Death by Veggie Burger

Should you be a long time reader of Curly Top and be blessed with a particularly excellent memory, you might remember back to my May post chronicling my short visit here to visit RISD. I made a rather dangerous assumption that the food here was excellent and quite Emily friendly.

Fast forward through seven weeks of actual day in and day out cafeteria. Fast forward through the 84 gardenburgers that have sufficed as my one and only protein source. Now put the video of my life on pause and reflect. Textured soy protein + salt + salt + salt is fun for a while, but by the time my number hit the 40s I began to feel as though my tongue was slowly morphing into a 4 oz serving of meat substitute.

My gastronomical disgust with that now barf-inducing patty has introduced a true conundrum when it comes to mealtime. Considering the fact that the required freshman meal plan credits each student eleven nonrefundable dollars per meal, I better find an in house solution to the problemo. Breakfast occasionally features hard-boiled eggs which I collect in mass quantities on plastic cafeteria plates only to face the humiliation of going through check out with twelve or more chicken embryos rolling around on my tray. The salad bar features hummus, but that tends to have the flavor of freshly ground shoe rubber with a touch of lemon. Occasionally the grill features a seafood dish, but I prefer not to consume butter, oil, and batter with a side of cod.

Vegetarian protein aside, the meal plan is actually workable. The salad bar is, on the whole, well-stocked, and the soups (which double as delicious warm salad dressings) are positively scrumptious.

Bars are my salvation.



I also drink insane amounts of tea to counteract the even more insane amounts of coffee.



No harm intended to those on campus suffering from nut allergies, but this chica needs some nut butter lovin soon! Perhaps the madre will send a little love package. ;P

This curly personage is most definitely sure that, after this year, she will never again affront her digestive tract with grilled soy lecithin and modified vegetable gum!

With Love,

Emily

Safe and Semi-Sound

The foretelling of my life here at RISD were harsh. Counselors, sophomores, janitors all relayed horrific tales of sleepless weeks spent drawing pretzels while hanging upside down a la Michelangelo and singing perfectly-pitched opera. I heeded the admonitions and expected nothing less than artistic boot camp.

But there was so much that they left out.

So I'm here. I've survived almost seven weeks of charcoal dust, Styrofoam lung, and rubber cement fumes. I haven't lost any fingers (yet)and the only injury I have endured in my classes is a rather terrific paper cut. I've gone seven weeks without pulling a single all-nighter. (Although I have a feeling that my current collective sleeping hours per week might terrify my mother.) And I am fairly certain that my sanity is still in tact (despite several overwhelming critiques).

No one warns you about the physical toll art school inflicts. No one warns you about the insane levels of competition fostered by everyone from the postal service attendant ("Checking your box twice in a single week? Must have a lot of free time...") to the cafeteria servers ("Only three cups of coffee today? Must have slept well last night.") No one warns you about the prevalence of paper thieves (@ $8 a sheet who can blame them?). No one warns you about the addicting high of making perfectly crafted cardboard cubes and tetrahedrons late into the night. No one warns you about the inescapability of sudden attacks of hilarious hysteria when you discover that you drew 45 crayfish instead of the required 30. No one warns you about the actual extent of absolutely jaw-dropping, awe-inspiring, pant-wetting, hair-curling levels of talent that will surround you. No one warns you that these insanely gifted people might just become your best friends.

No one warns you about the dangers of falling head over heels in love with a school 2,545 miles from everyone and everything you've ever known. No one warns you about the side effects of acute-onset ecstasy.

So I decided to let you all in on the secret.

Can't say I didn't warn you.

Expect to see more updates in the future. I've decided I have enough free time *cue the hysterium* to blog a bit (or perhaps I just miss you all terribly).

2,545 miles

Hello Bloggigans!

Life is crazy right now, but I just wanted to let you know that Curlyland has officially re-located, 2,545 miles from it's original location in sunny, Southern Cali to the incredibly cold, extraordinarlily wet, wonderfully amazing Providence, RI.

I'll be updating and adding pics soon, but until then feel free to add me on Facebook (e-mail me for my last name) send me some snail mail.

TTYL!

With Love,

Emily

I'm Off

I'm off to get my curly but to the hair stylist to get the curls dyed a nice rosy hue and then down to USC to pick a few certain personages for an LA blogger meet up. Wish you were here!

With Love,

Emily

Fish Dish

Tuesday I told you all about my crustacean acclimation and the mental and emotional scars the episode inflicted. I painted a picture of the sad and sorry sight of my breakdown in, what was, unfortunately, slightly less than tasteful.

However.

I did not touch upon the effects of my new dietary additions to one particularly sensitive member of the Curly Clan.

Can you take a gander as to Little E's opinion of my TJ's salmon burger dinner?



