13 posts tagged “qotd”
Who taught you how to cook?
Submitted by Donna.
I don't remember ever being explicitly taught to cook, though I certainly absorbed all of the basics from my mother. She cooked dinner from scratch for our family almost every night. And around the holidays there was always something baking up in the oven.
It wasn't until I got older and found myself in the kitchen with friends who really didn't know how to cook that I realized that I already knew things like the importance of heating up oil before tossing something in the frying pan, why you should always set the timer for sooner than the recipe says, and how a written recipe is always a jumping-off point for your own creativity.
Tonight I made beef short ribs with roasted garlic mashed potatoes, and I definitely wouldn't have had the nerve to try a two-day, multi-step, multi-hour-cook-time recipe (the ribs) without the culinary foundation that mom provided. And the results were more than edible:
What's your favorite restaurant?
I don't have any one "favorite" restaurant -- more like a handful of favorites in each of the cities in which I've lived. But one that would be a favorite if it were located here in Seattle is Cuvee, in New Orleans, where I had the best meal in recent history with dishes like these:
- Sweet-spicy frog legs, baby spinach; farmers' cheese vinaigrette
- Steen's cane syrup-cured-smoked duck breast and whole confit leg, walnut-blue cheese risotto, seared Hudson Valley foie gras; pear glace
- Chocolate torte; strawberry - almond ice cream; aged balsamic caramel
Favorite in Seattle would probably be Thai Tom, where the $6 spicy noodle is soooo fiery good with a tall Thai iced coffee.
What's your musical horoscope? (Put your music player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.) Inspired by Stephanie.
1. "Nothing New" - Game Theory
2. "Christmas Song-Original Version" - The Cavedogs
3. "Well Done" - The Donnas
4. "You Drive" - Game Theory
5. Track 15 - ?? [this is something from a mix CD someone made me that I never tagged when I ripped it]
6. "I Throw My Toys Around" - Elvis Costello & Gwen Stefani
7. "She Cracked" - Velvet Crush
8. "Brighter" - Acid House Kings
9. "Catherine" - PJ Harvey
10. "BeginningEnd" - Benni Hemm Hemm
Wow, that's an incredibly bizarre selection. Two songs by Game
Theory? And there are two in there that aren't part of my own
collection, since my mp3 library contains songs dumped from at least
two of my friends' iPods. I had to skip forward to random track
#26 (past yet another Game Theory song!) before I hit a single
Go-Betweens song, arguably the crappiest one they ever recorded ripped
only to satisfy a "worst song off of best album" challenge.
Whatever, iTunes.
If you could watch any movie on the big screen right at this moment, what would it be?
What are your personal memories of September 11th?
Here is something I wrote on that day, from the private blog I kept for a good part of 2001:
Almost left for my 10:30am meeting in midtown today without finding out the news. Was hurriedly sending an email to a coworker before dashing to my meeting just a few blocks away when I saw the alert on the NY Times main page (my default home page). Turned on NY1 and saw images of smoke around one of the towers, heard a plane crashed into one. That's all I heard. Went off to my meeting.
I think being here in NYC for the World Trade Center bombing in 1993 may have dulled me a bit to this -- just "plane crashes into WTC" was really jarring, but I didn't think for a minute to do anything other than continue with my regular routine. Walking east to Times Square, seeing the images broadcast on the Jumbotron screens I started to get the sense it was worse. Walking into the client's building, seeing streams of people leaving... then running into my client in the lobby of building, him telling me the extent of what happened. He and everyone there saw it all happen from the 41st floor of their building. Everyone leaving, meeting cancelled.
So I walk back west toward my apt, thinking how I was glad to have had this appt. in midtown today (otherwise I'd be stranded at my office downtown), marvelling at the relative quietude on the street, passing by people -- stoic, crying, indifferent, tense, but nothing out of the ordinary. Tried to use my cell phone multiple times, but that wasn't working. All pay phones in use. Walked over to my friend's apt a couple of blocks away from mine to use his phone since I figured he'd be home (he works nearby) and all I've got is my cell and my DSL (no land line). Sat w/him and his coworkers watching the events on TV unfold for awhile before returning home to my cat, pleasantly surprised to see me again so early in the day (mrow!).
