People associate food not only with flavor, but with the experiences that also accompany it.
I may not be a connoisseur of fine dining, but my palate knows enough when something is absolutely delicious.
When food nails it, it can be a major aphrodisiac.
If you take me on a date to the Cheesecake Factory and feed me a whole Dulce De Leche Caramel Cheesecake, I'm all yours.
While desserts are my inherent weakness, I must admit that there is something else that tops even the sweetest baked good I've ever had. It was salmon.
A few years ago, I went to a salmon bake on an isolated location near Juneau, Alaska, where I had the best salmon ever. Hands down.
My friends and I gathered at a lodge where we all gorged on all the fixings along with the main event – a melt-in-your-mouth glazed piece of salmon – that was prepared on their massive backyard grill with a view of the majestic Taku Glacier as a backdrop.
It was so good, grizzly bears were known to gather at the grill long after the guests have started feasting indoors.
The salmon was exceptional, but the experience of being immersed in nature with a very limited amount of people somehow made the feast more delectable.
Now that my mouth is watering again, let's turn to you.
Redditor sungoldd wanted to know about other people's experience with food and asked:
"What was THE MOST delicious food you've eaten in your life?"
Roadside BBQ
"Pulled pork sandwiches from these 2 old dudes who would park their smoker on the side of the road. They were retired and cooked for fun so they didn't have a set schedule. They'd just get bored some days and start cooking. I've yet to find any better bbq."
Nothing Beats "Grandpa's"
"I only eat barbeque from old black dudes. Grew up in Tennessee and learned very quickly that old black men are master chefs for barbeque."
"It's not even close."
"One place, called Grandpa's, would even do barbeque turkey sandwiches. Jesus Christ I've looked my whole life for something that good ever since."
Iberico Ham
"This particular version of Iberico Ham when I was in Spain. Straight up just melted in my mouth without chewing."
Thailand Dream
"Once in Thailand (Koh tao) with some friends, we asked some fisherman to join their boat, they let us. Even had rods and everything."
"They said we could have the fish we'd catch."
"After some red and yellow snappers and 2 eels, we got a biggggg fish (about 1 meter long,groundtype, don't know the name unfortunately). After a whole day we got back into the harbor, we said that they could keep all the fish except for the big one. (We also left cash for their effort that day)"
"So we walked extremely excited to the city center to ask if anyone could prepare us that fish.
Almost the 1st restaurant we asked said it was no problem.
We said: Prepare it as you would like to eat this fish.
We sat down and the fish came in 3 different styles.
Im not a big fish eater but boy o boy that was the best damn fish I ever had in my life."
"We left a lot of cash at the restaurant for their effort as well."
"That was my most impressive meal ever, not only the taste but that whole day was glorious, and the best island experience I've had."
No Other Frybread Comes Close
"I'm Native and I have to say hands down my great grandmas frybread. To this day almost 30 years after her death I have found no frybread that even comes close."
"Thanks for all the up votes. I know my great grandmother is beaming right now. She was 108 when she passed away so she had many many years to perfect her frybread."
The Freshest Catch
"I was camping on the Cabot Trail, a long long time ago."
"We saw this out of nowhere seafood 'shack.' So I ordered a lobster roll, guy comes back and tells me 'I can't believe it, we actually don't have anything fresh, if you're not in a hurry you can wait we should have some in a bit.'"
"We weren't in a hurry, we just sat and had a few drinks and some appetizers."
"I don't know if he actually went out and collected some from traps, or if there was just a truck coming in or something with it."
"But what I had was this glorious meal with the juiciest lobster literally spilling out of the bun onto the plate that melted in my mouth."
And Speaking Of Lobster
"The first real date with Kay, we had a picnic where I made gazpacho, lobster salad on a roll, and champagne. That clinched the deal. We were married for nearly 25 years before she died."
"Edit: After the picnic, we were driving back to work and she asked if I had a toothpick. I gave her the one from my Swiss Army knife. She picked the lobster flesh from her teeth, then tossed the toothpick out the car window. I married her anyway."
Thanksgiving Sandwich
"I lived in Orlando, Florida and there's a place near downtown called Pom Poms. They mostly make specialty sandwiches which are all made from super fresh ingredients."
