Jittery Jabber

Jittery Jabber has swanky homes on Tumblr and Pinterest. Or, if you prefer, you can ‘like‘ and visit JJ on Facebook. Inspired by the engaging style of Humans of New York, Jittery Jabber will be gathering your food stories, one by one. What’s yours? 

“La simplicité est clé dans toute cuisine. Trop de gens essais trop d’en mettre! P.S. L’alcool c’est bon dans toute recette!”

“I’m always trying to think of things outside of the net.”

“I really like to cook with my mom. She showed me how to cook beets. She has a white kitchen and I put red everywhere.”

“I’m Swiss from Geneva. I arrived in Quebec in 2008. I wasn’t a fan of maple syrup. I met a girl from here who was in love with maple syrup, and with me, I hope. So, I started using it. Now I love maple syrup.”

“I cook a lot of West Indian food; curry, callaloo. I’m from Trinidad. We learn to cook really early.”

“I don’t even think about food.”

“For me the best thing about food is making it for others and watching them eat it.”

“Adding cheese makes everything better.”

“Eat good foods, eat healthy. That’s the best thing you can do for yourself. I’m trying to play hockey and I like to eat well. It helps your training. It helps you live better.”

“J’aime manger les oranges et les sandwiches.”

“I make fried eggs.”

“I used to do a lot of traveling and I would go into the kitchen and ask them how you make this and how you make that. The most interesting one was to learn to make peanut chicken, in Africa.”

“I’m vegetarian.”

“One time I dropped a Starbucks wrap out of my pocket on Delancey and Allen and it got run over but I went back and found it and ate it. It wasn’t dirty, just flattened.”

“Prohibition, it’s in midtown in Miami. I went there a couple of months ago. They serve everything in big dishes to share. What is that? Like à la carte? And, they have the most amazing lobster macaroni. The wine was amazing. The scenery was really, really serene. It was really nice. And the food was just amazing. I loved it. It was a great experience. I can’t wait to get back down there.”

“The restaurant here is actually very good. I had a kale salad. And it was very fresh and delicious. The sangria here is very nice. It’s very refreshing. It’s white wine sangria with fresh apple chunks, very nice. I would definitely recommend this restaurant.”

“I made some home made hummus the other day. I soaked the chickpeas overnight. And then I just kept adding different spices and cilantro, just trying to get it to have a little zip to it.”

“I work at a restaurant and my guilty pleasure is walking by our Caesar salad table – do not disclose which restaurant I work at – grabbing a crouton and dipping it in the salad dressing dressing. I can’t stop myself.”

“I love to cook. I’ve been recently baking a lot of bread and bagels, specifically lavender sourdough.”

“My mom always used to make corn fritters. I’m from Puerto Rico and we love fritters. Since I was a child I always asked my mom to make them.”

“I was just reminded of the fact that I’m actually a foodie. And that’s because I don’t think of myself as being so. I just think of myself as having normal eating habits and I just need to have certain things around me to pursue those normal habits. But recently I’ve been traveling and I’ve been staying with friends and I realize these friends are not foodies. They do not have arugula in their house. They don’t have bananas. What else don’t they have? They don’t have burnt toast. They don’t have salted butter. Some of the times they don’t have butter. And sometimes they take the knife they just chopped garlic with and use it for the butter. So as a result I’ve now come to the conclusion that not only am I this open ended easy to please generalist about food. I am a picky ungrateful guest.”

“I remember the first time that I ate lobster when I was about 8 years old. My parent’s gave me lobster. And they didn’t tell me until many years later that I was humming while I was eating. So I would eat and I’d go mmmm, mmmmmm. And not until I was in my 20’s did they tell me that every time I ate lobster I started to hum, cause they didn’t want to embarrass me. But that was when I found out I hummed when I ate. Because I guess I love lobster. It’s my favourite food. I find lobster one of the most tear apart delicious foods.”

“It was really hot in Jamaica one day. I went to see a new Jamaican friend. I took this bus all the way to the next village. My friend had a little bar. She invited me up to the back of the bar and I sat down at this wooden table and she said; I’m going to bring you something to eat. I was starving. The fresh air and everything. She came out with a big bowl of soup and staring up at me was a big fish head. His eyes staring up at me and his little mouth. Floating around were these big white dumplings, so greasy and horrible. I ate it cause I was starving. I’ve been eating fish head soup and dumplings ever since. If it looks horrible it doesn’t mean it is horrible. The broth was beautiful.”

