All of this should do something to explain my unbridled delight when, on my birthday this past March, my darling friend Harry presented me with a modest brown paper bag that belied the smorgasbord of cheeses inside, which he’d picked out for me at Farmstead. They were all excellent (no, but really) and Ewephoria was even part of the selection, but it was this Roaring Forties Blue that captured my heart. I’d wear it in a locket if I could.

Because it’s made with cow’s milk, this blue cheese has a mild taste compared to more pungent sheep’s milk blues like Roquefort. That said, it still has a very full-bodied flavor: sweet, almost brown-buttery, honeyed. It’s creamy and moist, and its aftertaste doesn’t at all conjure images of musty, moldy caves and injected penicillin (images that, call me crazy, don’t quite work up my appetite). Instead, it is sumptuous and just a tad fruity, with a lingering richness that’s more cheesy than blue-y. Its mellowness makes it an ideal (if decadent) match for picnics in stolen shade now that we’re in the throes of lazy summer, but I also want to spread it on toast, spotlight it in a pasta dish, eat it with fruit, take it everywhere… Yeah. About that locket.

Finally it’s that time of year when Brown starts to actually feel collegiate again. The sun is out and so are we — masses of undergrads OD-ing on Vitamin D as we languish on our lawn of choice, impressing the tour groups with our proficient binge drinking and sociability. As we prepare for our picnics with blankets and PBR, we’ll need some treats that require minimal effort. Here’s a list of things that can be tossed into the nearest woven wicker basket with little to no prep work so that you, too, can partake in the vernal merriment.

Sandwiches: Popular legend has it that the Earl of Sandwich invented these ingenious parcels because he needed a lunch that was as hearty as it was portable. There are infinite permutations, so pick up whichever breads, spreads, and fillings suit your fancy: Black Forest ham with Brie and caramel mustard; a smattering of fancy cheeses, salumi, and a baguette; PB&J; turkey and cheddar; hummus, balsamic, and veggies; BLT. Get creative!

Produce: Need I say more? We all get visceral hankerings for the raw and vibrant this time of year. Dig into an avocado or a kiwi with a spoon or pick up some clementines, a picnictime staple; it’s easy to find them in bags of about 20. Eat berries alone or dip them into Greek yogurt and honey. Or, should you be so lucky as to obtain the perfect peach, bite into it and don’t look back. And then tell me where you got that thing of beauty.

Fanciful salads: Toss predispositions to Caesar and ranch to the wind, for this is neither the time nor place. Go classic by tossing sliced cherry tomatoes with bocconcini mozzarella, fresh basil, and a bit of balsamic + olive oil. Dress raw kale with lemon juice and olive oil, then mix in pine nuts and Parmesan. If you’re into hitting salty and sweet in one go, stir together watermelon, feta, and mint sprigs, then drizzle with olive oil and red wine vinegar.

Gazpacho: This chilled summer soup is as refreshing as you can imagine. Dice fresh veggies (tomatoes, cucumber, zucchini, red onion, celery, garlic) and toss half of this blend into a food processor (full disclosure: I once made this with a blender and my world did not skid to a halt). You can toss in some red wine vinegar, olive oil, salt, and Tabasco, but that’s about as complex as it needs to get. Once the vegetables are chopped but not pulverized, stir in the rest and chill. This is best when made ahead, but recruit people to help you chop and then bust out your finished product the next day.

Lemonade: Little-known fact: the word “lemonade” is actually just another word for “picnic,” kind of like Aphrodite is another way of saying Venus. There’s no reason not to go all out here. For plain fresh-squeezed lemonade, make a simple syrup with water and sugar, then add in lemon juice to taste. Fancify with any of the following: sprigs of rosemary; a wee bit of lavender; juice from smashed berries; spearmint tea; blood orange juice; vodka; gin. Go wild.

Sangria… does not equal Franzia. Pour a bottle of wine into a pitcher plus a heaping of whatever fruit you desire. Oranges, lemons, apples, limes, and peaches are all good bets, but there’s a lot of wiggle room here. The only other things you need are a bit of sweetener (sugar and honey both work) and ice to keep it chilly.

The next thing you have to decide, after buying groceries, is where to set up camp. Everybody has her favorite place to lie in the sun so I won’t dare prescribe yours, but if you’re getting a little antsy on your usual patch of grass, you can do something as simple as switching from Lincoln Field to the Quiet Green (different people, different sunlight, just a skip away) or you can take more drastic measures. There’s a quiet, bamboo-lined lawn behind Watson, or venture off the hill to Prospect or India Point Parks. You could also happen upon the verdant little pocket wonderland behind the MCM building (complete with a trellis!). I’ve heard fairies live there. No matter where you go, you’re in luck; you need little more than daylight and a nice wedge of Gouda to get your kicks. Just don’t forget the lemonade.

