my very first meme

Hendria from Canadian Baker Too tagged me for a fun little meme. I’ve never been tagged before, so I’m ever so slightly excited about this. Even though I haven’t got the slightest idea how ‘meme’ is even pronounced. Or who invents these things. Maybe a little fairy who lives inside the internet.

The rules for this one are as follows: list one fact, word or tidbit that is somehow relevant to your life for each letter of your first or middle name. Blog about this. Then choose one person for each letter of your name to tag.

Tis good I have a short name, it took me long enough to come up with four words. Since this is a foodblog, and also because I’m not ready to share my deepest and darkest secrets with the entire internet, I kept everything food related. Here goes.

innovative - I love making and baking things that tickle my imagination and pair unusual ingredients, or use techniques I’ve never heard of. Wild Sweets for example, full of exciting and unusual desserts, is one book I often browse. Having said that, I don’t often bake from it, as every finished dessert requires some serious commitment and would undoubtedly take me three days to make. Also, I do draw the line at molecular gastronomy. Although I wouldn’t mind experimenting with a syphon, only I don’t have one. And I would love to browse through the cookbooks of El Bulli, only they are prohibitively expensive.

natural - I prefer my food all natural, without any additives, colourants, flavour enhancers, genetically modified things, reconstituted whatever or the like. You’ll never ever catch me eating a ready-meal and I’m one of those annoying people you can see at the supermarket reading the list of ingredients on the label, putting things back if I don’t like what I read. This ‘rule’ of mine is very flexible though, I happily ignore the ingredient list on Nutella. Or wasabi snowpeas. Or any other terribly unhealthy thing I happen to be fond of.

new - I’m an adventurous cook and an adventurous eater, I simply love trying out foods I haven’t tried before. Unlike S, who usually wrinkles his nose when I bombard him with new recipes I want to try. He is happiest with simple ‘Vlaamse boerenkost’ (Flemish peasant fare). Maybe this tendency of mine developed as a reaction against my parents’ cooking - nothing wrong with their cooking, I was fed very well when growing up, just not very imaginative and always the same things.

easy - despite loving spending hours in the kitchen experimenting, I love it when I find a recipe that’s easy peasy but incredibly yummy. There is a chocolate fudge pie I regularly make (note to self: must blog about this soon) which takes the whole of 15 minutes to throw together, but it never fails to impress.

And there you go. Four things about me - the juicy secrets will remain secret for now. But maybe one of the following four people would like to share theirs:

Bake My Day
Feeding My Enthusiasms
Food Lover’s Journey
Rose’s Recipes