Take a look at the pic in the upper-right corner, my live webcam pointed north from the mid-40s in Manhattan. It's such a beautiful day out right now, blue skies and hardly a cloud in the sky, at least from where I sit right now. The only hint of what's going on elsewhere is the intermittent sound of sirens.
How cute were you as a baby/child? Let's see those baby pics!
Instead of a picture, here's a short clip from a home movie. When this was being filmed, I remember being mad at my dad for some reason, so I pulled up a lawn chair to sulk in silence facing the side of the house. But my dad kept filming me, and I got even angrier -- grrrr!
What's your cell phone's ringtone? What made you pick it?
It's just an old-style analog phone ring. I don't much care for cutesy ring tones, and I want my phone ring to sound like a phone. Like the harvest gold and avacado green rotary phones we had in my house growing up, one upstairs and the other downstairs. All the bloopy-beepy MIDI or songlike polyphonic ring tones just get filtered out by my brain as background noise.
What or who is your favorite product mascot? Why?
I'm not quite sure what is being advertised here (knitting needles?), but this cat is the coolest, needle through head and all:
(Spotted during my trip to Mexico last December, on the wall of a sewing supplies shop in Ixtapan de la Sal.)
Play any instrument or speak any language, which do you choose?
Question submitted by cruftbox.vox.com.
Speak any language.
Yes, I love music -- I've worked a record label, been a radio DJ, written for music publications, worked at a record store and even been in a band myself. And the ability to play any instrument would be undeniably cool, especially since I have only rudimentary piano and drumming skills.
The social aspect to playing music with others (as pointed out by Andre) is important, but I don't think you need to be technically proficient, or even all that skilled, to take part in that. One of the highlights of the EMP Pop Conference here in Seattle this past spring wasn't a panel or speaker (though many of them were both stimulating and entertaining) -- it was cramming into one of the museum's tiny "jam session" studios with friends, each of us banging away on an instrument. (Okay, it probably helped that my amp was off... BUT STILL.)
Language, on the other hand, is a barrier that is not as easily overcome. Now that I'm working in the travel industry, I'm starting to travel more, and I would love to be able to speak the language wherever I go. I hate feeling like a foreigner, and having to rely on English in a country where it's not the native language amplifies my natural introversion, making me feel stupid and awkward.
So, yeah... I think I'm gonna go brush up on my high school French...
What's your favorite drink or cocktail? What's in it?
Question submitted by charm.vox.com
While my old standby is the vodka tonic -- popular, easy to make, and refreshing -- I'll get a bit more creative when mixing something up at home.
My current favorite is the Mango Sour, which I've made twice already in the past month.
It's got the best elements of the vodka tonic (vodka, lime) along with just enough mango sweetness. Here's my own recipe (adapted from one that appeared in Gourmet a couple of years back):
Ingredients
4 parts Vodka
5.5 parts Mango juice3 parts Lime juice1 part Simple syrup
Spears of fresh mango
Directions
Stock up on limes and cans of mango juice or mango nectar -- while not as fabulous as fresh juice, the latter is much cheaper and easier to find. In order to prepare a decent-sized pitcher of these, start with enough limes to make 1-2 cups of juice (approx 5-6 limes = 1 cup) and work your remaining ingredient proportions from there.
If you haven't prepared simple syrup in advance, whip up a quick batch now by pouring equal amounts of sugar and boiling water into the bottom of your drink pitcher. If you're not good at eyeballing the amount relative to the other ingredients, you might want to do this part in a glass measuring cup, then only pour in as much as you need once you've measured out your juices and vodka.
Next, halve and juice the limes until you have the requisite amount of juice (approx 5-6 = 1 cup). Pour the lime juice into the pitcher. Add your vodka and mango juice or nectar. If you opted to make simple syrup in another container, or have some pre-made, add that now. Stir all ingredients together well. Taste a bit, and add more juice or simple syrup for sweetness if needed.
Next, fill a chilled cocktail shaker halfway with crushed ice and pour the desired drink amount from pitcher; cover and shake vigorously. Set a few cubes of ice into a cocktail glass -- or hell, drinking glass -- and let your libation flow from shaker to glass. Garnish with a spear of fresh mango if you're feeling fancy (or hungry). Bottoms-up!
