121 posts tagged “qotd”

What's your favorite ingredient to cook with?

GARLIC! and olive oil.  this household goes through a ton of both of these things pretty often.  We also go through a lot of cheese (esp. of the parmigiano or asiago variety)

I took a test on LiveJournal recently along the lines of "which country should you belong to?"  My results were a tied Italian and German (quite accurate, I'm only a little Italian by blood but ridiculously Italian in personality, and I am hella German, that's about 90% of my family's heritage...), and second place tied to Irish and British (There's a fair amount of both Irish and British on my dad's side of the family, makes sense).  But yeah, especially as far as the kitchen is concerned, Italian is pretty damn accurate.

Also: our freezer looks like it belongs to an Italian nonna these days, I made a huge batch of tomato sauce about a week ago, ate some, froze the rest, there is now no room in our freezer for naan...and we eat a lot of Trader Joes' frozen naan.  We may need a second freezer.  These are the times when I wish I kept my mini-fridge...

Imagine the perfect first date. Where do you go and what do you wear? Now think of the last first date you went on. Describe please!

Actually, my last first date was pretty darn perfect.  And kind of the only real first date I've ever been on... until then I'd had a pattern of randomly falling into relationships without there being any very obvious starting point and without a first date... it's usually been about just ending up spending more time with a person, realizing you have feelings for each other, and then before you know it, it's a relationship.  And somehow the first date thing never really happened.  

But it did, in my current relationship, after a lot of silly flirting that made me feel like I was fourteen sometimes, and made all of our mutual friends roll their eyes at us quite a bit (probably thinking "okay, we know, you're crazy about each other, please do something about that fact so you can stop annoying us with it!") ...April 23rd, 2008 marked my first official "date" with anyone, ever.  And it really was perfect. 

He picked me up from my knitting class (it was a Wednesday-night first date, as I didn't have a job at that point and he didn't have to work early the next day).  I wore a denim knee-length pencil skirt, can't remember what top I wore, and can remember that it was still quite cold and I wore my black peacoat as well.  Possibly legwarmers, too.  And I'm fairly sure I wore my brown heeled boots. We went to dinner (a pizza place that is in between fancy/casual), spent all of dinner loving the food, talking, and laughing, and then went to a movie ("21"), smuggling in our own soda and candy from a trip to the dollar store beforehand, because let's face it, movie theaters are overpriced.

And the entire night was perfect.  We had a great night together, and the comfortable, fun, happy atmosphere of that first date still hasn't faded, just two months short of a year later.  So, yeah, definitely counts as a perfect first date to me :)

Have you ever volunteered for something? If so, what?

haha, what great timing... just last week i started volunteering at our local animal shelter.  not the first volunteer work i've done (a few random things in high school, and volunteered for the obama campaign earlier this year), but definitely the most challenging.  the shelter is trying to become a no-kill shelter and therefore needs a TON of help and it's hard, hard work.  worth it though - when I see every day how spoiled my family's pets are in comparison to the animals at the shelter - all animals should get the chance to have a loving family just like our pets do, and being housed in a no-kill shelter with volunteers who really care and want to find homes for them gives them a better chance... i'll probably be writing more about the shelter in the near future, as working there is currently draining me of my essence and I'll need to rant at some point or another, but right now... I have to get up at the buttcrack of dawn to go there tomorrow and so I need some sleep.

What is your favorite thing to do on a rainy day?

--Curl up on the couch or in bed with a book and a big cup of tea.

-- Knit.

-- Open the sliding glass door so that I can smell the rain, put on a sweater so I don't get chilly, put on good rainy day music (Norah Jones, Jack Johnson, John Mayer, The Decemberists), and write. 

-- Watch movies (best when I have someone to cuddle with)

-- Go outside and walk around in the rain (best with someone else as well)

July is national ice cream month! What's your favorite flavor?
Submitted by LittleWiseOne.

I didn't know this.. national ice cream month, what a wonderful, wonderful thing...

anyway.

Coffee ice cream (preferably of the haagen dazs or starbucks variety) is my favorite.

Rocky Road is a very.close.second (also prefer to go with Haagen Dazs here).

Last but not least: Haagen Dazs Bailey's Irish Cream ice cream = HEAVEN. 

I'm also a sucker for any and all things Ben and Jerry's.

teeny tiny haagen dazs container!

heaven in a pint

How have you changed in the past year?
Submitted by littleduckling.

i was going to write a lot here, but i realized that there is a short, simple way to sum it up, and as i'm exhausted, i'll do that:

today, i am 200% more myself and 200% happier than i was a year ago. 

and that fact is wonderful :)

What was your biggest cooking disaster?

ahaha... in 7th grade, when I had just met my best friend Jamie, we did one of two things when we were together: we shopped (yes, we were those annoying little 13 year olds buying cheap jewelry in Claire's on a weekly basis) or we baked.  One day, we were over at her house and decided to make mint brownies - the recipe sounded mouthwatering, and we quickly got to work. 

Somehow... a little over 7 years later I'm still trying to understand how this happened... one of us misread the cookbook and decided that when we were making the mint frosting, cream of tartar was a necessary ingredient.

Needless to say, the frosting was horrible, and we still laugh about it to this day.

In November I was out doing some of my holiday shopping with a friend, and we were in Williams-Sonoma when I saw this:

Peppermintbrownie

Had I not A: already found my present for Jamie and B: spent far too much money that day already, I would have bought it for her :)

There was that disaster, and then a few years ago, everyone else in my family was elsewhere for the evening and a friend of mine was coming over so we could have a girl's night - pig out, watch movies, talk, etc.  I decided to make tortilla chips for us while I was waiting for her to get there.  I turned the heat on the burner up to medium and then the phone rang.  In answering the phone, I forgot that the pan was getting very very hot, and when I hung up the phone I started to pour canola oil in.... and it burst into flame. 
I didn't burn down the house or anything - it was a small enough fire that putting a lid over it killed it - but the light and fan above the stove were nicely blackened and so when my friend got to my house she and spent some time scrubbing away soot.  The light and fan still work but the vents are black to this day.  So now, when I'm cooking and have to answer the phone or there's another distraction, I turn the heat down and multitask (thank god for speakerphone).

How many houses have you lived in? How is where you live now different from where you grew up?

My parents say that we lived in two houses when we lived in Southern California, but I only really remember the second one.

So - SoCal 1, and SoCal 2.  Tally = 2

Then we moved to Montana, and we've only lived in one house here.  Tally = 3

I don't know if dorm rooms count, but I've spent more time living in dorm rooms these past couple years than an actual house, so Tally = 4, and 5, if we count both freshman and sophomore year.

And last summer I lived in an apartment in Florence - Tally = 6

Six.  And for the time being I'm back in the house I grew up in, so it's not any different. 

Share your favorite duet.

Elephant Love Medley

Nicole Kidman, Ewan McGregor

Sex and the City grossed $55.7 million dollars this weekend - the best opening ever for an R-rated movie. What did you think of the movie? If you didn't see it, do you plan to?

I saw the movie Saturday afternoon with a friend.  I'd only ever seen maybe a grand total of 5 or 6 episodes of the show, but the movie actually turned out to be pretty good.  There were a few melodramatic bits, but also some really hilarious moments - - "She Poughkeepsie'd her pants" for example, or the one that I'll be laughing about for a while:

Samantha: "Well I love to color.  I could color all day, everyday if I had my way.  I'd use every crayon in my box - "
Carrie: "OKAY. We get it.  You love to color." 

(Color meaning sex, of course). 

So, yeah, I thought the movie was worth my $6 matinee ticket.