guest blogger lynette

i met lynette after dave and i got married. she was in our ward and had the cutest little girl (carly) and i instantly wanted to be her friend. she is clever, smart, beautiful, and funny (no, funny's not the right word. hi-LARIOUS is more like it) and can make even a mundane story a bust-your-gut-snort-while-you-laugh type of story. i love that our friendship is even better now that we are blog buddies. she's a great writer and her blog is so much fun to read. her family moved to chile last year and it's fun to get a glimpse into the life of an ex-pat.

turns out, lynette is also a great cook. so i asked her to guest blog for me and she kindly obliged. so here is a quick "food" interview so you can get to know her a little better.

what's your favorite food? This is so lame, but probably big, juicy burgers. I can remember when I was younger and we went out to eat as a family, I always ordered hamburgers--even at Mexican restaurants!

what is your favorite thing to cook? anything fast! I like to cook, but it needs to take me less than 30 minutes. I can only handle so much chaos with the kids playing chase around the kitchen and running between my legs. I like my food fast & flavorful.

what's the weirdest/grossest thing you've ever eaten? I'm not usually one that ventures far from my food comfort zone, so I've never really eaten anything too weird. Plus, food is my friend--I enjoy it all. However, I do remember after having Wes, a family in our ward brought us dinner. It was a chicken and rice dish. But, the rice was overcooked and the chicken was undercooked. How that happened, I'm not sure. There was no sauce, no cream of anything, no cheese--just squishy rice and raw chicken. That was probably the worst thing I've ever had.

what's the most exotic thing you've eaten in Chile? Again, I haven't stepped too far out of my food comfort zone, so the most traditional Chilean food I've had is probably empanadas. Not all empanadas are created equal--I've had some pretty weird ones, like the one that was filled with black olives and egg. Personally, I'm not a fan.

what's your favorite breakfast? Do donuts count? No, seriously, pancakes, eggs, and bacon--but donuts are a close second.

and your favorite restaurant? I have too many. Cheesecake Factory, Red Robin, TGI Fridays, Las Rosas, Texas Roadhouse, P.F. Changs, and Lasagna House. (waaaaa... I miss the good ol' U S of A.)

have you ever had a cooking fiasco? Oh, yes! Every year at Thanksgiving my dad makes a traditional southern cornbread stuffing. Ammon and I were living in Provo and we were unable to fly home for the holiday so we decided to host our very own Thanksgiving dinner at our apartment with some friends. When I called home for the recipe, my dad gave me the ingredients and directions and assured me that I could not mess it up. So, with confidence, I began to make the dressing. {Now, my dad's recipe was tripled so that it feed my entire family, so I tried scaling it down.} Somewhere amid the stress of trying to cook my first Thanksgiving meal all on my own, I added three times as much chicken broth to the batter (the correct amount on the recipe, but remember, I was scaling it down) and it was a runny mess. What should have taken 45 minutes to bake, took 6 hours and even then it only barely resembled my dad's cornbread stuffing. But, not to worry. I have since mastered that recipe and I've made it for the entire family the past couple of years.

i can't wait to see what you have for us to eat! thanks lynette!