Week 1: Welcome to "Food for Thought"!

There are lots of food I like. I love Italian food and like almost anything, except grilled fish. But if I were to choose one thing that stands out in my mind, I would pick mint chocholate chip ice cream! Of course, mint chocolate chip ice cream is many people's favorite and is very common, but there is a special reason for my choice. I lived in California for the past five years and I love the beaches there. I went to beaches very frequently for all the occasions such as birthday, New Year's Day, 4th of July, and just simple hangouts with friends. But there's one thing that I must have when I go to beaches, and that is, as you might already know, mint chocolate chip ice cream on waffle cones! I love walking down the beach barefoot with the ice cream cone in my hand. I could never forget the feeling of eating refreshing mint chocoloate chip ice cream on a waffle cone, feeling the cold ocean water and the cool breeze. I have done it every time I went to beaches, but it never felt redundant. It is always, always so refreshing.

Lillie Catlin

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My favorite food is corn and cheese chowder, from a Moosewood cookbook. I think the spine of the book is broken where this recipe is. This soup is the perfect combination of corn, potatoes, spices, milk and cheese. It's best when you don't just use monterey jack, but you substitute part of it with spicy jack. It gives it the right amount of spicy, where it keeps your mouth warm but you don't need to interrupt your eating to get a drink of cold milk.

This soup reminds me of the fall and winter, and more specifically christmas eve. Christmas eve is my favorite holiday because of the tradition we have with this soup and having family friends over. At my Quaker meeting we have a christmas eve service, and afterwards, our (F)riends come over for soup and fellowship. My mom spends all day making three soups, in HUGE pots. Two are subject to change every year, but we always have corn and cheese chowder, and its always gone first. All of the adults stand in the cramped kitchen, drinking, talking loudly, and eating soup. All of the kids watch the same christmas special of Jackie Chan adventures that we have for 10 years, and eat soup. I know this isn't a crazy tradition or creative or cool like Bryn Mawr's, but its the strongest one my family has, and I absolutely love it. And I LOVE corn and cheese chowder.

Hi, My name is Keshia, I live in Boston,MA and I love food! From Sushi to Anchovies and Red Cabbage I love to try all kinds of foods. Its interesting to me because food is such a large part of many peoples cultures...when you get to try a small taste of their  food is like getting a better understanding of a culture.

With that said I must share one of my favorite dishes, which is something that I always crave after I have been away from home for a long time. I love to eat leftover boiled sweet plantains with beef stew and  kale. I like to eat it when  its been cooked  a day before because  I think it tastes better. My mom gave this to me to eat when I got back from studying abroad and I just remember how good it tasted and how happy I was to be eating it and how I wanted it to last longer with my senses..like I wanted that comfort feeling to last for a while longer.

Hello all!

Wow this blog makes me hungry.

I am not a picky eater, and I love eating. I'm the kind of person to try all the random vegan sides in the dining halls, try the oddly-colored vegetables (like purple or orange cauliflower or black tomatoes), pile on some neon-yellow, exotic-looking Asian noodles, and still reserve a corner of my plate for a tuna sandwich. Yum.

But, like everyone, I do have my basics/staples. More specifically, I believe that everyone has a preferred starch (potatoes, noodles, rice, bread, etc). Toast seems to be the happiest medium (if that makes sense) for me. It is the best vessel for carrying my two most comforting, familiar tastes (though they're different): tea with milk and sugar, and olive oil. I eat these things separately. Buttered toast dipped in sugary, milky tea is probably the most comforting food I can think of. It's like it's partly digested for you, but it's still crispy and sugary and warm when you bite into it. Mmmmm. It reminds me of tea time with my mom on weekends and dessert on Christmas when I was young. Eating toast (or just bread) with olive oil really is all about the olive oil. I inherited a love for its peppery, cool, distinct taste from my father, who was 100% Italian. Oh, my mom is 1/2 English (hence the tea time?). It's not all about the condiments, though: I really love a freshly baked loaf of bread.

Have to say-- as much as I love toast, you all make a convincing case for your favorite foods!

See you tomorrow, -Emily

PS-- sorry you're missing home and the home food, pxie! I heard you can rent out a kitchen at bryn mawr... so if you're ever so inclined to make your home food yourself, you could.... and possibly share it with others (me).... you know where to find me. But seriously, sorry you're missing home.

