10 Foods I Can't Live Without or You are What You Eat Meme (part 1)
I have been tagged by two different folks, S'kat from S'kat and the Food and by Ilva at Lucullian Delights. I had a hard time making this list because I am such a simple no frills eater here at home. When I go out to eat, well that's a whole different matter. So my list seems pretty boring compared to some of the others that I had read already. You won't find Pate' on my list EVER. lol! Okay here we go...these are not in any special order.

Potatoes
I love potatoes. Many, many times I have said that I have never met a potato that I didn't like. I like them, baked, boiled, fried, mashed, and any other way you can think of. I guess I look at potatoes and the "poor man's filler food". I remember eating instant mashed potatoes when I was a kid. When we celebrated holidays, my mom would make "real" mashed potatoes, with tons of milk and butter. I don't usually eat instand mashed potatoes anymore. Nor do I wait for a holiday for the "real" mashed potatoes. I could eat some kind of a potato fixed any way you can think of every single meal of every single day.

Nuts
I am nuts about nuts! Just like potatoes, there aren't too many nuts or too many ways that I don't like nuts prepared. I put them in cookies, brownies, cakes, breads, etc. I grew up in Texas (mostly when my dad wasn't stationed someplace else) and we ate tons of pecans. I have childhood memories of going to my grandparents farm and picking up pounds and pounds of pecans. I would sit for hours with a pair of plyers, a nut pick, a trash can and a bowl for the nuts. I really can't tell you the kinds of pecans that I picked. I know there were really long ones that would nearly take up my whole little hand and ones I think remembered being called, "paper shells". I think they were called that because the shell was really thin and they were very easy to crack. So easy that sometimes if you weren't careful, you would ruin the "meat" which was the inside of the nut. I remember that when we didn't live close to family, we would get a care package at the holidays filled with an empty Wonder Bread bag filled with shelled pecans. I even have a memory of smuggling pecans across some state line here in the states where they did agriculture inspections. The bag of pecans was locked away in a car top carrier and I was just daring them to make us unpack them. We never got caught, but my nose did start to grow after we drove away from the check point. To this day, I still get shelled pecans from my family members when we go back to Texas for the holidays. If my mother doesn't make fudge with one perfectly shaped pecan on each piece of fudge, it just isn't Christmas. I am equally crazy about salted peanuts in the shells. I love restaurants that serve them so I can eat a whole bucket myself and then take my dinner home in a doggie bag. I know I am strange. Now, I am addicted to those wonderful Hazelnuts that Michelle from Accidental Scientist sent to me recently. They are just too good!

Bread

I can't live without bread in some way, shape or form. I love carbs and even better that it comes in the form of numberous kinds of warm baked love. My love of bread started when I had to carry my lunch to school. There was something wonderful about two slices of very white and soft Wonder Bread surrounding a slice of Oscar Mayer Bologna. I think that I ate one four days a week all my years in elementary school. I did take a day off from my soft white bread sandwich on Fridays for fried fish sticks. Being a Southern Baptist, I thought it was really cool that our school had fish on Fridays for all the Catholic kids. So the bologna sandwich was on hold every Friday. As an adult I learned later in life how to bake bread from scratch, which is something I never saw my grandmother or mother ever do. I used to work in a bakery and I worked with a Polish Master Baker to try and learn how to make every loaf of bread exactly the same as the other. I never did achieve that, but I sure have a tremendous respect for those who can do it. My bread machine has been used a sum total of three times of which once the silly loaf actually turned out. I got so disgusted with the other two loaves that I went back to doing it by hand. I still am not perfect but I continue to learn.

I have more on my list, but you will have to come back to read the rest...I have to get ready for the Holiday Cookie Exchange hosted byDawn at So Cal Foodie.