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What is your favorite restaurant?
I think I see restaurants differently from most people. I spent years working in them. Restaurants are really insane workplaces with huge rivalries between the chefs, waiters and barmen. So when I go out to eat now I spend as much time watching the drama unfolding as enjoying the food.
What is your favorite food?
I love cheese on toast, made the traditional way with mustard and worcestershire sauce. It has to be a good mature cheddar so that it crumbles when you grate it, and thick, fresh granary bread. In fact I'm going to make some when I've finished answering these questions.
Are there any foods that you find yourself craving regularly?
Rowntree's fruitgums. They are an addiction. I had to kick them a few years back but still everytime I go past a newsagent I think about them. Total teeth destruction though.
Is there a childhood food that you miss?
I used to eat spaghetti with ketchup. I don't miss that though because it was horrible. Its funny how your tastes change as you get older.
Is there a favorite food you can't get where you currently live?
The city I live in (Leicester) is the most ethnically diverse place in the UK. Theres nothing you can't get here if you know where to look.
If you could invite any three people, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be and why?
Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. Life's a laugh init.
What is your favorite restaurant?
Actually it's a mini-chain -- Fresh, by Juice for Life -- in Toronto (http://www.juiceforlife.com/)
What is your favorite food?
for breakfast: pancakes
for lunch or dinner: peanut soup
for snacks: Spartan apples
What do you eat for comfort food?
Breakfast cereal, potato chips (not together!)
Are there any foods that you find yourself craving regularly?
Pancakes, apples, peanut sauce, peanut soup, pumpkin pie, lemon cookies, onion bahji, pizza
Is there anything you won’t eat?
I'm vegan, so I absolutely won't eat meat. Occasionally, I'm somewhat flexible about eggs and some forms of dairy when I'm not eating at home, but I try to avoid those as much as possible. I also do not like the taste of olives, liquorice, anise, and fennel.
Is there a childhood food that you miss?
No ... my mom was an awful cook. I only began to eat for pleasure with my first live-in girlfriend at age 18-19. She was a fantastic cook who totally opened up the world of food for me.
(When) Where was your most memorable meal?
A recent memorable one was the fish and chips I made for myself and ended up puking a bucketful.
What is your favorite restaurant?
My current favourite is my local Indian Restaurant, The Green Chilli in Stoneybatter. The balti is amazing. Takeaway restaurants in Ireland give out calendars at Christmas to valued customers. This year my ambition is to get the Green Chilli calendar.
What is your favorite food?
I love Indian food. But when it comes to cooking for myself I leave that stuff to the experts and it's simple stuff all the way. I cook the stuff me Ma would have cooked. Meat, vegetables, potatoes with gravy. Irish soul food.
What do you eat for comfort food?
In Chinese Restaurants and in chip shops here they serve curry that has no resemblance whatsoever to traditional curry but is absolutely amazing comfort food especially with chips. Wannabe food snobs will usually point out the amazing fact that curry isn't actually Chinese food but you can't argue with the taste of this stuff. It's radioactive green and it's delicious.
Are there any foods that you find yourself craving regularly?
At various times Thai Green Curry, Chicken Balti, Tuna and melted cheese on pitta bread…cheap supermarket bought chicken pies.
Is there a childhood food that you miss?
Funny feet ice creams.
Is there a favorite food you can't get where you currently live?
I was in Melbourne for a year and the Viet Rose on Brunswick Street did an amazing Chicken, Chilli and Lemongrass. I've tried similar things from menus over here but it just doesn' taste the same.
If you could invite any three people, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be and why?
God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost. I'm just curious about whether they'd order the same meal.
(When) Where was your most memorable meal?
1993, in Old Town San Diego, at a Guatemalan restaurant. The food was family-style, homemade and fantastic, and the owner found out we were on our honeymoon and wouldn't let us leave without drinking tequila shots. I’ve never seen my husband drink at any other time.
What is your favorite restaurant?
Chipotle. I’m willing to drive from Reno to Sacramento for what’s essentially fast food (but the BEST fast food.) [Reno doesn't have a Chipotle.]
What is your favorite food?
Pizza. Tea. Chipotle. Cheddar cheese.
What do you eat for comfort food?
Hot tea is the constant, happy, sad, celebrating, mourning. For rejections on stories and other gray days, it’s popcorn, heavy on the butter and salt.
Are there any foods that you find yourself craving regularly?
Pizza. Tomatoes. Lays potato chips.
Is there anything you eat that no one else you know eats?
Peanut butter (smooth), dill pickles and honey. Started eating it when I was a teenager and one night my father had a business associate stay for dinner. The adults were eating corned beef, which I still can’t fathom the point of, and I had my (very drippy) open-faced peanut butter, pickles and honey. The poor stranger at the table kept glancing at me and trying not to and finally couldn't stand it and stopped mid-sentence and asked, “What is she eating?”
Is there anything you won’t eat?
Mayonnaise. I’d like it to not exist.
Is there a childhood food that you miss?
