Late Night or Early Morning?

Last week I was tagged for a MEME by the lovely Lia from Swirling Notions.  It took me a few days to find a day to post it, but it was interesting, and I decided I wanted to participate.  For those of you not familiar with what a meme is, it’s a little ditty all about me.  Usually they’re a little survey of sorts with questions to answer about yourself and your personality.  What I love about reading memes is that after a while you start to get a sense of who that person behind the computer screen is.  While I blog daily about food and cooking, it seems that sometimes that personality gets left behind.  So from time to time, I like to do a meme which I have been tagged for.

This meme has two parts to it.  The first is a question: Are you a morning person or a night owl?  And the second questions is: As it relates to food or drink, what would you do if you could change your ways and become the opposite?

This is a question!  Like Lia, I used to be a night owl.  In high school I would easily stay up until 2 or 3 in the morning reading a great book or finishing up a paper.  In college I frequently found myself awake until 5 or 6 only to have a class as early as 7:30.  (And no, I wasn’t exactly studying…) But then life happened.  It started with a job- managing a retail store with regular shopping hours does not exactly translate to night owl life.  I still had to be at work at 7:00 in the morning, and to put in a full 12-15 hour day of work, I had to have sleep the night before.  Then of course, the twist in life came along with Abigail, my beautiful daughter who turns eight years old tomorrow!  It seems that right off the bat she was determined to be a morning baby.  I frequently found myself awake in the wee hours with her, watching plenty of sunsets rise.  I anticipated the days when she would start sleeping in a little bit.  And eight years later, I’m still waiting for those days.

Alas, both my children are morning creatures, waking no later than 6:30 on most days- winter or summer. The alarm clock during the school year is strictly a formality, a “just in case” we actually sleep in a bit.  As time went on, and Zander came along and proved no different from his sister, I realized that I just needed to suck it up and in the words of Tim Gunn, “make it work”.  I have gradually turned into a morning person, and I really have come to enjoy getting the household chores accomplished early in the morning.  It leaves a whole day in front of me to do with as I please.  Yet… I wish I had the oomph to do more.  I read about people getting up at the crack of dawn and baking a few loaves of bread or making a full breakfast before the family wakes up.  While I can enjoy the time in the morning, it does take a few cups of coffee and the morning rounds in blog-land before I can really function well.

But what if I could change? What if I could become the night owl that I once was?  What would I change food-wise?  The late night hours, in my mind, are the ones that are permissible for snacking.  In a few words, I would explore the world of tapas.  Little bites, little appetizers and amuse bouches that just give you a bite of this or a bite of that.  To me, there is no time more appropriate for those little bites than the late night hours, when you want just a little bit of something.  I could just see myself having a little corner of my fridge dedicated to all the little condiments and ingredients for nibbles of this and that.  I imagine the possibilities… and then I come back to the real world and I know that if I want to try all these little bites and nibbles, I need to throw more parties.  🙂

Thanks Lia for the fun meme! As for handing out a few tags… I think I’ll share some love with a few of the fine folks from the CLBB:

Josie from 1 Kitchen, 2 Dogs and a Girl

Elisabeth from Cooking In Cathedral Hill

Ana from Kitchen Space

Tracy from Rah Cha Chow

and last, but certainly not least,

Laura from The Spiced Life

And if you haven’t visited with any of these blogs before- here is a great opportunity for you to do so.  They are all blogs I enjoy visiting from time to time, and they definitely deserve notice.