My first game at the JPJ

(Tonight at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville.)

ACC basketball, oh, how I've missed you.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I went to Maryland undergrad. It didn't take long, though, before basketball fever struck. The air in Cole Field House was electric most nights, especially when Duke came to town. Oh, how badly we cared about each basket, each foul, each free throw. The games were hypnotizing, a few hours of immersion into another world. Maryland basketball gets into your blood. I'm a Terp for life.

But now I'm a Cavalier, too. And way overdue for my first game at home.

Without three cases to prep for, without Learning Team meeting tonight, with a Friday Reading Day waiting in the wings, the timing was perfect. The UVA men's basketball team took on N.C. State tonight. Bonus: The 'Hoos have been pretty good so far this season.


The John Paul Jones arena, just a few years old, is a modern temple to college basketball. The hallways reminded me a little weirdly of a convention center, with carpet and polo-shirted guides everywhere. Still, it's beautiful.

Take 15 minutes before the game starts and walk around. You'll eventually reach The Hall of Fame stretch — a mini-museum of past UVA stars with timelines of both the men's and women's teams.


I learned all sorts of interesting things. Duke gets everyone's blood roiling, apparently.


Ralph Sampson, a star way before my time.

Here's a 60-second grainy clip of the event's start. The team will run out for warm-up practice, and if you listen closely, you can hear the fans spell out U-V-A later in the chant.

The student section is behind one of the nets and wraps around to the side. Here's how the scene looks when a Wolfpack player tries to shoot a free throw. I've never seen the spinning lollipop-like things before — but what a neat idea for a distracting background.


Right, I almost forgot about the game itself! The first half was close. Back and forth we went. The rebounds never seemed to go our way. In the second half, despite a string of fouls, the game started to tilt our way, until the endgame was clear. Final score: UVA 59, N.C. State 47.

Next game: Saturday against Wake Forest. (Assuming, that is, we don't get another snowstorm. There's a formidable opponent. So far, Cville 0, Snowstorm 2).

Flickering thoughts

(My fireplace tonight. Yes, many of these apartments have working fireplaces. Jefferson would have approved.)

Ivy Gardens, the sprawling complex by Darden, at times feels like the dorms. Say, at 7:52 a.m., when I join the stream of bundled students with backpacks. We look like turtles lugging around shells, I think to myself.

Other times — say, when the fire gets crackling — Ivy reminds me of the delicious pleasures of being an adult.

When I was a child, I hated fires.

They always appeared to me like devilish flames, mischievously waiting to leap from the brick to the carpet to the Christmas tree. When Dad would pull back the metal curtain to move around the logs, I'd flee from the room. I didn't trust the fire.

But now, somehow, I love it. The flame holds a steady calmness. A timeless, hypnotic glow.

Even the prep is a treat. I love arranging the balled-up Wall Street Journals, a starter brick, the wood into a "log-cabin style" — like assembling a gingerbread house. I love striking the match and watching the bits of fire lick the newspaper and dance around, until a blaze is humming and hissing. I love curling up in an armchair, reading about Brazil in 2003 or Piaggio in the 1990s, by the warm snap-crackle-pop.

And then I get all philosophical. The fire reminds me of how far humanity goes back. I think of cave men huddled around a ring of rocks, or colonial women in aprons cooking over the fire, or all the people across the world tonight staring into flames.

How far we are. How close we are.

The flame always reminds me how much I've changed. Or more importantly, how many things stay the same.

Sweet and Spicy Chili, unlocked

I got a surprise gift in my inbox a few days after blogging about Darden's Chili Cookoff: the recipe for my favorite of the chilis. It was like a Chili Christmas.

Here, for your pleasure, and mine are the secrets behind Sweet and Spicy Chili.

