I moved to North Carolina when I was 9 years old.  I still remember driving into the town where I grew up and thinking that my mom and new stepdad were making me move to some backwoods town with a one-floor shopping mall and people who speak to strangers.  Despite all this, it didn’t take me long to warm up to life in North Carolina (shorts in November!) and by the time I turned 10 I had decided on my favorite ACC team (Duke—wanna fight about it?) and found out that the big mall was just a town over.   Over the years, I adapted to life in the South pretty easily (highway driving, hanging out in fields!), but there were some things that set me apart (Pepsi = “pop” and no, I’m not interested in going to your pig pickin’).   I lived there until I was 23 and, unfortunately, didn’t realize that I had fallen in love with it until I moved away.  Moving back isn’t really an option; living there now wouldn’t really be the same, but I like to visit often.   And on days when I miss NC most, I cook the dishes that remind me of home.

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If you put a poached egg on top of something, I will eat it. FACT.

I’m pretty bad at Christmas shopping.  Not because I give bad gifts – I’m actually really great at that – but because I tend to find “gifts” for myself that blow my shopping budget.  Then I end up arguing with myself in the three-way mirror of a dressing room, which is usually awkward for the store’s staff to watch.   I decided that this year (or last year?  ugh, I hate that) was going to be different and really committed to purchasing gifts for other people only.   And I only fell off the wagon once, for olive oil that resulted in amazing lentil soup, so I think it’s fair to say that I was successful.   There’s this incredibly charming, indie film–like story of how I met the French woman who runs the company while at the DC Holiday Market.  But I’m going to skip most of the story and explain that the oil is made from picholine olives and she had three types, varying in intensity.  I bought the mid-level oil for a friend’s Christmas gift (suggested for poultry and pastas) and the most intensely flavored one for myself. And when I mentioned that I brought back dried lentils from my trip to Paris a year ago, she dropped some lentil soup knowledge on me, courtesy of her grandmother.    

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This was part of my dinner Friday night (well, the 2nd course).

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