Arianna

I generally have a pretty empty kitchen. I have lots of little bags of grains of various types (quinoa, cous cous, polenta) but never more than a pound of each except for oats and rice. I have my cans on a single shelf. Usually there are about 10, mostly beans, tomatoes, tuna, and my boyfriend's chili. Our freezer is usually pretty full up with frozen pizza (also the boyfriend's). Our fridge contains milk and juice and some other random stuff, but we definately don't fill it up all the way or anything. Of course, there are only two of us, and we don't have any other space to put things if we wanted to. Also, the fact that I don't have a car really helps out- if I wanted to buy a ton of groceries, I would have no way to get them home!

i seem to have problems with lots of salt. like packaged things like ramen and potato chips will always do it. i don't think it's MSG, though, because I have no trouble at chinese restaurants that I know use MSG.

i like to put some sort of jam in my oatmeal. whatever i have in the fridge will work, it's all good. i've been up to my neck in figs lately, so it's been fig compote in the oats every morning. yum!

This is interesting to me. How does one get started as a vegetarian at such a young age? How do you think this affected her development? How do you feel is has shaped her view of food now? ← I've been a vegetarian since I was seven (although recently I have decided to start eating fish again. I became a vegetarian because the regular food was really gross at my summer camp and if you decided to be vegetarian you recieved better foor, but you had to stick with it the whole summer. When I got back, I decided to stick with it. It was never a real issue in my family (no one complained about having to make two seperate meals or anything). Meat was never incorporated into the dish, it was always cooked and added later. Meat was never the center of our diets anyhow. My parents made sure I got enough protein by making a lot of dishes with beans (they would also eat meat) and I learned how to scramble eggs and make grilled cheese at that age. I was fine and healthy. It also helped that no one in my house is that picky of an eater. My family, when asked what they want to eat, will say, "I don't care, whatever you want." Having someone with a preference made the decision of what to eat easier. Later, as I got a little older and could be trusted with the stove and whatnot, I started preparing everyone's meals. I liked cooking the most, and since I came home at 3 and my parents got home around six or seven, it was easier for me to make dinner and snacks for the hungry younger sibling and have everything prepared for them when they get home. We had a vegetarian household from then on, for about five years when I did all the cooking. Letting young people make their own food decisions is most certainly empowering and vegetarianism is not a huge deal, nutrition-wise.

I have just one thing to say about raw foods- Smoothies sure are delicious in this hot weather. You might as well make a compromise and eat tons of smoothies all the time. Yum.

what if you made some kind of croquette to fry in it, and then used the anchovy paste in that? I could see possibly a mashed potato and anchovy croquette being in existence.

BREAD PUDDING! My favorite way to use up old bread or even biscuits that don't get eaten. Super simple, and totally decadent. The other thing that's good is just a slice of the bread covered with a consomme or broth and then broken up and eaten. Or, if it gets really hard, pulse it in the food processor so it's still coarse, bind it with an egg and add whatever herbs you like, and drop it soup for fluffy dumplings. And there are so many things to do with breadcrumbs! Browning them with butter and stirring into pasta is a classic- my grandmother calls it "peasant food." But you can also make a stylized tonkatsu, or if it's a sweeter bread you could coat peaches and fry them in butter and serve with ice cream. I don't ever worry about my bread going hard- there are so many options! Also, you could always take it to the park and feed the ducks. That's what we did when I was a kid.

