This past Memorial Day, I had the delight of eating a strawberry parfait for the first time ever.  It was wonderfully tasty with creame, fresh strawberries and little bits of cake.  It was delicious.  I had two servings, thats how fabulous it was.  But I don't think it would be hard to make, therefore I think I might try and make it at home soon. I wish  I had made this instead of a lemon meringue pie for the baking and pastry final last semester.  It probably would have been alot easier then trying to whip the meringue. 

Meagan F.

Peaches Corner

In Myrtle Beach on vacation, my family and I decided to go out to eat. We didn’t really want anything fancy, just something to stop the rumbling in our stomachs. So, we hit up a local burger joint. The restaurant on the corner of the main road in Myrtle Beach was named Peaches Corner. Though nothing on the menu involved peaches at all, it really fit the warm climate in Myrtle Beach. I ordered a double cheeseburger with lettuce, mayo, and ketchup and a side of French fries. A simple meal that you can’t really mess up on. I bit into the burger and was momentarily paralyzed at how wonderful it was. The bun was toasted perfectly, and the burger was cooked outstandingly well. The fries were crispy on the outside, with a crunch, but soft on the inside. The burger was nice and juicy, making every other burger I’ve ever tasted (Five Guys, Mr. Mac’s) seem boring and plain. With free refills on a cup of soda the size of a double gulp from 7-eleven, The Peaches Corner in Myrtle Beach did everything right. This restaurant earns a 10/10 in my book everyday.

~Michael C. Davenport 

This past weekend my sister who lives in Minnesota was in town, and of course on Sunday it was Mother's Day! My Grandma lives right outside of NYC and my other sister goes to college in the city, so my mom decided that we would have a family dinner in the city at this restaurant called Dresner's Restaurant and Bar. Located at 1479 York Avenue, this Irish Pub that has been open for 94 years, was a really nice place to have dinner with my family on Mother's Day. It was not fancy or super casual-somewhere in the middle. The place serves American and international cuisine. For an appetizer, my mom got a caesar salad and gave me a little bit of it. It was a good salad, and I am pretty picky when it comes to salads because I hate a lot of dressing. However, the amount of dressing was perfect. The dressing itself was also very good. I am very particular about caesar dressing because I hate when it is noticeably "fishy." This dressing however was not fishy. The salad overall, from the little I had, was very good and I would recommend it. For dinner, I ordered the turkey burger. I am not a red meat kind of person, so when I saw that they had a turkey burger I was pleased. The burger came with some fixings on the side, and was very big to say the least. I barely ate half of it! The burger part itself was very thick, but had a lot of flavor! The bun was toasted and they went very well together! It is an entree that I would most definitely recommend. My family ordered many other seafood dishes-crab cakes, shrimp scampi, calamari. They all loved their food too! The restaurant was very nice and welcoming. It was small and personal. In addition, the service was very good as well. Our waiter was very kind and quick! I recommend that if you ever find yourself near york and hungry, that you walk in and try this place!
-Lindsay B.

Alright, so continuing with Mrs. Hoagland's streak of giving me bizarre and strange-looking roots to make something out of, this month was no exception. I was handed a small oddly shaped root, resembling a miniature ginger root, yet the insides were the color of a carrot. I spent a while looking for a recipe, many were very foreign, flavors I might only find in Thailand, until I stumbled across a kind of dressing used on dessert fruit salads in Thailand, and it captivated my interest, I set off combining ingredients like orange concentrate, a paste made from the root which I soaked in water for about 10 mins, sugar, oil, vinegar, into what looked like a strange concoction. I will have to admit, I was pretty nervous as to it's outcome, but when I tasted it, it was pleasantly appetizing, with many dimensions of flavor, sweet, sour, savory, and would definitely taste very good marinaded with pineapple of fruit cocktail. I'll try to bring it in tomorrow as long as I don't forget it in my fridge!! -Bryce D

