When: November 23, 2008.

What: The Farmer’s Feast tasting menu at Blue Hill at Stone Barns, a restaurant where they feature a sliver of lip-smacking pork ambrosia known as FACE BACON. 630 Bedford Road, Pocantico Hills, NY 10591. bluehillfarm.com

Rant: I am FURIOUS at my parents for not having reared me on this stuff as a baby. I just know my life would’ve been different. I would be able to see colors and look at strangers without attempting to bore holes in their faces with my eyes. Seriously, FACE BACON is that good. It cautorizes wounds and rasies T-cell counts and also cures lupus and fixes poverty and ugliness. Plus, it graced the cover of Time Out New York and sat pretty atop many food critics’ Best of Lists for 2008 (if you care about that sort of thing).

Lesson: Pork was huge in 2008. There was bacon in candy bars, chocolate chip cookies, salt caramel, maple-cured bacon almonds, berkshire pork EVERYTHING, and New York’s Korean-chef-boy-wonder David Chang became a kermajillionaire because everyone was so obsessed with it and him. But still… for all the clefthooved, be-snouted deliciousness I giddily shoveled down my gullet, I have to say this was the most important. It is what I think about when I close my eyes at night and without it, 2008 may have been kinda a wash.