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25 Randoms

(post, Liz Crain)


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Thanks to Ivy Manning I just spent more than an hour working on this list of 25 random things about me and food and drink. Somehow I convinced myself that this was work and so it was ok to take time-out at the end of a busy Friday. 

I had a really good time WORKING on it and was inspired by all of the touching and funny bits and pieces in hers. 

Without further ado...

Random Food:

# When I was 3 years old I finished off half a bottle of Flintstones vitamins. When my mom found me sprawled out under the kitchen table burping quietly with a blissed out smile on my face, and my tiny fist around the  empty bottle, she called poison control. 
# I own two Ice-o-Matics. One is Pepto pink and the other fire engine red. I usually only use them when friends' kids come over but I think they are two of my sexiest kitchen gadgets.
# The year my brussels sprouts plants grew taller than me I hugged them repeatedly.
# A few years ago I made cheese soda. I gagged and almost threw up after trying said cheese soda.
# I once spent an entire day working at home on a French Laundry recipe. I cried at one point. And then I was very happy.
# I started drinking coffee at the age of 6. I have always liked the smell and taste of it.
# When I was little and on family vacations my diaries generally contained lists and accounts of the foods I tried.
# I always have a little or a lot of home fermented kim-chi or sauerkraut in a crock or in the fridge. I always have a lot of homemade pickles in the fridge.
# My brother's nickname is pickle because when he was 5 years old he hid pickles all over the house -- under rugs, cushions -- when my mom was in labor with me. He was scared that no one would feed him after I arrived. They didn't discover the pickles until several days later when the house began to stink.
# I stabbed said brother in the hand with a steak knife when I was in 3rd grade. I still think he deserved it.
# Since college I have made potstickers several times a year. Sometimes I hide a king cake baby in one and whoever bites into it is due a very fortunate year according to me.
# Hidden foods are my favorite: from potstickers, samosas, empanadas, hom bau, beggar's pockets, and croquetas, to poppers, corn dogs and stuffed olives. Anyway you stuff it or wrap it.
Please refrain from lewd joke.
# One summer when I was in college my friend Rachel and I ran a restaurant for a week on San Juan Island. We also baked sweet and savory foods for and ran the restaurant's booth at the local farmers market. I think we might have slept a couple times.
# When I was 24 years old I listened to Jean Michel Cousteau talk about drinking ancient Greek wine recovered from a wreck dive with his dad. After his story I ate dinner with him and others at a picnic table on Catalina Island. 
# I have a habit of leaving cups and glasses precariously close to the edges of tables and counters. My boyfriend often shadows me and moves them to a safer spot.
# I think sweet potatoes and yams taste like baby food no matter how they're prepared. 
# My grandma used to make Wolfe eggs for holiday breakfasts based on a dish that the detective Nero Wolfe ate in the Rex Stout mystery series. Stout described the eggs in a few passages and then my grandma composed the recipe based on those descriptions. I have never made them but hope to one day. 
# I usually have a tea jar in the refrigerator that I keep used tea leaves in to re-steep. 
# The name pu'erh is funny to me every time I say it or hear it. I don't laugh when I drink it though because I love it.
# My cat used to arrange dried beans into shapes under our bed. She would grab a bag out of the cupboard when she thought we weren't looking and carry it under the bed. Then she'd wrest it open and usually arrange the beans in a square or rectangle. I'm not lying. I am very sad that she no longer does this. I am not lying about that either. Said cat is lounging in the above photo. In addition to counting beans she also likes to sit on seed trays.
# Hot cock (aka Sriracha) is my most used house condiment, just in front of homemade mustard, salsa and store-bought mayo.
# I didn't know until this fall that strawberry plants aren't perennial. Yes, they keep growing shoots but they will produce inferior fruit each season after a couple years until you just about cry over the loss of your Hoods. I kept fertilizing mine when that started to happen because I thought it was a soil problem.
# My favorite sandwich is a reuben. My big white dog's name is Rubin.
# I once broke into a neighbor's house when I was four and stole cookies from the cookie jar. I think they were chocolate chip but I wasn't exactly thinking clearly.
# In my sleep people have always told me that I often make the sound of chewing. I think it must be because I so often eat and drink in my dreams. Or maybe it's because I've just returned from sneaking down to the fridge and polishing off the last of the spicy pickled okra.