Aka Italian Fries, as served at the Grill in Macalester College‘s old Student Union (circa 1990s, before the remodel and adding an extra “e” to create the Grille, which seems WAY too healthy to ever serve such a concoction). I got a tip on ingredients list relayed from a friend of a former Grill student worker. Came up with quantities & directions through several (mostly delicious but occasionally ridiculously cheesy) trials.

Update: my friend “Pyronious” who I met when he was living in St. Paul and sharing an apartment with another friend who was a Macalester student (Hi, “Miles”) also had plenty of first-hand experience with the originals. He’s an excellent cook and food photographer; he made this recipe recently and kindly shared this much more attractive photo, showing the way to cut & serve. (Note the strips should be narrow enough to dip into your marinara.) Bask in the beauty!

My original photo, how it’ll look when it’s time to take out of the oven:

Ingredients

• Pizza crust, 12″ (Boboli original is the closest I found, feel free to use your preferred pizza dough – it needs to have some body to be like the originals)
• 4 oz shredded mozzarella
• 4 oz creamy Italian salad dressing (I use Field’s)
• Parmesan cheese
• Olive oil
• Garlic salt
• Pepper
• Marinara sauce

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 450
2. Brush outer ring of pizza dough (crust) w/olive oil
3. Pour 4oz dressing in middle of pizza, brush out to meet crust/oil band. Feel free to go lighter depending on how “juicy” you liked your i-fries.
4. Sprinkle 4 oz mozzarella evenly. (It might look like it’s not enough, but it is.)
5. Grate Parmesan generously over the pizza
6. Garlic salt: 3-6 shakes
7. Pepper:  3-6 grinds
8. Bake at 450 until cheese starts to get a little browning – 8-12 minutes.
9. Take out, let rest for a minute or two so all the cheese doesn’t slide off, slice into 1″ wide strips, rotate 90 degrees and cut all the strips in half
10. Serve with marinara sauce for dipping

What Mac memories do i-fries bring back for you?

Ready to move beyond bullet points for your presentations?

People are visual. If you’re sharing data, try creating a data visualization, instead of a table of numbers. (See Tufte for a start on this.)

And if you’re conveying an idea, a single bold image can be more compelling than a slide full of text. (Check out Presentation Zen and the companion website for much more.)

Here are some of my favorite places to search for images to use in presentations.

1. Flickr search (need another license? More Flickr CC search links here.)
2. Google image search supports usage rights, too. (Google’s help article)
3. Creative Commons search (and as of July 2017, a new CC search is in beta) has pointers and a front end for searching additional resources that support usage rights.

These searches help you find images you have permission to re-use. (The Creative Commons license is a very widely used way of indicating these permissions.)

Always pay attention to re-use rights and respect the creator’s intent – don’t just take any image you find.  If the re-use requires attribution, be a mensch and include the credit in your preso.