Alex Bain's Blog

Things to do in Florida when you're hungry

It bothered me. It was a slap in the face. I entered Cheeburger Cheeburger yesterday, and my picture was no longer on their wall. You see, this fantastic burger joint snaps a Polaroid if you manage to eat their 20 oz. cheeseburger, and they place you on their wall. you can see behind me in the picture, it's not totally uncommon, but it's no small feat either.

So, I took matters into my own hands. If they wanted to erase me from the records books, they'd have to stop me from repeating my destruction every time I was in town.

I sat down with Billy to recreate history, and, frankly, I was disappointed. I remembered the burger as being more of a challenge. I dusted this thing off in 9 minutes, while actively chatting with Billy, eating fries, and debating what sort of run to go for when I got home (I ended up running 3 miles in 23 minutes about an hour after I finished the burger).

I took a bunch of pictures throughout the meal, to document the process. Here's the link to the Flickr photoset.

Technically, there are two walls at Cheeburger Cheeburger. The "one timers" and the "repeat offenders". Well, I'll be back in town in 2 weeks, and move my Polaroids back to where they belong.

Big Man Run

It's not often I do something and think, "I hope I do this again every year for the rest of my life."

Big Man Run certainly falls into that category. I mentioned the rules of Big Man Run in an earlier post, but here's the quick recap:

• Run ~5 miles
• At each of 3 stops, eat a hot dog and drink a beer
• You must be a man, and you must weigh >190 lbs. (excepting a few sponsor's exemptions)
• You must bring cash to tip the waitress at each stop

I encouraged a bunch of my HBS buddies to do it, but my friend Steffen was the only one with the guts (no pun intended) to do it in the end.

Here are some thoughts on the day:

• There were a surprising number of guys that looked suspiciously less than 190 lbs.
• Many of the guys over 190 lbs. were the "tall with lean, athletic muscle" type, not the "I party all the time" type.
• We hit a total of 4 bars on the loop (including the one the race begins and ends at) and they were all awesome. Makes me jealous of people who live in Somerville.
• The Somerville area was incredibly supportive of our cause. I guess I would also enjoy watching such a spectacle, but I was impressed with how many people turned out to see us massive men run.
• It wasn't that hard to run with the beer and dogs in my stomach. I hadn't eaten since 10AM, and the race started at 4:19 PM, so I was actually pretty hungry for the food when I got it.
• Considering how much fun we all had, I'm surprised that this race format is not more common. Obviously, it's probably hard to find 300 fat guys willing to run 5 miles every weekend, but if they opened up the rules a little, and tried it with other foods, I bet they'd get a great turn out. Seems like you could do one on a hot summer day with ice cream and people would love it.

Here are all the pics from the day. I have to say, it wouldn't have been nearly as fun with anyone other than Steffen. He had the perfect attitude for the event. He says he'll fly back every year from now on from Belgium just to do this, and that he's gonna have a similar version over there that I should come out for. Sounds like a great plan to me. I have to say: I highly recommend mixing athletics with speed consumption.

Fun weekend on the Cape

We had a blast this weekend on the Cape.
We got to go to a fun BBQ at the Gundersheimer's on Friday night [FYI, Josh took a few pics while playing around with my new iPhone, and they looked half decent when stitched together, so here it is below]:

And on Saturday we went to a Cape Cod Baseball League game in Falmouth.

In case you didn't know about the league, it started in 1885, and many of the best college players in America take part in this league each summer.

The players stay with host families, and work classic summer jobs between games, like landscaping and pool cleaning. We talk about going to games all the time, but average one about every three years.

I was NOT going to let this summer go by without one.

From the desk of Mr. Ligums: Champagne

My buddy Jeb's father sends me crazy stuff all the time. He sent me this clip this morning to congratulate me for me engagement...

Hunger : Steak dinner :: Starting : Sailing

I've never been in a regatta, but I've had sailors explain to me how the start of a race works:
They tell you the time the race is going to start, and the point where it will start, and you try to get your boat going at such a pace that it will be going full speed and crossing the line just as the start happens. If you're at all over the line, there's a penalty. There's no penalty for being behind the line, but you have less of an advantage.

