March 2009 Archives

Giganto steak at the Amherst Brewing Company. Julia was a member of the Heterosexual Meat-Eaters club at Smith, and thank God for that!

Chocolate (and a few more flavors buried in there) ice cream for two from Herrell's in Northampton, Massachusetts.

Hot dogs and subways, they go togetha!

Lasagna, pita bread, baklava, and a chocolate-dipped strawberry, served up by our 4th-year Chinese teachers, Zhuang and Liu laoshi. Not the best photograph I've taken, but it does remind me how freaking great the Chinese program at Princeton was (or is, for all I know).

Provolone, onions, bacon... Sorry, Winberie's of Princeton, N.J., but this is probably the only good thing you've ever made. Man was it good though.

That's Adaboost, the algorithm which formed the engine of my senior thesis. At one point, I understood what it does, but now I don't think I could explain it if my life depended on it. I'm pretty sure that's a banana, though.

Yeah, I ate some biodegradable packaging material, you wanna fight about it? It tasted like corn, if anyone's wondering.

I ate so many "tenders and fries" at Frist Campus Center last year that it took nearly 20 minutes to choose the best photo. When there was a salmonella outbreak at Frist last spring they were interviewing students to investigate the source, I could have told them with confidence that it wasn't the chicken tenders. "I eat them almost every day, and just look at me!!!" Then I'd rip off my shirt to show them my pecs.

"Happy Valentine's Day!" says David L. This is when we were practicing for our juggling show, "The Good, the Bad, and the Juggly." David was also responsible for at least two photos of various candy bars with Bible verses taped to them that week.

Who says you have to get a hoagie when you go to Hoagie Haven?

Is it obvious from the increasing amount of comfort food in these photos that schoolwork is starting to get to me mid-Februrary? Anyway, what a genius marketing move for Arizona Tea. Put the word STRESS right on the bottle and put it in university convenience stores. I bought it almost unthinkingly, as if there were a question mark after the product name. "STRESS?"

Zorba's Brother never gets mentioned when people talk about restaurants in Princeton, but I'll be darned if it doesn't have beautiful French toast.

For years and years I avoided chicken salad because I thought it was synonymous with egg salad (which is gross), even though now that I actually write that out in words, it makes no sense. But anyway, I'm glad someone finally explained to me that it's just shredded chicken and mayonnaise and sometimes some leafy bits or raisins. After that I ordered it all the time. Mmm, pickles.

This is G.O.R.P. Good old raisins and peanuts. And M&Ms, but for some reason you're not supposed to include those in the acronym, even though without them G.O.R.P. wouldn't be very fun to eat. And who needs almonds, really? They're like Mitch Hedburg's sesame seeds. I could take them or leave them, to be honest.

Here I'm testing the color accent mode on my camera.

A Snickers "Marathon" Bar. I may not have run any marathons that month, but I certainly did spend a lot of time looking at white and yellow and orange code against a blue screen. If I'm not mistaken, this is the very bar whose carbohydrates boosted my biological clock over the edge of dawn and first led me to seriously consider becoming consistently nocturnal.

I'm only including these because of the Graph Theory homework underneath, thereby proving my nerd-cred. And because of the green.

On New Year's eve, Julia and I saw the ball drop in New York, from very far away. On the way back to the train station, we bought a packet of Pop Rocks, and this became the very first item on what would later become two very long lists of food.

This is a Grāpple (pronounced "grape-ell"). I don't know whether it was genetically modified with grape DNA or whether they just sort of injected some artificial flavoring into its flesh, but either way, it's the best apple I've ever had.

Sushi was consistently the most photogenic genre of food I ate last year. Didn't appreciate it enough at the time but Princeton had some good-ass sushi.

Chocolate-chip bacon cookies. Your reaction to this is either physical revulsion or desperate craving.

Here's a low point: Taquitos. What kind of food do you eat when you've played Super Mario Galaxy for 7 hours straight and suddenly realize it's 3am? I almost considered not adding this to the album because of how close it is to not being actual food.

Happy birthday Poh-Lin! This was a surprise party, and we were supposed to pop out from the shadows after Poh-Lin got back from dinner and Poh-Lin's roommate Allysa said the magic words which were "How was the restaurant?" Except what Allysa actually said was "Where did you all go to eat?" which nearly caused a suspense-fueled meltdown among the party attendees whispering frantically in the darkness. "Was that it? Was that the signal? Gahhh!"

Peanut butter and dark chocolate chunks. Naturally, the only way this could have been better is if I had sprinkled some bacon on there. January wasn't my healthiest month.

Melatonin. This isn't food (it's a sleep-regulator), but back then I still counted it as such. This is the first indicator of my slow biorhythmic lurch toward complete nocturnality in months to come.

I distinctly remember being laughed at by Simeng when I came back to the table with a self-assembled slice of cheesecake and tomatoes that night. "They laughed at Einstein!" was the spirit I tried to convey to her as I shovelled it down, pretending to like it, but in truth it was kind of gross. I think tomatoes are just too wet for cheesecake, and nobody likes diluted cheese. Or diluted cake, for that matter.

Charlotte airport, deep-fried pickle. Not much else I can say about that.

Mile-high cranberry juice, reading Peter Hessler's Oracle Bones. Cranberry juice is something I only seem to ask for when airborne (like Ellen Degeneres's bit about peanuts: "If someone handed you five peanuts in a tiny foil bag on the street, you'd probably say 'WTF? Get away from me; why the hell would I want five peanuts?', but when you're on an airplane suddenly it's like 'Five peanuts?! Oh God yes! Gimme gimme! OM NOM NOM NOM!'). Don't know why.

On Intercession break, at home in Kentucky. I ate these (Pillsbury cinnamon rolls) nearly every single day for approximately 15 years. I can't look at this one any more; it's going to make me tear up.

Another home shot. Thanks, Mommy! And I know the berries were great and all, but when I look at this, I can't help thinking what a classy pair of tongs we've got. Hot damn.

Next up, the month of February.