It was delicious. The vaguely dry ground beef bathed in once-powdered gravy, corn and perhaps some chopped carrots, topped with mashed potato. My first shepherd's pie.

My 13-year-old taste buds still weren't very mature (Pizza Hut rated higher than four star restaurants in Chinatown), but once a sip of syrupy Coke had settled the last of the perfect gravy-con-carrot-beef-potato mixture in my stomach, they recognized a new, wonderful sensation.

As my gastrointestinal tract processed the shepherd's pie the night, I dreamt of green hills and grazing sheep.

Ever since that summer at nerd camp, my taste buds and stomach have been on a quest to re-experience a near-perfectly balanced meal of vegetable, meat and starch in one dish. Specifically, my mission has been to discover and then savor the Platonic form of shepherd's pieness.

Unfortunately, the quest, which has taken me from Virginia to New England to England has failed to deliver an experience which matches my initial foray into shepherd's pie heaven.

I came close to tasting perfection in tenth grade, when after volunteering at a homeless shelter, my friend and I were allowed to help ourselves to some of the pie a church group had donated for dinner. But the guild I felt while swallowing what could have been a poor homeless person's gravy-smothered portion diluted the pleasure.

I thought, perhaps, that New England would provide a better venue for my search. After all, shepherd's pies were invented in England and made for cold weather. Therefore, frigid "New" England would undoubtedly have some appetizing version of the entree. I was wrong.

The shepherd's pies at Mr. and Mrs. Bartley's would more aptly be called beef stew pies--filled with chunks of meat instead of ground beef. At Quincy Market, Kitchens of the Bay State serves gravy-less pies. And the "pie" I bought at a sandwich shop in Kennebunkport, Maine was all smooshed together with peasin a styrofoam cup. Alas.

Last summer, I flew to England to visit a friend who had promised me that she had found an oxford pub that served my favorite dish. She sent me a packet of real British shepherd's pie seasoning mix as a preview of the taste sensations that awaited me in the Royal Kingdom.

Everything in England appeared true to form--the bell towers, the students in gowns bicycling to exams, the green pastures, the lush grass and, a very good sign, the sheep.

We went to the pub where my friend had discovered the shepherd's pie on the menu. Walking past the pink-curtained, glass storefront and through the door, I knew immediately that, even in England, the Perfect Pie would prove elusive. The pie at the pub was forgettably bland.

I decided, then, to put the shepherd's pie quest on hold and expand the search to any perfect meal. My chances of success, I assumed, would be far greater. Consequently, I now look upon every vacation to strange and far-away lands as an opportunity to sample new culinary delights.

On a Spring Break driving tour of South Carolina and Georgia, my single obsession became not to view every historical site and plantation recommended by Fodor's but to stop and taste the offerings of every single restaurant and fast-food joint we sped by on small Southern highways.

I lived from meal to meal. Hours before any "normal" mealtime, my fellow travellers would be bombarded with suggestions for possible mealtime sites.

"Oh. 'Katherine's Kitchen,' let's try that one for lunch..."