Will Tango for Bacon

Some say fall is a great time to fall in love. Change is everywhere, and life feels as crisp as the autumn air. I say that's bullshit, but I did fall in love with tango.

This isn't terribly surprising. Personally, music sparks a nearly tangible dopamine response. Stimulants like caffeine fail to keep me awake, but take me to a good club at 1am and I will dance for at least the next two hours. People generalize why many women and some men like to dance. The same people conclude that women like moving to music and men like women. Ah, there is no reciprocity in life, is there?

I went salsa dancing recently in an attempt to de-funkify and let loose. I got pretty lucky: the music was live, there were plenty of good dancers, and I successfully told anyone hitting on me that I was Susie, a linguistics major from Florida. My feet were so tired I didn't go running the next day. I blame it on the partner who thought standing in place while I did never-ending sets of triple spins was good dancing. It was as if he was thinking "Ooooh, she turns! Let's do it again. Oooh! She turned again!" WTF dude, you should try spinning nonstop. What do I look like, Dancing with the Stars? I felt like I was on the Salsa Teacups of Death. However I won't like; it was a lot of fun.

Why? Dance evokes that delicious feeling that arises when the body connects music and space. Suddenly all the emotions that leapt out of the brain at the first measure have a physical outlet. You not only change your body to fit the music, but you change the very environment: the palpable expression of elusive musical nuances.

Fancy words for a girl who danced a hoedown on a kitchen chair to Christmas carols before a midterm. In October. In dalmatian spotted PJ pants.

My new love is tango. Argentine tango is simply beautiful. It isn't necessarily the fiery flash-and-trash performances you see on stage and in film, although many are fabulous. Rather, the movements have a very organic superficiality. You can watch avid tangueros savor every flourish--regardless if they are seasoned dancers or an elderly couple on the floor. It is not a polished presence, but rather a raw consequence of the music that cannot be hidden or easily falsified. Some dances I love because they allow me to be someone else. Tango I love because it shows me that this someone else--is actually me.

Grammatical ambiguities aside, I'm obsessed. I listen to tangos at work, check out violin tangos to play at home, and dance with anyone who puts up with me. I'm having difficulty unlearning ballroom habits (Argentine tango does not have the arched, extended frame of ballroom tango), but my inner pseudo-dancer in me is whining like a five year old child. "Dance NOW! I want to learn more NOW!" Definitely matches the the music, no?

If I fell in love with tango, I became infatuated with bacon. Don't ask why, I have no clue. In fact, most animal fat scares me. I bake with butter because there is no good subsitute, my cream soups lack cream, and I trim every molecule of fat off my meat. Nonetheless I want bacon like I want my experiments to work. Grilled figs wrapped in bacon. Pineapple bacon prawns. Cheddar bacon biscuits. More sentences without verbs. As long as it includes bacon. One friend asked me if I was pregnant. Another friend joked, "I bet your brain when you wake up is like, 'Science! BACON! Tango.'" Damn straight it is.

The problem is that I haven't gone food shopping in two weeks. There is no food in the house. Absolutely no bacon. What to do? I managed to make amazing muffins: you know you bake too much when the leftovers make apple cranberry oat muffins. Too bad delicious muffins do not have bacon, which is what I want like I want oxygen.

To remedy the situation, I went for a run. One must do something to burn off massive amounts of pork fat. Afterwards I went to the store, yelling "Baccoooooon!!!" while dashing inside; much to the dismay; much to the dismay of my fellow shoppers. I waited fifteen minutes for my number to be called at the meat counter. The lady before me asked for a pound of bacon. "Good choice!" I quipped. "Oh, it's for a friend, she's too skinny. I haven't craved bacon since I was pregnant." Oh shit. I got my half-pound of thickly sliced pepper bacon. It was the lone outlier in a shopping cart of produce and low-fat yogurt. Statistical deviations have never tasted so good.

Now what? I could roll up my sleeves and cook something. Too bad neurosis are impatient. First order of business was a simple bacon cheese sandwich. Once that salty crisp ecstasy hit my palette I knew I was in business. Diced apples, shallot and garlic hit a saute pan. The mixture went into a bowl and met cheddar cheese and crumbled bacon. Can you say 'delicious filling?' I used it in stuffed pork chops, but it also makes a wicked stuffed turkey burger. There is something that hits the spot, and then there is something that reminds you why life is worth living. Generally life doesn't go your way. Things fail, people disagree, and discontent rules without interruption. But sometimes, all you need is a little bacon. And maybe a tango.


