I spent three weeks in the motherland this past X-Mas gorging myself on traditional Scandinavian fare. I did so for two reasons: the season being the most obvious, but the inexplicable fact that I had dropped twenty pounds being the more pressing. (Fear not–I was fortunate enough to have a medical camera spelunk through my digestive tract, finding only healthy tissue.) The conclusion, then, is that I have not been able to ingest enough nutrients. Go figure.

I returned to the College with a somewhat gloomy disposition, which I have later come to realize was a byproduct of spending my break in a country teetering on the edge of the Arctic Circle (how I survived close to nineteen years in that place I will never know). During my stay, I made an effort of brushing up on my cooking–after all, I do a lot of talking about the subject, even though I am still learning to walk.

I have come to see the Interim Term as a month-long weekend, and not in the good sense. Rather, the semester is a four-week-long Sunday afternoon in the Caf, complete with uninspired slabs of meat, chicken/veal parmesan hybrids, and a host of other forgettable dishes that I purposefully missed. After the pathetic showing that was the end of the fall semester, the Caf now boasts a new leadership whose crowning achievements so far have been wishing me good morning on a daily basis and moving a counter about nine feet forward. There are also new salad bowls.

During one particularly dismal meal–a Thursday, probably. I never could get the hang of Thursdays–I threw my head back and exclaimed, fists a-shaking:

“I am so [expletive] sick of this place! So here’s what I’m gonna do: I’m gonna go to the [expletive] store and I’m gonna pick up some [expletive] flour, some [expletive] yeast, and I’m gonna go back and I’m gonna make some [expletive] bread. I’m gonna make my own [expletive] bread!“

And so I did. I went to the local hypermarket, bought the ingredients (sans expletives), and made some [expletive] bread. I even picked up some decent peanut butter. As a result, I can now avoid eating lunch in the Caf. Of course, the place has been closed during the times when I have actually sought it out in the middle of the day, which sheds even more light on the ridiculous claim that the dining hall remains open and available for twelve uninterrupted hours. Breakfast, meanwhile, has been reduced to a temporary food fix, since I will not be awake before double digits starting this Friday. That said, I have never minded breakfast, especially since cereal and yogurt avoid tampering by being–you know–pre-packaged.

Dinner… The word conjures up new, conflicting connotations. If I railed against monotony in the past, I take it back. At the same time, however, I hope that some of the more bizarre creations never make it out of the breeding pool that is the Interim Term.

Fig. 1: a chicken (?) dish swimming in its own oil (?). It is here joined by some herb–anything from spinach or cilantro, really; your guess is as good as mine–corn, and a solitary carrot slice. The unannounced appearance of this dish caused the plate’s other inhabitants to abandon ship:

I washed the creation down with a gulp of hearty tap water, only to find an oil flake dancing on the water’s surface:

Either the chicken (?) is to blame, or the recent Gulf oil spill has found new, more creative ways of reminding us of its presence. I spent a year listening to the border conflict between Tennessee, Alabama, and Georgia about how to partition the water in the Chattahoochee to satisfy all three states’ energy and mollusk needs, and–actually, never mind. Who would have guessed that the water would be returning to wreak havoc upon its former masters? Someone needs to make a 3D movie about this.

Also, this:

Are those… tater tots? I don’t even–

I was leaving the library the other day when I came across an injured bird:

It looked awfully tasty.