Tagged by Shari

First of all, I have to explain who Shari is.

That post I mentioned yesterday, the one that got eaten by a hungry cybermonster? Well, it was about her and her blog, which is called Whisk: a food blog. Kayte found Shari's site and was immediately captivated, and when Kayte gets captivated, I often end up being prodded along to accompany her, and why I'm not sitting here with knitting needles instead of a keyboard and a badly-sewn, disheveled quilt square on my lap, I do not know.

Anyway, Shari is doing a project that she calls Whisk Wednesdays. Whisk Wednesdays involve doing a lesson from Le Cordon Bleu at Home, taking a photograph of what you cooked, posting it on your own blog, and then writing about it. The first Whisk Wednesday lesson Kayte read about was the one coming up just two days hence on June 18, wherein we will be making Sauce Hollandaise and Sauce Moutard.

Kayte happened to remember that I had set myself the project this summer of making a really good mayonnaise, perhaps from Julia Child's two volumes titled Mastering the Art of French Cooking. I had even recently checked out a lovely three-disc Julia Child DVD set from the library and spent several lucious hours watching Julia, of whom I never grow tired, making Hollandaise and Béarnaise sauces with grace and humor and choking slightly on a bread crumb and burning her finger on some sizzling butter. She was just adorable.

Naturally, when Kayte saw Shari's blog and heard me talking (at a Pizza Hut, of all places) about my desire to make a really special mayonnaise, she decided that I ought to do this with her, and the girls too.

So I decided to just jump into the sauce, so to speak. (And really, what could be better than being right up to the neck in rich, buttery Hollandaise? Just add a roasted asparagus life preserver, and swim, little minnow! Swim! Life is your saucepan!)

Shari is a lovely, friendly sort of person and her blog is too much fun to read. I love foodies. They are such expansive and generous people. I hope she still likes me when she finds out that I sometimes -- well, okay, often. Shut up -- make comfort food casseroles with cream of mushroom soup. I worry about that. My only defense is that casseroles are so French.

She tagged me with a getting-to-know-you set of questions, which I will answer and pass on to some unsuspecting fellow bloggers. Muuuaaaahahahahaha....

What was I doing ten years ago?
I was in Charleston, South Carolina spending the week with Susie, eating fresh seafood for dinner every evening and chocolate croissants for breakfast every morning. I can remember this specifically because we celebrated Aisling's birthday and Cato made a huge rainbow of balloons to cover the archway that led into Susie's dining room and Aisling, just, like, fell out. My husband and I bought If You Give a Moose a Muffin for her for her birthday and regretted it for the next four years.

What are five (non-work) things on my to-do list for today?
Ummm...brush my teeth? Hair? How about "lie in wait for the mailman, who should be bringing me a package from Amazon"? I'd like to read my book and continue paging through that stack of slow-cooker cookbooks I got from the library, looking for likely contenders.

Everything else is work, work, work. Not counting the time I'm spending here, typing, when I should be doing something else. I feel terribly guilty.

Five snacks I enjoy:
1.) Popcorn! 2.) Rye crackers and the bleu cheese/pecan dip I posted here around Christmas-time; 3.) And definitely wasabi peanuts; 4.) Graham crackers with chocolate buttercream frosting; 5.) Celery stuffed with peanut butter or cream cheese, cut into bite-sized pieces.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire:
1.) Do something to help all the people whose lives have been turned upside down by wind and water, especially Karen, Jane and Betsy; 2.) Have the most awesome fun homeschooling ever and spend a year or so just traveling around the world; 3.) Buy a house (with a fabulous kitchen and home office) closer to all my friends; 4.) Buy a car. BUY A CAR. Probably a Volvo SUV hybrid because I like their commercials; 5.) Retire and have the leisure to study whatever I felt like studying: cooking, literature, languages, history....

Places I've lived:
Oooh, this one is not a very fun question to answer because I read Shari's answers and she has lived in cool places like the moon and all. Well, not really, but when you consider the fact that I have lived in two places --- northern Indiana and east central Indiana -- it makes Papua, New Guinea, Saskatchewan and Ontario sound extremely exotic.

Jobs I've had:
1.) high school English teacher; 2.) elementary school teacher; 3.) writer; 4.) handmade soap and toiletries maker and business owner; 5.) private tutor