Ingredients

• Cooking spray
• 1 T olive oil
• 1 clove garlic, diced
• 1 small onion, diced
• ¼ tsp salt
• ¼ tsp black pepper
• 1 C chopped baby carrots or diced large carrots
• 1.5 lbs. ground meat (beef, chicken or turkey)
• 7 pieces bacon
• 2 T light brown sugar
• 1 can corn kernels in juice
• 1 can light red kidney beans in juice
• 1 can diced tomatoes (14.5 oz)
• 1 small can tomato paste (6 oz)
• 1 red bell pepper, diced
• 1 green bell pepper, diced
• 1 pkg. chili seasoning
• 1 T honey
• ¼ C light brown sugar
• ¼ C honey BBQ sauce
• ¼ C pineapple juice
• ½ tsp cumin
• ½ tsp red pepper flakes
• ½ tsp ground red pepper
• ½ tsp chili powder
• ½ tsp nutmeg

Garnish: bleu cheese crumbles or shredded cheddar cheese with sour cream and tortilla chips

Directions

• In a medium or large stock pot, lightly spray with cooking spray and add olive oil. Sautee garlic and onion over medium heat, adding salt and pepper.
• In a medium skillet, lightly spray with cooking spray and brown meat. Drain and set aside.
• In a large skillet, cook bacon. Add 2 T brown sugar halfway through to caramelize the bacon. Drain cooked bacon on a paper towel. When cooled, chop the bacon and set aside.
• In a small pot or sauce pan, boil chopped carrots until slightly tender. Drain, then add to the stock pot with garlic and onion.
• Add the remaining listed ingredients to the stock pot and simmer over medium heat. Add ground meat and bacon.
• Simmer for 30 minutes to allow flavors to meld.
• Serve hot.

What MBA-school recipe would be complete without brands?

For testing purposes:
Ground meat, turkey
Chili seasoning, McCormick’s low sodium
BBQ sauce, Kroger brand Honey BBQ
Corn, Kroger brand sweet corn kernels
Diced tomatoes, Hunt’s brand
Pineapple juice, Dole
Tortilla chips, Fritos

Enjoy!

Restaurant Week, extended

Restaurant Week — the semi-annual chance to be completely stuffed with gourmet food for $26 — was set to end today. Why I am mentioning this, then, you ask in indignation? How unfair.

But wait! It has been extended to Wednesday (Feb. 3), apparently an attempt to undo the damage from the recent snowstorm.

The list of participating restaurants is long: C&O, L'Etoile, The Melting Pot, Zinc, Maya, to name a handful. At many of them, $26 would just buy an entree on an ordinary day.

On Friday, the eve of the snowstorm, we ended up at Blue Light Grill in the downtown mall (accidentally, I confess; we didn't realize it was Restaurant Week.)

Blue Light Grill's best feature is the comfy, couch-lined cocktail area. Enormous wall-size windows face the mall, perfect for people watching. (In January, that mostly means watching buddled-up fuzzy figures scurry down the street.)

The cocktail on the right is the Pear Tree, made of St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur, GreyGoose Pear Vodka, lime juice. Our visiting friend who runs a wine & spirits blog (Thirsty Girl's Whiskey Rebellion) pointed out the St. Germain Elderflower Liqueur, which apparently is pretty hot right now. I could last the pear and the lime, but the floral part, mmm, ever so faint. Next time, I'm trying the Ginger Pumpkin concoction (They were out of it, dang.).

Here are a few cell-pics from dinner. Don't be too put off by the weird glare and colors; everything tasted better than it looks here.

First course: walnut and bleu cheese spring rolls drizzled with honey. (Good, but not lick-your-plate good. Very nutty.)


Second course: Winter Root Vegetable Tian (What is that? A pile of thinly sliced vegetables, like the namesake dish Ratatouille creates in the Disney movie. ) with Goat Cheese Flan (creaminess x 10) and Tempura Haricot Vert (fried green beans).

It was delicious.

The photo looks horrible.

So, instead, here is Risotto with Lobster, Marscapone Cheese, and Grannysmith Apples, which had two friends gushing. I mean, lobster and cheese and risotto? How could you go wrong?


Third course: We all ordered the Grannysmith Apple Turnover with Salted Caramel and Vanilla Gelato. Picture a crispy mini-pocket oozing applesaucy filling. (You'll have to picture it, because I forgot to photograph it. Oops.)

