About the Cook…. An Interview with Peabody

One of my daily reads and all round good person, Kristen of Kristen’s Home Cooking had an interview about her up on her site. I have seen these floating around on a few people’s blogs but I bought the bullet and decided to let Kristen come up with some question to ask me. She actually asked me 8 and then told me to pick 5, so I did.

 1. Everyone is dying to know, when did your husband learn of your skills in the kitchen? Did you hold out, or win him early on when dating? What is his MOST favorite thing you make?

I did not cook dinner for him until we were living together. Now keep in mind we met October 5, were engaged by November and moved in together in January and were married by March. I had a super busy schedule back then and a super crappy apartment kitchen so I/we ate out a lot. When we were first together I was always offering to make him cookies and what not but he said he preferred store bought(which is what he ate most of his life). I of course could not handle that. I made him cookies. He said they were good and that is about it. However, once we were living together and married, he was getting them all the time. I decided to stop making them(just to see if he would miss them). He went about 2 weeks on store bought and asked me if I could go back to making him cookies. Other than Oreo’s and Circus cookies, we don’t do store bought. Sadly his MOST favorite thing I make him is sloppy joes. Again, he always just had the can mix, so fresh ones were a new concept to him. Justin is so not a foodie and has very simple tastes. He eats a peanut butter and jelly sandwich EVERY WEEKDAY for lunch.
 

2. What is the No. 1 food you just can’t stand no matter what, and what is the No. 1 food you really can’t imagine life without?

 About the only food I can’t stand is the food I am allergic too. I also can’t stand lemon grass. I am not sure if I am allergic to it or what, but every time I put it in my mouth I vomit, literally. So I try to stay away from that.
I am going to have to go with sugar. I gave it up for a year once, for a bet, to see if I could do it. Everyone told me how it would kick my addiction to sugar. Guess what, not one of those 365 days did I not want sugar…so much for that theory. I was the crankiest I ever was that year and I actually gained 12 pounds because I was eating extra things trying to compensate for not eating sugar.

3. You were a teacher, right? Well, they say that it takes one to know one, so tell us in your own words and ideas what we can do in America to fix some of the problems with today’s teacher shortage and struggling schools?

Stop putting emphasis on tests. When I left teaching my kids were taking 3 major tests. All of which they had to spend hours and hours of class time focusing on how to take the test, how to guess better if you didn’t know how to answer the question and how to bubble properly. A complete waste. The kids don’t get recess anymore except at lunch. They don’t allow you to do frivolous things anymore with the kids. And by frivolous I mean things like do an art project with the kids(that is what art class is for…sadly they only get art for 40 minutes once every 6 days).
Education today is of the mindset that all children must live the “American Dream” and go to college. Well, some kids aren’t made for college. I am a strong supporter of trade type high schools. We have many talented kids who drop out of school simply because they don’t fit into the reading, writing and mathematics box that they try to shove everyone into. Some kids will never get algebra but they can fix my car, play guitar, bake a cake, build a tractor from scratch, rewire my house, cut my hair, design flowers and graphically design my website.
And lastly, probably one of the main reasons I left teaching is lack of teacher support. Back when I was in school, if the teacher called my parents and said that my brothers(I was an angel and never got in trouble…for real 🙂 ) my parents believed what the teacher said. Not so now a days. Parents don’t want to believe their child did anything wrong. I had a student once stab a kid with a broken protractor and then PEE on him. He was in my homeroom so, even though it did not happen in my classroom, it was my responsibility to call the parent. When I tell the parent this, they aren’t mortified like I expect them to be, instead they turn it around on me. You know, my son tells me you are a horrible teacher and that you said the word crap last week. I calmly tried to explain that I would talk about my teaching style and word choices with them at another time, but that for now we needed to focus on what their son had done. They of course would not and I had to pawn them off on my poor vice principal. This is sadly more the norm now a days than the exception.

4. Do you have any regrets in life?

None. I am a firm believer in that every mistake(and I have made a lot) and choice you makes you the person you are today.
 

5. How did you learn about blogging? When did you discover food blogs? How long did it take you to start yours after learning about blogs?

I came across a food blog one day. I’m 97.23 % sure it was the Domestic Goddess website. I instantly fell in love with the idea of food blogging. I called my husband into the room and pointed at the screen and said, “I wanted to do that.” He said okay and within 48 hours, I had a blog. It started off slowly and we didn’t own a camera at the time and so I didn’t update it very much since I felt like something was missing without the photos. So we went down to Circuit City when they had a sale and bought my cheapo Nikon Coolpix 4600 for $100 and started taking photos. Really, really bad photos. Then one day I broke down and asked Ivonne of Cream Puffs in Venice how she takes such nice photos. As luck would have it we own pretty much the same camera but hers has more bells and whistles. She did a nice job of teaching me the basics and I then took it upon myself to learn a little bit about photography. It’s really only been in this last year that I have focused on my blog…and I have the thighs to prove it! 😛

So there you have it folks. I little more insight in to my slightly twisted world.

Do you want to be interviewed? Here are the directions:
1. Leave a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by emailing you five questions. Beware, I may ask personal questions! Please make sure I have your email address.
3. You will update your blog with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.