The raw and the cooked

I walked into the medical center today, intending to head to the student annex for some studying, only to have my way blocked by a holiday gala in the lobby that featured little girls in velvet dresses, exceedingly shiny chafing dishes, and a calypso band playing Bob Marley's "Jammin'" on steel drums. It was all very surreal.

As a testament to what the combination of bad weather, lots of studying, and too much caffeine can do to a girl, I accidentally added raw pasta directly to my homemade tomato sauce. Oops. To rescue it, I added water (my kingdom for some vegetable broth or cooking wine!) to the sauce and cooked the pasta like one would cook arborio rice for a risotto. In the last 10 minutes, I threw in some green beans, and in the last 5, I added mushrooms and a can of (drained and rinsed) cannellini beans and finished it off with some Parmesan. The food was good, but it could have used an acidic element. And also the aforementioned wine or broth. And fresh basil. And maybe something crunchy on top. Perhaps I'll fetch some crunchy, raw (and raw to remain) snack during a late-night study break to belatedly alleviate the insufficiency. Almonds, carrot sticks, a slightly unripe pear... the possibilities are endless.

To close, a favorite and famous quote: "The scientific mind does not so much provide the right answers as ask the right questions." -Claude Levi-Strauss, The Raw and the Cooked

Too often we students forget this, in part because we're still rather... callow, but, in our defense, also out of educational necessity.