andy

In my WordGoddess collab posted earlier this month, I said that I was going to post the answer to the food question in a separate Blathering. Well, here it is. Thanks again to Sasha for the question.

Using food ingredients/dishes or terminology, describe your personality and character.

Appetizer: Shrimp cocktail. I have a secret weakness for shrimp cocktail; I have been known to hoover down an entire plate if left unsupervised. I get sick afterwards, of course, but it's worth it.

Main course: A stirfry. The exact ingredients change each time, depending on my mood and what's in season, but overall it would always some kind of stirfry. Not something you'd serve at a fancy restaurant, but is filling just the same. I used to use pretty bland seasoning when I first started making this dish, but have gotten more experimental with spices over the years. ;-)

Dessert: A plain glazed Krispy Kreme doughnut with a glass of milk, and a small dish of chocolate truffles. I know I haven't actually tried a Krispy Kreme yet so my imagined KK dessert is fashioned more from over-inflated expectations and stubborn optimism, but I figure that's pretty appropriate here anyway. Thanks to Joey Shoji, by the way, for pointing out this great Krispy Kreme cartoon. :-)





Cathy and I had dinner at Masquerade in BCE place last night, then went to the Hummingbird Center to see the Erik Bruhn ballet competition. Erik Bruhn was a well-known dancer and teacher at The National Ballet of Canada, and also served as Artistic Director from 1983 until he died in 1986. In his will, Bruhn left part of estate for a prize for one male and one female dancer between the ages of 18-23.

This year, the competitors were from American Ballet Theatre, The National Ballet of Canada, The Royal Danish Ballet, San Francisco Ballet and Stuttgart Ballet. The competition reminds me of the figure skating competition in the Olympics, with the costumes, music, and tension of possible mistakes.

One thing I really like about the competition is that the audience is much more enthusiastic in their response, much more emotionally involved. They gasp when dancers almost fall, cheer wildly after a particularly well-executed technical move. We all pick out favourites and root for them.

I've always admired the grace and physical beauty of ballet. I think that almost all little girls dream about becoming a ballerina at some point in their lives. I used to do part-time work as a pianist for a ballet school in Toronto; it was fun watching the youngsters in their pink tights and ballet slippers, struggling to get through their pliés without falling over. During the lesson, I'd practice the steps on my own as I sat waiting at the piano, my legs hidden from sight.

And since Sara's adventure at the ballet, I've had a special fondness for the National Ballet of Canada.





I was delighted to see the Blatherchat postings about my weird food combo Blathering. I was told that my horseradish/steak and wasabi/shoyu combos weren't so weird after all.

Fascinating to see the other unusual things that other people eat, too. Here are just a few:

Christo: Toast and margarine with Marmite/Yeast Extract on one half, marmalade on the other. He always starts on the marmite half.

Amanda Snyder: Ketchup Pizza -- "one flour tortilla, smear with ketchup, top with grated cheddar cheese, fold and eat cold." Also puts salt on her watermelon, blue cheese dressing with her fries, goat cheese and apricot jam on toast. And like me, she enjoys pineapple on her pizza (yay!).

Allison: "My mother's apple pie and a slice of really good aged cheddar. Yum. Desserts do not get better."

Dave Weingart: Likes wasabi peas (yum, I like these, too).

Jim Poltrone: Peanut butter and vanilla ice cream, French onion dip on baked potatoes, Gatorade and vodka.

Luisa: White spaghetti and ketchup - "You fry up some onions and garlic and perhaps anchovies in a good amount of olive oil, add it to cooked spaghetti and throw on as much parmesean cheese as you have in your house. Really yummy. My brother hated it, so he would put ketchup on it. And slowly, everyone in the family started to add ketchup."

Scott Snyder: Puts salt and pepper on his cantaloupe, sugar on tomato slices. Also "Peanut Butter and X sandwiches, for very broad values of X. Some of the things my dad and I have tried (in various combinations, but all including Peanut Butter) are: Onions, potato chips, sweet pickle relish, banana slices, apple slices, anchovies, honey, coconut, cheese (cheddar, swiss, jack, jarlsberg), and other things that I'm sure I'm just forgetting. I especially like the Peanut Butter and Cheddar Cheese on Toast - then heat the sandwich JUST long enough for the PB to get soft and the cheese to JUST start to melt. YUM!!!!"

Joey Shoji: "My grandmother used to cook pieces of chicken with the fermented soybean paste called miso and we would eat it with hot rice. It would keep refrigerated fairly well so she'd make a big batch at a time. My mom still prepares it in small batches from time to time and I still love it. Another item to learn to make."

Martin GK: "I did get accused of going through university entirely on sandwiches made of white plastic (cheap) bread, red leicester cheese and blue cheese dressing. It's an unwarranted slur - it was only the last eight terms..."

Dave Henry: He eats his sandwich in a circular pattern around the edges, "so that after each complete revolution I am left with exact copy of the original sandwich, albeit a somewhat smaller version. This drives my wife nuts. The other 'sandwich' obsession involves Smarties, those little flavored sugar disk candies. I don't know when or why I started doing it, but I always eat Smarties as sanwiches, taking two of one color and placing a third of a different color between them. My favorite Smarties sandwich is cherry on banana. Conveniently, the number of Smarties in a roll is a multiple of three and it is very rare that I encounter a package that does not lend itself to being eaten entirely as a series of sandwiches."

This is making me way too hungry.

I think I'm going to snoop through the fridge for unusual things to throw together and stuff in my face...

---

Today's Blatherpics:

are all of my friend Andy (who writes as "aiabx" or "Lord Hellpus" in Blatherchat sometimes), over a span of about 20 years. The photo at the top, for example, was taken back in '82 or '83 on the University of Toronto campus.