Happy as a clam

A clam:

Me:

Who has two thumbs and a bivalvular calcium carbonate
shell? This girl!

See the resemblance? The reasons for my sanguinity are threefold: the transfinite is a really, really cool thing* and is only at the Park Avenue Armory until June 11, so you should go see it, we have eight days of book-larnin' before the summer, and I finally, finally obtained a mandoline.

No more hacking away at vegetables with low-quality knives wielded by an inexpert hand! Filling an MD Stomach will now be graced with the finest of thinly sliced vegetables, and you, dear readers, will have to put up with mandoline-inspired dishes until I calm down about it. For instance:

This is a jicama salad "quatre-feuille" with gram flour and sesame seed crackers, a homemade pear chip, and raw cashew and dill dressing. I'm experimenting with raw, nut-based foods, not because I have any intention at all of adapting a raw foods diet--can you think of anything more horrific?--but because nut butters, pastes, and dressings are great sources of all the right sorts of lipids. They're also delicious.

Look at those thinly sliced pears!

I'm experimenting with the food theory that if the food
is piled high on the plate, it must be über-chic

This is just gratuitous.

*It's mesmerizing and unsettling all at once, like Four Organs, but less brain-melting.