Michael tagged us for this an embarrassingly long time ago. We wanted to make sure we actually did it because Michael's a friend and we hate to leave any request unanswered. It's kind of a tough one, five (interesting) things about us that you haven't read about here already...
1. Alex has only one kidney. It's an anomaly that he was born with. They only discovered it after years of football and lacrosse when he had an x-ray during a routine examination. What this means to him is that he drinks lots and lots of water to keep his system clear and functioning well. What that means for the both of us is that he goes to the bathroom a lot. As in we know where most of the decent public bathrooms are all over NYC.
2. We are suckers for a good night's sleep. Years ago in Maine we were renting a furnished apartment. It came with a Select Comfort bed. That's the one with an air mattress that you can adjust by number. We loved that bed and vowed to get one of our own some day. When that day came, we went to the store to check out all of the new options and discover our new sleep numbers. We actually discovered that all those years ago we had been using the wrong sleep number because we didn't really know what we were doing. Go figure. Once we brought home our new extended queen-sized bed and programmed it with the proper sleep numbers, we were in heaven. You really do sleep better on the right mattress. We'll never go back to those coil mattresses at home again.
3. We struggle every day to come up with great food ideas. Truthfully, there are few meals we enjoy more than a perfectly roasted chicken with bitter greens and butter roasted potatoes. Let's face facts though, people don't go out to upscale restaurants for food they can cook at home. That's what the The Food Network is for. Add to that the fact that we would go insane if we had to roast chickens every day of our lives and that sets us up for a never - ending quest for delicious food that also manages to be fresh and interesting to our slightly jaded palates and to those of our guests. It may seem like there's an endless parade of ideas in the notebooks and on the site but it's a choppy process. There are days when we come up with a plethora of inspirations and many more days when we have nothing at all. The key is to write them all down when they appear so that when you need that extra bit of stimulation you have it at your fingertips.
4. I cannot eat foie gras. It turns my stomach, has since the first time I ever tasted it. Sometimes I can deal with tiny amounts of torchon. I absolutely cannot handle seared foie. Alex adores the stuff. When we go out to eat, especially during tasting menus and their ilk, occasionally he pays the price for my aversion. For example when we dined at Masa, he told the woman who took our reservation that I did not eat foie gras. She did not speak English very well and the result was that neither of us ate foie gras, in spite of the fact that the shabu-shabu was one of the things that he really wanted to try. A smart woman once told me that compromise in marriage means that sometimes you get what you want and sometimes he gets what he wants. No one is ever really happy on the middle ground. That was one of those times I got what I wanted and unfortunately he didn't. Thankfully restaurants have become much more flexible and most are happy to deviate from a set menu to ensure that we both get what we want when dining out.
5. We're just winging things here. Honestly, we are not tech-minded at all. Thank goodness for templates. I'd love to create cool slide shows like Pim or a rotating banner like Adam or a totally cool map like Tana. We can cook reasonably well, research with the best of them, and take pretty decent photographs. We're good enough at all of those things to be happy with what we publish here. When it comes to writing code and mastering software we're still pretty much at the kindergarten level. We're learning though, and eventually we'll climb that mountain too.
Since most of the bloggers we know have already participated we won't tag anyone else. Thanks Michael that was fun! Made me think happy thoughts on a gloomy Thursday evening.
