Subject: FOOD

[awhyzip]

Tonight I got to have dinner with Barak and Amy -- how lovely. The plan was originally just to sautee up some mushrooms, because I had been saying to Amy that I like to make mushrooms with paprika and she was curious to taste how that would come out. What we actually ended up making was a bit more.
When Barak and I swung by the supermarket to get mushrooms, he decided that a Carvel birthday ice-cream cake was in order. Who says you need a birthday to get one?
In Amy's room we cooked the mushrooms with paprika, roasted garlic powder, and apple. That's better than it sounds like it might be, I promise. Then we combined them with spinach and couscous for a full dinner. Yum!
For dessert we broke into a rousing, spontaneous chorus of "happy birthday, dear Someone" and ate the cake.
You should know that I had been looking forward to this plan since about the second week of school this semester. Part of the fun was getting to say "We have to get together and make mushrooms," or having my friends asking me about my "'shroom plans," and pretending that it could sound like we were up to something illicit -- but really it was wholesome! Ha ha ha! Mis- interpretability is funny...
I so enjoy cooking and eating food! I would hazard that cooking is more fun than drugs. And of course, in this case there's the further pleasure of an evening with friends.

On the subject of food, the lack of cooking facilities was the thing I dreaded about returning to Brandeis while I was in Australia. I haven't really got the space in my single to set up a pseudo-kitchen, and of course I have to be on a mealplan. Every on-campus resident is required to buy a full mealplan unless they live in one of the three quads with full kitchens. Sadly, my quad is not one of those, so I have been eating Aramark food again.
What I have learned is: it really takes so little time to loose all desire to eat. I just consume meals now out of schedule or sometimes hunger.
It's not such a bad state of affairs, really. I've been chatting it up daily with my foodservice friends in the Boulevard, although I have yet to coalesce a reliable group to eat with for most of the meals. I miss the camaraderie of the B&G kitchens.

An exciting new development is the "Culinary Arts club" which apparently was formed last year. This brilliant piece of brilliance involves getting the university to purchase nice ingredients and supply materials so that the members can cook once a week in the dining hall kitchens. Brilliant! And they even bring in chefs every so often to teach new recipes. I have signed up and look forward to the first meeting I'll get to go to.