Mustard-crusted pork chops with apple bacon stuffing
2 pork chops (thick cut)
2 T whole-grain mustard
1 small apple, diced (pick a tart and crisp variety, like golden delicious, honey crisp, fuji, or macintosh)
3 strips thick-cut bacon, fried and crumbled
1/2 c sharp cheddar cheese
1 clove garlic, minced
1 shallot or 1/2 small red onion, diced
1/4 c chicken broth
2 t apple cider vinegar

Saute apples, garlic, and shallot in olive oil until shallot is slightly translucent. Put into a small bowl. Add bacon and cheddar cheese, mix.

Cut a slit into the pork chop, making as wide and deep a pocket as possible. Salt/pepper the meat. Spoon mustard on either side of the chop to make a nice crust. Put stuffing into the pocket, packing in firmly. (It helps to rest it on the non-slit edge.)

Heat a little olive oil in a skillet over med-high heat. Cook pork in skillet for 2 min on each side. Then, add chicken broth and vinegar, turn heat down to medium, and cover with lid. Allow to simmer/steam for at least another 5 min, or until cooked (depends on thickness of pork chop.

In the beginning, God made Sudafed.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a grad student in possession of a death-cold must be in want of some meds.

Post the parodied work, and I'll bake you cookies. (Assuming I can or will be able to get them to you...)

A new rite of initiation has furthered me along the path to acclimation: the cold. Any university is a veritable cesspool of pathogens. Thousands of people, plenty of stress, and not enough handwashing makes a simple cold virus akin to the Borg.

Colds are an interesting pathological purgatory. Anyone who has a cold will tell you they wish to die. The body aches, the lungs can't breathe, the head wants to explode, and the spirit shrivels in despair. Yet everyone waves it off, "Oh, it's just a cold, it won't kill you." It makes me want to cough violently on their sanctimonious bottles of Purel and launch flaming boxes of Kleenex into their houses. Unfortunately, the sinus headache makes coughing excruciating, and Kleenex is more vital than oxygen at the moment. I grunt indistinguishably and slink away.

Indeed, viruses show that a streamlined agenda (reproduce) is a force to be reckoned with. I love small molecule research, and small molecules haven't done squat when it comes to fighting viral infections. This is why I'm glad to have an adaptive immune system, which I am so painfully learning about in class. While I'm ready to cough up my own spleen, my professor is elaborating on the nuances of T cell co-stimulation. I don't give a rat's ass about CD28. Where is the nearest fifth of robitussin I can chug?

Sidenote--anti-tussives are the molecular mirror images of narcotics. If you want a funny story, ask about the time I actually did drink half a family sized bottle of robitussin.

My personal signature disease phenotype is my voice. It is the first thing to go when I get sick, probably because I use it incessantly when healthy. Karma is a bitch. I go from pseudo-normal female to emphysema-robot-noise instantly. This gathers much sympathy and hilarity. Friends tell me to lay off the cigarettes, co-workers tell me to go home NOW before I contaminate anything. One roommate told me that for a while I had the 'sick yet sexy' voice. I'm not sure what she was talking about--I sounded like Stephen Hawking.

It is rather entertaining, though to be sick when you have an overly expressive face. Steve Wonder could tell I'm sick before I said a word. I look terrible, and the minute I start to recover everyone says "Ah, I can tell you are feeling better! You looked like shit the other day." Why thank you! I was in fact hoping to start a new career in diseased modeling. Why display an eating disorder when you can strut the swine flu, rock the cholera, or put some sizzle back into SARS? Alas, my dreams are crushed!

During this illness, some amazing (and brave) friends in my PhD program invited our house over for lunch. How sophisticated! The food they made was incredibly delicious, and the spread was straight out of Martha Stewart. Only better, because our friends aren't bitchy and aren't convicted of insider trading. This naturally calls for a mature and quaint dish to bring over, right? I didn't have one of those, but I did have a pumpkin cranberry bread recipe. Using the fresh pumpkin puree and my roommates as taste testers, we made some tasty loaves. It is hard to bake something you can't taste- especially when figuring out how much spice to add. I'd ask
"Does this need more cloves, or more allspice?"
"What's allspice?"
"This is allspice" (hands jar)
"ooooh, this smells good!"

