Spring Week has come and gone (goodbye, collection of fratty tanks…), and reality has begun to sink in; the end of the semester is fast approaching.  As much fun as I had over Spring Weekend, I was more than ready to start using my kitchen again to create some delicious (and healthy) homemade meals after a week of Sno-Cones, popcorn, tater tots and an (over?)abundance of Baja’s. After buying all of the fruits and vegetables Eastside Marketplace had to offer, I set aside an entire afternoon for cooking, during which I made enough food to feed me for the week.  Of these dishes, my favorite was the one that gave me an excuse to eat my favorite meal — breakfast — three times a day.

Brunch is a glorious thing: it both facilitates and deems socially acceptable the simultaneous consumption of eggs, bacon, french fries, pastries, sandwiches, coffee and alcohol. Brunch is one of those meals that people usually eat at restaurants, because they (like myself) are much too lazy to actually prepare such a cornucopia on a lazy Sunday.  However, after a week of barely even opening the refrigerator, I was feeling inspired, and thought I would put in the effort to make a deliciously brunch-tastic tart. [Read more →]

Gimme some of your tots!

Some of my fondest memories of Spring Week(end) consist of me and my friends eating all sorts of unmentionables at Jo’s post-concert and late night. Somehow, Butterfinger ice cream bars and Spicy Withs taste a million times better than normal when consumed in baggy Spring Weekend tanks. But now that most of my friends and I are off meal plan, it’s time to reevaluate our approach to Spring Week eats. It goes without saying that we’re all going to want our fair share of mozzarella sticks, cookies, and plates of onion rings, but how can we when flex points are a far-away dream?

My recommendation for you: do your Spring Week food shopping now when you have the time and energy to leave your apartment/dorm. Believe me, it’s better to walk to Eastside Marketplace this weekend before you have all sorts of social engagements than to find yourself with serious hunger pangs come Saturday afternoon. Here is my suggested grocery list for the upcoming week based on three years of personal experience. [Read more →]

After a lovely week of sunshine, fried fish, and endless mudslides (the yummy kind, not the scary kind), we all find ourselves back on College Hill greeted by midterms and 40-degree temperatures. As the end of the semester fast approaches (#SeniorSpring #whatclasses), students who are either on or off meal plan are probably finding themselves in similar rock-and-a-hard-place situations. For those reliant on the Sharpe Refectory for nutrition and Jo’s for naughty food unmentionables, that special time of the semester when meal credits are starting to dwindle and flex points are virtually nonexistent has now arrived. For those of us off meal plan, the funds that were allocated for grocery shopping, whether from one’s own bank account or from the Rentals’, are somehow frighteningly tiny. But, luckily for myself and for starving college students everywhere (#firstworldproblems), there are ways to make the dollar stretch without eating from a fast food value menu all of the time. [Read more →]

Chocolate Bailey's Cheesecake? Yes, please!

This Saturday, March 17, is a momentous occasion in Ireland and America alike (though in few other places): the day we celebrate the Christianization of Ireland by Saint Patrick with copious amounts of green-dyed beer. Huzzah!

Lately, I’ve really wanted to make a cheesecake. Cheesecake is one of those desserts that seems really difficult to make, but is actually quite easy once you have a foundational recipe. But remember, not all cheesecakes are created equal. It seemed only fitting that this week I should test out my brand spankin’ new spring-form cake pans with a cheesecake. And due to the 100-year anniversary of Oreos, I wanted to incorporate the iconic cookie into my creation. To make this cheesecake even better, I threw in some cocoa powder (because chocolate only serves to make things better), made a dark chocolate ganache to pour on top, and added a whole lot of Bailey’s — after all, it is Saint Patrick’s Day! [Read more →]

Let me set up a completely not true at all but just go with it hypothetical situation: You’re an 18-23 year-old college student living in a dorm or an apartment close to a college campus. You are off meal plan, but many of your friends still eat dining hall food regularly. You enjoy food. You enjoy cooking. Sometimes, you don’t feel like cooking intricate and in-depth recipes for every meal because you’re usually cooking for one. You don’t want to buy food every day, but also don’t want to subsist on instant oatmeal and Easy Mac. What to do? Luckily for you this completely anonymous and hypothetical person with no connection to you at all, one woman has your back, through thick and thin, through cocktails and more cocktails: Sandra Lee.

Ms. Lee has made a career drinking vodka on television helping you make “Semi-Homemade Cooking” and “Money Saving Meals” on the Food Network by using a 70/30 attitude when it comes to cooking; 70% ready-made products and 30% fresh ingredients. In other words, you’ll learn how to trick others into thinking you slaved over a hot stove for hours!

