Confession: I love reading my Blogger stats. It's everything I wish I could do with Facebook (and Myspace back in the day). Well, I guess it would be cool to see EXACTLY who looked at my blog, but for right now the search keywords that lead people to my blog is good enough. The most popular keyword? Ellie Krieger Chickpea Ragu. Seriously, it's on there every time I check (which is kind of a lot). I made that dish around this time last year and it was absolutely delicious, so go check it out.

Does it seem like I've fallen off the face of the earth? To me it does - I'm SWAMPED with homework and projects! Unfortunately blogging and baking have taken the back seat, but at least I have roommate dinners to keep me cooking, even if it's only once a week. I also have all of the wonderful restaurants of Athens to get my mind off trivial school matters like stochiometry and on important things like the perfect sweet potato fry.

Sweet potato fries > stochiometry. And parabolas. There's some math for ya.

Anyways, I had THE BEST sweet potato fries at a cool restaurant called Trapeze Pub. I went there a few weeks ago with Kathy, Adam and Chris with the intention of getting the Vegetarian Reuben (sauerkraut calls to me), but after Adam declared he wanted a hamburger, I suddenly got an intense, dire craving for a burger (apparently, so did everyone else - we all ended up changing our orders to burgers). And what goes better with a burger than fries?

Nothing. One could argue tater tots, but in my humble opinion, tater tots are a more suitable companion to hot dogs.

So yes, I payed an extra 3 bucks for a side of sweet potato fries (WHAT?!), but boy, they were worth it! They were sprinkled with cinnamon and were more tender than crunchy. I find that when sweet potato fries are crunchy, you can't really taste the sweet potato flavor. Trapeze must know this, too, because it almost seemed like their fries were baked - they were cut into pretty thick wedges and were slightly crunchy on the outside, but creamy on the inside.



The burgers were just as delicious - juicy, flavorful and tender. This picture doesn't really do it justice (obviously I forgot to turn off the flash), but it was one of the best burgers I've had in a while. I mean, Graze has amazing burgers, but if you want a big, classic burger, try Trapeze Pub. The atmosphere is great - kind of small, but it has a great "pub-ish" feel to it and they had a BAZILLION different kinds of beers, if you're into that kinda thing.

I also made a second trip to Five Star Day - it was really cold that day, so I ordered a bowl of Chicken n Dumplings and a side of fried green tomatoes. So Southern, right? Other than that, I've literally been at school, work, lab, or holed up in my room studying/doing homework. Bleh. This week is going to be another long one, but at least we have a fun Market Basket project in my Quantity Foods lab - every group was assigned some food items and a list of equipment to use to make a dish with their food items for the entire lab. My group got eggs, sausage and tortillas (so hard, right?), so we're making a Mexican Tortilla bake. Hopefully I'll get to use the big tilt skillet to brown the sausage. Downside? We have to be there at 6:30 in the morning. Awesome.