And so on. The cream cheese drizzle on top was even more obscure. When I came up with the recipe I didn't have any cream. So I used ice cream, and fell in love with the result. This time I didn't even have a hand mixer, nor powdered sugar. So, I softned the cream cheese, added ice cream, and nuked it for a couple minutes. Then I added sugar and a splash of vanilla. It makes an amazing shmear to go with fall food. And it really is a technique a la college-tackiness. But try this recipe. It is absurdly easy.



Pumpkin Cranberry Bread
2 eggs
1 c pumpkin
1/2 c veggie oil
1 c white sugar, 1 c brown
2 1/4 c all purpose flour
1 t baking soda
1/2 t NaCl
1/4 t cloves, 1/4 t allspice, 1/4 t ginger (you can use whatever pumpkin spices you like, or pumpkin pie spice)
1/2 t nutmeg
1 t cinnamon
2 c fresh cranberries

Oven to 350 F
Combine eggs, puree, and oil in one bowl. Dry ingredients go in the other. Add dry to wet, mix enough to bring together. Add cranberries. Pour into greased loaf pan, bake about 1 hour.
Makes one loaf.

Icing:
Cream cheese, ice cream, powdered sugar, vanilla.
Do this to taste.

Beat cream cheese. Add melted ice cream. Add powdered sugar. Add vanilla.

October News: The Nobel Pumpkins

Ah yes, fall is here. The bay area is not known for large seasonal variations, yet the leaves are indeed changing color, talk of thanksgiving and Halloween is creeping in, and my roommates are buying pumpkin beers. It is time to stock up on your carotenoids (molecules like beta carotene that make life beautiful and orange) because chlorophyll is on vacation, and we must take advantage of squash, sweet potatoes, and yams.

October also brings the Nobel Prizes. Allow me:
Once upon a time, a very ingenious Swede named Alfred invented dynamite. He thought it was helping makind by creating something that could aid construction of bridges, tunnels, etc. Silly, Silly Alfie. Quickly the man realized that humans found dynamite much more entertaining up each other rather than stupid inanimate objects. Oops. Young Alfie felt bad, so when he became Old And Dying Alfie, he set up a Prize. It was a prize of Super Swedish Superiority: governed by committees and a 'trust.'
And that is how (in my bastardized recollection) the Nobel Prizes started.

So a bunch of stuffy old white guys determine who has contributed to humanity. I think it would be more entertaining if the winners couldn't exchange the currency--so Laureates end up investing 10 million Kronor in Ikea allen wrenches or Stockholm souvenirs.

Liz Blackburn (medicine prize this year) did her work on telomeres (wikipedia it) while at UC Berkeley. The thing is, that happened 25 years ago (common for science Nobels) and now she is at UCSF. So she will not get a Nobel Laureate parking space at Berkeley, which all residents NLs recieve. It is a shame, because parking in such prime real estate is probably worth more than the money. One day I'll park in a NL space and get this ticket: "You're ordinary. Go park in the boonies, you bastard." Too bad I bike to lab everyday.

The other relevant breaking news? There is a shortage of canned pumpkin this year, sound the alarms! Pies are out of reach. Soups, cupcakes, bread, cookies... that subtly sweet earthiness is no longer form in those unchanging orange tin cans! Fall has ended. We must trade our Thanksgiving pies for sackcloth, our fall custards for ashes. Repent to the God of Squash, and He may bless this Gomorrah with the convenience of our darling canned pumpkin.

Or... you can buy pumpkins and make it yourself. It is actually fairly easy, if you time it correctly. Please note the following.

1) Buy sugar pumpkins, pie pumpkins, or sugar-pie pumpkins. They are all the same squash: pumpkins that have softer, sweeter flesh that is best for pumpkins. Keep the normal pumpkins for Jack-o-Lanterns, because they tend to be stringy and tough.
2)Keep in mind that pumpkins are mostly filled with pulp that you don't eat. Pick a pumpkin that feels heavy for it's size, and don't expect a gallon of puree for a pumpkin the size of a marmoset.
3) Give yourself time. The stuff must be strained out--so don't make the puree the day you intend to cook with it. It needs to cool, be pureed, and then strained. I cooked these pumpkins after a party on Saturday and let it drain overnight before making pumpkin cranberry bread on Sunday. (I'd advise cooking BEFORE partying, or you end up in your kitchen late at night wondering what synaptic misfire led to you attacking cooked orange-ness with an immersion blender.)

