"choptalk" news and stories

When I was in college, I had this party trick that I would trot out ever so often. I would ask people to show me their favorite pen, and then I would intuit facts about their personality based on their pen choice. It worked best when people were slightly intoxicated, as a few well placed guesses could really wow them when they were slightly incapacitated.

Yesterday, Julia Langbein wrote a post on Gourmet's Choptalk that made me think about this old trick of mine. She claims that the best way to learn about a person or family is to take a peek at their coffee mug cabinet. Apparently, you can tell a lot about the people who live in a particular space by the type of mugs they have. Thinking about my own cabinet, I realize that my mismatched hand thrown mugs (mostly thrift store purchases), the freebie blue NPR mug and the one with my sister's face printed on it do say certain things about me.

What do your coffee mugs say about you?

Source

My grandma Bunny (her real name was Edith, but she disliked it so intensely that she renamed herself Bunny at summer camp when she was nine-years-old and never looked back) loved melon. The smell of ripening cantaloupe or casaba melon is one of the scents I associate with her Southern California ranch house (that and the aroma of the Am-way products in the garage).

She died before my interest in food and cooking really blossomed, and so we never really got a chance to sit around and talk food tips, experiences and advice. However, her love of melon coupled with her sense of humor makes me think that she would have really enjoyed John T. Edge's recent post on the Gourmet's Choptalk blog entitled My Wife Abuses Our Melons. Since she's not around to get a chuckle out of his story about how his wife leaves the cantaloupes in the trunk to ripen via concussion, I thought I'd share it with you all. I hope you enjoy.

Photo link.