Why 'Your' Last Meal? My Last Meal

Food has always been my passion along with my family and my religion. In the kitchen, with my mother as she cooked and baked delicious full meals every night. Holiday tables filled with family and overflowing with soup-to-nuts meals. No one ever left hungry and everyone always savored an invite to dinner. My never ending hunger continues to this day and it will be something that will be instilled in my children.

My quest now is to find out how deep your passion goes with food and to find out what your last meal would be if you knew tomorrow was your last day on earth. I broke down 'last meal' into appetizer, main course, and desert because it helped me help others focus on the meal combinations and where in time they enjoyed that wonderful dish. I will try to include as much detail, background and as many recpies as possible so that you can sample someone else's last meal.


My Last Meal

Appetizer: Colossal grilled shrimp and grilled calamari over broccoli rabe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapini). The broccoli rabe can only be made by one person, a friend of the family that knows how to make it just right, not bitter, and with the right amount of hot pepper. The shrimp and calamari are there because they make it a well rounded dish, add flavors that blend well and are not over powering.

Main Course: Blue point crabs (that I just caught under a bridge somewhere in NJ) and homemade pasta. The crabs are cleaned, their cavities are filled with some chopped garlic, and then they are fried till they turn orange. When all the crabs are fried, throw them back in the pot with all the juices and fill the rest of the pot with your spaghetti gravy/sauce (The gravy or sauce issue is a very controversial issue to be discussed at a later time). As for the pasta, it must be homemade linguini - NO EXCEPTIONS! This dish originates from some of my earliest memories of the dinner table; my grandparents sitting on either side of me, spending hours cracking crabs open and giving the meat they worked so hard to pry out of the little crevices.

Desert: Grilled pound cake, a cake that my mother has made thousands of times, with grilled pineapple and vanilla ice cream on top.