Duff: How did you end up at Zingerman’s?
Margot: Funny you should ask. I was familiar with Zingerman’s only in the most abstract of ways after seeing their Mail Order catalog at a friend’s house in Chicago. Last summer I moved from Austin to Ann Arbor to pursue a Master’s in Architecture. After a semester, I realized that I had reached a pretty miserable state of existence. Now, please understand that I’m a pretty classic type A personality. I don’t quit things. Type As are “stress junkies.” We endure. So I started my second semester but after about 3 days into it, I realized I couldn’t keep up with it. So I quit. I’m pretty sure my best friend back home thought I had lost my mind. I took the next logical step which was to look for a job. Zingerman’s Deli was hiring runners/bussers. So I applied.

Duff: What chocolate bars are you enjoying at the moment?
Patric 70% with Nibs, Michel Cluizel Maralumi, Claudio Corallo 80%, Rogue Hispaniola

Duff: What do you do when you aren’t at the Deli?
Margot: I’m a diehard Texas Longhorn football fan, so during football season Saturdays you can more than likely find me on a couch, yelling at the television. Other hobbies include cooking (Indian food is a favorite! Check out books by Madhur Jaffrey!); some recent forays into baking; miscellaneous creative endeavors big and small (I have a degree in studio art); proofreading; reading nonfiction; and falling asleep with cookbooks on my face.

Duff: Do you have any favorite accessories?
Margot: I live and die by my iPhone. Other things I often have on me include my purse shaped like a rabbit which was previously my Mom’s; a necklace with a teeny coffee cup (the coffee cup is the only thing I’ve ever found with my name on it); a signet ring from the school I attended for 1st through 12th grade; and two small silver bracelets which I had stamped with ‘Have Courage’ and ‘Be of Good Cheer’ – my late Grandpa’s way of signing each and every piece of correspondence.

Duff: OK this one is requisite – how about your top five music albums?
Margot: This question makes me wish I was as cool as Rob Gordon in “High Fidelty.”

Elliott Smith – Either/Or
Big Star – #1 Record
Iron & Wine – The Shepherd’s Dog
David Bowie – Ziggy Stardust
Rilo Kiley – The Execution of All Things

Duff: What is your favorite body of water?
Margot: My mother raised me with a more than healthy fear of the creatures of the deep. We vacationed to the Texas Gulf Coast each year and my shallow dips in the ocean were punctuated by my mother screaming, “SHARKS ARE CAPABLE OF SWIMMING IN LESS THAN THREE FEET OF WATER!” So I’d say that oceans are probably not my favorite body of water. My exception to that that rule would be my favorite body of water: the Mediterranean Sea. I swam and swam and swam in a little rocky cove; the water was so crisp and clear, allowing me to reason that I’d be able to see the sea monsters before they reached me. My slightly more realistic body of water in terms of ever swimming there again would be Barton Springs in Austin; it’s a man-made pool fed by natural, underground springs. It’s home to the Barton Springs Salamander (Eurycea sosorum), an endangered species Austinites fiercely protect.

Duff: Do you have any pets?
Margot: Presently, my parents are acting as parental guardians for my grey tabby, Cass, who is back in Texas. His full name is Cass Gilbert, named for the late 19th/early 20th century architect who designed Sutton Hall and Battle Hall at the University of Texas. He enjoys eating banana chips, jumping to the highest points he can, and riding around on people’s shoulders. My father routinely shaves his face with Cass wrapped around his neck. To be honest, I am not sure I’ll ever get the cat back from my parents. They seem awfully attached. I recently received a CD with a folder of photos of what Cass was up to in Austin.

Duff: Name some sports you love, please.
Margot: I’ve got lots of favorites. I’ve already mentioned my affinity for Longhorn Football. In terms of sports I played, I was the pipsqueak on the varsity basketball team and the smallest goalie in my field hockey conference. ‘Scrappy’ and ‘hustle’ were terms oft-used to describe my technique in both sports.

The aforementioned qualities also, I think, ensured my success in a new sports realm: Hog Wrestling. My friend Lucy and I are the 2004 Bandera Middleweight Champions. We had been in Bandera, Texas with some friends, attending a bar-b-q festival. There was talk of hog wrestling, and ultimately, Lucy and I were badgered into signing up. I guarantee no one thought we would have a chance. The announcer called us city folk and our opponents were as country as they come. Lucy was wearing designer jeans and I had no cowboy boots to my name. To give you a general idea of hog wrestling, you’re left in a large circular pen into which a hog storms. You must catch and bag it, the latter activity being the most trying part. Once bagged, you must drag it across a line in the center of the pen. Lucy and I entered the pen, shook hands with the timekeeper, and tried not to visibly shake in fear. The whistle blew and we were off! 36 seconds later, that hog was caught, bagged, and dragged. In the words of the announcer, “What [we] lacked in size, [we] made up in speed and cunning.”

