This summer, I embarked on a journey of self-discovery. This involved setting up a panini press in my dorm, developing a new recipe every week and then promptly creating, photographing and devouring the result of said recipe. On this spiritual excursion, I discovered a few things: one, keep your panini press away from your smoke detector; two, deadlines suck; three, if I don’t find people to eat my paninis and keep having to make them for myself, the Sophomore 15 is going to become a thing (so yes, we’re now accepting volunteers! Let me feed you!); and four, I freaking love paninis, like more than ever before. The last realization is obviously the most important. I never knew I was capable of such passionate emotion.

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Photo by Tarika Narain

I’ve been on hiatus from this column for a couple weeks, but never fear! I’ve spent the entire time in “recipe development mode” (aka, making myself lunch the only way I know how, apart from microwaving anything I find in the freezer and/or cereal). Thanks to Dartmouth’s nonsense (but wonderful!) quarter system, I found myself lacking in the friends department while at home. I blame it on the quarter system, but it could have just been that I’m lacking in the friends department. Naturally, I turned to food, and more specifically, paninis, to fill that gaping hole. Which you probably know if you follow me on Instagram, Snapchat or Facebook. Sorry for bombarding you with food photos, but consider it a sneak peak.

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Fall term starts tomorrow and with it comes the grand return of Weekly Panineats. This is like when they made the Transformers movie, and you were like, wow! There’s no way they could make a worse version of this movie! But then they made three more, each worse than the last, but everyone kept watching them. This column is basically the Transformers of food blogs, and I am either the Shia LaBeouf or the Megan Fox of food blogging. It’s up to you to decide.

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Whether you’re a veteran reader, consider this article a summary (or summer-y, ha ha ha I hate myself) of this summer’s recipes; if you’re a new reader, check out basically a compilation of my life’s work and every panini-related pun I could think of (pun-inis!) below. If you’re illiterate or are morally against reading because it’s for nerds or whatever, check out the pretty pictures. My four years of high school photography are finally starting to pay off!

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Cue the panini montage (almost as hardcore as that training montage from Rocky, so you should probably blast “Eye of the Tiger” while you read):

Week One: The Red, Wheat and Blue

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Week Two: The Leonardo DiCapreseo

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Week Three: The Peter Pan-ini

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Week Four: The Big Green-ini

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Week Five: The Liz Lemon-ini

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Week Six: The I Don’t Need No Man-ini

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Photo by Tarika Narain

Week Seven: The Pizza-nini

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Photo by Tarika Narain