Which Came First the Article or the Egg: An A&E Farewell

Liz Foster ’22 and Hunter Savery ’20

A&E Editors

Liz’s Thoughts:

Each week, a blank page taunts me as I debate what 300-800 words I will produce for readers of this section. However, the task of finishing out an absurd semester of Arts & Entertainment content (one with a recent spike in food reviews) proved the most challenging. This semester has been full of suprises, Venmos, and bad jokes, what could we possibly do to finish out strong? With this in mind, I’m here to tell you about my Saturday brunch. Like any good Trinity College student, I awoke at the ripe hour of noon. Due to a road trip, a lack of clear communication, and a failure to eat the cereal my mom sent me off to school with in September, I found myself still breakfast-less at the dark hour of 3 p.m. Naturally, I raided my co-editor Hunter Savery’s fridge to satiate my cravings for breakfast foods.

Searching around the confusing kitchen of 78 Crescent, I was met with a stack of sourdough, some shredded cheese, five eggs that I deemed “broke boy eggs” due to their miniature stature, a plethora of bacon, and various hot sauces. Unfortunately, I have very little experience in the kitchen. I can make a mean avo-toast and scrambled egg combo, but when it came to the simple task of frying an egg, I was a bit lost. After some careful coaching, a lot of olive oil, and one soldier lost to the compost bin, I succeeded. Sprinkling in cheese, salt, and pepper, the eggs began to form into a semblance of edible material. Elated, I donated one to Farran Brown ’22 who entered the house in a whirlwind before disappearing back into the wild, and gave my host his choice of the remaining three. After coaxing the eggs onto my sourdough that had been toasted, quite literally, an hour ago, all I needed was the bacon.

Slightly greasy but only due to an unforeseen paper towel shortage, I smushed two strips into my poor excuse for a bacon, egg, and cheese and coated that bad boy in hot sauce. After enjoying a few bites, I realized I absolutely hated said sauce and requested more options. Moving forward with a new spicy condiment, I attacked the sandwich. What I learned from this “BEC” was that I am a very mediocre cook, but that nothing is quite as satisfying as making your damn breakfast. Living in High Rise has deprived me of a lot of basic human rights, but its lack of kitchen is a massive detriment. Being in a kitchen provided me with responsibility, not unlike owning a pet. I actually had to try to not fuck up my food, carefully watching my eggs and awaiting instruction on when to put things in them. Rather than my usual meal of brick ramen cooked in a plastic container in the microwave, my Saturday brunch was a fully constructed product of my own efforts, save(ry) for the bacon which I did not understand and shafted onto Hunter.

Perhaps my breakfasts shouldn’t come from Dunkin’ Donuts, Steve’s Bagels, or even the trusty Bistro, but rather my own hard work and labor.

Hunter Hot Takes:

The Tripod’s A&E Department has been overwhelmed with requests for more Hunter and Liz reviews, so much so that our computers crashed and this article was originally written as a series of tweets. However, we had no choice but to answer the demands of the unwashed masses, but how? Like the great Hunter S. Thompson before us, Liz and I went on a savage journey to the heart of the American dream, but after the road trip we found ourselves famished. This is why, on this fine Saturday in the year of our Lord two-thousand and nineteen, we decided to make breakfast at 4 p.m. As soon as we embarked on this endeavour it became clear that this was to be our article. Bringing it back home for our final article as editors of the Tripod Arts section, this week we’re reviewing our own cooking.

It was a frigid and inauspicious Saturday as Liz Foster ’22 and I sat idly in Crescent 78 bereft of inspiration for a Tripod article. Understanding that the unspoken, and sometimes spoken, challenge to any food critic who writes an even slightly negative review is “Why don’t you cook your own damn food?” we figured that we ought to transform the breakfast ritual into high journalism. Bacon, egg, and cheese: the mundane, even prosaic, slamming together of words matching the unskilled and common slamming together of ingredients that creates something greater than the sum of its parts. A breakfast sandwich seems like a simple task, but we saw it actually involves quite a bit of coordination when two unskilled people are in the kitchen. Drawing on our narrow areas of expertise, Liz made the eggs and I handled the bacon.

The first egg was not the best one, there was some difficulty in the flipping process with an initial failure to launch leading to an end product which was far too triangular. After picking at it for a few moments, we thanked it for its service and heaved it into the compost bin. Stepping away from the eggs to regroup, I placed the bacon into the oven. The bacon was the most straightforward component here and, for some reason, the one that we found in the greatest abundance. The menagerie that is my Crescent kitchen is a transient collection of food and objects, at best I only have approximate knowledge of what is in there.

Like Mother Nature, the kitchen giveth and the kitchen taketh away. This is to say that I couldn’t find my own bread and stole several slices of the unattended sourdough on the counter, my apologies to the rightful owner. After gathering the requisite hot sauces and once the eggs were ready, we assembled our sandwiches. Mine fell apart almost immediately, but upon reassembly I was reminded that the payoff of a bacon, egg, and cheese is always worth it.

This was no standout sandwich, it wouldn’t pass muster at any respectable delicatessen, but the experience of making it was refreshing. The world moves too fast, sometimes we all need to slow down and make our own eggs.

As for the critique of the critics, our sandwich was well received by our only customer, the socialite Farran Brown ’22. Farran was clearly in need of a BEC, and by some strange feat we were able to meet that need. Just as mysteriously as she arrived at my palatial villa, she vanished, leaving Liz and I to devour our sandwiches. We can consider this a kind of soft-opening for our egg sandwich business, serving the tragically underserved portion of campus south of the DMZ (former trench).

Egg sandwich shop schemes aside though, the real takeaway here was that making food is both more challenging and rewarding than ordering Taco Bell from the couch, though I remain staunchly in favor of that decision. The coastal elites of the Tripod Executive Board can keep their mimosas and eggs Benedict, I prefer to eat breakfast with the common bantam. Why complain about Chartwells when you can make your own? Homemade bacon, egg, and cheese: 8/10, though more for the experience than the sandwich.

Editor’s note: This is my last article as an A&E editor here and I can think of no better way to have finished the year than breaking some eggs with Liz. History will little note, nor long remember the absurdity of the Arts section this semester, but I was proud to have made it possible. Long live the Tripod.