Finished my GAfilk song yesterday, yay! Thanks for help from thatcrazycajun, filkerdave, billroper, bardiclug, madladyred, kitanzi, spiritdance, msmlrlr, stevieannie, bedlamhouse, madfilkentist, blueeyedtigress, gorgeousgary, patoadam, pola_bear, tigertoy, zencuppa, catalana, autographedcat, little_cinnamon, braider, sdorn, and vixyish. If you posted in response to my GAfilk/Atlanta entry and notice your name is missing from the list above, please let me know so I can add it to the song acknowledgements.
Urban Tapestry will be performing it in concert at
GAfilk.
As is usual when I write songs these days, it sort of mutated from what I originally intended, becoming more of a story-song. With fairies and waffles and enchantments and such. You'll better understand what I mean when you hear it. Yay for Allison and Jodi being willing to learn another new song this close to the convention! At least I didn't wait until a few days before. :-)
In
yesterday's Blathering, I posted a survey about adventurous eating and cooking. Out of 27 responses, three people said they wouldn't try ANY of the dishes I proposed; one of these was because of dietary restrictions (though she said she would try them all if she could). People who said they were willing to try ALL of them: nelladarren, viewoftheworld, Tibicina, Pafuts, huskiebear, one anonymous person, Judith, and kchew.
All the dishes I named, by the way, were recipes from my cookbooks that I've either tried or wanted to try cooking: Armenian Stew With Pilaf, Mediterranean Couscous Salad, Crostini with chicken-arugula spread, Fiagioli all'uccelletto and Ladies' Fingers Stew.
37% of you have dietary restrictions.
81% of you cook.
38% of you bet that your cookbook collections are bigger than mine.
22% of you said that if you didn't have to cook for others, you'd be cooking more adventurously.
My friend Luisa pointed out that I'm not so much an adventurous eater as an eater who likes pretty much everything. :-) And she has a point: if I had a list of ingredients I strongly disliked, I'd probably be more hesitant about ordering freely in a restaurant. I should clarify, though...I don't always LOVE everything I try. I'm just willing to try it in the first place. If someone offered me a chocolate-covered grasshopper, I'd try it, or blood pudding or tongue (all three are food items I've always been curious about). If I didn't like a dish, I wouldn't eat the whole thing....ideally I'd be sampling someone else's. :-)
I also make a point of trying foods I don't like on a regular basis, to see if my tastes have changed. As a result, I've added kiwi back to my "Likes" list. At the moment, I honestly can't think of any type of food I strongly dislike, at least foods that have been prepared the way they were supposed to.
Anyway, here are some of the comments:
"I read through cookbooks for inspiration. I have hundreds. I'll even put a recipe up as a framework but won't ever follow it exactly. I know my family's tastes so I might increase a spice we love or add one we like to that one as a complement. Also having an awful cardio history in my family (several grandparents and my father had first heart attacks before 50) I'll make better changes in fats, reducing them or using more heart friendly oils. I love to cook and enjoy meal planning. I've learned that we are considered adventurous by others. We just like to eat." (
viewoftheworld)
"I don't like cookbooks too much - but I ask for other people's recipes if it's something special. And I scavenge bits and pieces of what I see/taste to use with my old recipes. Give me anything and I'll cook you something. :o)" (
nelladarren)
"The dietary restrictions thing is getting a bit interesting, between Daniel's food allergies, my (new) restrictions, and getting something appropriate to feed a toddler (thank goodness David isn't picky about what he eats!) As to my cookbook collection, it currently overflows a 6 foot tall bookshelf ;-) I'll try to get a picture of it up sometime soonish." (
Melissa)
"I mostly cook the same recipes, but also go on 'let's try new stuff' binges from time-to-time. Some years ago I found myself getting much too familiar with the staff of the cookbook store at Yonge and Yorkville." (
phillip2637)
"I live alone, so I don't do much cooking because it's hard to cook little enough! Mainly big soups/stews that will do me three meals, and then usually in winter; in summer I occasionally do a salad with peppers and onions and mushrooms and some tomato/cucumber (NO lettuce!) which again does three days, usually with additions each day like croutons, chopped hardboiled egg, cheese... I have a few recipes which I can repeat easily to take to parties and so on, but which I don't cook for myself because a single quantity of them makes too much for one person. On occasion I'll produce something by experimentation that's worth remembering for future use, such as my (in)famous Pear and Ginger Crumble." (
Marion)
"I use cookbooks for baking, to get ideas, and sometimes, especially for parties or special dinners for having a recipe that I know will work, rather than my usual 'oh, I think I'll add a bit of /that/ this time.' After a major paring down, my cookbook collection still has several bookcases, though, to be fair, I cheat and share a collection with my mother. My personal collection is possibly smaller than yours." (
Tibicina)
"I don't cook very often, and I tend to often cook the same things because I want to eat them regularly, but I like to try new stuff too. I don't like too complicated or time-consuming recipes, but I really like cookbooks too." (
Ina)
"I use the vast collection for inspiration, rather than strict recipes." (
huskiebear)
"Alas, my not eating meat limits my choices from above. Three years ago I would probably have tried any of them. I especially love stew and pilaf.