"They have a sandwich called the 'Mama Ling Lings Thanksgiving.' It's: Turkey, Gouda, Stuffing, Ginger Cranberry Chutney, Mashed Potatoes, Cream Cheese with a side of Gravy."
"It is the best sandwich I have ever eaten. It tastes like the best Thanksgiving dinner you've ever eaten."
"Check the place out if you're ever in Orlando: http://pompomsteahouse.com/menu/pressed-sandwiches/"
Peachy Keen
"A peach. Picked off a tree at a friend's house, still warm from the sun. I have never tasted something so gloriously delicious before or since. Juice running down my hands, the epitome of peachness."
Peach Satisfying GIFGiphyNothing Can ComPEAR
"Went on a Baltic cruise a couple years ago - and on a stop in St. Petersburg, we went to this restaurant/live Russian folk music spot."
"For dessert, we were served a baked pear. I'm not even sure I'd eaten any pear in my life let alone a baked one. I can't remember what was on the pear if anything. Everyone at the table was just in awe at how delicious they were. Will never forget."
– masu94
First Meal With Dad
"4 years ago I was in Florida with my family. It was my 1st time meeting my father. I was 40 at the time. I got a bowl of seafood mac and cheese with crab, scallops, shrimp and some kind of fish in it. The restaurant was on a river with manatees in it. Eating a meal with your dad for the 1st time is delicious on a whole new level. But the meal itself...still totally killer."
Burnt To Perfection
"The day I first saw Star Wars back in 1977. I was twelve and spent the day with my new step-brothers. After the movie we went to a restaurant on the Tacoma waterfront called Clinkerdagger, Bickerstaff & Petts. It wasn't so much the dinner (it was good) but the dessert was Burnt Custard (Creme Brulee). My God, it was good I still remember it 43 years later. No other Creme Brulee has come close."
Peaches Are Sensual
"Peach bread pudding at Tartine in San Francisco."
"My husband and I were there visiting friends 4 years ago, heard Tartine was good and stopped in to sample some of their pastries. I don't even have much of a sweet tooth but my husband said he'd never had bread pudding, so I ordered us a slice."
"I took one bite, and my eyes rolled back in my head. It was a completely involuntary action. The bread pudding and peaches hit my mouth and my body had never experienced anything that good before. My husband still talks about that bread pudding and how it f'ked his wife right in front of his face."
Authentic Sushi
"I had sushi in Japan at a small but amazing sushi bar. There is a whole art and etiquette involved in making, serving and eating really good sushi that I never appreciated until then. Nothing else has ever compared."
Nothing Beats Mom's Cooking
"My mom would make these stuff shells with turkey, bread stuffing and cheese and bake them in pan with cream of chicken soup. So f'king delicious but labor intensive so she didn't make them often."
"I wish she was still here."
– olioster
Curious to hear examples of this, Redditor TheArchitect_7 asked:
"What’s a thing dumb people say that makes them think they sound smart?"
Some people just want reactions more than a back-and-forth interaction.
Attention-Seeker
"'You wouldn't understand.' Yeah, that's why I asked you for an explanation."
– Appropriate_Donkey18
Fancy Words
"I sometimes use big words that I don't really understand to make myself sound more ambidextrous."
– Alone_Ad1278
Looking At The Score
"The more someone emphasizes their IQ, the less smart I think they actually are."
– rmshilpi
Hackneyed Sayings
"Everything happens for a reason, nothing is actually 'free' as someone has to pay for it, both parties are the same, you may have book smarts, but I have street smarts, common sense isn't so common anymore, but that's how we've always done it!"
"An addition to the previous: 'We will send 40 billion to Ukraine, but we won't spend 40 billion to secure our schools!'"
– humorous_anecdote
Things can get wacky when dealing with someone who is cantankerous.
Futile Argument
"Something along the lines of 'You can’t prove it didn’t happen.'"
"A guy at work tried to pull this one on me. He believed one of those Animal Planet mockumentaries about a giant killer shark was real. When I told him it was all fiction and that there was no real proof of this kind of stuff, he tried to argue back about while he couldn’t prove it, I couldn’t disprove it either."
