Do You Know What NBA Basketball Players Want? I do. Home-Cooked Food.

This weekend, I journeyed from balmy Palm Beach, FL to icy Atlantic City NJ for a girls’ weekend and had the unexpected pleasure of sitting next to NBA Basketball Player, Mark Blount.   [Secret:  I had no idea who he was.]    I only knew this was the tallest man I had ever laid eyes on, much less sat next to on a cramped airplane.  Holy basketballs!

So, we’re having a nice conversation, mostly small talk, when people suddenly begin lining up for his autograph.   Ahh. Now, I get it.   7-feet tall, autographs – he must be a professional athlete, right?   I don’t really follow basketball so I had no idea.  Politely and almost apologetically, I said, “I have no idea who you are but you must be someone famous.”

We both laughed out loud and he introduced himself.  I don’t think he has to do that very often.  I told him my name and that he could call me Sugar and we resumed polite conversation, all fame being behind us now.

Now, I don’t know a forward center (that’s his position in basketball) from my elbow, so I started talking about food, like I always do.   I doubted that Mark wanted me to ask him all sorts of stupid sports questions about basketball anyway.

To my delight, he was very interested in food.  Home cooked food especially.  Go figure:  a hungry 7-foot tall pro baller (see, I know the lingo now).   But, that’s when it hit me that food is a bond we all share as humans.   It doesn’t matter where you live or what walk of life you are from, how much money you have, we all like to eat and have to eat.  And although Mark enjoys eating out, his favorite thing is a home-cooked meal.

Since we are both from South Florida, we started to talk about the restaurants we like to eat at but the more passionate discussion was about the foods we like to eat at home.    His sister is apparently a great cook and she always asks him what he wants her to make.  I then told him my background with food and how I love to eat and cook and talk about eating and cooking.

For 2 hours, we talked about many things, but it always came back to food as our common ground.   Stuffed artichokes, meatballs, sausage, all kinds of pasta and even BBQ.   You name it, he likes it and I am sure that at his size and activity level, he must eat a real lot.

After the flight, we said goodbye, but as fate would have it I bumped into him again, of course coming out of a restaurant.   He was coming out of Carmine’s Italian Restaurant in the Tropicana where he and his friend just had a huge meal.

On the flight back home, we were seated next to each other again (go for the front row.  It’s where the tall athletes sit).    This time, I did ask some questions about basketball but all I could think about was getting home to my husband and kids and our Sunday pasta dinner.   I told him that my Mom was cooking that day.   We take turns cooking the big Sunday meal and today, she would be making homemade raviolis.  I could taste them while I was talking about them.   Carmine’s was so-so but when I thought about my Mom’s “home-maders,” I knew Carmine’s didn’t come close to a home cooked Italian meal.

So, I told Mark, any time he wanted a true Italian meal he was welcome to come over.   Who knows?   Maybe someday he will take me up on it.   He may be famous but to me, he was another man whose heart is easy to find.  In his stomach.  I didn’t give him my email address but I told him where he could find it if he really wanted to take me up on my offer – cookingwithsugar.com.

Are you cooking yet?  Somebody wants you to.