Not pictured: Instant Ramen, Annie's Easy Mac, string cheese, peanut butter.

Living with my parents, the food in the kitchen was routinely used and restocked, something I took for granted. This week, I opened my mini-fridge to peer at the Brie and chorizo, then closed it to gaze at the wheatberries and French lentils sitting prettily on my shelf. As silly as it sounds, it was only then that I had the epiphany that I can’t just let this food sit around and leisurely cook it when I please. Duh – it expires. I find myself now in an utter cooking frenzy, and hanging near my desk is a sticky note with a list of groceries I need to use and dishes I want to make:

• grilled cheese à la Stella! with Brie and dark chocolate on brioche
• curried wheatberries with feta and raisins
• braised lentils with winter greens or pancetta
• pumpkin spice cake with cinnamon crème fraîche
• LOTS OF OMELETS! (Brie/spinach/mushroom, chorizo/goat cheese/peppers…)
• Spanish tortilla – I need, I need, I need
• praline bacon chocolate chip cookies
• cornbread
• risotto

But I still desperately need ideas as to what do with with my chorizo! My mind is reeling with ideas but I want to really maximize the potential of this sublime stuff. Chorizo scrambled eggs, for example, sound yummy but feel like a cop-out. Paella came up as a possibility, but I’ve got zero background in that area and I don’t know how successfully I could pull off my maiden attempt with the very basic cookware I’ve got. Please, send me your ideas! I’ll blog about my creation and if I use your idea, worry not, you’ll get all due credit. Just help me out of this rut!

They’re even better when you swab them in sugar – grit and juice and grit and juice. mmmm strawberry nectar. Such a good snack that takes me back to sunny summer.

Photo: Robyn Lee

From one bite of beef, Lauren Vernet can determine the age, gender, feed, and breed of the cow from whence it came.

THIS IS A SKILL THAT I WANT TO LEARN.

It’s summer 2009 and you’re looking for a movie. Not just any movie, but a high-grossing, low-brow movie rife with at least one of the following: grandiose special effects, scantily clad chicks, drunken buffoonery, Sacha Baron Cohen. Perusing the spread, you nod in approval: Terminator 4. Transformers 2. The Hangover. And, wait, there’s that new one, Julie & Julia. Now tell me: what’s wrong with this picture?

And then there’s the runaway success of such TV shows as “Top Chef.” The cult following of The Food Network. Books like Eat Pray Love, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and former New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni’s new full-length opus, Born Round. The celebrity of food bloggers, and the subsequent rise of a new genre: the blogger cookbook. All around us, gourmet culture is proliferating at a hyperactive rate – and it’s doing so far beyond the boundaries of physical restaurants.

Compared to other creative endeavors like art and literature, food is becoming a hobby for the masses – an irony, if you consider that the aroma of sautéed shallots is an ephemeral gift, or that the utter velvetiness of a masterfully crafted risotto transcends the boundaries of the written word. But then “Top Chef” comes on, and damn it if you can’t hardly smell the bacon as it sizzles seductively under the camera. If food is in fact such an immediate and fleeting stimulus, why then does it keep sprouting up when we turn on the TV or check the New York Times bestseller list?

Well, there’s the small detail that food and the various instances in which it is prepared and consumed are a critical, regular part of each of our lives. To like books is to be intellectual; to like food is to be alive. And isn’t the purpose of any creative endeavor to penetrate beyond our innumerable differences to the fundamental, visceral qualities that unify us? More than being simply sustenance, it’s a real universality, giving us perspective on the threads that bind us together. Colleen McDonald ’12 calls it “one of our most basic drives. An appreciation for art… can be cultivated, but biologically, there’s some mechanism for the desire to eat” that makes the dining process more holistic and pleasurable than perfunctory. For Samuel Choi ’13, seeing these “palatable sensations [in the media] is a heart-pounding experience,” a vicarious means by which to tap into this central human commonality. Our voracious response to this recent barrage of food-centric media is thus little more than reflex, a deeply wired instinctual craving.

In constructing a rich culture around this most elemental of needs, we create for ourselves an art form that can be enjoyed thrice daily, a resourceful merger of routine and indulgence. If food is what binds us together, this plethora of new outlets fleshes it out, glorifies and secularizes it, lodging it into our common mentality so that it’s not an incidentally tasty necessity but instead an incidentally necessary luxury. As Choi puts it, “food… enraptures all the senses,” rendering it as manifold and complex as a classical artwork. Where it could be habituated, it is instead celebrated, transforming the vital into something deliberate, as much an artistic medium as it is a progressive channel or a whimsical foray. Michael Goodman ’13 describes this as an “apotheosis,” saying that “taking something that is essential to our survival and making it into something with power and meaning” is a noble and inherently human pursuit.

