Ali at Cleaner Plate Club dinged me with a 5 things about me tag. Seeing as how her blog is mostly about food I’ll try to stick to food related items. She did that a while ago, but it’s taken this long for me to think of 5 things about me. Besides, usually my blog is where tags go to die.
If you are interested in an earlier tag check here, although in retrospect that one is mostly about drinking or doing stupid things. Sometimes both at the same time!
1.) Ali mentions she has a serious weakness for sour candies. I do too. To the point eating them until my tongue is raw and blistered. I do the same thing with Hot Tamales. And Milk Duds and chips hold a special place in my heart. If I had to be stranded on a desert island with only one though, it would be Hot Tamales. I love me some Hot Tamales.
2.) I eat salads with no salad dressing. Not because I’m super healthy. It’s because I don’t like salad dressing. I’m not a big fan of vinegar, which seems to be a primary component of just about every dressing. Feel free to leave me a dressing recipe. Chances are I won’t try it, but you never know if your recipe might be the final one that allows me to enjoy salads even more. I just go for some salt and pepper on mine please. And it has to be fresh, local lettuce. If it’s that head lettuce from the store you can just keep it. I’ll save the stomach room for Hot Tamales.
3.) Ali mentioned that she and her sister use to make butter-sugar “cookies”. That reminded me that my brother and I use to take a slice of white bread, smear it with butter (margarine really) and then add colored sprinkles like would appear on a sugar cookie. We would eat that for a snack. Talk about processed American food heaven. Wow!
4.) I’ve eaten sushi, in Japan, at a fancy restaurant, and I didn’t think it was all that. It was good, but I doubt if it was worth the money. I did enjoy the pink fish eggs though, and the seaweed wrapped rolls were good. I did not enjoy seeing a whole fish on my plate for breaky. While I liked the fish, I wasn’t ready for it to be staring up at me at 7 in the morning. And since I love rice I had no problem eating that 3 meals a day. Of course that was nothing compared to the first meal in the country served by our host’s parents when they had fish heads and such floating in the soup. Visually it was a little shocking (especially after the 20 some hours spent flying), but my stomach told me it was damn good!! It’s amazing how much your cultural awareness and vision play into what you would find appealing to eat.
5.) (The serious one) Why is food and cooking important to me? I love to cook because it allows me to provide wholesome foods to my family, something that I think is critically important to everyone’s well being. (If you don’t think that’s important then I won’t tell you the last time we were at the Dr because one of us was sick…) But even more, it allows me to build the foundation of memories and family glue between all of us. Sharing food together is one of life’s great pleasures.
Some of my fondest memories from my childhood have food as a large part of them. They might be a special dish, or a special occasion with food involved, or food might just be a small piece of the memory, but it’s still there. By being heavily involved with the cooking I can make that happen. It’s my personal way of showing my concern and affection for people. I want to make sure that the people around me experience this same thing, and that’s why I obsess over food like I do. Besides, it’s a heckuva lot of fun. And eating food that tastes bad is no way to go through life.
Bonus thing–My most favorite homemade food in the world is soup or stew. We eat it quite often. Also, if I was a piece of bacon, there’s a good chance I would eat myself.
FGLB
Fat Guy on a Little Bike 