“Years later, I went to Royal Plantation Inn, 5 star hotel. The chef would teach you how to cook. I wanted him to teach me how to make fish head soup. They call it fish tea.”

“When I grew up there was always a container of chicken schmaltz. It looked like cashews or peanuts. There was always a container in our pantry that we would snack on throughout the day. And then one day, I said – What’s in there? And my mother told me, – It’s fried chicken fat. And after that I wouldn’t eat it anymore. My mother always wanted me to eat them. I was so skinny. I didn’t eat anything.”

“I associate food and family. When I was quite a bit younger and just newly married, and my parents were off in Florida for the winter, I used to be invited to my good friend’s house for Shabbat dinner. And this was not a tradition I was particularly part of in my own home. However, I loved it so much and when I got to be a little older I decided to make Shabbat dinner every Friday and it became a tradition in my house. And now there isn’t one Friday that I don’t have my parents over and it just wouldn’t be the same without them. My kids now expect it. It’s such a lovely tradition that’s gone on to the next generation. Now my daughter is doing it because she has babies and it’s easier for her to do it in her house.”

“As a child, my favourite dessert was ice cream sundaes. And as a child  in Maine, we would go to one restaurant, which is now closed, and they had a five scoop sundae called the Mount Katahdin, cause there’s a mountain in Maine called that, and I would order it and eat the whole thing.”

Steak or Critters? Chicken, steak, pork filet, fish? Or none of the above? Eggs would do. Yet, how ‘bout something new? Compose a tune. Foreign delicious aroma calls. I am a loon. Beetles, ants; any crawly critters could be next. I swoon. So desperate for change in text. I concentrate trembling with all my might; filet mignon au vin rouge tonight.

“Apparently, I make the best turkey. Ever. Cause I have a special recipe, that I’m not really sharing. But it’s a secret and I’m always the one that is doing the turkey dinner. And I will find any excuse to have a turkey dinner just to have leftovers turkey sandwich for the next morning. And everybody goes along with it. And apparently, I have to make it every year.”

“Christmas, we’re doing these sandwiches that my husband made his whole childhood. They’re roll-up sandwiches. So, he puts ham, cheese, some other stuff…I’m not sure, and he rolls it, and then he puts it in the presser. So that’ll be very good.”

“What kind of bread?”

“It’s a very thin dough. I don’t think it’s cooked or baked. It’s not baked yet. It’s a recipe from his mother. It’s years and years they’ve done it, since his childhood. It’s a French québécois tradition, I think.”

“Food! I just love to eat food. Anything that I never eat. Something new I like to try. I’m used to spicy food. I’m always into different tasting food, different cultures.”

“We were at Spago in LA. The couple next to us was taking notes instead of just eating. We asked them what they were writing. They told us that they owned a restaurant and farm in Seattle, called The Herbfarm, and that it took a year to get a reservation there.”

“A few years later we planned to go to Seattle and called The Herbfarm, hoping to get a reservation. It was listed as one of the best restaurants in the US. They remembered us and gave us a table. The meal was so fantastic, perfectly cooked. It was all vegetables, but very interesting, creative and complex. The chef prepared it in front of us, explaining everything.”

“During the meal we met a young couple who lived next door. In the middle of the four hour meal they invited us to their home to see their treehouse. He was an expert on treehouses. He wrote a book on treehouses. We have his book.”

“It always pays to talk to the people next to you.”

“I hate Brussels sprouts. I think they’re the vegetable of the devil. The mere sight of them is repugnant to me—the sight and the smell. If there is a hell, the only food you can eat is Brussels sprouts there.”

“I got sick after eating something with eggplant. Since that day I hate to eat those things. Every time I go to a restaurant I ask if that food is in that thing. When I was young, my dad used to cook it. He put it on the top of where you cook plantain and I used to enjoy that with my dad. I was the last one of eleven kids. He was sixty. That was the only thing he would cook for me.”

“I enjoy cooking Spanish food — typically Chilean food. Spicy of course. It’s a soup that I make. It’s a dough that we fry — sopaipilla. You deep fry it and have that with our soup. And cilantro on top — it makes it look so nice and taste delicious.”

“The one thing that I cannot handle are olives. I’ve tried them on numerous occasions and I spit them out as soon as I put them in my mouth. And this, coming from someone who loves all foods.”

“I always keep fresh dulse in my office. Anytime I have a St. John Maritime patient I offer them fresh dulse. It’s sold in St. John in paper bags. It’s nori, but with all the taste. Very salty, but the most significant thing is a strong taste of iodine. It’s seaweed they put on the wharf. It oxidizes and turns black.”