"There’s a saying about getting into an argument with a stupid person. This was my real world experience with it."
– WongoKnight
Status
"Do you know who I am?"
– FoxFourTwo
The Equivalent Of Winning
"Thinking that getting a reaction out of someone is the same thing as winning an argument."
– bcopes158
Please Define
"My friend once used the phrase 'By its very definition' while we were arguing about something...so I asked him what the definition actually was, while he fumbled with that a bit I told him to stop using weasel words."
– groovyinutah
No Kidding
"'it all depends on how you look at it.' yeah thats f'king obvious."
– psychpopnprogncore
We all love a good malaprop.
Or Intents
"For all intensive purposes"
– p38-lightning
It's Moot, Really
“Mute point”
"Cracks me up every time."
– Ed_The_Bloody
Sometimes, editing yourself a bit in discourse with those who are intellectually out of your league is better than trying to keep up with them in an attempt to win their favor by articulating something you know nothing about.
I would explain better, but you wouldn't understand.
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Curious to hear about some of the more ominous events experienced by strangers online, Redditor IM_Not_A_Robot_10110 asked:
"What have you witnessed that will haunt you forever?"
What happens inside hospitals are full of trauma and heartache, even medical professionals have a hard time processing what they encounter.
The Pediatric Patient
"X-ray tech here, but I was a student at the time. Called to ER for trauma code. Only know it's a pediatric patient. The terror as I walk around the corner and see it's a little boy, same size as my son. We go to take an x-ray and he's making this high pitched shrill wheezing noise. They couldn't intubate enroute so we were doing a chest/neck to see what was going on. His neck was full of air."
"Come to find out the story later, he had tripped and fallen in school and his neck went square on a desk and he had broken his trachea. Believe he was stabilized & flown out. Never found out what happened after."
– ZephyrGrace
Calling Time Of Death
"ER nurse. This won’t haunt me in a bad way, but it’ll stick with me for sure. We were coding a middle aged lady we knew was going to die. We were pulling out the last ditch stuff hoping we’d get lucky, but everyone knew which way it was going."
"Family was there and in the room. When it was clear we had run through all the Hail Marys and it was time to call it, the husband spoke up for the first time. He had apparently been an EMT for a long time so he knew what he was looking at. He said he was going to do the final round of compressions."
"It was very respectfully done. He got up to do his 2 minutes, the nurses quietly started turning things off so there wouldn’t be continuous alarms, we called for a pulse check which the husband did, then we called time of death. He was thankful we let him do that and I was thankful to be a part of it."
– pause_and_consider
Missing Jaw
"Not me, but my roommates fiancé is a flight nurse. She told me this story around Easter."
"They showed up to a scene being told beforehand that there was a patient with a gun shot wound and bleeding bad but that’s all they were told. When they got there they found a woman who was sitting on the ambulance gurney completely lucid and looking around, completely missing her lower jaw. She said you could see down her throat and she looked like a zombie. Her lower jaw was hanging to the side by some tissue and when she looked about it swung around and dangled. She said the woman seemed relatively calm and when she tried to speak what was left of her tongue kinda moved but nothing but gurgles came out."
"It was not a suicide, her boyfriend accidentally discharged his firearm while they were in his car."
"She survived."
– New_Hand_Luke
AIDS Epidemic Era
"Retired RN. I was working in the PACU and helped another nurse take her patient to his room. As I was adjusting something by his head, he grabbed my hand and started crying. He kept saying I don’t want to die. He was barely 20. In an isolation room. I looked into his eyes and tried to comfort him as he sobbed. This was in the early days of the 'AIDS epidemic.' He died within a week. To this day I still see his eyes and hear him sobbing."
– Tkay906363
Traffic accidents can be some of the most gruesome scenes no one should ever have to witness.
Accident Victim
"I live next to a busy street, inbetween lanes is a tram station. Teenager wanted to cross and got run over by a tram. Well, partly run over, he ended up with his body squeezed in between the tram and the tram station wall, with his legs stuck under the tram. It took about 1,5 hours until they had the equipment to lift the tram to get him out of there. They managed to reanimate what was left of him but he died in the hospital."
