Proudest Culinary Moment?

What culinary achievement has made you the most proud? Was it dinner guests singing your praises as you carried your beautiful Thanksgiving turkey to the table? Or was it when you finally baked the most perfect chocolate chip cookies in the world? You know the kind, crispy around the edges and soft and chewy in the center, oozing with warm melted chocolate.
My proudest moment was when my dad told me my fish sauce tasted just like his. Yep that's right - fish sauce. It defined my culinary achievement.

My dad makes the best fish sauce in the world. Every Vietnamese family has their own way of making it, but from all the ones I've tasted, none can compare. Talking about it now makes my mouth water. It's the perfect combination of spicy, sweet, sour, and salty and I've been eating it all my life. I remember at family parties, my aunt or sister-in-law would try making the sauce. But i could never eat it, or at least never enjoy it, and I'd always have to ask my dad to make me some of his so I could get through the meal.
As a snotty little kid, I refused to eat anyone else's fish sauce. All the other sauces were too sweet or not lemony enough. And I would actually tell them to their face that it "wasn't as good as daddy's". Looking back, I know I was being incredibly rude. But hey! Kids can be honest and get away with it!
One day a few years back, I was helping my dad cook for another family party. I was washing salad when my dad said to me" "Pho (my nickname) make the nuoc mam(fish sauce)." I looked at him and I said "Me? I don't know how to do it! I only like it when you make it!"
"I'll show you how to make it. It's easy." He replied. Easy? The sauce that elevated every dish onto a higher plane?
And he showed me. And it was actually pretty easy.
My brothers couldn't taste the difference. They said it was just like my dad's=) And since then, I've been making the sauce for the parties=)
I might share the recipe sometime, but not right now. Its sort of a family secret=)