The turnover was tasty, but not worth a repeat. The gelato, though, is totally worth a trip to Splendora's, where they often have salted caramel available for a few bucks. (Right now, it seems to be swapped out for butterscotch. Yes, I try to stay up on the gelato news.)

In the scheme of Cville restaurants, $26 for a three-course meal is a deal. But for a student with a $0 salary, definitely a splurge.

One tempting idea for next time: Order a fancy $10 drink and then go down the block for a slice of Christian's fantastic avocado and feta pizza.

Blue Light Grill's Restaurant Week Menu
120 East Main St.
Charlottesville, VA

Annual Chili Cookoff

Umm, I promise: We do more at Darden than cases and cooking. (Like, oh, fund-raising for Haiti, case challenges, bowling, concept competitions, dodgeball, company briefings, TNDC, interviews, soccer, club events, wine tastings, lectures, panel discussions on current affairs, salsa night, etc. — and cases, cases, and cases.)

Let's just say, it's a well-rounded education.

Above: View of PepsiCo Forum tonight, one small part of the cookoff. Pretend it's "Where's Waldo," only look for the decorated tables featuring home-cooked chili.

Tonight was the annual Chili Cookoff. Teams simmered up their own recipes, which other students got the pleasure of tasting. (In teeny paper cups that appeared deceptively too small, but by the end, you are inevitably too stuffed.)


Here's one with two types of lamb. (Neither are the fluffy stuffed-animal kind.) And chocolate, bacon, and beer. If I remember correctly.

I may just be dreaming.


This chili was from the reigning champs. Tasty stuff!


One team's table of witches (just guess, is all I'm saying) had a caldron. Spooky cool.


Adult beverages and kid-friendly options. I had a little of both.



This was my favorite chili — a sweet concoction with the lovely hint of pineapple. Mmmm. I heard a classmate call it "dessert chili." (Not hot enough for him; perfect for me.)

The official judges picked this devil of a team, Los Diablos, as the first place winners. Congrats, Daniel David, Daryn Curry, Rosie David, and (not pictured) Niki Hartvigsen! Their specialty 6-6-6 recipe: 6 types of meats, 6 kinds of chili peppers, and 6 varieties of beans.



OK, what's next on the foodie calendar?

Mornin', 2010 & Q3

(Above: The view from my balcony at 7 a.m. today. One of winter's only perks: sunrises that sleep in.)

Five blissful weeks away from class will end on Monday.

Q3 is coming. The six-week sprint will include finance, management communications, decision analysis (which I weirdly love), macroeconomics, and strategy. I'm looking forward to it — five weeks, while blissful, is too long. (Suggestion to Darden powers-that-be: How about a week between Q1 and Q2 off, and a four-week winter break?)

It's as if our brains have been on a runaway rocket for months, and suddenly everything slammed to a stop. Now we have to get the engine going again.

Highlights of Winter Break
(Darden-related version)

Venture Capital Bootcamp — This fantastic multi-day workshop is part of Darden's entrepreneurial program, though you need to apply and students from other MBA programs also attend (go Terps!). We also end up in groups that worked on a VC case together, which was fascinating and fast-paced. I learned that I have a lot to learn about the venture capital funding calculus and that VC really works for a certain type of enterprise and timetable, not your average mom-and-pop business. We met amazing people, in the VC community, the startup community, and within our own schools. One of my favorite experiences at Darden so far.

Job treks to D.C. — Each year over winter break, first-years organize visits to companies off-grounds. Ex: Students interested in energy might travel to Houston to tour a few companies of interest and meet a few executives. I would love to end up back home in D.C. one day, so I helped out with two treks: MES (Media, Sports, and Entertainment Club)'s D.C. trek and a brand-new D.C. trek aimed at entrepreneurs.

The MES trek visited The Washington Post, Discovery Communications, NFL Players Association, Sirius/XM Radio, and the Washington Nationals. Most of these visits featured panels with executives, who spoke about the role MBAs play. We got to ask questions of Discovery's Chief Marketing Officer and the Nats' Team President, among other superstars, which was awesome.