It occurred to me last night at Abe & Louie's that eating steak is a lot like sailing. Let me explain:
When I know I'm going out to a nice steak dinner, I think about it all day. I know I'll want to pig out, so I try to make sure I'll be suitably hungry when I sit down. If I get too hungry, I get cranky, and can't resist the bread, then I'm not able to properly enjoy my steak. I consider this the equivalent of a sail boat crossing the line early.

If I'm not hungry enough, I either overeat, which is slightly unpleasant, or I have to live with the public shame of not finishing my meal.

Last night I "came in a little too hot" and took down half of the bread basket waiting for my salad as my body had subconsciously slipped into "survival mode". I still had plenty of hunger for my wedge salad smothered in bleu cheese, but I was losing steam by the time the steak and sides came out. In my defense, they were kinda slow to take our order, and I had tried to time the whole operation to the minute :-)

My (Spaly's) creamless carbonara recipe

I have two brothers that are both awesome at cooking (seen in action working on chili and corn bread to the right), but I'm totally worthless in that regard. I make decent omelets, but there's really only one dinner I know how to cook, and on Monday, I cooked it: creamless carbonara.

My buddy Spaly taught me this dish years ago, and it seemed crazy to me that a health nut like him would be making carbonara, but this recipe is not bad for you at all. Here are the ingrediants:

• 1 lb. pasta (works great with angel hair, but anything will do)
• 4-6 eggs (depending on how light or heavy you want the final product to be)
• 1 container of parmesan cheese (I forget how much is in a container, but a normal container is the right amount. I recommend the Digiorno brand).
• 1 lb. of lean turkey bacon

You may notice that these items are already in you kitchen (except maybe the bacon). That's what makes this a great last minute idea.

1. Begin by getting the water for the pasta boiling.
2. Start nuking the bacon. Place 4 strips between two paper towels and nuke for 4 minutes. Continue this process until all strips have been nuked and then crumble the strips into tiny pieces in a bowls.
3. Break the eggs and whip them until they're homogenous. You can add a little bit of milk here if you want your dish to be slightly more saucy.
4. Add the pasta to the water when it's boiling (I know this may seem obvious, but I'm trying to make this idiot proof).
5. Add all the parmesan cheese to the eggs and continue stirring so it doesn't clump.
6. When the pasta is done, remove from heat, strain, & return to big pot.
7. Slowly pour into the pot the cheese/egg mixture, stirring the pasta so that the sauce is distributed evenly. The pasta is extremely hot, and will begin cooking the eggs a bit, so you have to keep stirring.
8. Once all the sauce has been added, pour in the crumbled bacon bits while stirring the pasta.
9. Serve and enjoy. I usually add salt and Tabasco to mine, but you can season to your heart's content.

Part of why it's a relatively healthy dish, is that you are using lean bacon to begin with, and the paper towels draw out a lot of the fat (as you'll notice when you pull it out of the microwave. Additionally, parmesan is not a terribly indulgent cheese.

I strongly recommend eating immediately, as the flavor changes while the eggs are cooking into the pasta. Have the salad after the entrée, or before you begin cooking entirely.

Bon appétit!

It's better to be lucky than smart

As I mentioned in my post the other day, I got really lucky with my learning team here at HBS. It used to be that students were on their own to find study groups, but two years ago, they started randomly assigning learning teams. We're put into groups of six, of mixed genders and backgrounds, with each student coming from a different section.

There's two nice things about the students coming from different sections:

1. You get to know people outside your section.
2. You can steal their ideas and take credit for them in class and no one gets hurt or angry.

The learning team acts as an insurance policy. If I read a case and don't understand it, someone in my learning team will explain it to me.

A few things have to come together for this to really work:

• You have to have a group of morning people. We meet at 7:20 every day, even though class doesn't start until 8:40. We like to have ample time to discuss the issues. If folks aren't good at getting out of bed, this falls apart quickly.
• We have to all tacitly agree on the amount of chit chat versus productive work we like to have. Our team is relatively serious after about 10 minutes or so of initial goofing around.
• You have to agree on the requisite level of preparation for each discussion. I've heard of teams where participants show up unprepared and expect the group to catch them up to speed. We never let each other down if we can avoid it.
• You have to agree on whether or not you're doing "write ups". Some teams take turns writing up case summaries and passing them out to their teammates. We see this as a waste of time. I'm sooooo happy I'm not in a group that wants to do these.