“When I was much younger, one of my cousins was babysitting me. I remember a package of cookies sitting on the kitchen counter that I was very interested in. My cousin obviously noticed this and she obligingly offered me one. They were good! I gobbled it down. She offered me another. Eureka! Or, in today’s vernacular “Awesome!” What a great girl! And she offered another. Wow! Would this never end? I was experiencing Nirvana. My mother would never have allowed me more than one, or perhaps two treats at a time. And it didn’t end. That mischievous cousin just kept offering me cookies, one after another. And I, at that age, never considered the possibility of refusing. I don’t remember if we went through the whole box or not. But I do remember feeling so sick afterwards. It was a long time before I ate cookies again. So I have to thank my cousin for my first lesson in self-control — a very important and somewhat painful teaching.”

“Did you want to hear about my coffee cake?”

“I was a young bride and I wanted to cook for my husband in the old fashioned way. I didn’t want any help. I felt capable.”

“I made this beautiful cake. He took a bite and spit it out, and said; “Why would coffee cake be so crunchy?”

“I said; “I don’t know. I did everything it said, flour, sugar, eggs, honey and a cup of coffee.”

“I was born and raised in Vancouver. The first time my husband and I went to Vancouver together he asked; “Tell me, what was your favourite restaurant that your family went out to on a Sunday night?”

“I said; “What are you talking about?” We didn’t go to restaurants. The best food was at home. We went to a restaurant maybe five times. We had food growing in the garden — strictly an Italian immigrant thing. My dad would go to work early — he was a carpenter — come home at 4 and stay in the garden until the sun went down.”

“I used to make homemade pizza. Bit by bit everyone had a different eating style. My daughter became a vegetarian and didn’t tell me. The only thing green my husband eats are green beans and I love every vegetable. Over time, my love for cooking dwindled until I turned off completely. There was a lot of pride I had in my kitchen in the ‘90s and the 2000’s. Now it’s up to each person to make their own.”

“So. I used to make homemade ragu that would take the whole day. My kids would eat it but my husband wouldn’t cause pasta made him fat. And yet on vacation he’d order crappy pasta and eat it. My son would say — Why are you eating that when mom makes the best ragu?”

“I don’t eat meat or fish and for a while I was a raw vegan — I should just say vegan. I tried to do the raw vegan thing. It just didn’t work out. It’s really hard to maintain that kind of lifestyle in New York. You have to have raw fruits and vegetables all the time and you end up leaving your house with a big bag of food for the day.”

“When I went to Italy a couple of years back to visit my family, we stayed in a villa in Florence. They had olive trees, vineyards. In the morning you wake up and come out. The owner of the villa would bring fresh foods and local specialties…capicola, prosciutto. Breakfast was a spread. Bed and breakfast Florence style. Handpicked food.”

“Recently, me and my wife went to a South African store. We had shepherd’s pie. The owner used all ingredients from South Africa. Nice to have a different taste. Fort Lauderdale, just past Commercial —‘Meal in a Pie.’ They have groceries from South Africa.”

“When I was little I used to take my candy corn and make candy corn cats, cause I’m a cat fanatic.”

“The first time I visited Colorado in 2012, in a car garage, mechanic shop, best Brussels sprouts with a side of hickory aioli. I also had half a chicken and potatoes and cauliflower and carrots — comfort food. Most delicious food I ever had. Then I watched the food channel, ‘Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives’ and the guy visited the place.”

“Where in Colorado?”

“Denver, Colorado.”

“You want to know my favourite food? I love sushi. My favourite is salmon. But I won’t eat sushi in Florida. I only eat sushi in New York. I’m a sushi snob.”

What’s your favourite Halloween candy?”

“Peanut M&Ms.”

“Sweet tarts. Sweet and sour.”

“I eat anything. I eat junk food. I eat Gummy Life Savers everyday. I don’t  know how I’m alert.”

“In Russia, my grandfather used to like to eat pasta with sauerkraut and sugar on top of it. That’s very weird. I skipped the sauerkraut, but I always loved pasta with sugar as a child. Now I like good quality sweets and pastries.”

“One of my most pleasant memories — my grandmother Jennie — when we broke the fast, she made dozens and dozens and dozens of knishes. Handmade. And the smell would be wafting. After the Yom Kippur fast. She had tiny knishes. They were this big. And she had trays and trays of them. She also made thick soup. A big thick vegetable soup.”

