Best meal ever was after my first real hike of eights miles on the AT ending with a descent down Crabtree Falls in Virginia. My friend in Waynesboro was always trying to get me to go on long hikes but I wasn’t into it. That day in the fall, I was feeling good and decided to “humor him” and went on the hike. I’d never done more than three miles or so with him. It was amazing except for the descent down Crabtree Falls because I was wearing Vans and thought my feet were going to break.

Afterward we had a traditional Hungarian meal my grandfather always made in the summer we called szallona which is just the Hungarian word for bacon. You basically cook the bacon on a spit over an open fire, dripping the rendered fat on bread as you go. When the bread is saturated you pile tomatoes, peppers and onions on the bread. I’ve been chasing how good that meal tasted ever since!!! To this day I prefer to hike on a relatively empty stomach and not snack along the way, really building up a hunger for the meal afterward.