The reason our group has been so successful is the perfect chemistry. I'll introduce you to folks left to right across the picture:
Jared: The marketing guy. He worked in packaged foods before school and is an overall smart guy.
Alex A.: Has a background in private equity, which is huge for our finance cases. He tends to show up late to every meeting by 45 minutes, which breathes life into our discussions just as they're starting to stagnate.
Joe: The accountant. He saves us big time in our Financial Reporting classes.
Michelle: She worked in the public sector. She asks a lot of really smart questions, and learns incredibly quickly.
Me: I'm not sure that I bring a unique strength to the group, other than enthusiasm and Excel modeling.
Jenn: She worked both in consulting and in the non-profit sector. She's the one who keeps our time focused and efficient. She's also great at understanding the interpersonal relationships at hand in each case.

The guy at the far right of the picture is a professor at HBS. His name is Prof. Karim R. Lakhani. He's an teaches a classes in opeations here. This picture was taken during a dinner at Red House (which is incredible). The dinner was a part of this program the school puts on where they match students with professors for a dinner series so we can ask each other questions. I learned that he is really interested in social media, just like me, surfs many of the same blogs that I do, and keeps one of his own.

Frusion: the biggest thing since sliced cheese

You all know how excited I got about sliced cheese, well here's another big food innovation...

It's a product I wish I'd known about when I was commuting to Apple:

I always wanted something light and healthy that I could consumer easily in the car, so I'd end up eating bananas, but these things taste awesome and they're so easy to grab as you're running out the door. This will become a staple of my business school diet.

As if the product wasn't cool enough on it's own, it's website has an old Mike Tyson's Punchout simulator.

UPDATE:
My friend, Hutch, who turned me onto drinkable yogurt pointed out that I have inadvertently endorsed the wrong brand. I hear that Frusion actually doesn't taste that good, and that the brand which is by far the best is Stonyfield Farm. Try their Organic Strawberry flavor.

Flipping bottles

Most people I know enjoy wine, but wish they knew more about it. I have a great tip for all of you out there:

An old family friend, Andy (at left in pic below), was in town last week. He's in the wine business, and has forgotten more about vinum than most folks will ever know. He was saying that a great way to find a good foreign wine is to buy from the best importers. He says that the importer is usually listed on the back of the bottle, so they call this "Flipping bottles" in the business. Here's a few he recommends: Kermit Lynch (has an office in Berkley), Eric Solomon (of European Cellars) and Robert Kacher (he may be difficult to find, mostly east coast I think).

Technorati Tags: Alex, Flickr

Movie monologues

Next time you're in the mood for a stroll down memory lane, take a gander at this site. It's an awfully comprehensive database of great movie monologues (as well as a few worthy TV quotes). A few of the best are only available upon request due to copyright reasons, but don't let that stop you from perusing such gems as:

Steve Martin to John Candy:
You're no saint. You got a free cab, you got a free room--and someone'll listen to your boring stories! Didn't you notice on the plane when you started talking, eventually I started reading the vomit bag? Didn't that give you some sort of clue, like maybe this guy is not enjoying it? Y'know, not everything is an anecdote, you have to discriminate! You choose things that are funny or mildly amusing! You're a miracle! Your stories have none of that! They're not even amusing accidentally! "Honey, I'd like you to meet Del Griffith, he's got some amusing anecdotes for ya! And, oh, here's a gun so you can blow your brains out, you'll thank me for it! I could tolerate any insurance seminar. For days, I could sit there, and listen to them go on and on with a big smile on my face! And they'd say, how can you stand it? And I'd say, because I've been with Del Griffith, I can take anything! Y'know what they'd say, they'd say, "I know what you mean, shower curtain ring guy...whoa!" It's like going on a date with a Chatty-Kathy doll. I expect you to have a string on your chest that you pull out and have to snap back. Except I wouldn't pull it out and snap it back, you would! (imitating) Dyah dyah dyah dyah! And, you know, when you're telling these little stories, here's a good idea: have a point. It makes it makes it so much more interesting for the listener!