7 Things About Michelle.......

Michelle is my niece. She married my nephew Kris last summer. I can't believe we are aunt and niece because we are only about 10-ish years apart in age......right Michelle? How old are you? I'm thirty-freaking-eight. Are you mid to late 20's?

Noodle fell in love with Michelle immediately. Here they are right before Michelle and Kris moved to Seattle:

Here are 7 things about Michelle....she emailed her list to me:

1. My current favorite shows are Last Restaurant Standing on BBC America, Top Chef (Bravo), and Coupling (BBC). I'm also strangely and embarrassingly drawn to The Real Housewives of New York City, even though most of the women make my teeth itch and give me facial twitches. I just can't look away.
(MZ says:"Ha! Teeth itching and facial twitching!! You crack me up!Dude....I've got to see that show. What channel is it on? Probably on cable, which we don't have. My pal Holly feels the same way about that show. Like a train wreck, right? Gotta see it....gotta see it. Love a good train wreck. Unless it's my life. Then? Not so much.....")

2. If I'm wearing socks, I guarantee you they're Smart Wool socks. They're all I wear. I haven't gotten around to throwing away my other socks because that's wasteful, and my mama didn't raise a wasteful girl. Perfectly good things you don't want should be given to someone, donated to charity, or sold at a garage sale. But who really wants my used socks? So all those socks, whose only crime is not being a Smart Wool sock, will sit in a dedicated un-Smart Wool drawer until I get motivated to do a major purge. Then I'll break down and throw them away and feel guilty about it for months.


3. My husband is hands-down the better cook in the relationship. I enjoy spending time in the kitchen, but it's easy to let Kris do the cooking when the man whips up some fine grub and has knife skills that rival anyone on the Food Network--not that that's saying anything. Lately I've been having the urge to try new recipes, and he's not complaining about the break. But when I'm in the kitchen, you can invariably hear me saying things like "Baby, does this look done to you?" and "Ew, this recipe specifically says NOT to use the garlic press, will you chop the garlic?" and "Um, dinner might be like an hour later than I originally said". I'm learning as I go, and he's very patient. Especially since he considers himself a cook--not a pastry chef--and since I started taking over the meals, there has been a 100% increase in the appearance of chocolate-y baked goods in the house.


4. Since I've been doing more cooking and baking, the KitchenAid Artisan Series 5-quart mixer in Metallic Chrome has been appearing in my dreams. And they're some hot dreams. I've used all four of my email addresses to get one-day trial memberships to Cook's Illustrated on-line; it's practical--I'm waiting until Kris will let me subscribe to the magazine AND the website because together they're 25% off! But if I'm honest with myself, it's gateway food porn. I used CI's equipment section to make a 46-item Amazon shopping list of kitchen accoutrement we MUST get because CI said they're the best. We probably own at least half of the items on the list but they weren't rigorously tested by the chefs in the Test Kitchen. Thus, they suck. I added eight cookbooks to my Amazon Wish List; I promptly deleted five of them because it pushed my list to two pages and that looks greedy. I've added at least 50 food-related sites to my bookmarks. I've started drooling over the course offerings at Cook's World--a great locally-owned shop down the street--and I want to take the Thai class, the Italian classes (the Tuscany class with the chef from Serafina AND the Northern Italian class with the chef from La Spiga), the Turkish class, the knife skills workshop, the rustic break baking class, the growing and cooking from your own herb garden class, and the Tamales and Mexican favorites class. So, uh, when I get a new hobby, I get a little obsessed. But just a little.


5. I've been playing the piano since I was four years old. I taught piano lessons for five years, quitting when nursing school got too intense. We moved to Seattle in September, and this is the longest I've ever gone without playing the piano. Some days I have intense cravings to sit down and play my favorite pieces, and some days I'm surprised to remember that I play an instrument.


6. We have two guinea pigs, LuLu and Shelby. They are adorable, cuddly, and endlessly entertaining. They beg for food in the morning and for treats in the evening, getting up on their hind legs and singing to let us know that they would very much like some spinach or a piece of apple or some parsley. Or a nose rub. If there are no treats to be had, they will happily settle for a good nose rub, collapsing into a pile of contented piggyness.


7. I set up a blog once, but I deleted it the next day. I worried that since I'm a nurse, it would be too hard not to write about my job, which would be a huge HIPAA violation and would get me fired and worse. And sometimes my entire life IS my job. So instead I barf all over other people's blogs! Thanks, Martha!