That's What Jenni Said

I’m driving down a long and winding road in the back hills of Virginia. My GPS can’t identify my location, my cell phone has no coverage, and I’m really not concerned. I’ve got the top down on my convertible, the bluegrass music playing, and I feel full and happy. Wait a minute, back up here. The bluegrass music? The bluegrass music! I have enjoyed the small snippets of bluegrass music I’ve been exposed to over the years. So I finally decided to fully immerse myself in the genre by attending a bluegrass festival. My friends in the know who keep up with the music scene told me that the Graves Mountain Festival of Music is the best bluegrass festival in our region. I put the word out on Facebook and Twitter and casually asked around among my friends to drum up support for a group to go together but no dice. I have friends who I can call on in an emergency, friends who will pray with me, friends who will drop everything and fly to London for dinner, but apparently no friends who are i...

I am a food snob. There, I admit it again. I don’t shun food (as my waistline sadly attests to) but I tend to feel frustrated with people who don’t live up to my expectations with regard to their culinary experience and tastes. In my defense, they’re not particularly high standards to meet. A few months ago I met a woman who rules out entire categories of food based on color- she won’t try anything orange or yellow. And she told me that her most exotic culinary tasting was…rice. Every other opinion I formed on this lady was filtered through the knowledge that she is a culinary ignoramus. Today I had a quick and healthy lunch at the Thai restaurant down the street. A woman and a young man (her coworker I believe) sat at the next table. She remarked to her guest that she was open to trying something new as long as it had familiar ingredients and was not at all spicy. First, why do people go into a Thai, Mexican, or otherwise traditionally spicy cuisine restaurant and ask for no spice...