Hey, I'm Rachel and I love a good bacon cheeseburger. I'm really not picky about toppings or the level of grease involved, it's all just about that first meaty bite where pure bliss overwhelms all other senses.

The first time I realized my fondness was at a great Five Guys (a fantastic burger chain) right by my school. It's pretty crucial for me to set the scene: I had a class that ran past my only time for lunch so I spent the rest of the day listening to my stomach growl its empty walls. Luckily, my afternoon classes ended early that semester, and I was free starting at 2 pm. I drove to school and had my car waiting for me and I drove searching for a quick fix to my hunger. And there it was: a Five Guys burger joint, beckoning me in the distance. It must have been fate, but in my hunger-induced frenzy I ordered the nastiest thing (at the time) on the menu. That first bite of that bacon cheeseburger, with jalapenos, fried onions, mushrooms, BBQ sauce, tomatos, it was love.

So for me, all bacon cheeseburgers are reminiscent of that initial experience of leaving a long day of school and just indulging in something I know will one day clog up all my arteries.

In my family, popcorn is not just a traditional snack to go along with Friday night movies.  It accompanies Yatzee games on lazy summer evenings, is choked while gasping at a shocking twist in a NCIS episode, and tucks itself into homework folders and history textbooks.  It is vacuumed up by my Australian Shepherd, Cody, and even munched on by my cats Hobbes and Picklette.  Popcorn has laced itself into so many of my fond memories, it is hard not to love it.  Not just any popcorn will do, however.  The only popcorn that is truly satisfactory is a large bowl of stovetop popcorn.  Rather than just throwing a bag into a microwave, I have to wait patiently next to the stove, listening for the tiny *ping* sound that signals the first kernel flowering open.  After a few more scattered *pings*, a symphony of popping erupts.  Some muscle power then becomes involved, and I stir the kettle until the popcorn quiets down.  Finally, I get to pour the warm popcorn into a smooth silver bowl and lightly salt it.  I then get to share a bowl of popcorn made with love rather than one made by a microwave =)

I love Japanese food. I know it's a type of food, not a particular dish, but there is no way I'd be able to narrow it down -- I just love it all! Udon, Katzu, Tempura, Mochi, Edamame, and SUSHI; it's all just amazing. I love the mix of flavors and textures you can find in a single dish. Many people would assume that since I’m half-Japanese, I eat it all the time at home. However, in reality, my family rarely eats it during the year – my dad hates it (I don’t understand how he can!). Summer is the only time I get to eat all the Japanese food I want.  I think this is where my love of Japanese food began: summers spent in Virginia with my grandma. Many of my memories include her making sticky onigiri, or frying gyoza with friends on the stove .

SO, while I might miss home and home-cooked meals, one thing I'm looking forward to is finding a great Japanese place nearby (: (or learning how to make some of my own sushi!)

Hello everyone! Yesterday in class I said that my favorite food was definitely salad, hence the "Rabbit" title. It's true, if I could chow down on a salad every meal of every day, I would be one happy camper. I would consider this to be my favorite everyday food. BUT, after some careful thought I remembered a food story that I'd rather share.

Last November I was in London, visiting my older sister who was studying abroad. With my miserable luck, I was of ended up visiting on the coldest and rainiest week  that month. In stead of following our normal pattern of grabbing a measly breakfast to go, we decided to brave the cold and eat in a restaurant for breakfast. We found a little breakfast stop, sat down, and ordered our food. Out came a plate of poached eggs on toast and sizzling baked beans. It doesn't sound like much, but I know for a fact that this breakfast made the rest of my day better! It stopped raining, the clouds parted with sunshine, and I enjoyed a wonderful day touring the beautiful city, feeling great!

Just goes to show the true power of a healthy and delicious breakfast!

I don't come across marzipan often, and even then it's almost always doled out in disappointingly tiny morsels-- hidden inside a fancy piece of chocolate or layered super-thin over the top of a cake. These little, impure tastes keep me going, but I live in wait for pure marzipan, alone, sans chocolate, maybe not even molded and dyed into tiny fruit shapes. It's an addiction I share with my dad, and I figure I can blame him for it, since he had it first. He loves to explain it to people who don't know what it is (and to people who do)-- how you mix a pound of sugar into a pound of almond paste, with just a little water in there to stick things together-- and to reminisce about the day he got to eat all the little marzipan fruits he wanted. I've heard about it so much, and for so long, that I can't remember the first time I ate marzipan. It's always been so firmly established in my head that marzipan was the food of choice under any circumstance that, when I finally actually tasted it, not much changed.

