Tag. You’re it.

My friend Pat tagged me for a meme back in January. I’m not usually into this sort of thing, but I thought you might get a kick out of the answers. And truthfully, I’m hoping that sitting down to think about the foods I love will liven things up a bit around here.

I know it makes me a spoilsport, but I refuse to tag. Bloggers, take that as your cue: Meme away. Say I sent you. And heck, if you’re not a blogger but want to respond, by all means, answer the same questions in the comments section below. Type your little heart out.

What were you cooking/baking 10 years ago?
February of 1998, I was cooking dinner with my friend Michaela for a big group of folks for Middlebury College’s winter carnival. Michaela was in charge. We made pumpkin risotto, I think, and something that required beef stock, for sure, because Eric thought the bouillon cube was chocolate and ate the whole thing in one bite. Haven’t seen a guy cry so hard since.

Or wait, was that 1999?

What were you cooking/baking one year ago?
Soup for Peter.

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. Chicken salad, straight from the container
2. A cheddar cheese quesadilla (corn, of course)
3. Greek yogurt with walnuts, fruit, and honey
4. A dripping-ripe nectarine
5. Chocolate croissant

Five recipes you know by heart:
1. White bean dip
2. Roasted chicken
3. Vinaigrette (but more like by feel)
4. Brussels sprouts with bacon
5. Pie crust

Hmm, sounds like dinner.

Five culinary luxuries you would indulge in if you were a millionaire:
1. Feeding the people who can’t indulge
2. Unlimited triple cream cheese, followed by liposuction
3. Egg ducks (and the yard space, including pond, to accompany them)

Okay, on second thought, I’ve decided I object to this question. I don’t think I’d get liposuction, for one, and I think having culinary luxuries is more a state of mind than one of finance. Of course, I (like you, probably, if you’re reading this) have the fortune to be in a situation where I can eat a wide variety of foods, don’t have to live on rice and beans, can afford to buy fruits and vegetables, etc. That said, culinary luxury is (to me) about having the time to enjoy the food you have, not about money. So, I’m changing it (yes, I was always the kid who changed the rules in the middle of the game):

Five culinary luxuries you would indulge in if you had an extra four hours in the day:
1. Savoring the texture of an entire serving of Greek yogurt, one bite at a time
2. Plunging my hand into a new bag of flour. I’ve always wanted to know what it feels like but never wanted to waste time cleaning it up.
3. Smelling all the fruits in the grocery store
4. Rubbing my hands in our rosemary bush, every day
5. Stirring a pan of oatmeal and sticking with it, smelling the way it changes as it cooks, instead of abandoning it on the stove

Five foods you love to cook/bake:
1. Chocolate chip cookies
2. Granola
3. Potato salad
4. Fruit crisps
5. Pasta

Five foods you cannot/will not eat:
1. Eggplant. Okay, will eat it, but have lots of trouble enjoying, unless peeled, pulverized, and rendered unrecognizable.
2. Tripe. The texture kills me.
3. Mayonnaise, if I can see it.
4. Fugu. I’m just not that much of a risk-taker.
5. Polychaetes. Never tried, never will.

Five favorite culinary toys:
1. Microplane
2. Small offset spatula
3. Immersion blender
4. Stand mixer
5. Kyocera mandolin

Five dishes on your “last meal” menu:
You know, a friend of mine recently asked me what I’d eat for my last meal, and I refused to answer. The food I tend to love most is happenstance. I’d love to eat whatever I felt like in the moment for my final meal, and I hope that if I somehow knew it was my last, I’d be content to eat anything from foie gras to homemade pizza to Chinese take-out. I think a more appropriate question is who you’d like to eat with, but I get sad just thinking about it, so I’m not going there.

That said, there are, of course, a few “dishes” I really, really like. Okay, more than a few. Here are five of them. They’d make for a really strange menu if they were served all at once, but I really don’t care. So there.

1. Pasta Bolognese, made with a mixture of pork, veal, and lamb
2. Willow Tree chicken salad, on lightly toasted wheat bread, with lettuce, pickle, and tomato
3. Crème brulee
4. A burrito from Anna’s Taqueria
5. Coq au vin

Burritos and creme brulee. Eww.

Five happy food memories:
See? This is why I hate these things. Why five?

1. Eating a five-course tofu meal at an organic restaurant in Kyoto, and washing it down with a Wolaver’s
2. Spreading Nutella on lemon-poppyseed bread for ten consecutive meals when Jim and I were traveling in New Zealand in college (it seemed like a good idea at the time)
3. Cutting into our wedding cake and realizing that the cake in the entire middle layer was charred to a crisp, and that the filling was the wrong flavor, and not caring
4. Catching a delicious bass for dinner in Woods Hole
5. The cookies my neighbor brought me last week, when I really wanted a cookie

Tag. You’re it.