All my memories can be traced back to food. I remember walking alone at 4 years old to the local diner and for 75 cents I'd get a paper bag of steaming hot French fries. Back in those days, you could walk alone and nobody was worried.

I used to watch my grandfather make a chopped salad with Clamato juice (Clamato is a mash-up of tomato and clam juice often used to make bloody Caesar’s, Canadian Bloody Mary)  based dressing. He did this with a Monte Cristo Cuban cigar dangling from his lips.

I used to anticipate with glee my grandmother’s chocolate squares, and my other grandmother’s pea soup.

I remember my mother making fresh cookie dough with Toblerone chunks that my girlfriends and I would gobble down long before they made it onto a baking sheet. I remember my mother’s alfredo fettuccine and her garlic shrimp that would permeate the entire apartment with garlic.

I remember in college wooing potential dates by planning spaghetti nights in my apartment with homemade bolognese sauce. I'd host spaghetti parties and had to constantly turn people away.

And then of course there was my obsession with soup. Since I can remember I’ve always loved soup. For me, it is the perfect food.

Growing up in Montreal every Sunday night meant going with my grandparents to what was the Montreal institution Moishes Steak House. I'd always order the same thing. Shrimp cocktail ( cocktail sauce on the side)  butterflied filet mignon medium rare, with a Monte Carlo potato and two gaufrettes ( which for lack of a better definition was sort of like a French version of a cannoli ) for dessert. My grandmother had a Millefeuille for dessert, my grandfather had chopped ecra ( fish eggs) and chopped eggplant which he would mash up together with olive oil and red wind wine vinegar and my mom had either the sweet bread or the special moishes chicken.

It’s interesting how I can recite this as if it’s yesterday and yet I do not remember what I did only yesterday afternoon. And there’s a point to this. Food elicits indelible memories, and always ones that connect oneself to a place in time, a sense of place, and a feeling of contentment. Think about that carefully and you’ll see that what brings you around a table, food, drink, good company, this is what connects us all and that sense of connection is what always had in the past, does in the present, and will do so in the future propel me forward.

Food, good food, homemade food if possible, food made with love ideally .. around a table with people who you like, people who you love, people who you connect with, who make you feel good about yourself, people who give you a sense of place. To me, that’s what the essence of life is all about and if I can impart some of that connectivity to others through food, through gatherings, around a table .. then my mission is accomplished.