 My favorite food story happened in Japan.  My very first experience with Thai food, with no consideration for my bland midwestern palate from the chef, was painful.  I had a delicious cucumber salad, with carrots cut into flower petals around the outside and luscious vegetation within!  Alas!  About five bites in my taste buds imploded, and five bites more had me weeping, my nose running, attracting stares... it was all together an epiphany.  I went home, and began working for a Thai restaurant.  I trained to develop my pain tolerance abilities or, possibly, just destroyed so many taste buds the chili could no longer affect me.  Whatever I managed to accomplish, Thai food is now (to me) by far the most awesome food on the planet.  Green curry... green curry.... pad thai... kao pad... 

...green curry.

I think anyone who loves Chinese food must have had some chow mein at some point. The way "chow mein" is spelled actually came from the Taishan dialect. Even though the name does look different from the way I learned it, I am simply happy that at least it sounds the same as the standard Madarin dialect that I understand. In Taishan dialect, "chow" stands for stir-fryed, and "mein" for noodles. But today I am not going to talk about the noodle part. In fact, I am replacing the word "noodle" with "potatoes." Yes, chow potatoes.

My mom taught me how to make chow potatoes when I was in the third grade. I loved chow potatoes so much that after I learned how to make it, I wrote at least two essays about it for my literature class. Now as I enter college, I cannot help but amazed at the fact that I am writing my first short essay about it again.

I like chow potatoes not only because it tastes good, but also because it takes a lot of learning during the cooking process. Chinese cuisines consider color, smell and taste the three most important elements in cooking. Most importantly, the color. Potatoes have to be cut quickly or else the earlier cut ones would have gone brown by the time one finishes cutting all of them up. Cutting potatoes into same sized strips is no easy task. One has to be careful using a knife, cut the slices into the same thickness, and use the right amount of force so that the knife does not get stuck in the potato nor crush the potato too quickly that the sound it makes scares people. Then you cook them, with pepper and or meat. I prefer overcooked fries-sized potatoes, but some people prefer slim and crisp ones.

Now that I am on a diet, I cannot have any more potatoes, nor can I buy some and cook it in college. But I do miss making the dish, and serving it to my family. Lastly, I welcome anyone who is willing to come over to my house in Beijing sometime and try a mouth full. Trust me, it is worth the trip!

Chloe

Throughout most of middle school and high school my three best friends have remained the same. It has always been Ellie, Liz, Lily, and me. As our junior and senior years wore on, the trials and tribulations of teenage life pulled us apart, but gathering arounda sizzling hot dish of seven layer mexican dip has never failed to cheer us up. Armed with Tostitos scoop tortilla chips, we each choose a corner of the dish that we stake out as our territory. Only then may we delve into consuming the heavenly mix of melted cheese, cool salsa, and smooth refried beans. In between bites, we tell stories and crack jokes. The laughter causes us all to edge dangerously close to spitting out the mouthfuls of food because of our failure to control the giggles.

The preparation necessary for a mexican dip night has been edited down to an exact science. One girl brings seven layer and chips. Another makes sure our itunes playlist is ready and someone provides Snapple Ice Tea, the perfect cold drink to accompany the spicy entre. The seven layer is placed in the microwave for 3 minutes and 30 seconds and then placed on a plate to protect our fingers from the hot plastic container. We bring the delicacy upstairs upstairs and place it in the center of Lily's flower shaped rug. The positions we all take on the floor, as we circle around the food, always provokes a comparison to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants. In truth, that is what we are: a sisterhood, but our pants have transformed into seven layer mexican dip.

Hi,

My name is Rebecca Militello and I am also in Professor Brodfuehrer's seminar. Choosing a favorite food is somewhat difficult because I am always changing my mind about what my favorite food actually is. Though, at the moment I would have to say that my favorite food would be mangoes. Good mangoes are hard to find, especially living in upstate New York, but the good ones are absolutely delicious...especially when they are used to make refreshing mango smoothies on hot summer days!