What is your favorite thing to cook?
Yummy vegetarian dishes – think Moroccan/Mediterranean stews or casseroles w/spices, chickpeas, lentils, and lots of veggies. Also cookies/muffins/scones!

What kind of cook are you? Measure twice and add once? Or dump until it looks right?
Well, it depends. When I was 8 years old I would get into fights with my best friend Brianna over the “right” way to measure flour for cookies (Type A even back then). These days I tend to just eyeball it.

What food genre would you say influences your cooking the most? (eg southern, asian, Mexican, yuppy gourmet, localvore etc.)
Hmm. Well, I probably don’t do enough cooking to claim an “influence”, per se. The closest would probably be “healthy dinners w/fewer than 8 ingredients.” Lots of tofu stir-fries, rice and bean concoctions, and veggie-packed pasta dishes.

Where/when did you learn to cook, and to what/whom do your attribute your love of cooking?
I learned to make Christmas cookies from an early age with my mom. Her love of holiday cooking and entertaining has certainly had an influence on me—despite the time and stress, she always made a superb effort and received rave reviews of her menu. A tradition has also been that that two of us plan the meal and do the holiday shopping together. The other major influence was the first years of real independence senior year and the initial year out of college. I lived with four other women in a tiny apartment, and we cooked meals for each other. One was a vegetarian, and some of my favorite recipes and food preferences developed from that experience. Later, during my year abroad in Norway, a tight budget encouraged cooking from scratch – soups, basic sauces, and breads.

List three ingredients that you are never without in your pantry:
Rice, black beans, diced tomatoes

What is your favorite food?
My mom’s lasagne!

What is your least favorite food?
Eggs! Ask anyone.

What is your favorite recipe?
Tomato-basil couscous with spinach and Muenster

What is your proudest cooking moment/achievement?
Producing my first Thanksgiving turkey for a 10 friends during my year in Norway.

What was your biggest cooking disaster?
Trying to make Thanksgiving dinner for my Tanzanian host family, with none of the usual ingredients available. They were decidedly underwhelmed.

What is a food/technique you want to learn but are intimidated by?
I love Indian food and would love to learn to cook it well, but the ingredient lists are oh-so-long!! And I just don’t keep much ghee in my kitchen.

What is the next food/technique you want to try?
Developing my salad repertoire this summer.

What is/are your favorite cookbook(s)?
“Express Lane Cooking” by Sarah Fritschner
“Moosewood Cookbook” by Mollie Katzen
Barefoot Contessa series

Do you own them?
I own neither Moosewood nor any Contessa books – hint, hint!

List at least three cookbooks you have been coveting:
See above, plus David Lebovitz’s “Room for Dessert” – I have given it as a gift twice, but have never gifted myself!

What are your three favorite cookware items/gadgets?
Food processor
Electric hand mixer
Potato masher

Do you own them?
Nope – none of them!

List at least three kitchen-wares you have been coveting:
Food processor
Air popper
Espresso/Cappucino maker
Higher quality ice cream scoop