Blended Titles and Favorite Foods

Your resident meme queen just couldn’t resist these two.

Blended Titles Meme

I got the Blended book title meme from Stefanie. The rules are to blend two titles together using the last word of one title and the first word of another. Also, you can blend the authors’ names. I decided just to browse the shelves in our living room, and I was actually having much more fun with the authors’ names than the book titles, so I came up with these four that abide by the rules:

The Pursuit of Love in the Time of Cholera by Nancy Garcia-Marquez (her mother was from Kent, and her father was from Buenos Aires, and their marriage, which was anything but boring, ruined her for life. But it made her a fabulous writer.)

Canterbuy Tales of the Unexpected by Roald Chaucer (he had a childhood obsession with cathedrals and castles, and as a teenager and very young man, he used them as backdrops to stage elaborate photographs with his friends that are incorporated into his chillingly eerie stories)

Crooked Little Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson Lamott (everyone’s assumed for years she’s a woman, but he’s really a man)

Rule of the Bone People by Russell Hulme (he escaped his hideously abusive childhood in America and found himself completely adrift among strangers on an unfamiliar continent)

Then I came up with four more, because the authors were so intriguing. These blend titles, but don’t stick to the first word/last word rules:

Beloved Tortilla Flat by Toni Steinbeck (she came from a large, very dysfunctional extended family living in just as dysfunctional a town and married a man who came from same. They never communicated and never understood each other, but the sex was great)

Sophie’s Choice, Sophie’s World by Jostein Styron (her parents escaped from Europe to South Carolina just prior to WWII, before she was born. She changed her first name from Sophie to Jostein when she moved to Norway at the age of 22, ostensibly to become a great writer -- which she did -- but really because she was following a man who subsequently broke her heart)

The Lay of the Once and Future King (a rather bawdy novel) by T. H. Ford (everyone’s assumed for years he’s a man, but she’s really a woman)

The Wizard of War and Peace by Ursula Tolstoy (Russia’s answer to J.K. Rowling)


8 Food Things Meme

(Once again, we have that number 8. Does anyone know why there's this meme obsession with the number 8?)

And this one I got from Charlotte (who else?).

What are your favourite foods?
This is an extremely difficult question for me to answer and always has been. I love spicy, creamy, sweet, sour, salty, subtle, powerful, soft, chewy, crunchy…see what I mean? And it depends on my mood. I will say, though, that there are a few very, very basic things I absolutely adore, things that, these days, are all considered “no-nos”: whole milk, cheese, real butter, eggs, potatoes, and fresh-baked bread. I’m not convinced any of these things, when you eat organic versions in moderation, are at all bad for you (most especially the eggs with their high levels of Omega Fatty-3s). The problem is that “in moderation” part.

What foods do you hate?
Sun-dried tomatoes. Why are they all the rage? Why do restaurant chefs insist on adding them to dishes that would be perfectly scrumptious without them? Unlike such things as grapes, apricots, and cherries, which are deliciously candy-like when dried, tomatoes, when dried, seem to hang on to some unpleasantly bitter flavor not noticeable when eaten in their un-dried, juicy, firm but succulent state.

Foods you like but are embarrassed to admit:
Cheese Doodles. Don’t put a huge bag in front of me, please.

Strangest food you’ve eaten and enjoyed?
Goat. It’s a bit oily, but – and I hate to admit this, because who wants to eat a cute little goat? -- I still liked it quite a lot (or maybe that’s just because it was cooked with so many intriguing Caribbean spices, it was hard not to like).

Cooking failures that still rankle?
I made a pea soup once when I was just beginning to learn my way around the kitchen, and I thought the recipe called for un-shelled peas, which seemed very odd. But this was from a health food cookbook, so I decided to try it. Bob and I still refer to it as the “dental floss” soup. The flavor was delicious, and it probably would have been fabulous if I’d shelled the peas as I thought I should, but it was so disastrous, I was never brave enough to try again. A very good lesson, though, wouldn’t you say, to prove to a budding cook that both flavor AND texture are very important?

Ingredients you don’t want to consider living without?
Butter, cream, hot peppers, cheese, garlic, sugar, cilantro, basil, lemon, lime, chocolate (but not altogether, of course).

Cuisine you’d like to know more about?
Ethiopian. I’ve been to some wonderful restaurants.

Foods you’ve hated but have grown to love?
Broccoli. Have no idea why I found this wonderful vegetable so distasteful as a child. These days, I actually find myself craving it if I go too long without it.

Yogurt. I always liked fruit-flavored yogurt, but I hated plain. Now I love it plain or plain drizzled with a little honey or molasses or maple syrup.

“Smelly” cheeses. Now, the “smellier” the better.

Current kitchen conundrum?
Knowing I should give away things that take up space that I never use (like the juicer) but being unable to part with them, either for sentimental reasons (my mother and I bought that juicer on a shopping spree before I was even married, and the first summer Bob and I had a garden, we used it all the time to make vegetable juice. The novelty has warn off, though, and I’d much rather just pick up a bottle of V-8) or because I’m convinced I suddenly might start making great use of them (right. I have tons of time to start spending hours making my own pasta with that pasta machine I’ve used twice since I got it as a wedding gift, especially when I’ve got a perfectly good rolling pin for the few times a year I decide to make my own ravioli – the only kind of pasta I ever make from scratch).

And then there’s pie crust. I really, really want to make my own. I’ve made it about four times, once with fantastic results and the other times with disastrous results. I know it takes practice, but I never make the time to practice and keep buying it already made. I’ve learned it’s very easy to make a good graham cracker crust, though, so I make odd things like pumpkin pie with graham cracker crust, which is actually quite yummy. But, you know, even a grand taste-bud adventurer like me has to admit that quiche with a graham cracker crust probably isn’t going to cut it.