OSI: Vibi of La Casserole Carrée

Vibi from La Casserole Carrée is our Thanksgiving Twofer Pie host this week. I love brushing up on my French while reading her blog but she also has a translator (upper right corner) for when I get lazy too. Gotta love that Google technology!

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1. When did you start baking?
I can’t recall at all, it seems baking and cooking were always part of my life. I can only rely on my mother who says I was “in the kitchen” at a very early age… cooking, baking or simply making a mess? Who knows!

Vibi, the “red head”, age 5

2. Do you have a favorite baking memory?
My father loves homemade doughnuts but my mother never made them because she was too scared of deep frying. She had to be hospitalised when I was 7, so my father and I secretly made doughnuts while she was recovering. I helped frying the doughnut holes, frosted some of them and shaked others in a bag filled with powdered sugar… at the time, I thought that was the coolest and most magical technique I had ever seen! Finaly, I brought the decorated doughnut holes to my mom’s hospital bedside, all neatly organised in a recycled Valentine’s heart shaped box… how cheesy can one get, I ask you!

3. Who is your TWD blog idol?
So many are amazing it’s hard to tell. I admire my good friend Isabelle of “Les gourmandises d’Isa” for she is a cooking and baking machine (no one would even believe everything she makes on a normal day). I also admire Shari of “Whisk: a food blog”, Steph of “A Whisk and a Spoon” and Karen of “Scrumptious Photography”. Oh! and I have to add Clara of “I(heart)food 4 thought” …everyone should have a Clara on their path.

Gooey Chocolate Cakes

4. What has been your favorite TWD recipe so far?
A tie between the Gooey Chocolate Cakes and the Fresh Orange Cream Tart.

5. What recipe are you dying to make that no one has picked yet?
All of what’s left …and that’s probably why I participate every week, unless major constraint keeps me from doing so.

6. What 2 questions would you ask Dorie if you ever met her?
“Would you by any chance, be feeding your neighbourhood?”
“What is the one thing you find the hardest to make, or dislike the most?”

Dimply Plum Cake

7. Share one food item that best describes the last year of your life. (example: “frozen pizza” because I did a 180-degree turn this year, or “cinnamon roll” because it had lots of twists and turns but overall was pretty sweet)
Crèmes brûlées for it’s a simple, easy, breezy and delicious dessert and my passed year, has been just that.

8. What one item in the kitchen best describes you and your personality?
A four-interchangeable-plates waffle iron, for its crazy versatility.

9. What’s your favorite band or CD of all time?
Gravity by Jesse Cook (1998) – But really, all of his work.

Mario Takes a Walk – Jesse Cook (Gravity)

10. If you could live anywhere in the world for a year, where would it be?
I’ve traveled to so many places which I fell in love with it’s hard to choose, but definately Amsterdam – Holland, Grasse – South of France and Cascais – Portugal, would be at the top of my list

11. Complete the statement “I recommend…” (it can be a show, movie, book, restaurant, website, activity, etc.)
Look, listen, smell, taste, touch… learn. Be positive, be Zen.

12.If you knew you could try anything and not fail (and money was no object), what dream would you attempt?
Spend the rest of my life in university, studying all I wanted: Medicine, Theology, Anthropology, Sociology, Politics, Fine Arts …I could go on and on.

Chocolate Malted Whopper Drops

13. What super-power would you most like to have, and why?
Be able to fly.

14. If you had 1 hour of free time, no distractions, what would you do?
Dunno… try myself at flying?

15. What is the meal and dessert you would choose as your very last?
Hummm… All kinds of cheeses come to mind, foie gras, garlic butter escargots, duck, creamy pasta, sauted mushroom and my mom’s raisin pie but really, if I’m dying soon after, I have a feeling I’m going somewhere way better than what any food could possibly satisfy, so… just about anything and everything would do, as long as I get there on a full stomach!

Peanut Butter Torte

16. What is the “strangest” food you ever ate?
At a special “Insect Tasting Event”, roasted queen ants’ abdomens, larva pizza, chocolate covered grasshoppers and drosophila eggs (fruit fly eggs) on banana cake. Hey! I did answer “anything and everything” to the previous question! Plus, they’re full of protein, ya know!

17. What are three adjectives that describe you?
Broad Minded
Empathetic
Different (as in original)

18. What is your favorite thing about yourself?
It took me a very long time to accept my red hair, but I learn to really like them when I realized so many women were dying theirs the same as mine!

Apple Cheddar Scones

19. Have you ever met a famous person? who?
Roger Federer

20. What’s your favorite spice?
Black pepper, black pepper and black pepper!

21. Do you speak another language? (If yes, say something and translate)
Too long to do… Linguistics was my major, translation my minor, but many already know that my mother tongue is French. So besides the obvious English, I can carry conversations in Spanish, Italian and Hebrew. I know some Greek and dream of learning an Asian language; anyone from Cantonese, Mandarin to Vietnamese or Korean.

Traditional Madeleines

22. Do you have any pets? (List what kind of pet, names etc)
A two years old Chartreux called “Boucane” which is a French slang term for “smoke”.

Believe me when I say he knows the camera’s pointed at him!

23. Are you a ‘morning’ or ‘night’ person?
Definitely a night person. I’ve have been suffering from insomnia for over 20 years now (yawn).

24. What was the last book you read?
The French version of The Trouble with Islam Today – Irshad Manji. I can not for the life of me, get into novels. So I only read biographies, true stories, life experiences, etc.

25. “2 Truths And a Lie” – Share 3 unique things about yourself and your life, 2 of them true, 1 false, and let the group guess which one isn’t true.
1. I locked myself out of my apartment in broad daylight, barefoot in forty freakin’ freezin’ inches of snow, wearing only my underwear.
2. When I had the flu, my mother used to send me to school wearing a garlic garland around my neck… bummer, my seat was next to the heater.
3. I volunteer for a palliative care association, as an “end of life” in-home companion, for terminaly ill cancer patients.