On this date in 1862, Alice Liddell asked her friend, Charles Dodgson, to tell her a story while they were being rowed in a boat. Dodgson proceeded to regale Alice with a tale of another girl, also named Alice, and a journey she went on. Why does any of this matter? You probably know Dodgson better by his pen name. Lewis Carroll. Three years to that fateful day, the fourth of July of 1865, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland was published for the first time, and I’ll gladly take that book over fireworks any day of the week. Or year. On that note, let’s play the friday5.org Friday Five.

1. If a traveling food show were to visit your neighborhood, what are some unique, regional foods it would spotlight, and where would it go to get them?
For better or for worse, if Toledo is known for any cuisine, it’s known for Hungarian cuisine thanks to Jamie Farr writing all his local references into his Corporal Klinger character on M*A*S*H. The show would probably go to the restaurant referenced by Klinger most often, Tony Packo’s Café, which I have eaten at a total of one time my entire life. I was not impressed in the slightest.

2. On an American cable show, a celebrity chef surprises people by challenging them to a contest featuring their own specialties (he usually loses). If he challenged you to your specialty, what dish would you prepare? If he challenged someone you know, what would that dish be, and how might the competition turn out?
Why not just say Throwup with Bobby Flay and be done? If he goes after anything of mine it’ll be my brownies, although the irony here is that my brownie recipe is just a slight tweak of one of Emeril’s. If he goes after Mom — the only other serious cook I still know — it would probably be for one of her mother’s recipes, either macaroni and cheese or oatmeal raisin cookies.

3. What are your feelings about cooking shows on television?
The only one I still watch is Simply Ming. I grew up on Saturday afternoon cooking shows on PBS — I still have a strong emotional attachment to Jeff Smith even after the scandals surrounding him — and I loved Food Network when I first got it in the mid-90s. These days it seems like Food Network shows everything but actual cooking shows, and you don’t see that many cooking shows on PBS because they aren’t big money-makers.

4. What kitchen gadgets have you purchased because you saw someone using them on television?
I’m not a big believer in kitchen gadgets; I like working with my hands whenever possible. That being said, my sister spends a very large chunk of her husband’s money purchasing everything Alton Brown ever uses. "A few simple tools" my ass.

5. You get to (or have to, depending on how you feel about it) host your own food show on television. What will it be called and what’s it about?
The show would be called Alton Brown Sucks (I’ve mentioned this before), and I’d dissect an episode of his show on every episode, pointing out all the problems with it. (In addition to just being a smug jackass who thinks he knows everything there is to know about cooking, he gets a lot of things wrong, and his recipes betray a strong southern US bias that’s anathema to a lot of us. I mean, mustard and onions in macaroni and cheese? What the Toot?)