Cici The Foodie.

Those of you who know Momlissa and me well are aware that we like food. We like eating it, we like making it, we like trying things we've never had before, we like forcing other people to try things they've never had before, we like talking about it, we like reading about it, we like watching TV shows about it (even if they're on creaky old VHS cassettes that we've already watched together a thousand times).

Well, lately we've been feeling that Cecilia might have caught her parents' food bug. A few pieces of evidence (in addition to the conversation about tater-tot hotdish that Momlissa has already documented) point in this direction:

1) When eating some homemade applesauce Momlissa made a couple weeks ago, Cici said she preferred it to the stuff she got at her school, because the texture (chunky) was so much better. (And she's right about that, of course.)

2) At breakfast a few days ago, she made some very accurate observations about the differences in flavor between Honeycrisp apples (sweet) and Haralsons (sour). (She prefers the Haralsons, and so do I.)

3) The other night we went to see Christopher Kimball, a noted food expert, the founder of Cooks Illustrated magazine and host of America's Test Kitchen on PBS. Cici watches the show with us, and after we had attended the event she said to me, "Dad, if he's such a great cook, how come he never cooks anything on the show?" (A great question - I told her she should have raised her hand and put him on the spot during the Q&A.)

And 4) (although this one's more funny than observant) When we were getting ready to go see Kimball, I told Cici that we were going to see somebody who was a famous cook. She said, "You mean Earl?" It took me a minute to figure out who she was talking about - and then I realized she meant "Boilmaster Earl," the crazy old fisherman who oversaw the rustic Wisconsin fish boil we went to last month!

What a super kid. I hope she never loses interest.