I find my adventuresome cooking (and my use of cookbooks) fluctuates with the seasons. In the summer, I would plan meals in advance, shop for them (though probably only once or twice a week, since the grocery store was quite the trek) and take my time with the cooking, probably devoting more than an hour, altogether to preparation. Now that school's back in full swing, I'm far more likely to just open the fridge and throw some vegetables and beans in a wok, though I really would like to spend more time on my food (at least at dinner, I love my lunchtime sandwiches as they are) because it seems silly to eat so many times every day without really making it an experience to savour.
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I _do_ cook only for myself most of the time. When I am cooking for others, I tend to fall back on faithful recipes, usually cookbook inspired and then adapted through experimentation. I've also learned just recently that lentils, rice, and cheese sauce, while each delicious on their own, should not be mixed together on leftovers day. My poor belly..." (
Lyanne)
"I like experimenting but I usually start with a recipe then adapt. The first present I ever got from Phil was an apple cookbook that I still often use (including this month for his applesauce-carrot birthday cake). Then he gave me a big coffee-table book called Asia the Beautiful Cookbook thinking it was mostly to look at. Trying the recipes did significantly expand the spice selection, but you can get anything at House of Spice on Augusta in Kensington!" (
JaneG)
"I'm definitely an adventurous eater (I count Indian, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, Italian, Greek and Mexican among the cuisines I've eaten. And at least moderately spicy dishes too). Not so much an adventurous cook. Mostly, I'm a pretty lazy cook--pretty much boiling pasta, baking FISH!!*, and baking chicken (usually just rolled in bread crumbs). (*ever since a certain Chris Conway song, we no longer eat "fish". We eat "FISH!!")" (
gorgeousgary)
"Due to my dietary restrictions, I can't try all of the dishes you mention above. But if I could, I certainly would try them all. And I consider myself a pretty adventurous eater, much like yourself. I know you're adventurous, so is Reid. But adventurous isn't the quite the word I think of when I think of you. It's that you like almost everything. So does David Barker. Reid does NOT like almost everything..." (
Luisa)
"With regard to the 'try it in a restaurant' question -- I would seldom try something without having some idea of what was in it. I'm quite willing to try most things I've never had (though I don't think I could get myself to try some things that just say 'gross' to me, like insects), but I really prefer to avoid the things that I have had and know I don't like." (
tigertoy)
"With two kids and a John, I don't cook as much as I would want to. Besides, John has more dietary restrictions than I do. I do like experimenting, but will often use a recipe from a cookbook as a starting point. Sometimes, I just do something creative with the leftovers, without benefit of cookbooks." (
kchew)
"I don't cook - I barbeque!" (
lord_korak)
"I'm very lucky that I have great eaters for children, or life would be very difficult for me. My daughter's favorite food is octopus, my son's is Japanese style curry-rice. I can pretty much cook anything I want for dinners, and they will eat it. So my menus in a week can vary widely, and I don't get bored with cooking dinners. Last week, our meals were Baked Haddock & broccoli, Moo Shu soup, Mexicali Round Steak, Chicken Cacciatore, and shrimp curry rice." (
Ally)
"Have no clue as to what those dishes are listed in the second question but as long as they didn't have a ton of sugar in them, I would try them all. Yes, I cook, but I enjoy others cooking more." (
gnomedude)
"I'm afraid that in nearly 31 years of marriage we have never pruned our cookbook collection -- it's well into the multiple hundreds by now.
The flower_cat is unlikely to answer your survey, and it isn't really aimed at somebody like me who's quite capable of cooking, with or without a cookbook, but rarely gets the chance to make more than the occasional batch of fried rice, hot tofu, or omelet for breakfast. The Cat is an excellent cook; mostly she improvises, but she reads cookbooks like novels, with a handful of little postit bookmarks to flag interesting recipes.
For some reason our kids are even less adventurous than I was at their ages, though they're getting better. And the range of food they're comfortable with is probably a little wider than that of most of their peers. I'll try just about anything." (
mdlbear)
Livejournal comments
Monday, December 4, 2006 at 10:49AM 
by Hüseyin Özer, which I discovered through my friend Justin's mother. Every recipe I've tried from this book has come out wonderfully, and it all looks and tastes so great. My only complaint is that the recipe titles are so dull, but at least you know what you get upfront. :-)
