About Me - Interview

For the "about me" section of the website, I decided to have some of my friends interview me via email for the past couple days. This was hard for me because I don't like writing about myself. Anyways, here is the result.

Since Bermuda only has one fast food restaurant (kfc), which one is your first choice when visiting the states? What is it that you missed?

Well, I love me a nice McDonalds cheeseburger, we usually get this first because it is usually on the way from the airport to wherever we are heading. But in reality what I miss most is taco bell and Qdoba. We try and get taco bell 3 times on every trip to the states. Other then that, I stay away from most fast food. Trips to the US are basically eating frenzies for us because I miss all the food in the US. Some restaurants here are really good, but only a handful, and as they get better they get crazy expensive. The unlimited restaurant cornucopia we get when visiting the states is a bit too much for us to even handle. I think I gained 8 pounds on my last trip.

What are the pros and cons of cooking in Bermuda?

Moving to Bermuda really kick started our cooking for 2 reasons. 1 - in boston, we liked to cook and have people over for dinners, but we didn't have very much time or money, and 2 - we went out all the time for dinner. Here we are able to relax more and cook all the time.

The huge con is the supermarkets. Everything is extremely expensive. There is little to no local produce or meats. And the quality is up and down, a lot of times vegetables will look good in the store and 5 hours later at home they will start to wilt or get soggy. It isn't the stores faults, they do the best they can with the shipments they receive, it is just tough for cooking reasons. At the same time it has taught us to improvise. For example when we go out expecting a big fish bbq that night and hit the store but the fish counter is ugly that day. The worst is when you want to make something slightly exotic but you can't buy pork belly on island or palm sugar costs 30 bucks for some reason.

What advice do you find you most often are giving to your friends about cooking.

When sharing ideas or cooking w/ friends & acquaintances what is your favorite point of knowledge and/or advice to spread onto them? It depends on what they ask! I'm mostly giving advice on that one extra step that takes your food from semi-homemade to real. Like using fresh chicken instead of from a bag for buffalo chicken calzones. Or using a nice can of imported plum tomatoes instead of that jar of sauce. Things that people my age don't realize only add 10 min of effort to overall cooking time but increase the final result exponentially.

What's your favorite spice?

What a weird question... I'm not sure really... do herbs count? Because I think I would go with Cilantro if so, it has recently overtaken Basil. For spices I guess I would say cayenne or cumin. I think I would answer this differently every time if you asked me once a week.

Has anyone in your family inspired you to cook?

Yes, my mother and grandmother. I have eaten amazingly at home my whole life so why should I stop now? You can't go from homemade spaghetti and meatballs to prego

Do you like to cook Breakfast, Lunch, or Dinner - one more than the other?

Well, I loooove cooking breakfast on the weekends, but I like to eat dinner more, so it's hard to say. I just like the relaxing feeling of making a nice egg sandwich or omelet in the morning. It's easy and I know exactly what I am doing. Also it helps that Mandi says "best. Omelet. Ever." Every time I cook her one haha. But my favorite meal to eat is obviously dinner.

What albums are choice albums to cook to?

Because of the setup of our kitchen/tv room, we watch TV shows a lot while prepping cooking because we chop on the coffee table. Things on my hard drive like 30 rock, the office, freaks and geeks, kitchen confidential, always sunny in phila, curb your enthusiasm, extras, and arrested development. When we DO however listen to music, it depends on what I am cooking, what the day is like, and what day it is. On a weeknight I will put on something a little faster like the arctic monkeys, on a Sunday afternoon, maybe some white stripes or rilo keily, if friends are over and we are having a post beach BBQ, it is going to be something like Damien or Stephen Marley, or M.I.A.

Name some places you want to travel to and why? Any food destinations?

I've always wanted to go to Italy. I never had any interest in traveling to Asia but now that I have been watching No Reservations, I really want to travel to a bunch of different destinations like Tokyo, Singapore and Thailand.

Favorite Comfort food?

I like to sauté some peppers and onions (large dice), throw in a crapload of ground beef, brown it, add a few cans of some good tomatoes and spices, simmer for awhile and dump it on the weirdest pasta I can find at the store that day. This is Mandi and my go to meal when we aren't feeling too well on a Saturday afternoon.

When you have an hour of free time what do you do?

Probably play video games. I have a Wii and I like to play Mario Galaxy and Smash Brothers. I would play any Mario game ever made really (not the sports ones).

If you were a superhero, what kind of powers would you want?

I've always wanted to stop time and still be able to move around. This would also take care of teleporting because you could just stop time and walk there

Would you ever want to be on a reality tv show?

I don't think so. As much as I love top chef and all the other ones, I don't think I could handle people flaming me all day on blogs. (PS Emma is the WORST)

You are neither a chef nor a writer, why should I read your blog?

I don't know really? When I first decided to start a blog, it was to practice .NET skills for my job. Mandi really liked it and egged me on to start it for real. She would tell me "I think we have something to say" and I agreed with her. As fun as it is to watch my statcounter and see if people came to my site and where they live, I really would continue to write this if it was just my friends and family reading it. We love to cook and take pictures of our food and where else would we put them? If more people like it and read it, then all the better.