Last week, we showed you our most popular posts by the numbers - which is dandy, to be sure - but sometimes the stats don't tell the whole story.

2011 was a massive year for us; we won an EPPY award for Best Food Website with 1 million unique monthly visitors and over, traversed this wide, wild and wonderful country hosting Secret Suppers with some of the most passionate and intriguing people in food, the arts, politics and social justice. We also popped up on TV a whole bunch and pretty much spent every single day pursuing food stories that made us think, laugh, feel, scream, discuss, debate and, perhaps most importantly, get ourselves into the kitchen, where on occasion, we cooked squirrel.

Here are a few of our favorites.

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Lists! Lists! Lists! At this point in the year, our brains are collectively ground down to cornmeal mush, and second helpings of some tasty posts from the past twelve months seem like just the ticket. Tomorrow, we'll share our personal favorites, but today, we're serving up the top ten most read, shared and commented-upon posts from 2011.

Pull up a chair, strap on your feedbag and feast on the posts that posts that got folks clicking, chatting and passing along.

Most read

1. My first Thanksgiving with white people

2. Most honey sold in U.S. grocery stores not worthy of its name

3. Chocolate company CEO Pietro Ferrero dies in biking accident

4. The truth about Mexican food

5. Starbucks barista spills the beans, gets canned
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One year ago today, Eatocracy went live to the world, and while plenty of people are still a tad confused about how to pronounce it*, they've had no shortage of things to say. As managing editor, I couldn't be more delighted. We started this site because we love nothing more than talking about food.

I don't just mean waxing rhapsodic about the ultimate grilled cheese, perfect burger or shrimp etouffee - though we certainly enjoy sinking our teeth into those conversations. We love stirring the pot and getting people thinking, talking and typing back about all the issues, politics, relationships and emotions that go into feeding both your body and your soul.
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I don't have family recipes - at least on my side of the marriage. More on that at another time, but most of my culinary heritage is stitched together from books that somehow made their way onto my shelves and into my psyche.

Here are a few that changed the way I eat, drink and think, forever.

1. An Invitation to Indian Cooking – Madhur Jaffrey
Vintage (1973)
When Dorothy cracked open the door of her tornado-tossed Kansas farmhouse and stepped from staid black and white into lilting, lively, color-popped Oz, it must have something akin to how I felt when my Dad suddenly started cooking from this book.

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