– ir_blues
Dangerous Road
"It was Easter Sunday about 5 in the afternoon. I was driving home from the lake with a friend of mine on a country highway that’s pretty well traveled. It’s one of those single lane coming and single lane going where the speed limit is 70 roads. The intersections are far and few between so instead of an overpass it’s just a blinking yellow caution light. In what literally felt like the blink of an eye the car driving in front of me is struck on the drivers side door."
"The impact pushes both cars off to the road and onto the shoulder. I hit my brakes and was able to stop to help render aid. My friend and I get out of the car and run over to help. The drivers side door is crushed inward, driver has been pushed into the passenger side. It was a younger lady, maybe mid 30s. The impact pushed her out of her seat and into her daughter."
"You ever see movies where a dead body jump scares someone and it just stares at the with wide eyes and mouth agape….. yeah. The girl is ok but very confused. She has no visible injuries and is freely looking around so we unbuckled her and pulled her out of the car so she didn’t realize her mom was laying on her. As we do it I look at the mom and I can see a little life is left in her, so I said the only thing we could say. 'She’s alright.'”
"You could see the light in her eyes fade and she passes away. More cars stop and help out. As more people are here to help I start to realize that someone has been screaming, at me. In the back seat is her son. He must have been knocked unconscious and he’s now yelling, not out in pain but asking 'Is mom okay, is she okay?' I had no words for him, he was maybe 6. His sister was about 9. Thankfully about 4 of the cars that stopped were off duty first responders so they quickly took over for me. This was about 20 years ago, I was 17 at the time and I just saw a mom die in front of her 2 kids. I’m crying now thinking back on it and to this day I still refuse to ever take that road again."
"They finally build an actual stop light a couple years back. The area isn’t more crowded so I can only imagine what the motivation to improve that intersection was."
– Boothulu
Pedestrians
"I was designated driver at my friend's 30th birthday party. Had just dropped off my last friend and I was heading home. Little blue car zipped by me going maybe 10 over. Maybe a block ahead of me I see the speeding car hit two 20 yr olds who were running across the street. They were running to McDonald's across from the nightclub they were partying at and didn't wait for a red light. I'll never forget the girls blond hair in the bright headlights as she got hit. One thing that isn't ever correct in tv shows when people get hit by cars is how much damage it does to a human body. I distinctly remember his legs laying like 2m from his body. Both died right when paramedics got there."
– SuchAGeoNerd
PTSD
"Getting hit by a car really is ugly. My girlfriend accidentally stepped on the street while we were having a minor disagreement and bam she was gone in a moment. I have ptsd, I can still see all the blood, her trying to breathe and the moment she gave up."
– More-Masterpiece-561
You never know when a friend or acquaintance is going through an extremely rough time–even though they present themselves differently in public.
All we could ever be as fellow humans is to always be compassionate.
Prolonged Guilt
"I found my roommates body in our apartment when I was in college. He had suffocated himself with a helium tank and a plastic bag over his head. That fucked me up pretty good, especially because I knew he was struggling with his mental health. He was cutting himself too, he tried to hide it but I noticed. And I didn’t say a word, i didn’t offer a helping hand. I could have done something to help him, but I didn’t. That guilt is still there, 10 years down the line."
– Jon__Snuh
What The Taxi Driver Witnessed
"I was driving Taxi once and I picked up someone who said he thinks he just saw a dead body. Said someone had jumped from the top of the parking garage. There was already an ambulance and what not on the scene. I remember briefly thinking of my friend Willzo, but dismissed it, I didn’t even think he was depressed like that. I found it odd that I would even consider such a thing out of nowhere. But I dismissed the thought and went about my work night. Couple days later I got a call from a mutual friend. 'Hey buddy, did you hear about Will? He jumped off the parking garage a few days ago.'”
– Everywhere-Danger
These Redditors' stories are a lot to take in.
However, they are good reminders about the brevity of life and how we should always strive towards being the best versions of ourselves while we're still alive.
Because you never know when you or someone close to you will have their last breath.
If you or someone you know is struggling, you can contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).
To find help outside the United States, the International Association for Suicide Prevention has resources available at https://www.iasp.info/resources/Crisis_Centres/
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