• Cool Brew coffee concentrate (buy milk from the library café)
• 50/50 blend Cinnamon Toast Crunch and Cracklin’ Oat Bran
• Pillsbury sugar cookie dough
• Cabot white cheddar cheese
• Sour Patch Berries
• FaveReds Starbursts

Block all fun Internet websites for 8 hours. Realize after you’ve made the irreversible blockage that you forgot to include WordPress on the blacklist. Update your food blog when you’re taking a break from philosophizing about parental and filial obligations. Focusfocusfocus until Loui’s opens at 5am. Go order a 3-3-3 (three pancakes, three sausage links, three eggs).

Be calm, you intrepid scholar, you. Sleep will come soon enough.

Still, it’s the simple joys that are often the greatest, and the same goes here. My favorite new discovery is the incredible, edible egg. Specifically, the fried egg, in all its glory. I’ve lived my life believing I scorned it. Sunny side up, over-easy, over-hard, whatever; I just knew to avoid it at brunch. Yolks that somehow manage to be both runny and chalky, whites that are plasticine and flavorless… who needs it?

I needed only a few tweaks to have a total 180. I’d been missing out on the secret all along. The way I’ve started frying eggs makes the best of both components, resulting in a crispy, crackly egg white that’s surprisingly redolent of latkes and a velvety egg yolk free of all former chalkiness. Even better, it’s embarrassingly easy to prepare. Like, these eggs take me less time, from when I start cooking to when I take my last bite, than it takes to eat a bowl of cereal.

1. Generously coat the bottom of a frying pan with extra virgin olive oil. (You want ~1/8 cup for 2 eggs, so adjust the ratio accordingly; really, just a nice, very shallow pool is what we’re going for.)
2. Heat the pan on high for a few minutes. You’ll know it’s hot enough when a flick of water into the pan makes crackling noises.
3. Pour your eggs into the oil (it’s easiest if you crack them all into a ramekin or bowl beforehand and pour them in simultaneously). Since you’ve been good and patient while the pan has heated, it should be hot enough that the white starts to bubble almost immediately.
4. Sprinkle with salt and pepper; drizzle over lemon juice or white truffle oil or any extra flavor your heart desires.
5. Once the white has bubbled up and made itself pretty unsightly (the yolk, on the other hand, will still be near-raw), cover the pan completely. This will corral all the heat so that the yolk finishes cooking in the steam. Leave the cover on for one minute if you like your egg on the runny side and two minutes if you prefer it more well-done.

That is it. Seriously. It is great on its own, with a hearty helping of sautéed shiitakes, on a sandwich, whatever. Try it for yourself and spread the love!

This is just a fun concept. It has nothing to do with food and everything to do with how this blog will come in handy through the rest of this super-busy semester (10 papers left to write between now and summer). Basically, the professor’s idea is that procrastination is normal and inevitable, but if we procrastinate doing otherwise meaningful things that may normally get pushed to the bottom of our to-do lists–calling a family member to catch up, exercising, reading for pleasure, writing a food blog–then it’s actually great, one way of leading richer, more dynamic lives.

Pierre Hermé's Ispahan croissant: a 2€ joy filled with rose, lychee, and raspberry. It tastes like angels.

I’m giving this another go, now that I’m one year wiser. A brief recap of the events that transpired in the last 52 weeks or so: I was a crazy person and took three summer jobs, rendering me a SAT teacher cum apprentice cheesemonger cum dessert flinger. I earned a lot of money doing this. I did a lot of traveling, within the U.S. (New York, two of its suburbs!, Boston, Vermont, Chicago) and outside it (Paris, Rome, Barcelona, London, Copenhagen). I took a semester of classes in Paris at the University of Paris VIII: Vincennes Saint-Denis (also known as the school that was founded by Foucault in the 1960s and doesn’t seem to have restocked its soap or toilet paper since then). I bought 20€ of chocolate that promptly fell into the Seine. I was stricken by the overwrought poeticism of this event. I reevaluated my educational philosophy and am taking everything pass/fail. I got accepted to lead BOLT, aka Brown Outdoor Leadership Training; as a participant it changed my life, and as a leader I think it will be exponentially better. I’m loving it so far.

I’m also back on my gig as a threefold food columnist; you can find me on the interwebs at BlogDailyHerald or on Thursdays in print by way of Post- magazine (in the BDH). Most recently, we came out with a Best of Providence issue, which is kickass from cover to cover. My best friend Gopika wrote a love letter to Providence from her outpost in Cambridge, England (page 3). Anita wrote her hilarious and all too true memoir of being a cyclist on campus (page 6-7). Clay, Anita, and Ben conspired to add to my Providence bucket list with all the cool new bars and hipster coffee shops (page 10-11). And my fellow food columnist Jane and I wrote a hilarious, witty, knowledgeable Oscars-style homage to Providence’s gastronomic superlatives (page 12-13). Shameless promotion of publication, others, and self. Check it out.

All for now; it’s back to beating my head against the wall that is Aristotle’s nature/art analogy (I fondly call it Aristothell). I swear I’ll be back soon with the legend of Noma, though.

The weather’s in the 80s. The park is absolutely flooded with sunbathers. When I went to Hogs for the Cause last Saturday on my first day home for spring break, I got a sandals tan after being outside for just a couple of hours. (And who knows, if I keep talking up the springtime, maybe it’ll become so enraptured with me that it follows me back to New England…)

This can mean only one thing: IT’S TIME TO GO GET SNOWBALLS. The line is already permanently out the door over at Hansen’s, but that shouldn’t stop you. Go get you one (or seven); by the time you’ve made it to the front of that line, you deserve it! I like to get several tiny cups, each with a different flavor, so I can get everything I want all in one go. Satsuma, nectar cream, vanilla bean, and raspberry are all safe bets. Coffee + condensed milk is a revelation.

