My siblings and I pick on my mom a lot. Always out of love, of course, and one of the things she sometimes says when eating something tasty is “yum, yum, I just had a good bite!”

Even though we joke about the expression, I really feel that it is often justifiable because there is something euphoric about having the first bite of good food!

My family has always loved to eat. Friends of mine would come over to our house for dinner when we were growing up and go back home and tell their parents that they could not believe how much the Voss’ ate. And it never just stopped with the main course…there was always desert and lots of it too. Eating ice cream straight out of the tub has always been normal for us.

Now that I am not swimming 3 hours a day, I don’t quite eat as much as I used to, but I still love to eat. While traveling through Albania, Montenegro and Bosnia so far, I have had “lots of good bites,” from fresh seafood to interesting salads.

In Albania, my friend from work Mabela introduced us to some traditional foods from her country. These included lamb pies with yogurt, an egg cheese and meat mush, and a cinnamon rice with meat desert. It would be difficult to be a vegetarian in this country, when even the desert has meat in it!

In Montenegro, we stayed in the old town of Kotor right on the bay, so we enjoyed a lot of fish and seafood. Our favorite was the “fish for 2,” which probably could have feed five…

In Bosnia, we tried to not order as much food as we had been, but failed miserably in ordering a “meat platter for one” that had about five layers of meat….we may make some pastas at home to give our stomaches a bit of a rest. We also had some great baklava, which each of these countries claim to make differently. They all taste good to me. I have my father’s sweet tooth!

I’ve already put on a few pounds, which I hope will insulate me a bit better for Boston’s winters!