Some weird gelatin and fluffy strawberry something concoction that was sold in the cold aisles at Raley’s Supermarket when I was 10 or so. it was layered and I could never quite figure out if I liked the fluffy parts or not but I ate it a lot.
Is there a favorite food you can’t get where you currently live?
Chipotle, but Sacramento has other benefits, like William Glenn Christmas Store and a terrific used book store and driving 2 hours for lunch seems so decadent.
If you could invite any three people, living or dead, to dinner, who would they be and why?
Can I have them there separately? Jean Kerr (Please Don’t Eat the Daises), James Thurber, Connie Willis. (Neil Gaiman, Graham Joyce, and so on and on.)
If money was no object, what would your food splurge be?
Strangely enough, it's not the money but the body that stops me here. As anyone who truly loves good food knows: fat is _tasty_. Ladle it on, whether it be via rivers of heavy cream or gushers of pork grease or melted mountains of cheese, cheese, cheese -- oh, hell, I just put on ten pounds.
I guess my food splurge would be a total heart-and-artery transplant at the end of a saturated-fat-laden meal.
Do you cook at home? Why/why not?
Yes, I do, and I cook far beyond my earned competence level. I'll spend hours doing what a trained chef could do in minutes, just to see if I can attain the same heights by virtue of sheer stubbornness and patience. Often, I pull it off, too. (Sadly, by that time I no longer want to eat -- I'd rather watch friends and family enjoy the meal without complaint, watching their faces to catch a hidden grimace of distate, a subtle wink to another which I know damned well means "Humor him -- pretend it's wonderful!")
Of course, if I ever wind up poisoning the lot of them, at least I can call for the ambulance...
What three things are always in your fridge?
Sadly, I have children, so this is indicative of that and not my own cooking prowess (which may or may not exist): milk, eggs, and mysterious, apparently sourceless pinkish-red spills.
What food item are you always running out of?
The one I neglect to realize I need right now for the recipe at hand.
What's the strangest thing in your fridge/pantry right now?
A jar of cocktail onions (with only a few onions left in it, but quite a bit of vinegar left) that I decided would be perfect to store the chili pequins that grow wild in my back yard. It has become a great joke for my family to have me eat one of the remaining onions as the jar becomes more and more full of one of the hottest peppers on Earth.
What's your favorite literary food scene?
Reading about food in novels or stories never really did much for me -- with very few exceptions, I just wished they'd get on with the story. (Shallow, yes, but true.)
So I'll skip literary completely and say "Any food scene in Ratatouille. (And if you're a foodie and missed the film because you thought it was a kid's movie, shame on you!)
What's your speciality in the kitchen?
Other than general mayhem, I'm going to go for baklava. Time-intensive, but not that hard to make. (I've thought seriously about making and selling it, considering what Greek restaurants charge for a tiny little piece.)
What food is better at home than out at a restaurant?
Enchiladas, hands-down. Better the second day, as well. And restaurants try to mess with something simple, then wind up turning an easy dish into some vague imitation of the original.
What food do you wish you could cook at home?
Not a particular food, necessarily -- but any food that truly requires professional restaurant-quality ovens, stoves, etc. Let's face it, no matter what toppings you put on it, you can't make a really fantastic pizza at home unless you have a 1500 degree wood-burning oven out on the porch, say, or one hell of a convection monster in your house (and I don't, sadly.)
Who are your cooking influences?
This is where I'm supposed to list James Beard, Julia Child, the Galloping Gourmet, or some famous French chef, right?
Nope. My parents are responsible for all of it. They always cooked together, and even during times of very limited budgets, they always managed to satisfy. (With the exception of salmon-cakes -- made with tuna, because they couldn't afford salmon, no less. Blecch!)
What is your favorite drink?
Whatever gets me through the night, baby...
(When) Where was your most memorable meal?
My most memorable meal was in Poland, about seven years ago. I was part of a group of visiting grad students & professors, and we were being hosted by some local bigwigs in a small village outside of Poznan. The meal included a number of dishes I'd never seen before, some delicious and some quite terrifying: ham suspended in some sort of aspic. At the time, I believed that most food wouldn't be eaten if they weren't delicious. Afterwards I came to realize that acquired taste has more to say about it than anything else.
What is your favorite food?
Cheese. All shapes, all sizes, from the mildiest to the stinkiest. Cheese rules.
Are there any foods that you find yourself craving regularly?
When Winter rolls around, I find myself craving beef stew. Big hunks of steaks, piles of carrots and peas and onions, and chunks of potatos slowly decomposing in a thick brown sauce that warms you up as it slides down your throat.
Is there anything you eat that no one else you know eats?
I have on a few occasions found myself craving SPAM™, buying a tin, and eating it by the slice. I'm not sure why, as it's saltier than a hundred salt licks floating on top of the Great Salt Lake. I know no one else who will eat it.
Is there anything you won’t eat?
I actively dislike casseroles and will avoid them at all costs. Possibly through the use of magic.
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