Kale and White Bean Soup (Page 108)

• Date: Saturday, January 20, 2007 -- 1pm
• Location: Somerville, MA
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Dining Companion: Matty
• Recipe Rating: B-

This recipe was on the list generated with the random number generator, so I made it last weekend to pack in lunches this past week. It was ok, but not great. The beans gave it a good heartiness, and contributed some texture to the broth. The smokiness of the kielbasa added to the dish, but the kielbasa itself wasn't very appealing in the soup (perhaps it was just not very good kielbasa, because normally I am strongly in favor of sausage!). Matt noted that the broth didn't have a lot of body or flavor to it. The soup was cooked for a good length of time, so I would have expected the broth to have more flavor than it did. Overall this recipe was fine. I liked eating it but I wouldn't make it again.

When I first started graduate school, people mistakenly assumed that my friendship with Mike was romantic in nature. In response, our friend Jon wrote the following quite funny seminar announcement concerning a marriage between me and Mike:

Empirical Work on the Stable Marriage Problem;
A Wedding of Michael H. and Teena G.

Tuesday September 31, 2002
10:00 A.M., Room 2-236

Refreshments will be served at 9:45, black tie banquet in 2-235 to immediately follow talk.

Abstract: Over the last several millennia, much work has been done on holy matrimony. The field began in earnest with the groundbreaking work on the avoidance of adultery [God1300BC], and has remained an active area of research until the present day. Recent work has focused on applying the tools of modern mathematics to this classical problem [Lang02]. In the present talk, we extend these results by wedding Michael H. and Teena G. Major results include the exchange of vows, the tossing of the bouquet, and the kissing of the bride. A conjecture about the intractibility of future relationships will be set forth. If time permits, connections to homotopy spheres (“queer spheres”) and the intrinsic irony of something called a “bridal shower” being associated with a math department will be discussed.

References:
[God1300BC] God. “Commandment 7” in The Ten Commandments. Private correspondence, 1300 B.C.
[Lang02] Serge Lang. Functor? I hardly even know her. Springer-Verlag: New York, 2002.

Work supported in part by a Wedding Reception Grant from the Parents of Teena Foundation.