My sister and I are hoping to attend the Bandera Wild Hog Explosion in the Spring of 2011 so that I may hog wrestle once again.

Duff: What is your most valuable (sentimental value) possession?
Margot: Oh gosh. I’m going to name two. The first is the belt buckle I received for the hog wrestling. It may be the most one of a kind thing I own. The second possession is a Syracuse China creamy colored ironstone mug with a loosely sketched blue eagle crest on it. It’s not particularly old (1978) and probably wasn’t acquired by my family until the early 1990s, but I hold it dear because it was the coffee mug my Grandpa used every day back when we used to have a little country house in East Texas.

Duff: What is the best meal you’ve ever had?
Margot: Outside of Las Terrenas, on the Samaná Peninsula in the Dominican Republic. While walking the shoreline, trying to find the beach the guidebook described as an absolute paradise, I came upon a little shack where a husband had just returned with a small cooler of freshly caught fish. The wife grilled it whole with a simple blend of salt and spices and served it with some beans and rice.

Duff: What vegetables do you love to eat? You can name one for each season, if you want.
Margot: As a vegetable fanatic since I was a baby, I both love and hate this question. So many to choose from! Radishes. Mustard greens. Peppers. Brussels sprouts.

Duff: How about your top two beverages?
Margot: Thanks for allowing me to gush about soda water. I leave a trail of La Croix sparkling water wherever I go.
Number two, morning edition would be a short Americano with room for cream.
Number two, evening edition would be a gin and tonic, always with a twist of lime.

Duff: Where is your favorite vacation spot?
Margot: I have a huge crush on Montreal. I’m itching to get back, especially in a month that’s not freezing cold (The maple syrup lollipops made by pouring fresh syrup into little snowbanks almost made the below freezing temperatures worth it.).
I also love the food culture of New Orleans; my family visited there just about every year when I was growing up. It’s been a little too long since I feasted on beignets and café au lait at Café Du Monde. I think it’s also about time that I visited with a palm reader on the French Quarter.

Duff: What else should we know about you?
Margot: Well I already disclosed the hog wrestling. Let’s think…

1. I have a horrific fear of broken glass and given my track record of glass breaking in my vicinity, my mother is convinced that I emanate an energy that pulls glass objects from where they’re sitting to their shattered demise on the floor.

2. I’m pretty much living the dream right now at Zingerman’s. If I wanted to live the dream in another fashion, I’d be pining for a job with Willet Stained Glass Studios in Philadelphia. They’ve been making and restoring stained glass windows for over 100 years. One person’s job entails searching through their massive collection of glass color chips to find the right color for each part of a window’s design. This is what I’d want to do.

Duff: Can you give us any chocolate sneak peeks for the holiday? Stuff you are excited to bring in later this year?
Margot: Askinosie Chocolate may have a new origin bar for us by the holidays. This new bar is part of a larger project called Cocoa Honors. Since the fall of 2009, Shawn’s been meeting with 15 high schoolers and taking them through the steps involved with sourcing cocoa and developing long-term partnerships with cocoa farmers. Shawn Askinosie & crew have raised the money needed to get their high schoolers to Tanzania this August to visit the woman-run co-op that will be supplying their cacao. I urge you to read more about this remarkable program at their website: http://chocolateuniversity.org/

Vosges Haut-Chocolat continues to excite with 8 new bars! I’ll whet your appetite: Sicilian Marzipan. Just the mention of it provoked a symphony of oohs and ahhs at our most recent Next Door Team Meeting.

I was recently able to taste a number of products by D. Barbero, who makes the Italian hazelnut torrone we carry. They also have a pistachio torrone that is not only a gem to look at, but maintains the same quality of flavor we love in the hazelnut.

I’ll be a little bit coy now and just include a picture from the packaging of a product that pretty much illustrates my giddiness for it. Keep your ears to the ground!

Duff: I’m a nickname girl so I’ve got to ask – do you have any?
Margot: Have I ever. Mar, MarMar, Marge, Margs, Meer, Mkat, Shrimp, Smalls, and Goat.