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I'm into food. I like to grow it, smell it, smush it, create with it, play with it, consume it. Certain foods are special, usually because of the social interactions to which I connect them. As a child I would spend a week or two each summer on my Grandparents' farm.  A particulary fond memory is that of picking green tomatoes with my Grandmother, who would then fry them in a mix of cornmeal and cumin (she puts cumin in everything; this is one of the dishes in which it really works).  Naturally, I've since been unable to recreate this particular mix of slightly sour fruit and carefree summer day.  Comfort foods remain a favorite, though, the most recent of which is mango sticky rice.  A friend introduced me to this wonder when I spent a couple of weeks recouping in her home after a particulary rough year. The night I arrived, Kris magically produced an amazing mound of chewy rice drenched with intensely sweet mango syrup. I think it had traces of lavender in it (although I could be embellishing my memory).  She now makes it as a late night snack whenever I visit and this sensory experience -- the sugary smell, the almost white draped in vivid orange, the warm dense liquidy bite -- tells me I home, I am safe, I am cared for.