seeing whom might be the one to get the worm in their bowl of soup.  I think everyone in the family got at least one worm in their soup over the many years he made his soup.  The next best meal I have ever eaten was my wife's creamed peas and eggs on toast.  May not sound interesting to you, but the flavor was, and still is to this day, remarkable.  She would make a cream sauce and place either fresh or frozen peas in it and slowly heat it on the stove.  After hard boiling eggs, she would cut them in pieces and add them to the mixture.  When the mixture was ready, she would make toast and place the mixture on top of the toast.  Unbelievable meal!  My next most favorite meal was found in Chesapeake City, Maryland at a restaurant known as The Chesapeake City Inn.  Their Anaheim Pepper with cheese ravioli was so good that it was just about the only meal I ever had at the restaurant over about 40 years of visits.  From here I must take you to the Caribbean island of St. Martin/Sint Maarten to finish my list.  Next on my list would be Andy & Cheryl's Baywatch Restaurant on Orient Beach.  The "mussels a la Andy" were unbelievable.  You would remove them from their shell, dip them in melted butter and pop them in your mouth.  Not sure if it was the food or the view in front of the restaurant that was mesmerizing.  Closeby were two restaurants with equally delectable meals.  The cheese ravioli at le Piment and the scallops at Safari Grill were both delicious.  A few miles to the west of Orient Beach found us in Grand Case and the Il Nettuno Restaurant where I always enjoyed their cheese ravioli.  And finally, traveling to the Dutch side of the island, we found the restaurant known as Pineapple Pete's where we almost always had the lobster thermador.  Most of my selections seem to be mostly seafood choices, but that's what both my wife and myself enjoy.  Perhaps if you had the chance to try a few of my choices from the Caribbean, you too would love them.  Tough to narrow my list of fabulous meals to one, so I have listed what I could remember as some of my favorites.  I'm sure I missed a few, but I'm no longer hungry after writing this story.