21 posts tagged “qotd”

What are the 10 foods you must have in your refrigerator and/or your kitchen cabinet? 
Submitted by Carol.

1. Stonyfield Organic Yogurts
2. All-Natural Peanut Butter
3. V8 Spicy
   
4. Bananas
5. Copenhagen Blend Coffee Beans
6. Honey Bunches of Oats Cereal
   
7. Beer (Currently Bell's Oberon)
8. Barilla PLUS Angel Hair Pasta
9. Delallo Roasted Garlic Tomato Sauce
10. Lean Cuisine Fiesta Chicken frozen entree

I'm a little embarrassed to admit that these are staples of my diet right now. These are the foods that get me through the week, serving as breakfasts and lunches primarily, but sometimes dinner. We love to cook, but decided in the interest of free time on weeknights to keep things simple. We've added daily exercise to our evenings and we need the extra time provided by quick and easy cooking to do it.  We do our big meal cooking on the weekends. Usually hitting up the Fresh Market Top Chef Style, buying what looks good and making a meal out of it.

What are your favorite ways to reduce, reuse & recycle?

Simple answer: any way I can.

As far as examples, here goes.

I reduce by asking that small purchases not be placed in bags. This goes for take-out food as well. I generally ask

Totes

Reuse is probably my weakest area. The only thing I consistently reuse are the plastic bags I get at the grocery store. I use them when cleaning out the cat box. I want to start using this tote, and stop getting the bags altogether. I do try to use reusable containers when packing my lunch for work instead of plastic bags, but that probably falls under reduce.

When it comes to recycling, we are fortunate enough to live in a county where virtually everything can be recycled via the local waste management facilities. Our recycling bin gets taken down to the curb twice as often as our trash bin.

What are the 5 words that best describe your life right now?
Submitted by mojito.  

1. Healthier
2. Less Stressful
   
3. Happy
4. Searching
   
5. Wonder
   

What are your top 10 most-played songs currently?

According to last.fm my all time top 10 songs are:

1. Another Traveling Song -- Bright Eyes
2. Intervention -- Arcade Fire
3. Bury Me With It -- Modest Mouse
4. Rides the Rails -- The Besnard lakes
5. Neon Bible -- Arcade Fire
6. Devastation -- The Besnard Lakes
7. My Girlfriend's Boyfriend -- Her Space Holiday
8. And You Lied To Me -- The Besnard Lakes
9. Old Soul Song (For The New World) -- Bright Eyes
10. Ugly As I Seem -- The White Stripes

To be clear songs 2-7 are tied for second, and 8-10 are tied for eight place but I just listed the first ten songs.
I was surprised by this list. None of the artists featured are what I would call my essential artists. I feel like I should listen to them more just to game last.fm, but then it wouldn't really be a document of my natural listening habits.

What websites do you visit every day?
Submitted by Chez Michelle.

Well there's Vox of course.

But I also read a few other sites on the regular. Here they are:

1. The Morning News
2. Making Light
3. Google Reader (to handle high volume link blogs such as BoingBoing, Kottke.org, The Tanooki and Dethroner)
4. 43 Folders
5. The New York Times
6. The New Yorker (usually because it takes me a whole week to read one of their amazingly good but amazingly long stories)
   

What is your favorite greasy spoon?
Submitted by S@ngarang.

Louie's Cafe

Louie's Cafe near LSU's campus in Baton Rouge is the definition of a greasy spoon. Louie's is Baton Rouge's oldest restaurant for a reason: purely great food. So old school it doesn't have a website, the best Louie's link I could find is this review from Mr. Breakfast.

What's your musical horoscope?  (Put your player on shuffle and write down the first 10 songs that come up.)
Inspired by Stephanie.  

1. Blame -- Soul Coughing
2. Rememo--Kings of Leon
3. Exercise--Clem Snide
4. A Lack Of Color--Death Cab for Cutie
5. Michael--Franz Ferdinand
6. Jagged--Old 97's
7. Lord Only Knows--Beck
8. Extraordinary Machine--Fiona Apple
9. Motion Picture Soundtrack--Radiohead
10. Breakdown--Jack Johnson

A lot of these song titles suggest a sort of bad day . . . I guess. Mine wasn't all that bad, a little stressful at times, but nothing out of the ordinary. I might actually listen to this list (I cheated and used Party Shuffle to generate it) just to see how the flow works.

What's your favorite blend or brand of coffee or tea?

Community Coffee, Dark Roast

Being a Louisiana boy, when it comes to coffee I'd prefer to make mine Community Coffee. Preferably their Dark Roast.  However here in Lexington I stick with the whole  bean Columbian coffee sold and packaged by Kroger.

Until recently, as much as a coffee connoisseur I am, I've been content drinking instant coffee in the mornings. More for the quick convenience than anything. Mind you I don't consider IC to be the same thing as brewed coffee. It's a tasty warm beverage deserving its own category.

This week though I switched back to the real thing: fresh ground beans steeped in my Bodum French press. Man how I missed that rich flavor. It'll be a while before even convenience sends me back to instant.

If you could write like one fiction author, who would it be?
Submitted by Marilyn.

Underworld

Oh wow! What a question. There are authors who I like because their stories are good and others because their writing is good. I'm answering this QOTD from a pure prose-style point-of-view. And I'm going to cheat a little bit by doing a combo.

I'd like to write like a combination of Jonathan Lethem and Don DeLillo. Yes, they both also tell amazing story, but the way they do, the way the build sentences is often as amazing as the stories they tell with them.

I had just started writing my own fiction when I first read DeLillo's Underworld. I finished the book thinking I would never be able to write that well and nearly gave up writing completely.

What are your favorite weird food combinations?

Blackraspberry

Submitted by Dulce.

I invented this one morning last week after having a blueberry-guacamole
omelet at Alfalfa last weekend. (I guess that omelet sort of qualifies as a weird food combo itself.)

First fry an egg over easy, the runny yoke really adds to this dish. Just after you've flipped the egg, toast some bread and smear with black raspberry jelly. I prefer Smuckers Simply Fruit. Put the egg on the jellied toast and enjoy.