Dirty chai made with Intelligentsia's Black Cat espresso: one thing I've reviewed recently. Mmm, deeelish. (Click the picture for more!)

I know I’ve abandoned ship with the whole “personal blogging” thing, but I actually started Passionfruit Butter more as a portfolio than a blog, so I’ve decided it would be fitting for me to come here and check in with all of y’all about my whereabouts.

Since my last post, I have become a threefold food columnist. So… THAT’S where I’ve been. Writing a shitload about food, only somewhere else. I would really, really love it if you scampered on over and checked out what I’ve been doing!

Amuse-Bouche is my first real food criticky outlet. It’s a weekly restaurant review of the digs around College Hill, by way of the Blog Daily Herald. So far, I’ve reviewed La Laiterie, Sakura, Sawaddee, Parkside Rotisserie, and The Edge. Coming up in the next couple of weeks will be Harry’s and, methinks, New Rivers. Stay tuned.

Chow Down Brown, also on Blog Daily Herald, is about college kids + food: the funny things we eat and drink in cafeterias, in our dorm rooms, in the wee hours of the morning, etc. It’s a lot of fun.

Ravenous Rapture is the title that’s been slapped on my articles for Post- magazine, where I’ve been writing since the beginning of freshman year. Same old stuff; new official, biweekly column. Last time it was about portable delectable condiments; this week it’ll be about chocolate.

On the first day of French classes at summer school in Nice, my teacher told us, in no uncertain terms, that the only things French people talk about are food and sex. Exhibit A:

Jenna and I found this bakery while wandering through Paris. According to my stepdad, “the guy’s just kneading.” This is a stunning exemplar of efficiency and multi-tasking.

Now I’m trying to write a 10- to 15-page paper for my food anthro class about that. But where do I even start? Better question: where do I stop? The two are so inextricably connected that it’s kind of dizzying for me to attempt to outline an academic essay. There’s so much to say about everything from gendered foods to whipped cream bikinis. That said, I’m attempting to delving into the role language plays. Where do we get phrases like food porn? Orgasmic cheesecake? Sexual appetite?

There is very little conclusive evidence for the libidinal effects of many aphrodisiacs. The New York Times decided chocolate doesn’t have a marked effect on actual desire, and it’s even dubious that oysters, the most infamous aphrodisiac at all, have real physiological effects. If you don’t believe the case that aphrodisiacs are more decided by culture and folklore, consider that bull penises are eaten in China to increase sexual desire and potency. Gentlemen: wanna give that a shot with your ladies next Valentine’s Day and report back to me?

Now imagine what a $5 footlong will do to your mind.

Fun fact: in Brazil, the Portuguese word “comer” — meaning “to eat” — has the vulgar added meaning of “to fuck.” Women are “comidas,” or “foods.” So literally, the guys devour the chicks. That brings a whole new meaning to dinner dates.

Other fun fact: the author of The Sex Life of Food is named Bunny Crumpacker. Really and truly. Not only is that horribly vicious on the part of her parents, but it’s like her career as a food (and sex) writer was handed to her as soon as they put her name on the birth certificate. This is supporting evidence for self-fulfilling prophecies, my friends.

Still, I’ve been pondering lately on the oddities of college eating. Deny it all you like; eating here is worlds different than eating at home. It’s as though we harken back to that wish we all harbored as children to live alone in a city with no grown-ups, where we could eat cotton candy for breakfast and use ice cream as toothpaste. No, it’s not that extreme, but faced with independence, we quickly discover our idiosyncratic identities as diners.

So, I’m launching an experiment of keeping my own food log. The rules aren’t so strict and the goal isn’t so defined; quite simply, I think there’s a lot to be learned by having your day’s food in front of you. I won’t be broadcasting it everyday, but to make it official, I’m putting the inaugural entry online. Given that this is a point of fascination, I’d love to hear what y’all are putting in your bellies on any given day. Holla in the comments section!

No, I did not eat this today; I just found this in my photo backlog and it made me wistful. You're gazing at a thyme-y mushroom duxelle topped with ribbons of savory, sexy, spicy lardo, all on top of sliced toasted baguette. Pretty sure they took this off the menu. Pretty sure that makes me want to self-amputate.

“I’ve been awake for two hours so it’s about time for me to eat” (breakfast, around noon): A bowl of vanilla Greek yogurt with a pack of cocoa-roasted almonds stirred in.

“Never again will I put off lunch until after a 1.5 hour lecture” (lunch, around 4:30pm): Ciabatta roll with salami, arugula, basil, tomatoes, and chèvre. My invention. It’s kickass. Also:  one nipped slice of buffalo mozzarella and a cup of warm Masala chai.

“Screw it, you only live once” (snack, around 5:15pm): Half a slice of yellow cake with buttercream frosting and raspberry glaze. Also, some bites of communal cookies.

“I’m not even close to being hungry but I have to eat before the dining hall closes” (dinner, 7:00pm): A pathetic pile of mixed greens with shredded carrots, olive oil, and raspberry vinegar.

“Awesome, it is now 10:00 and I am ravenous” (real dinner, 10:00pm): One pathetic piece of grilled chicken, eaten from the take-out box as I walked home from class.

There were also a couple of seed crackers, three or four dark chocolate Quaddratini (bite-sized Italian wafer cookies, oh my), and some barbarian fingerfuls of crunchy soy nut butter at various points of late night.

Moral of the story? Eat more vegetables; eat at reasonable hours!