Monday, March 30, 2009

Recent discoveries, the unfortunate edition

-The cafe near campus with amazing (if annoyingly un-priced) breakfast pastries also has fabulous (and price-unlabeled) lunch pastries. Spinach-and-cheddar quiche, indeed. I take back what I said about things suspended in egg-and-cream being disgusting. They can be quite wonderful. I consider this discovery both fortunate and unfortunate.

-It turns out everyone who studies French in NYC dreams of running off to Tel Aviv. OK, not everyone, but apparently there are others. Which is a victory for Francophilic Zionism, but considering it's already impossible for Israeli academics to get jobs in Israel, the influx of not-Israeli academics studying subjects unrelated to Israel could potentially add instability and conflict to an otherwise serene region of the world.

-And finally, of course Jacob Levy has a post about the coffee-helps-the-workouts article. Can I just say: called it! My lunch the days before track practice in high school was always either a bagel or a muffin and a cappuccino (RIP Downtown Delicious, Taylor's...). Needless to say, I got a hard time about the coffee, because coffee before running is just wrong.

You know what's wrong? Running three miles after a full day of high school classes, a sizable subway commute, and on very little sleep without a good amount of caffeine beforehand.

(Speculation on how I came to be 5'2", despite two taller-than-average parents, not appreciated.)

-So there are these things called 'Jewish holidays'. I've now been asked more times than I can count when Passover falls this year, and I'm like, I know I should know this. But now I do, thanks to a somewhat pressing need to go to the JTS library on a day it's, you know, open. Old newspapers, it's been too long!

6 comments:

Jeff said...

Do not have guilt about the quiche. I have a quiche Lorraine or a spinach & ricotta quiche from my local French bakery almost every day.

I justify it on low-carbohydrate grounds.

Phoebe Maltz Bovy said...

I think the pastry-dough crust has some carbohydrates...

What I didn't mention in the post is that you can't go to this particular cafe and not get a (large) chocolate chip cookie. That might contribute to my concerns about turning that lunch into an everyday thing.

Matt said...

I'd not realized it was quiche you were bad-mouthing before. There is a lot of horrible quiche, of course, but some truly great stuff, too. Like most things in life you just can't judge from the garbage. It's as if you'd think all films were bad because of Star Wars Episode I or The Devil Wears Prada or something.

Matt said...

I'm certain Passover comes sometime near Easter. I remember I'd take spring break to visit my grandparents and we'd wind up looking for plastic easter eggs in the hallway.

-a different Matt from above

Jeff said...

These quiche have a very thin shell, not the heavy flaky shell. It's like it's not even there, carb-wise.

Still, like your cookie issue, I often can't walk out without also getting a cassis macaroon or similar.

Anonymous said...

So, you would like to avoid mailman speculations, and you are too young for an iceman or milkman to be plausible.
Height is pretty clearly the product of a number of genes. Postulate 6 genes, each of which can be in a tall (T) and a short (t) form. Phoebe dad: TTTTtt. result - moderately tall. Phoebe mom: TTTTtt, moderately tall. Sperm for P, half of her dad's genes - Ttt. Egg for P - Ttt. Phoebe genotype: TTtttt. result - moderately short. No mailman required.
dave.s.