This last month, my mom visited my older sister in North Carolina who was having her baby. When she came back home, she brought back a present for me: Blair's After Death Hot Sauce with Liquid Fire. I have always considered myself a patron of the world of spice: I've eaten a raw red Thai pepper (I wouldn't recommend it!), but I wondered if I would ever use my new bottle of After Death sauce... The bottle itself is laced with warning labels and cautions. I was eager to see just how hot it was however, and my curiosity got the best of me. I pooped open the box, pulled out the bottle, and unscrewed the cap. I took a single drop of the inside of the cap on the tip of my finger, and barely touched it to my tongue. I couldn't feel anything at first, but after about two seconds my mouth erupted in searing fury. It went numb before long, and I downed a glass of milk to try to quell my pain. It subsided a little while later, and I put it in the fridge without any plans to use it. However, a few days later, we were having tacos for dinner, and I have always drenched my tacos in hot sauce in hopes of making a taco hot enough to satisfy me. I found my After Death sauce in the door of the fridge, and very sparingly put a few drops on my taco. I took my first bite and was amazed by the awesome flavor combined with the searing heat. It was my perfect taco. It hurt like crazy, but it was absolutely delicious! I love habanero spices and sauces now, and I have some seriously spicy tacos nowadays. The slogan of Blair's Hot Sauces and Spices is "Feel Alive", and I definitely feel more alive. -Sam G.

I was given a tamarind root sometime during the past week and I was told “make something out of this for your blog”. After extensive research and multiple tries, I’ve learned that Worcestershire sauce is really, really annoying and time consuming to make. Aside from Worcestershire sauce, the Tamarind root can be used in some herbal medicines. It has a wide variety of uses in Culinary, ranging from juices to jams to ice cream to Worcestershire sauce. You can also make Tamarind candies such as the Tamarind Ball from Trinidad & Tobago. -Cameron Partrick

I do not understand avocados. I enjoy eating them but....what are they? I mean, most everyone has a basic understanding of food. Cheese is simple. Chocolate is great. Apples are good. But avocados. Is it a fruit? Is it a vegetable? Why does it taste like egg? Who the hell designed and why aren't we shunning them? To begin, we have the avocado itself, which is a usually a pear shaped thing with a thick dull green skin. The skin is very tough like an orange but not really as pliant. We are also not sure if it is a fruit or a vegetable. Yet. Avocados are also pretty intimidating to cut. do you slice it up (no) or cut it down the middle (not bad) or peel it with a peeler (oh god, no. just get out of the kitchen now)? No, you have to slice this little androgynous thing down the middle, curving around this really awkward center. You don't try and cut to the center open because you will lose your fingers in the process. Just don't even try it. Now you have to twist the the avocado apart, and you have two nice halves of an avocado. Yay!and whats this a seed?! Yes, an avocado has a seed therefore it is a fruit even though it does not taste like a fruit and is made up of mostly fat. Its like the black sheep of the fruit family. So you have two halves of avocado, one half with a little bowling of a nut stuck smack dab in the middle. I swear to god, the avocado nut is the most annoying thing in the world. Half of you just wants it out of the flesh but, you also don't want to ruin the smoothness either. I kind of....sort of...hit the nut with a knife and it pulls right out. So you have this nut now. Just throw it out. Its nut. What are you going to do with a nut? Now here's the fun part. You get to scoop out the soft avocado stuff. I don't know why but I just get such a kick from scooping out the avocado meat. You can also remove the skin easily now by simply ripping it away; since you cut the avocado in half, you don't have to worry about bruising the meat. In this way the avocado retains its curve. Yay, curves! If you wanna make a sandwich, you can slice it up like this. Very good with turkey. And tomatoes. And salads. And chicken breast. Avocados also have this weird flavor. Even though they are fruit, they are not water based and are mostly fat. Because of this they do not taste refreshing in the classical sense of the world. No, instead, the avocado has a creamy egg flavor. It is indulgent yet cool like a cucumber. It goes good with spicy food and strong flavors because its flavor is just so mellow. Aesthetically, it blends really well with the brighter redder colors spicy food tends to have. Cayenne, tomato, onion are forever the avocados' best friend in the kitchen. Cilnatro is its adopted twin. Lime juice is its sassy gay friend. Together they make guacamole which is just amazing. And for the record, everything I learned from avocados I got from this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dNJdJIwCF_Y you should really watch it. -Gabriela P.