25 Randoms

From LizCrain — Blog by Liz Crain

February 6, 2009

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:

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. The year my brussels sprouts plants grew taller than me I hugged them repeatedly.
4. A few years ago I made cheese soda. I gagged and almost threw up after trying said cheese soda.
5. 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.
6. I started drinking coffee at the age of 6. I have always liked the smell and taste of it.
7. When I was little and on family vacations my diaries generally contained lists and accounts of the foods I tried.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. I stabbed said brother in the hand with a steak knife when I was in 3rd grade. I still think he deserved it.
11. 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.
12. 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.
13. 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.
14. 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.
15. 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.
16. I think sweet potatoes and yams taste like baby food no matter how they’re prepared.
17. 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.
18. I usually have a tea jar in the refrigerator that I keep used tea leaves in to re-steep.
19. 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.
20. 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.
21. Hot cock (aka Sriracha) is my most used house condiment, just in front of homemade mustard, salsa and store-bought mayo.
22. 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.
23. My favorite sandwich is a reuben. My big white dog’s name is Rubin.
24. 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.
25. 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.