#6 - university salute.

i was raised roman catholic, meaning that i am totally down with the guilt & the shame. as a result, for about a week now, i've found myself reflecting upon the early bloggy days of eat! drink! snack! & feeling that the chosen snacks & drinks for my first few entries may not have been of the healthiest variety possible. also, the "snacks ain't healthy enough" issue may have had a tiny bit of something to do with my trip to the beach last weekend.

to combat this wickedness, i decided yesterday that when i was at home tonight, i was going to have some sort of snack that embraced health & more specifically, some type of fruit.

today was when i decided that regardless of whatever fruit i chose, i was going to take that fruit & dip it in nutella...& have it with a tasty beer.

#6 - university salute.
snack: strawberries & nutella
drink: wolavers' organic oatmeal stout

my senior year of college was the first year that i lived off campus, in a just-remodeled apartment in the allston area of boston, where i lived with three sophomore roommates i had met the year before. we had a porch off the kitchen, which gets me on a side track. i've yet to have a porch in new york...just rooftops. new york prefers rooftops to porches for some reason...maybe because porches are best for sitting & we can't sit still for a spell in this city to save our lives.

two of the roommates were a couple. the guy was a younger fraternity brother of mine from romania via lower jersey & the girl was in the same program as he & the daughter of a diplomat. she loved carnivale. they spent a high percentage of their waking moments together, many of them at the apartment. i don't think either of them had to do much cooking until they came to college, so when they ate, they fell back on a lot of the same foods & dishes. one such item consumed in mass quantities was nutella, or as i like to call it...chocolate of the gods. they ate it by the spoonful, dipped breads & fruits & meats & whatnot in it and for all i know, probably poured it all over each other. it is a wonder that they didn't both gain immense amounts of weight or develop a candy shell.

the other roommate was a girl who i also met the year before, a time when i was dating her roommate & she was dating mine. this roommate of mine she was dating was a good fellow, another of my fraternity brothers. he was totally from vermont, dude...the sort of guy who got kicked out of a yanni concert for brawling with a canuck.

in remembrance of this era of my life, tonight's snack pairs the healthiness of hazelnuts & chocolate with strawberries, who won out over the mango when i didn't feel comfortable with my ability to judge the ripeness of a mango on the fly. sure, i could have used it as an opportunity to strike up a conversation with someone, since i hear it is a great way to meet babes in a grocery store. does this mango feel ripe to you...babe?

that's not really my style though.

the wolavers beer, brewed by otter creek brewing company in middlebury, vermont, contains the healthiness & starting-your-day-right goodness of oatmeal with the certified goodness of organic beer. mmm.

vermontwise, middlebury is about an hour south of winooski (the town outside burlington where my former roommate grew up). to compare, winooski has its down-the-street proximity to higher ground & phish (who rumor has it may be reuniting!), but middlebury totally has a college that's a member of the little ivy league. they're so tiny those lil ivy leaguers! i'd pinch their lil middlebury panther cheeks if the panther wasn't such a ferocious jungle cat!

good pairing. definitely healthy.