I have a few that have already been said: Raw onions (although I like cooked ones), ketchup (yucky sweet mess, and I work in a frites shop!- I will eat it if at some point it becomes savory, like in tonkatsu sauce or curry ketchup), sweet pickles (who thought of that?). Here are my weird ones: <b>Pizza!</b> I know I am going to get maligned for this, so let me clarify. I like pizza in it's traditional form- a thin piece of flatbread with sauce and maybe some cheese or some mushrooms applied SPARINGLY. But what I can't get over is American pizza, with it's dripping grease and the cheese that slides off and so many toppings who even cares about the bread underneath. This is a hard one because it is the food of choice for so many people, including my boyfriend's mother, who insists on pizza and nothing else for her birthday and mother's day dinners. Needless to say, I eat before we leave to go to her house. <b>Stone Fruits!</b> Actually, this isn't a dislike, but a genuine allergy. I get hives all over my body if I eat raw stone fruits (cherries, peaches, plums, etc.). If they are cooked I can eat them without the hives, but honestly, I remember the idea of the hives and that puts me off. It's a true bummer, because I do think they taste ok, and since I live in Washington State we get tons of local fresh ones at the farmer's market. I am always tempted, but then I remember the horrible itchy terrible hives and I stay away. As for your other dislikes, I can offer explanations for some of them: Cilantro- some people have a compound in their saliva that makes cilantro taste like aluminum or soap. It's natural, don't be ashamed! I am very happy I do not possess this compound. Any general dislike of a flavor like Bitter (coffee), Sweet (cheesecake and chocolate), Sour (pickles, olives), or Salty (pickles and olives again)- Your tongue is divided into those four categories by region. Some people have more tastebuds in certain parts, some people have less- it's all good! When you have a sweet tooth, it's really a sweet tongue!

I don't mind dining alone at all, but I also make it very clear to people that I am NOT open to strangers conversing with me (i don't consider waitstaff strangers). I try to always get the paper or bring a magazine. I don't like to bring books because I always manage to spill food on them! Dang! But I keep my nose in my reading and i don't really look up. That seems to stem unwanted advances. Why is everyone so friendly on the west coast anyways? Jeez! I would never consider this acceptable in a fine dining atmosphere, but especially when i am traveling for business, if i am in a small cafe or some taqueria or pho joint i will whip out my computer and either do work or play games (or surf if there is a hotspot). Is that rude? I'm not so sure if there is any etiquette for that kind of stuff (does waitstaff hate it as much as if i were talking on my cell phone? I would never talk on my cell phone inside a restaurant).

Whether this all matters is all part of your personal values, of course, and if you value making money above all else, then you won't see anything wrong with large multi-national corporations like Altria (formerly Philip Morris) owning large parts of your processed food supply (they own Kraft and Nabisco, which in turn both own hundreds of smaller brands- and yes, Altria still makes cigarettes). I personally value quality, sustainability, and local production, which don't always follow through when the larger corporation acquires the smaller brand. I can't make any promises, but if I was buying my cheese from a small, local company that had a completely internalized production process and offered the most delicious cheese, and that company was bought out by Altria, I feel like something would have to change. At the very least, the increased market power of a place like Altria would increase the amount of production in the cheese factory, which, depending on how much they would want to outlay on quality control, would almost certainly lead to a decrease in quality. If nothing ever changed when companies were acquired, I might not have lost my faith so easily. Many people value making money before all else, and money is all well and good, but there are ways to spend and earn it responsibly, without damaging people's health, planet, or local job opportunities.

New place opening up in a beautiful hardwood floor space on 12th between Pike and Madison, next to the Retrofit furniture store that is that wonderful seafoam green. The woman inside told me the name, but I forgot! Anyone else remember?

Lunch: The Honeyhole Than Brothers when it's raining and cold, but not really in the summer Saigon Deli (the one on 12th on the north side of Jackson) Dinner: Teapot Vios when we feel fancy Umm probably the Honeyhole again. Although I can never finish more than a half sandwich and for dinner you don't have the choice, so I have to share or eat my Dirt Burger remnants later. We go to the Honeyhole a lot.

Spitfire, a bar brought to you by Marcus Charles, the former owner of Marcus' Martini Lounge and the Rendesvous, and the current owner of the Bad Juju and part owner of Neumos.

i'm sure my friends think it's weird, but they would never say anything, because then they might not get some of whatever i cook.

avocados, tomatoes, or cucumbers with tons of salt on them.