Maybe we couldn’t tell you where we’ve been, or how we got there, or whom we’ve met, but we can always tell you what we’ve eaten. The story of our meals can be the story of our lives. And here’s a challenge: Tell it in six words.

Hemingway famously wrote what he called his best short story: “For sale: baby shoes, never worn.” And the six-word story was born. SMITH (“Everyone Has a Story”) Magazine took the idea and ran with it, asking all kinds of people for their six-word memoirs. These are collected in a book, <= link_to “Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous x%x Obscure”, ‘http://www.amazon.com/Not-Quite-What-Was-Planning/dp/0061374059’ %>. (Mario Batali’s submission: “Brought it to a boil, often.”)

We like the idea, and in collaboration, SMITH Magazine and CHOW challenge you to define your food life in just six words. Tell us your tiny tale and you could win a copy of <%= link_to “SMITH’s new book”, ‘http://www.amazon.com/Not-Quite-What-Was-Planning/dp/0061374059’ %> or even an iPod nano (personalized with your winning submission, of course). Come on—you hungered, you found, you ate. Tell us. What’s your food story?

Recent Submissions

<% smith_feed_elements = begin Hpricot(open(‘http://www.smithmag.net/sixword-chow/rss.php’).read).search(‘item’) rescue SocketError, OpenURI::HTTPError, Errno::ETIMEDOUT, Errno::ECONNRESET Array.new end %> <% smith_feed_elements.each do |element| %> <% begin %>

- <%= element.at(‘author’).inner_text %>

<% rescue NoMethodError %> <% end %> <% end %>

<%= link_to image_tag(‘http://www.chow.com/assets/2008/05/smith_submit.gif’, :alt => ‘Submit to SMITH’, :onmouseover => “this.src = ‘http://www.chow.com/assets/2008/05/smith_submit_rollover.gif’”, :onmouseout => “this.src = ‘http://www.chow.com/assets/2008/05/smith_submit.gif’”), ‘http://www.smithmag.net/sixword-chow/’ %>

<%= image_tag ‘http://www.chow.com/assets/2008/05/six_words_book.jpg’ %>