The E-trek skipped the corporate halls (and the tie and suit of most treks) for an array of startups. We visited Affinity Lab in Adams Morgan, a cool working space above the Tryst coffeeshop where hoodies and sneakers fit in just fine. We met a handful of entrepreneurs there who were working on everything from socially progressive PR to crowdsourced community building to solar thermal products. It was a refreshing switch from the profit-focused firms we learn about most days. Sure, all these companies want to make a dollar, but it's not the first or fifth thing their owners mention.

We also visited FortiusOne, a company that transforms mountains of raw info into compelling and enlightening maps, and Opower, which charts energy use compared to your neighbors in hopes of nudging you to a more energy-efficient lifestyle (and, as the numbers show, it really works!). Both are young startups with 25-60 employees and a great energy in the air.

And we had lunch with local entrepreneurs from smaller companies AwayFind, FELA, and FitFeud, who all had interesting and insightful stories to share.

Field trips for MBAs = a big hit

The magic land of free books

Libraries have a marketing problem.

Think about it. A free place to borrow books, just down the street. Nonfiction, fiction, cookbooks, finance books. Even DVDs, CDs, and magazines.

Simply fill out a form and get a free swipe card for your key ring, like in the grocery store. Take books home today! Dozens, if you like! (When the nice man at Charlottesville's Northside Library told me this — "The limit to checkout at one time is 75," I blinked. Really? Seventy-five?? "Does anyone actually ever reach that limit?" I queried. "Oh yes," he said.)

Right, and you can keep them for a long while. Say, three weeks.

If you forget to bring it back, the fee is just 10 cents a day.

Amazing.

And yet Barnes & Noble, its coffee shop and wide-open spaces and neat displays of pristine books, draws me in some days. The power of marketing, of user experience, of location.

Still, free is hard to beat. I was thrilled when I got my Cville library card earlier this week. (For other Darden students, be sure to bring something with your Cville address — it can be an electricity bill or your lease agreement, for instance.)


Here's the stack I took home.

To have the luxury of time to read right now, without three cases a day, is heavenly. When it's free, even better.

Wintry D.C. and its elegant trees

The wardrobe of trees never ceases to amaze me.

In the spring, lush green dresses dotted with flowers. In the fall, gorgeous orange and flame red accents. And in the winter, stark limbs reaching in fine detail to the sky. I might love the winter best.

I visited the D.C. National Mall over holiday break, an annual family tradition that always includes a delicious meal at the National Museum of the Native American's creative Mitsitam Native Foods Cafe. (Think buffalo chili and fry bread, roasted sunchokes and wild rice salad.) Another highlight was Julia Child's kitchen at the National Museum of American History. (Yes, they picked up the entire thing and transplanted it to D.C., like a precious fossil.)


This year, though, I was really struck by the trees.

In the spring, the trees in D.C. are a tourist attraction in and of themselves. Around the tidal basin, the cheery cherry blossoms explode into a frothy white beauty.

In the winter, the trees are naked. At first glance, they just look like a broom of branches. But then ... see the way the limbs curl up, stretch into space, divide into a seemingly endless array of tinier branches?


In the background of a powerful tree, the Hirshhorn looks dull and timid.


Lined up, at attention.


The trees on the Mall are so deliberately there. Pruned and placed just so.

I wondered, would the developers and the urban planners be enthralled if trees had only one coat, the bare lines of their winter selves? Everything dismal gray and naked, would a surveyor of the land marvel at the intricate limbs or see them as merely obstacles to the line of sight? Would they be knocked down for their valuable real estate?

Would trees be exiled to a museum, rather than surrounding us?




Would humans think, oh, we can do better than this?


Then I found this last tree. Mais, ceci n'est pas un arbre.

I was first fooled, standing in the Sculpture Garden and snapping photos.

Then I realized that the limbs were incredibly shiny, glistening, like polished stainless steel.

This tree has a name: "Graft." It has a creator, Roxy Paine. I searched online and found this description by Blake Gopnik of The Washington Post. He writes:

"Set against the live trees already in the garden, Paine's piece has the strangest effect: It's grander and more impressive than them, but also so much deader. The trees, in a sense, critique the human artifice — "That's the best you can do?"