I was wondering what to blog about when I got a call from Hazel Kelly, who works for Frieda’s, a company that supplies produce to local Schnuck's stores.

She was calling to suggest blogging about jicama, an ugly vegetable she swears is delicious. It's pronounced HEE-KA-MA.

One of my favorite questions to ask people I'm getting to know – what are you reading now, or what have you read lately that you can't put down?

Right now, I'm reading “The Richest Girl in the World: The Extravagant Life and Fast Times of Doris Duke.”

It's good and full of interesting information about the “rich-rich” and heirs to the robber-baron tycoons, but it's not exactly can't-put-it-down material.

The News-Gazette wants you! Or at least, we want you to submit a recipe for your favorite, tried-and-true recipe that keeps your family wanting more, or your church community suggesting potlucks or you just like to make. We run them in our Wednesday Food pages.

I've long associated music with seasons, and this end-of-winter business has me gravitating toward summery tunes.

I've been listening to some songs I can imagine floating in the air at my next cookout, whenever that might happen.

They include:

- Emmylou Harris' bluegrassy rendition of "How High the Moon," from her "Songbird" album (I can't find a link to a video on YouTube, but this version is great.)

I'm not exactly a health nut. I'm willing to challenge you to a chocolate-eating contest, and I bet I'd win.

I was driving on a country road southeast of St. Joseph this weekend when I came across a group of four or five dogs in the road. They were all different kinds, colors and sizes.

A quiz Pew Research Center posted online, called "How Millennial Are You," has me thinking.

Wednesday at the tweetup, someone attending asked me if I might know where to recycle paint locally.

I had no idea, so I asked the newsroom's recycling guru, copy editor Aubrie Williams, if she knew. I thought I'd pass it along, in case anyone else has paint they need to recycle:

Last night, The News-Gazette put together its third tweetup at Jupiter's at the Crossing in southwest Champaign.

Typically, when I mention a tweetup to those who don't understand it, they get a panicked, confused look in their eyes. "What do you do there?" they ask. "You meet people from the Internet in person?"

OK, yes, it's a real-life meetup. And yes, people tweet  at the tweetup. But it's not a bunch of dorky people hiding behind their computer screens.

I hate my refrigerator.

It came with my house, all 9 cubic feet of it. It's fairly new, but my faith in it evaporated upon seeing "damaged" scrawled on the back of it in black permanent marker. Eventually, rust start creeping along its bottom, which I'm guessing is a problem with the defrosting feature.