Three Friday Food Stories

I love to eat. I am, however, lazy, and although I can kind of cook, I don't often do it. Plus, it's a bummer cooking for one, as I usually get sick of leftovers after a few days. (I do love to bake though.) So I love it when there are affordable and different restaurant options around, not for a daily basis (that's what cereal is for!) but for every couple of weeks. Some excellent finds from today:

I went out to lunch with my "mentor," who is a third year PhD student, focusing on Southern Renaissance, who also happened to be super nice. The department has us meet up with a mentor so that we can ask advice, freak out to them (if need be), go to them if we're having problems, etc. It's a sweet idea. Anyway, we went to a Turkish restaurant called Turkuazcafe, and oh my gosh, it was delicious. I'd never had Turkish food before and also never sat on the floor, covered with lovely carpets and pillows, to eat, but we did both. I got the eggplant pide, which was sort of a pizza-like bread boat thing, topped with mashed eggplant, tomato (but not too much, which is good for me, a fairweather tomato friend) and lots of garlic and paprika. It came with a bowl of red lentil soup, 3 little salads (coleslaw-like, cucumbers and tomato, and couscous). And it was $6.50. I will absolutely be back.

This evening, two of the other girls (or should that be sister students?) in my program and I went to the Campus Candy store. For someone who does have an occasional (ok, ok, frequent) craving for tempting tooth decay, this place is dangerous. Any type of gummy candy you could think of--brain shapes, egg shapes (yolk and all), licorice pinwheels, worms, spiders, bears, snakes, and a lot more. Not to mention any combination of chocolate, pretzel, nut, and toffee that you could have wanted, PLUS retro-candy, like my favorites, Bit O Honey and Mary Jane's. Not cheap for the bags, but getting just a little bit is still a good sampler.

(no, this isn't a picture from Campus Candy--it's one I took a few years ago in Paris, because they were smurf gummys, called "Petit Schtroumpf," which I just loved. Embarrassingly, they were in the basement of the Louvre--I might have taken more pictures of the candy down there than art. Whoops.)

Lastly, we had the departmental picnic tonight. I cop-ed out and brought grapes, not having too much to bake with yet, and then I proceeded to bring the grapes home with me, because there was so. much. food. I just ate sides because there were so many good ones. If anyone has a good homemade hummus recipe, I'd like it--I keep wanting to try it, and there were some great varieties there tonight.

On that note, I'm going to eat a licorice pinwheel and hit the hay. Good night, my Petit Schtroumpfs.