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Breakfast was a bowl of pineapple and banana slices and two cups of coffee. I weighed 157 pounds.

I had a cup of coffee at the office.

For lunch, a bunch of us from the office went over to Panda Express at the HUB. I had mandarin chicken with mixed vegetables on chow mein noodles with hot and sour soup, a small sierra mist, and a fortune cookie.

Your destiny lies before you,

choose wisely.

Lucky Numbers 8, 12, 14, 16, 30, 43

Gretchen made a really terrific sautéed green pepper and onion pizza for dinner. We washed it down with two Saranac Pale Ales.

Gretchen took this picture of a Pileated Woodpecker rooting in the remains of the wood pile behind the cabin.

The butterscotch flavor develops naturally when you boil sugar syrup and butter together to a high enough temperature to make hard candy. It’s a combination of two flavors: browned sugar, otherwise known as caramel, and browned butter. The browning results from what chemists call the Maillard reaction, in which sugars and proteins react under heat to create roasted and browned flavors. This is why butterscotch has so often been combined with other roasted ingredients. Nuts, such as pecans, are typically roasted; rum and Bourbon contain caramel; maple syrup has undergone the Maillard reaction. [Perry]

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Perry, Charles. “Boss sauce.” The Chicago Tribune. 21 April 2004. <www.chicagotribune.com/features/food/chi-0404210083apr21,1,183784.story> (23 April 2004).

Breakfast was a bowl of pineapple and banana slices and two cups of coffee. I weighed 155 pounds.

I had two cups of coffee and three peanut butter sandwich girl scout cookies at the office.

I walked downtown to Subway for lunch and had a six-inch pizza sub — essentially a peperoni sub — a bag of baked Lay’s potato chips and a Dr. Pepper.

Dinner was a salad and three glasses of Vendange Pinot Grigio with a slice of pineapple upside-down cake for dessert.

I just bought a Penn State Faculty/Staff Fitness Membership for the Summer Semester (4/15 – 9/15). So now I’ll be able to take advantage of:

1. Athletic weight room in Recreation building during designated hours.
2. IM Fitness Center
3. White Building MBNA Fitness Center
4. Natatorium Fitness Loft
5. Recreational aerobic classes

Muscle burns more calories.

Breakfast this morning was a bowl of fresh pineapple and banana slices and two cups of coffee. I weighed 156 pounds. At the office, I had another cup of coffee, and three peanut butter sandwich girl scout cookies.

I walked to the HUB for lunch and had a salad from Picallili’s while sitting on the lawn out front. While I was there, I picked up a copy of the New York Times Dining Out section.

Gretchen and I had the honor of hearing Robert Kennedy Jr. give a talk this evening on the topic of “Our Environmental Destiny.” It was the keynote speech of the Colloquium on Environmental Initiatives at Penn State, presented by the Penn State Institutes of the Environment.

Before we went in, we each had an Egg Roll and a Fortune Cookie that Gretchen got us as a snack.

All your hard work will soon pay off.

9 12 1 44 33 4

Dinner was pan fried haddock, roasted winter vegetables, and some apple wedges, with a glass of 2002 Vendange Pinot Grigio with a hand full of peanuts for dessert.

Attention! Your attention, please! A newsflash has this moment arrived from the Mallo bar front. Here is the news flash —

I had a Penn State Creamery Orange Vanilla Sunday Cone the other day. The sky was blue and sunny. It was beautiful. The day was beautiful. I have a food blog. And yet, you did not see it. I had my camera with me, but I did not take a picture. I did not take a picture because the summary food log format I have been using to “reduce the noise level on this blog” does not lend itself to the detailed photographs I had been taking of my food. Since it appears only weekly, it does not encourage the sort of spontaneity that desires a photograph of everything. I censored myself and in so doing, you all suffered. For that I am sorry.

I have decided that the purpose of this journal is actually to generate noise. It is an ongoing conversation with the past, the present, and the future, and it should not be censored in any way. Who am I to say what the future will find interesting or even important. As George Bernard Shaw said, “All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships.”

Since I want to make progress, I am no longer going to censor myself, regardless of the perceived information content of what I have to say. I am going to log my food as I eat it and I am going to update those logs without indicating what the updates are. Those who want the first draft of history will simply have to pay attention and witness it themselves.

I am restoring the daily food log today and I am going to retroactively log what I have eaten in daily format since the last summary food log.

That is all. Please go back about your day. Nothing to see here. Move along… move along.

The responsibility for great sushi extends to the customer.

The sushi bar diner is expected to order from the chef (but drinks and other food from the waiters), to pick up each piece with fingers or chopsticks (both are correct) and to eat it in one or two bites without putting it back on the plate.

Another sushi commandment, often flouted in American sushi bars, forbids dropping a piece of sushi into soy sauce and leaving it to soak. All the careful hospitality of the Japanese tradition could not conceal the shudder that ran through every sushi chef when asked about this practice. “It is very painful for us,” Gen Mizoguchi of Megu said.

For the record, you should turn the piece upside down and swipe the fish lightly through the dish of soy sauce. A small amount of wasabi can be added to the dish, but too much is disrespectful to the chef and the fish, as it drowns other flavors. [Moskin]

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Moskin, Julia. “How to Eat Sushi.” The New York Times. 21 April 2004. <www.nytimes.com/2004/04/21/dining/21SBOX.html> (20 April 2004).

Potato chips may not be the most healthful food, but Pringles is going to introduce a chip this summer that is going to make you smarter — well, kind of.

That’s because the chip maker is using new technology and a partnership with the makers of Trivial Pursuit to print trivia questions right on a chip.

Every chip will include a multiple-choice trivia question with the answer printed upside down…

Pringles won’t reveal what its technology is, but assures that it’s safe. The questions are printed with a food coloring that won’t alter the taste of the crisps. [Guerrero]

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Guerrero, Lucio. “Chips as brain food?” Chicago Sun-Times. 20 April 2004. <www.suntimes.com/output/lifestyles/cst-nws-pringles20.html> (20 April 2004).

Breakfast was a bowl of cold cereal with a sliced banana and a cup of coffee. I weighed 156 pounds.

At work I had two cups of coffee and a banana.

I went to the Big Onion and had a chicken parmesan sub, a bag of chips, and a Dr. Pepper. Afterwards, I went for a two mile walk around campus.

Dinner was grilled marinated butterfly venison steaks, roasted winter vegetables — using the last of the butternut squash — a salad, a hand full of peanuts, and a bowl of pineapple and banana slices.