This could be you!:

Doubts about your summer plans making your tummy tremble? Post up in 502 Lerner tonight at 9 pm for free cookies, cupcakes and milk at an info session for Ivy Summer Management Program hosted by Jeremy Slawin CC ’11 and Shelly Xu CC ’13.

Then, head over to the Relay For Life Kickoff in 101 Diana Center, inside Liz’s Place Cafe at 9:30 pm to decorate free freshly baked cupcakes with colored frosting, sprinkles, and white chocolate chips and a chance to sign up for Relay For Life.

Cupcake prince via wikimedia.

The brainchild of two former Business School students, DessertTruck has rapidly grown in popularity since it first started its engine in late 2007. The (surprisingly reasonably priced) mobile pastry truck has roamed the streets during the day (making its way up to Columbia from time to time), and hangs out at St. Mark’s at night, drawing more and more devoted customers each month. It was TimeOut New York’s readers’ choice for best mobile food last year, and beat Food Network chef Bobby Flay in a “bread pudding throwdown.” All signs pointed to increasing stardom, word eventually leaking out to tourists, and then becoming too popular for the hippest among us after getting its own New Yorker cartoon.

But now the city has suddenly declared their mobile food permit invalid and denied them the chance to renew said permit, forcing the Dessert Truck to shutter its public operations for the forseeable future. As denying freedom of dessert is the first step on the road to culinary fascism, we urge the city: for the good of New York’s taste buds, please reconsider.

roboppy/Flickr

Last night, Bwog reported on the shocking disappearance of the Tasti D-Lite kiosk from Lerner. It turns out that the departure was as sudden as our photo suggested. According to Michael Novielli of Student Auxiliary and Business Services: “Dining Services was notified on Friday, January 16 that Tasti-D-Lite would be permanently closing its location on the fourth floor of Lerner Hall due to steeply declining sales.” Steeply declining? Oh economy, what hath you wrought.

As for what will be take Tasti’s place, Novielli says “Dining Services has begun the process of assessing potential replacement vendors. More information on new use for the space will be available soon.” Until then, friends: courage.

Tasti D-Lite has served its last four-ounce cup of sweetened dairy-based frozen dessert substance on the fifth fourth floor of Lerner.

Bwog discovered the d-parted D-Lite kiosk Monday night, just as employees were giving the area a final sweeping. No word yet on why Tasti has vanished from Lerner, but Bwog will doggedly track down answers from Housing and Dining administrators as soon as possible.

Courage.

Last night, Culture Editor Tony Gong went to CCSC’s massive multicultural event “Passport to Columbia,” and returned a little more appreciative of diverse foods, arts, and Columbia, the nation. His account of the night follows.

Some people (naysayers and cynics, mainly) don’t think you need a passport to go to Columbia. “Columbia is a university, not a country,” they may argue. Well, last night, the CCSC Campus Life Committee finally showed us that Columbia is actually a country with over twenty smaller countries inside of it. Correspondingly, we’ve got a pretty kickass flag (see picture to the right). And yes, you do need a passport to enroll, naysayers. More proof and pictures after the jump.

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Welcome once again to Cooking With Bwog, dedicated to providing quality, cheap, healthy, and easy recipes to make your meal-plan-free life as tasty as possible. If you have any amazing cooking secrets you’d like to share or questions for the Bwog Culinary Team, please email bwgossip@columbia.edu. This week’s theme: dessert!

(Note to readers: Bwog has heard requests for easy Thai, and is working on an amazing set of recipes for next week.) 

Rice Pudding

Cook time: 1/2 hour

Supplies: 2 cups rice, 2 cups sweetened vanilla soy milk*, 2 eggs slightly beaten, raisins, cinnamon, baking pan or dish, oven, bowl

Set oven to 350, mix ingredients in a bowl, put them in the pan and bake for 25 minutes.

*You can substitute 2 cups milk, 1/2 cup sugar, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla, but it’s so much easier to buy the soy milk instead of buying the three products separately, and it ends up costing less. You can get soy milk like this at JJs or any of the grocery stores in the area.

Popsicles, pie, and creme brulee after the jump.

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