Little E is not, and never has been, a vegetarian, but her horror at my new decision to eat creatures that once swam in the ocean blue might even outweigh mine.

We are supposed to be the best of friends, but my declaration that while fish breath will come and go, sisters are forever only brought on screams of repugnance from the child as she ran in the opposite direction. I promised to rinse away any unavoidable ocean breezes with plenty of (my favorite) Costco's green tea with citrus.



No luck.

For some, the choice between an aquatic vertebrate animal and their own flesh and blood might be easy. But after a little thought I realized that the exposure is actually for her own good. Who knows how many romantic lobster dinners might be sprung on her without the poor guys's knowledge of her complete and total aversion to ectothermic main courses.

I'm afraid, dear sister, that, with your best interest at heart, I'm going to have to continue infusing the house with the scent of grilled salmon burgers and Shy Thai Peanut Squashed Shrimp.

So sorry.

Should you not have any overly-dramatic 17 year olds sharing your living space, you might consider picking up a pack of these salmon burgers at your local Trader Joes. I've grilled them, cooked them in a nonstick pan with a little rosemary, and even topped stir fry with them. Very convenient and quite cheap.

And a question for you all: Is there anything in your dining repertoire that makes enemies of your housemates? How do you handle the situation?

With Love,

Emily

Book Cake

Want to see the product of my hard labor (detailed in yesterday's post)?

One Book Cake coming up.




I think everyone enjoyed it because it was gone in under an hour... lol.

With Love,

Emily

Cheesiness

Seeing as Thursday was national Take Your Cheese to Work Day and my last day of slavedom at Barnes and Noble I thought I'd up the cheesiness factor and bring a sappy letter and some sort of baked goods to thank my fellow booksellers for their patience with my talkative self.

I wanted to bake a cake in the shape of a book--a sculptural masterpiece worthy of a spot on the Food Network's Ace of Cakes. (Or at least a place among my Blooming Cupcakes and Painting Cake)

I chose a delicious looking chocolate cake recipe from Mark Bittman's vegetarian cookbook (watch the video review here)and got to work. Unfortunately, the only way I could think to incorporate any sort of cheese product in a cake was to select the Pillsbury brand cream cheese frosting at the grocery store. Gross I know. But also highly convenient for someone who was, for once, more interested in the appearance of the final product than the nutritional facts. Seeing as I was baking for a group of males whose diets centered around white bagels and Venti Mountain Dews from the Starbucks cafe, I was pretty sure this wouldn't be a problem.



I baked two 9x13" cakes. Once done, I stacked the two on top of each other,sliced off the rounded top, slathered the whole thing in creamy, hydrogenated glue, and used a brand new, plastic comb to make the edges look like pages. Then, feeling hot and exhausted from all of the oven exposure in 95-degree weather, I threw that baby into our outdoor freezer and let it harden up overnight.



The next afternoon, feeling refreshed, I made a batch of marshmallow fondant (From this recipe) and had to call upon every fiber of my Pbu-mixing muscles to kneed the coloring into the dough. Seriously folks, I think I was kneading this stuff for at least an hour!



Fondant+blood+sweat+crocodile tears=rather messy hands... although I think my face turned more shades of red than my palms due to all of the exertion.

I used 3/4 of the fondant to make a marbled leather cover and the remaining 1/4 to make leather bindings and a bookmark.



The marbling effect was created by not completely mixing the food coloring into the dough. Then I discovered a whole new meaning for measuring your eats. I'm not talking tbsps or food scales. I had to call on all of my rusty mathematical skills to calculate the surface area of my cake and, using my trusty pink ruler from seventh-grade algebra, measure out a corresponding layer of fondant.



To me, this was the greatest accomplishment of my day. You see, I am, as you might say, arithmetically challenged. Words are friends. Numbers are the enemy. When I sent Little E a picture message of my progress at this point her response was, "Congrats sis, you learned how to use a ruler!"

By the time I had the whole thing completed, I was hot, cranky, and definitely no longer feeling the love towards my cake-hungry coworkers. Daddio wasn't feeling the love either when he walked in and saw the current state of his kitchen...



It would appear that I somehow managed to contaminate every available surface of both the counters and my body with marshmallow goo, powdered sugar, or leftover frosting.

After cleaning everything up, you better believe I did NOT feel particularly inclined to whip out the camera and stage a fancy photoshoot (I was going on my sixth hour of bake shop confidential here). However, my sweet father was kind enough to snap a few shots while I lay on the couch, nursing a Diet Coke (I know, I know!), and cursing the fact that I ever had the horrible idea of making a book cake in the first place.

To see the final product you'll have to check back in tomorrow! ;P

With Love,

Emil