That we eat is nothing new. But the various media that have cropped up so quickly in recent years function as reminders of the meaning behind the age-old practice. Far from a one-dimensional habit, the dishes portrayed on The Food Network or in a bestselling book about food are comprised of an intensely complicated fabric of synesthesia and sentiment, of craftsmanship and cultivation, of boundless opportunity and creative license. Says McDonald, “it’s this combination of smell, sight, texture, taste… that connects so well with memory and sensation” to transform it into the deeply meaningful ritual that it is to us today: in our homes, on our TVs, and on our bookshelves. The allure lies in an awareness of our action – so next Friday, tackle those V-Dub chicken fingers with full force. Your humanity depends upon it.

Eggplant seems to be a consistently dooming ingredient when it comes to plating and presentation, but Boucherie did a damn good job exhibiting it to its best potential in this amuse of savory eggplant over cool slices of cucumber. The cucumber could’ve been a bit thinner, but it was overall a refreshing and vivacious counterpoint to the salty fattiness of the smooth, viscous eggplant. A whimsical twirl of red pepper on top added color as well as a lush, sweet crispness.

Pulled pork with pickled red cabbage and potatoes confit was heaven on earth, especially with Boucherie’s housemade barbecue sauce, a vinegary concoction redolent of North Carolina and outdoor barbecues. This was made all the better with an additional sprinkling from the bottles of spicy vinegar on each table; somehow, it made the unctuous shreds of smoky pork even moister, so that each bite was an uncontainable spree of delectable juiciness.

Boucherie is an awesome little neighborhood stop – a real gem in a quiet Riverbend neighborhood off Carrollton. Each dish is a tasteful re-imagining of Southern cuisine and flavors, ranging from the traditional (brisket with supreme garlicky parmesan fries) to the inventive (smoked scallops with watercress chimichurri and black pepper spaetzle) to the fresh, simple, and lovely (goat cheese and fig roullade with Holly Grove Market veggies). With its low prices (no large plates exceed $15), it’s an indulgence that you can afford to make pretty regularly (go back and try a new plate each time; I’ve already got my sights on the boudin balls for my next visit). Wait, is that a good or a bad thing?

When people find out I write a food blog, one of the first questions they ask is related to how often I write posts. I tell them that of course it depends on what’s going on in my life, but ideally, I write a post a day, maybe a post every three days.

It’s been five days since my last post. Funny how the nature of the blog world makes that feel like an eternity.

Just thought I’d drop in to say that in those last five days, I have packed up all my worldly possessions, gotten on a plane, and moved hundreds of miles away from my beloved NOLA. This morning, I’ll be moving into my dorm at Brown University. Already, I’ve met some of the most incredible people and had some of the most incredible times – and I’m only just starting. This is all to say I might not be posting as much as I have. I have a HUGE backlog of stuff to post about, so that’s sufficient motivation, but I figure better to acknowledge something in advance than just let it hang.

That right up there is a pistachio chocolate from La Maison du Chocolat. The inside is actually pistachio-y almond paste, which was a little strange but did help to calm and nuance the pistachio flavor. I just like it for the color – one talent LMDC doesn’t prioritize, but Sucré has in spades.

This, in a nutshell, is why you should not go grocery shopping when you’re hungry. It’s both uniquely inspiring and incredibly frustrating. Mom fell victim to Whole Foods’ prepared food section, so we had beets, sesame-crusted seared tuna, fancy fish sticks (which were gross), broccoli crunch (I hate to love it), succotash, and more. Then there was fresh crunchy almond butter, lemon hummus, green beans, grape-pear tomatoes, a peach, strawberries, kale, mushrooms, lemons, kiwis (one green, one gold), clementine Izze, and that bizarre tea. PLUS the chocolate and Fresca we already had on hand… and a bounty of movies. The only two I can distinguish from that pile (the one on top and the one with the green case) are both Audrey Tautou movies (“Le Battement d’Ailes du Papillon” and “Amélie”). Sometimes I hate myself for being so predictable.

Brillat-Savarin’s famous quote goes, “Tell me what you eat and I’ll tell you who you are.” Then there’s that new book that’s been getting so much buzz, What We Eat When We Eat Alone. I think this is a pretty fair representation of us. Chaotic, a bit messy and tousled, partially decadent and partially fresh and light, with just the right dosage of identity crisis. Don’t you think that deep down, we’re all a smorgasbord?