“I was at work having lunch with 15-20 people around the table and a colleague addressed us and said she has a beautiful dog she could no longer take care of. She said she’d love to give the dog a good home. The response was silence, to the point that I started to feel guilty. I said the only dog I can bring home is exactly the dog my husband grew up with. It has to be female, short-haired, dachshund. She said, that’s exactly what it is.”

“And that’s how I ended up with a dog.”

“When I started to try real food at friend’s homes, I went home to canned peas and peaches — fruit cocktail was the worst — and asked my parents, what kind of crap have you been feeding me?”

He: “The first time she invited me over for dinner…”

She: “I went to Akavan and got all kinds of food; marinated quail, hummus, tabouli, eggplant salad, persian bread, stuffed vine leaves, labneh, halvah…”

He: “She thought I was bringing my football team over. So, I get over there and it’s hot like a sauna — she’s running back and forth checking out dishes like a whirling dervish.”

She: “He put on Simon and Garfunkel’s ‘Slow Down You Move Too Fast’.”

He: “It was a feast. I thought she did that all the time.”

“I have 3 kids — 7, 5 and 3. If they see anything cooked and green, they’re not eating it.”

“We have a group of people from the university. We call ourselves the food snobs. There are five of us. For the last 4 years now one person is designated as the master of ceremonies and she or he finds a good restaurant within 100 or 200 kilometers. Usually we don’t know where we are going. We just set off in a car. Only the master of ceremonies knows.”

“There was one restaurant on Île aux Grues that specialized in sturgeon. Normally you go across by ferry boat, but when the tide is low, an airplane takes you on a 3 minute flight for $20 per person.”

“So we wait at the pier, the van takes us to the airport. We all get into the airplane and take off. We think we might be going to the North Pole. We have a fantastic meal. We sleep in yurts, have a fantastic breakfast and take off to go back home.”

“I definitely consider myself a foodie. When you ask me my favourite food, I say everything.”

“One of my cooking quests in life is to make the perfect turkey. One of these years it’s gonna happen. Every year they have new turkey recipes in the magazines and I always check them out just in case.”

“Sometimes, when I am eating something ridiculously sublime, I have been known to state that I am having a food orgasm. Yes, I equate good food to sex.”“My husband is a meat lover. Everything that has meat is good. My kids are more veggie and lots of fruit. I’m not consistent. There are days when I’m craving meat and days where I can not look at it.”

“My grandmother’s specialty was plăcintă pie, made with dairy products or fruit. It’s baked with cottage cheese and sour cream as appetizer or main dish. With sour cherries or prunes it can go as a dessert. I didn’t do it for more than 10 years.”“My mother was a good cook but a better baker. She used to beg me to bake with her on Sundays, but unfortunately I had no interest.”

“My son was never into baking, but he liked science experiments. I told him that with baking you have to follow a recipe; it’s not like cooking. He didn’t listen. Now he has a successful cookie business. It’s creative and crazy with flavours like Birthday Cake, Red Velvet, Cookies and Cream, Hot Chocolate, Apple Pie and Cinnamon Bun. He called his company Yo’Dough cause he wanted to make custom flavours for people. Yo’Dough, as in your dough.”“My grandmother used to make french fries. They were delicious. On Mondays my mother—we never had a washing machine in the house—went to the Colonial Turkish Baths to use their machine. We owned the place. My grandmother made us lunch. She prepared white beans with onions and oil. And then she used to make us french fries, you know, her french fries were so delicious. From real potatoes.”

“We didn’t have a dryer at home. So my mother put the laundry up on a clothes line. Monday was wash day. She used to go outside in all kinds of weather.”“Friday night when we had chicken soup I had cornflakes and milk. That used to upset my mother no end. I never liked chicken soup and boiled chicken. My favourite dish was cornflakes and milk.”

“Now one of my favourite dishes is French Canadian pea soup, where if you put the spoon in the middle it stands up. A good bowl of soup is the equivalent of a full course meal, as far as I’m concerned.”

“I like to eat in restaurants. I like a good broiled, charcoal broiled steak with a side order of fries and a diet coke. That usually does it. And a good piece of key lime pie.”

“You know I don’t usually give interviews before 4, 5 o’clock.”“When I was young, every morning before school, my mother obligated me to eat; yogurt, fruit, grapefruit – at least my grapefruit, with sugar on top. It is very ironic because since I moved out I never eat breakfast anymore. When you’re young it’s very good to eat well for breakfast. Your body is under construction.”