A Few More Things About Meme

The darling Inne of Vanille and Chocolat in London has tagged me for a meme...and I, too, wonder how you pronounce that...and this time I can blog about a fact or tidbit using the letters of my first name. Fair warning...there will be four bloggers tagged at the end, one for each letter of the name...they will then get to do the same.

As some of you may know, Elle is my blogging name. Lucky pick..what if I had decided on Lucretia?

Since this is a food blog, the bits will be food related. Seems fair.

E - Easy - Although I occasionally enjoy complicated cooking or baking (which is good or I couldn't be a Daring Baker), mostly I prefer to make things that are easy and use seasonal ingredients. One reason you won't see too many of our regular meals on this blog is that they tend to be prosaic...meat, poultry or fish, prepared simply, with a simple veg or salad and something like baked potato or brown rice on the side. The most excitement is when Sweetie pours a slug of bourbon on the salmon before grilling. For entertaining I pull out the stops and do complicated and intersting dishes, but I've too many other enthusiasms taking up my energy, so I go for easy weekday meals.

L - Love - Cooking with love should not be underestimated. Even those simple and easy meals are satisfying when made with love. Little things count, like inspecting the salad greens to remove any bruised lettuce and to snap off the extra long stems so often found in mesclun mixes. Adding some chopped fresh herbs to the rice or some grated lemon zest is still easy, but is a loving touch. Making a favorite dish or dessert for a special someone's birthday is a family tradition and a sign of love. Sharing recipes and food with friends is, to my mind, one of the best parts of cooking and blogging.

L - Local - As the world becomes more crowded and as resources become more scarce, perhaps the time has come to really think about eating local foods. I love that watermelon is available year 'round in the grocery, but the time may be coming when it will again be a seasonal treat of high summer. Shipping that heavy fruit from Chile (or wherever it comes from) to California uses so much energy. The garden gets bigger every year, so maybe next year there will be melons planted. Maybe I need to plant some more fruit trees too. Figs trees do really well in this area. I'm going to be spending some time this winter with seed catalogs, too.

E - Eating - I love to eat. Really. Guess I always have. It is especially fun to eat with others. I grew up in a large family. Truthfully, eating with 10 other people is a mixed bag...one spilled glass of milk after the other and lots of noise...but I still loved it. When I eat by myself, I usually bring something to read with me to the table. For so many years eating alone wasn't even a possibility, so I got used to company. The folks in a good novel can be company in a pinch, right?

Well, that's it for this meme.

Passing it on to Anh of Food Lover's Journey, Amanda of Little Foodies, Davimack of Wish I Were Baking, and Deborah of Taste and Tell. They are all amazing bloggers so you should visit their blogs often, especially at the end of the month when Daring Bakers run amok in the blogosphere. I won't be joining them this month, but you won't want to miss the fun and delicious goodies.