Food Journal

On Tuesday of break, my family and I went to an Italian restaurant. Normally, I just order chicken parm, but I was feeling adventurous and decided to order [Pasta] con Sabia, a dish made with cappellini noodles, kalamata olives, roasted garlic, breadcrumbs, and olive oil. Earlier in the meal, we had enjoyed bread with olive oil (which I had been jokingly telling my family they should sample a la Extra Virginity by Tom Mueller), so I was looking forward to a different taste of olive oil.

The dish was delicious! I don’t eat pasta often, but when I do I enjoy marinara sauce or plain butter noodles, but the olive oil added a fruity taste to the pasta and each bite was incredibly tasty. Butter and olive oil are both fats, yet olive oil is lighter and fruity, as opposed to butter being richer and sweeter. I am looking forward to trying it again!

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As an early St. Patrick’s Day meal, my mom prepared a corned beef! Corned beef is beef treated with large salt rocks, giving the beef a nice pink color and salty, almost pickled taste.

While drying dishes with my mom, I noticed that much of the bottom of the roaster used to cook the beef was covered with a wispy pink substance, as well as a brownish-pink liquid. This was the fat and other liquids that had dripped out of the beef during the slow cooking process. Despite this fat being removed from the beef, solid fat still remained on the slices we ate, and it was not as chewy or hard as fat from other meats (such as steak – I always cut the fat off of steak). Corned beef is a delicious St. Patty’s day tradition and it was interesting to think about it through a more scientific lens.