Now, in the interest of full disclosure, I must admit that I haven’t really ever taken too much an interest in Sandra Lee, nor have I watched her show for more than a few minutes. Despite the fact that I have never made one of her Frankenstein concoctions before, I find her methodology to cooking very college-friendly. There are a ton of things you can do to improve upon ready-to-make foods. The Internet is swarming with “recipes,” or you can just figure stuff out with food you already have. So, in honor of this approach to gastronomy in college sans meal plan, I present you with some great ideas for cheating your way to homemade. [Read more →]

Fun Fact: Did you know that Ja Rule is a leaper? For anyone who doesn’t know what that means, a “leaper” (not “leper”) is someone born on Leap Day, or February 29. This is an extra cool birthday for anyone looking for the fountain of youth because you can technically exploit your age by saying you’re a quarter of however many years old you actually are. So, happy ninth birthday, Ja Rule!

As I recently learned from a particularly hilarious episode of 30 Rock, Leap Day is a day of endless possibilities when Leap Day William emerges from the Mariana Trench to trade children’s tears for candy. That sounds legitimate, right? Regardless, it’s made clear that Leap Day gives us the opportunity to do whatever we want just for the heck of it because it “doesn’t count” — after all, it’s a magical day that isn’t real. I’m not one to do things completely out of character, a situation Liz Lemon found herself caught in, but, as a foodie, I like to believe that Leap Day can be a day to eat whatever and whenever you want without consequences. In other words, Leap Day William tells me that I could eat anything in the world without running the risk of permanent arterial damage or becoming overwhelmingly full. Oh, what a joyous day that would be! [Read more →]

Shrimp, meet Tabasco.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that folks on practically every continent have been celebrating Carnival for the past two weeks in preparation for Lent. The culmination of these two weeks of vice and frivolity is known here in the States as Mardi Gras, or Fat Tuesday.

New Orleans is an amazing city full of life and culture, and no other place celebrates Mardi Gras like the Big Easy. Apart from the tales of nudity and reckless drinking in hopes of building one’s bead collection, New Orleans is famous for great food, great people, and a great atmosphere. Much to my dismay, I have yet to make it to New Orleans; despite this, I have tried my share of NOLA cuisine from Creole to Cajun, beignets to pralines, and beyond. Louisiana is one of those places that has about a million “original” recipes that could probably instigate some serious problems with the locals if done incorrectly. One of my favorite dishes is Creole jambalaya.  [Read more →]

One of the liberties of being off meal plan that I (perhaps too often) indulge in is the ability to eat off campus. And, though Thayer does offer Brunonia a surprisingly eclectic and delicious range of restaurant choices (late-night or otherwise), it can get tiresome eating the same thing over and over again. Many visitors to Providence don’t realize the sheer number of superb restaurants in the area and are utterly surprised by the choices available. This weekend, a good friend from home is staying with me while on the pursuit of being a successful person (a.k.a. Brown Med School interview), and I want to take this time to both selfishly indulge in many of the restaurants within a walkable radius and show off Providence to someone who has never experienced her in all her glory.

Granted, there will probably be at least one meal eaten on Thayer (Meeting Street cookies? Late night Baja’s? Nice Slice for someone who doesn’t have much experience with New York style thin-crust pizza?), but I’m on a mission to talk-up Providence and its coolness factor. (I’ll downplay the rain a bit. And the masturbators.) So, where does one take a guest who has yet to experience the 401 and is on a student budget?  My plan is to start by interrogating him before each meal to figure out what kind of food he wants. Indian? Mediterranean? Italian? Asian fusion? [Read more →]

Ah, Saint Valentine, thank you for all you have given us. What would we do without red-foil-wrapped Hershey’s Kisses and poorly written Hallmark cards? Okay okay, I’m not one to be cynical about love and romance, but sometimes it’s hard not to feel a little left out when Starbucks cups and movie night advertisements in the SciLi continuously remind me that I’m (insert cough and awkward eye-contact deflection here) single.

Fortunately for me (and for all of us in college), I cannot complain about the lack of love in my life when my friends and the people I adore most in the world constantly surround me (seriously, I feel like I’m participating in a year-long sleepover with my roommates and I could not be happier). So, to show my roommates how much I love them and how much they mean to me (#sappy), I decided to celebrate Valentine’s Day with a baked treat: red velvet cake. [Read more →]

By now, we’ve all realized that, at Brown, experimenting to find one’s true self is not only practiced, but also widely encouraged. From experiencing other academic fields to making new friends to trying new activities (and, um, extra-curricular activities), experimentation has long been central to the Brown dogma. So, why stop there? Now it’s time to get freaky in the kitchen!

I’m going to let you in a little secret: playing with recipes and doing what I call “throwing a whole bunch of stuff together and seeing if it tastes good” is one of the most rewarding and therapeutic activities you can do. That, and it is the ultimate time-waster — just sayin’. I’d always been under the impression that while cooking rewards experimentation, baking punishes it. However, after being inspired by some of my favorite food bloggers out there, I decided to go out on a limb and try and create new recipes (for both “real” food and sweets) just for the sake of experimentation. I was met with some major successes and even more epic fails, but hey, it beats that 200 pages of reading I was supposed to do for section today (#SeniorSpring)! [Read more →]