Spicy French Fries (Page 570)

• Date: Saturday, May 12, 2007 -- 9pm
• Location: Somerville, MA
• Kitchen: Matty's Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Ana
• Dining Companions: Matty, Matt, Mike, Tim, Vero, Philippe, and Ricky
• Recipe Rating: B+
  

I was feeling like having a burgers and fries kind of meal for my post-thesis celebration, so I figured some homemade french fries were in order. Everyone made the same comment about these fries: they were delicious before they were seasoned, but the seasoning was just too overpowering. I like spicy fries, but these were indeed too spicy. I still ate them and enjoyed them, but the spiciness was overpowering. With half the amount of seasoning they could have been delicious. They were deep-fried twice, which initially seemed odd to me, but it did give them a nice golden-brown exterior and crispy texture. Overall not a bad recipe, but it had the potential to be much better.

Stories From The Past (1.1):

My freshman year at Stanford I took a course in partial differential equations. On the first day I walked in wearing a black t-shirt, a knee-length white skirt, and black strappy heels. I had my hair bobbed in a high ponytail with my sunglasses on top of my head holding back my straggly bangs. I sat down in an empty desk and pulled out a notebook and pencil. The guy in the seat next to me, a graduate student in statistics I would later find out, gave me a once over and then said gently, “Excuse me, but I think you must be in the wrong classroom.”

I smiled, opened my backpack again and pulled out a red textbook with the words Partial Differential Equations written clearly across the front. I said nothing.

“Oh,” he said, embarrassed, and turned away.

I am not offended by these exchanges. I have been mistaken for an administrative assistant in the math department, a wife, sister, or roommate of a mathematician, or just someone clearly lost and in the wrong place. Facing an unknown situation a mathematician will always choose the most likely explanation. As it turns out, they never assume that a female in a skirt and cute shoes is likely to be a mathematician.