Dixon on Halloween

Dixon on Halloween
Originally uploaded by Kit Pollard

After my last long-winded, pseudo-intellectual post, I feel the need for a little self-mockery.

Last night was, obviously, Halloween. Dixon's not old enough to trick-or-treat yet, but he's definitely old enough to get into the spirit of the holiday. I spent most of the night chasing him around with a camera.

Inside, though, I was feeling sentimental and reminiscing to myself about Halloween when I was a little girl. I grew up in a small community where a lot of the houses are at the top of big hills, so none of my neighbors ever got many trick-or-treaters. As a result, they gave out a TON of candy (plus homemade popcorn balls, cookies, brownies - all the things you can really only hand out in a small community.)

I loved trick-or-treating itself - hauling myself up those hills with my friends (and our dad's following us to any houses that might hand out beer with their candy). But my favorite part of the night was when we got back home. My friends and I would dump our candy out on the dining room floor...and categorize.

We'd sort the candy into groups - by brand name, by size, by ingredients - and put them into tiny baggies. What's most embarassing is that in the days following Halloween, I would re-sort by different variables. Sometimes several times.

I never actually finished all my Halloween candy, but it definitely brought me lasting joy.

And that is the very, very dorky story of a young market research analyst. Wow, I'm cool.

A View into My Soul

recipe spreadsheet
Originally uploaded by Kit Pollard.

A few months ago, I decided I wasn't using my food and wine magazines efficiently enough. If I'm going to collect hundreds of magazines, I should really be using them, not just reading them for pleasure. Not that I never used them - but I regularly thought recipes sounded good, only to forget about them once I'd finished reading the articles.

At that point, my crazy organized evil twin took over - and opened up Excel. The result was either amazing or ridiculous, depending on your attitude towards spreadsheets. Over the past months, I've been logging every interesting (and feasible) recipe I read about in a magazine, on the internet, or even in a cookbook.

The recipes are sortable by type (dessert, brunch, etc.), by description, and by publication/issue/page. There's also a very tiny notes section, but considering that I've only made a few of the hundreds of recipes listed, it's not all that helpful just yet.

But there is something so, so soothing for me in scrolling through all those nice, neat rows of recipes. So much potential...so much promise.

Now if I could just rip myself away from the computer long enough to cook something!