Garlicky French Vinaigrette (Page 168)

• Date: Wednesday, January 31, 2007 -- 8:30pm
• Location: Somerville, MA
• Kitchen: My Apartment
• Fellow Chef: Ronen
• Dining Companions: Craig, Ana, and Matty
• Recipe Rating: B+

There is a dandelion salad in The Book that we had hoped to make last Wednesday, but Whole Foods was out of dandelion greens so we made this salad dressing instead. Opinions varied, but I thought it was pretty good. It had a nice strong garlic flavor. It went very well with the bitter greens Ana selected to serve it on. The heavy cream gave it a lovely thick, rich texture. There wasn't any subtlety to this dressing, but it tasted good!

Wednesday was February 7th, and thus some of the undergraduate math majors at MIT hosted an e-day celebration.

(Get it? e=2.71828... so e-day was on 2/7 at 18:28pm. Ah, MIT.)

Festivities included lots of food starting with the letter e (eel, eclairs, Edy's ice cream, etc...) and a contest to see who could recite the most digits of e. I kid you not! The main event was a nerdy pick-up line contest. This is how I became involved. They needed some mathematicians (including some women) to judge their contest. One of the undergrads asked Lauren to help, and she recruited me to judge with her! It was hysterical. A few examples of what we heard:

"Want to make like an isomorphism and get one-to-one and onto with me?"

"Is your name Lorentz, because you are definitely an attractor?"

"Yo, my eyes must be parabolic because they are focused on you."

"Hey baby, I don't have a good pick-up line for you, but I can prove that one exists."

My favorite detail: the scores were listed on the chalkboard not by the contestants' names, but rather by their username for the MIT computer system! Wow.