profile jeremy n. smith '00

Jeremy's Helpful Salad Bar Hint: "Do you like tossed salads but have trouble tossing at the dining hall salad bar? You're not along. I wrote to Dining Services to say that if you cover your salad bowl with no chance of mess.' Give it a try!"

FM: When did you decide you liked your salads shaken, not stirred?

JS: Well I guess you could say that the specific tolled salad idea was just an epiphany I had one day. I saw that the two salad bowls fit perfectly on top of each other. A friend told me to put it on the comment sheet, so I filled it in and drew a snazzy picture. It was a beautiful illustration.

FM: You know they quote you on the card. You say there's "no chance for mess." But when I tried to do it I spilled dressing all over myself.

JS: It's in fact a lie. But I had to sell them on the concept, you have to understand. That's the problem with not publishing my picture. My Picture clearly indicated that the only movement is up is up and down. Without the picture to guide them, people were moving it back and forth and on the diagonal.

FM: there anything else that's good shaken up like that? Some people like pasta with Italian dressing.

JS: People like crazy things. We talk abut diversity all the time, and Harvard's not really that diverse, But I think when it comes down to the food, that's when our true differences come out.

FM: Any dining hall gripes?

JS: [No.] In Annenberg last year I asked them to make me a grilled cheese sandwich with a hotdog in the middle. One chef spent 40 minutes on the grill working on it, but it just couldn't happen. You just Can't cook a hot dog within a grilled cheese.

FM: Have you upped you salad consumption lately?

JS: I think I've been having more salad lately. but batter yet I think the whole community has been having more salad lately. Not only that, but it led me to realize that I could remake the dining hall.

FM: Have you thought of any other helpful culinary?

JS: Actually last year I figured out how to make something that tastes just like Mexican fried ice cream. It's very simple: you take vanilla fro-yo and cover it with Just Right cereal. And this year I've gotten far bolder. After the salad bar thing worked out, I spent some time experimenting with sushi.

FM: Where do you get your inspiration?

JS: Probably from my grandma. She's an amazing woman, and invents food for a food company she started in New York. I guess in the '50's she used to work for Seventeen magazine when they had a food column. So she started her food company and she just freelances and develops food. She invented cran-raspberry.

FM: Really?

JS: Yeah, the Ocean Spray stuff And Clamato. In the 80's she did a lot with soy based products. Now she's doing microwave stuff, I think.

FM: Do you like to cook too?

JS: I would like to say so, but I'm probably too lazy.

FM: Have you acquired any nicknames since your tip was published?

JS: Well I have to say that I've not acquired any nicknames. But I've gotten a lot of response, which is nice. I think it's because everyone is trapped in the dining hall, and they have to read the table card. If you want to write something that every undergraduate will read, put it right on that table card.

FM: How does it make you feel when you see people shaking up their salads?

Js: It makes me feel like I'm on the top of the world.

FM: Do you notice it a lot?

JS: From time to time, but I'm not that focused on it. I'm looking to move on, move ahead.