No fro yo or ice cream during finals? Shameful, Val, really shameful.

Finals:

Finals Therapy:

San Francisco and Me: Already Turning into a Love Story

So today I was perusing the Serious Eats website, in true procrastination fashion, and found this:
 http://www.seriouseats.com/2010/12/best-food-cities-for-pizza-sandwiches-hot-dogs-sichuanstreet-food-ice-cream-slideshow.html#show-128093 - a guide to 8 cities which are doing great things in certain culinary areas. Clicking through, I saw that they talked about San Francisco and ice cream. Oh. My. God. Considering that nothing goes together so well as ice cream and me, could you imagine any place that would be better suited to me than SF? I am getting more and more excited about this...

A Little Shoutout to Start the Week

So today I want to talk about the amazing woman who I like to call my food mentor here in Amherst, Betty Rosbottom. Betty and her husband, who is my English professor this semester, invited a couple Amherst students over to their house to decorate their Christmas tree and eat a wonderful home-cooked meal (which is UNREAL to anyone who's ever tasted Val). We had a lovely time decorating the tree (it looks spectacular) and then Betty served us a wonderful casserole with rigatoni, tomato sauce, olives, and basil. It looked relatively simple to make and tasted delicious. She then followed it up with some of the most outrageous brownies I have ever tasted. I of course have to stay loyal to my mom's brownies, which are unbelievable, but Betty's are of such an intensely fudgey rich character, they are in a whole new category. The Brownie recipe is already on her website and Betty promised to put the pasta recipe up in January so you have to check it out: www.bettyrosbottom.com

Enjoy!

PASTA

I forgot to mention this in my previous post, but I absolutely could not be more excited for what I'm getting for Christmas. Aside from the necessary (a new computer before I go to Institute next summer and a ski jacket), I am getting a pasta board and rolling pin so I can make pasta at home! I've been longing for one of these pretty much since I went to Bologna and took my epic pasta-making class there and I am so excited to try it out. Get ready for some sweet posts featuring that whole process.

Esselon Cafe

Wow, I actually made it a couple of days without blogging as a method of procrastination. Look at me go! It's mostly because I've turned to Sporcle instead (if you don't know what it is, go there now and, if you do, you know what I'm talking about) playing every kind of geography, Oscar, literature, and Harry Potter-themed quiz imaginable. Last night was the incredible and always epic Crossett Christmas, which turned out to be a great night. Today, however, I'm paying for my folly in taking almost a whole day off between getting an outfit for the night and going out. I'm camped out at Esselon Cafe, a great little coffee shop/breakfast place on Route 9 in what would probably be called Hadley. The food is a couple notches above diner yet with the same consistency. The blueberry pancakes (served with free maple syrup) are killer, as are the specials that are detailed on the chalkboard as you enter. Today I opted for the special omelette, which was with ricotta, tomatoes, and arugula (yum!) and, instead of toast, opted for one of their bagels. Now I am a New Yorker and I know my bagels, and I can honestly say that Esselon's bagels are up there with anybody's. They are smaller than most of the NYC bagels I've found, but that just lends to their crispiness and general small proportion of gooey dough to crust. Delicious.

The Highs and Lows of Val Chili

So, as all Amherst kids know, Val is pretty much the bane of the Amherst student's existance. It serves consistently over- or under-cooked food made from a low-grade product that turns out a meal that is at best satisfactory and more usually just plain disappointing. Every year, the one bright spot on the Val menu occurs on Friday of Parents' Weekend, when Val hosts local farmers, chefs, and purveyors, inviting them in to set up samples of their products. Val also designs the menu of the day to reflect the amazing local food and it is usually the one day a year that I am happy at Val. This year, our new Executive Chef, Jeremy Rousch (who I believe knows what he's doing but doesn't have enough leeway or money to make anything happen) made some incredible chili featuring local farmed beef. The beef, for the first time ever at Val, was juicy and tender, able to be sliced with just a fork. Awesome, right? I walked up to all of the Val management and more or less begged them to put this on the menu.

Well, here's where you can start shaking your head because no story about Val ever has a happy ending. Today I saw that "chuck wagon chili" was on the menu and I got super excited because that was the chili! It was coming back! I loaded up a bowl and more excited than I've been at Val since they got rid of cereal at dinner, took a bite. A chewy, tough bite. Wait a second, this can't be right. I've had this before - the beef was so moist and tender! Another bite - same result. After eating enough to be convinced that my first bite was not a fluke, the answer came to me: this time, Val had not advertised the origin of the beef, meaning that it was definitely not the same product. Knowing Val, this inevitably means a product of less quality and, man, it showed. Instead of a chili that was one of the best I've ever had, I had something that I will never eat again. Ever.