I AM the other swedish chef.

i like food a lot!  i try to have some every day.

ok, so i have always had an interesting relationship with food.  i have lived overseas.  i eat things like tongue and snails (ok not the tongue anymore) and even goose liver if properly prepared.  i have loved spinach and asparagus since i could lift a spoon.  i have eschewed sugar, vowing not to be aunt shirl...  i type as i simultaneously carmelize a huge batch of onions and reduce 2 litres of red wine!

food entices me, comforts me, bewitches me, and entertains me.  if i wake up at 4:30 in the morning because the cat sneezed (in his sleep) i can get up and take refuge in my kitchen.  i cook new things i have never tried before.  i play chemistry lab and add an egg or some beer to that soda bread recipe, just hoping it will in fact explode.

sometimes i just chop lots of stuff in preparation for a big day of cooking.  which is really silly when all i have in the house is onions, apples and potatoes, because the apples and potatoes tend to get discolored and the onions make me cry and i'm liable to collapse back into bed three hours later in tears and having ruined a bunch of perfectly innocent root vegetables but again i digress...

DEEP BREATH...

so some of you know, i would like to launch a personal chef/catering business from my home.  this isn't easy to get started, but if you read my blurbs on Cooking Fetish Days, you know it's going to work out OK.  but it makes me think of some of the reasons i wanted to call myself the swedish chef (and no, i won't tackle the obvious, if you don't know what that is look at jonas' profile picture)!  i will explore this idea through some quotes of my friends.

WOW, YOUR KITCHEN IS SO WHITE!  DOESN'T THAT MAKE IT HARD TO KEEP CLEAN?

funny you should mention that, BUT it would seem that the thing making my kitchen dirty is ME  :(  if i stay the hell OUT of the kitchen, it hardly gets dirty at all.  but the thing is, i seem to make the same amount of mess with all-white cabinets, countertops and appliances as i would with cherry wood, marble, and stainless steel.

the thing that occurs to me is, when everything is white, i can SEE the dirt better.  all the better for those late-night silent-cleaning binges i have grown so fond of.

ARE YOU SLEEPING OK?

thanks, dad, but now that i'm under-employed, i'd have to say that can't be anything but a "yes".  when i find myself up in the middle of the night, i clean and cook and chop.  which is sad news for the onions, potatoes and apples, but not so bad for kate, jonas, beau and felix as i've perfected doing all this frenetic stuff without making a sound.

and then when i'm exhausted at 11am, i just take a nap.  

THE DIRTY DOZEN...  ISN'T THAT A MOVIE?  WITH, LIKE, CLINT EASTWOOD OR SOMETHING?

bingo, it sure is.  and it's the list of organics i used to have posted on my fridge until i started making the effort to memorize the new one every year, in three groups of four, a technique called chunking, for those of you interested in my mnemonics fetish as well.

of course, anything without a thick skin you would peel off should be purchased organic.  as should anything you eat as a leaf.  as well as any root vegetable such as potatoes, onions, beets, radishes turnips leeks carrots and parsnips, to name a few.

which is why most of us will keep the list posted on the fridge, unless you, too, are fond of memorizing otherwise seeming useless strings of information as i am.

PUT THAT BACK!

yes, i have an odd relationship with the dishwasher as well.  i sometimes have to succumb to my family's requests to "quit it", "back off", or just "chill" when it comes to making sure all the things are in the right spot, and not likely to be left dirty, spotty, or melting.

ok, so i DO feel there is a correct way to put in the utensils (spoons with spoons, forks with forks, etc so when you take them out you don't have to sort), and i DO put plastics on the top shelf with near-religious fervor, and i even wash the cutting boards once or twice a week in the dishwasher as well as that scrubby thingie we use to PRE-clean the dishes that are going in the dishwasher.

but none of this NECESSARILY means i'm obsessive.

and my favorite...

ARE YOU GOING TO FINISH THAT?

once, i went to my aunt wendy and uncle paul's house for some lovely family gathering.  i went armed with a giant tupperware of my curried chicken salad.  it was a hit.

the next morning, i woke up and came down to see my uncle paul's backside sticking out of the refrigerator (certainly nothing new for anyone in our family, we all raid wendy's fridge like that all the time).  i went about my business hunting up the only tea bag containing caffeine in the house, when wendy come down from upstairs.

WHAT ARE YOU DOING PAUL?  she says...  ARE YOU EATING THE LAST OF ***MY*** CHICKEN SALAD???  GET OUT OF THERE!  after which there were fisticuffs and much shouting, as wendy had unexpectedly just alerted the rest of the family that the chicken salad was almost gone.  to whit, everyone then became involved in the chicken salad scuffle.  

"i'll make some more, i'll make some more, i PROMISE!" i yelled in the general direction of the melee that ensued.  yet i was yelling with a cheshire cat grin on my face.

especially since i had beaten paul downstairs that morning.