Pumpkins
Buy a pumpkin. Don't steal, they're cheap. And how do you run out of a store with a pumpkin? Scoop out insides with a spoon. Reserve seeds for roasting. Lay face-down on a foil-lined cookie sheet. Cover with foil. Bake at 375 F for 1.5 hours, or just until tender. (I had two pumpkins, one bigger than a softball and one smaller than a size-3 soccer ball. It took one hour) Take out and let cool, or you will burn your hands (Stirfrycookies, J. of Stupid Cooking, 2009.)

Scoop out flesh into a bowl. Either blend with an immersion blender, or use normal blender/food processor and work in batches. Dump puree into strainer, place over a bowl, and let sit in the fridge, covered, for at least a few hours. Longer is better.

That is it! With my two smallish pumpkins I got about 4 c puree. Once made it'll last a few days in the fridge, and much longer in the freezer. I like this method because it is the least messy and doesn't involve water, so the stuff doesn't need a million cheesecloths to drain. The pumpkin is sweeter and lighter in color than the canned, but it is fairly easy to make, and gives a nice autumnal clarity to whatever you're making. Add it to pancakes or oatmeal, for starters.

A real recipe? Stay tuned--it'll be pumpkin cranberry bread, with a cream cheese drizzle. So much more optimistic than real news!

Taxidermied hamsters and a complete lack of focus

Midterms are here! Therefore, I taxidermied a family of hamsters.
Ok, maybe not.

The exclamation point clearly denotes an air of joy; as if mind-numbing tests on stuff you plan to study for the rest of your life but currently hate were just like rainbow ice-pops. Mary Poppins can suck it, because the only thing that helps midterms go down is alcohol. And, considering that I decided to stop buying alcohol so that I could afford to take tango classes, I was thoroughly screwed.

I tried to cram for my biochemistry exam the weekend beforehand. Here is how that went:

1. Wake up.
2. Make tea, start breakfast.
3. Pull out computer, download enough articles to make one pee one's pants.
4. Neighbor starts power saw. Sounds like Marilyn Manson exploded a pipeline.
5. Eat breakfast, look over first paper. Nearly pee my pants.
6. Sawing stops. Sigh in relief.
7. Oxyacetalene torch starts. What. the. hell. Would get up to look out window, but was so surrounded by papers didn't want to move. Assume neighbor is welding an oil rig.
8. Try to read paper. Paper doesn't really make sense. Paper has 49 more pages, and 20 other friends. Intensely hate paper.
9. Neighbor switches off torch. Sawing resumes.
10. Resist urge to turn on college football.
11. Torch relights. Hear casual Spanish conversation on a cell phone about the weekend. Who chitchats while holding a lit torch?
12. Change papers. Take a break and go online. The internet is fascinating. Scientific artciles are not. Read about a man selling taxidermied hamsters.

http://www.craigslist.org/about/best/rcs/1127138244.html

Continue, ad nauseum. Needless to say, I got very little done before watching ASU play UGA while indexing lecture notes. I was very proud of the Sundevils, who managed to hold their own against a ranked SEC team in Georgia. This was, until they lost this past weekend to the Beavers. Truly, sports are the eternal tease of humanity.

Towards the end of the weekend, I give up. I will fail, it will suck, and I will get over it. One test probably won't get me kicked out of grad school, and let's face it--I incessantly babble about life plans that do not involve a PhD. I could always become a baker, yoga teacher, or South American Ninja.

Take the test. Obscenities fail to capture my state of mind. I could barely see straight while stumbling out the door. It was if my brain had focused so much on those nine sheets of paper that life on the outside demanded a re-acclimation period. This was it. I was done. I'd drop out, tech in industry for a year, and join the Peace Corps. Clearly, I would be much better at digging ditches for orphans in Indonesia than doing biochemistry.

Get home. There is a tent on the patio. It is a four person, bright green tent. What? Was there a slumber party I was not aware of? Who is camping on a Tuesday night ON OUR PORCH? Who owned this tent? Our stipends are pretty low, but we did not need a fifth roommate to live on the deck. Last time I checked.

Turns out the tent is the neighbor's; the same neighbor who was torching the Alaskan pipeline while on his phone on a Saturday morning. Apparently the tent blew into our patio. I guess it got tired of Kansas, but the only witch to land on would be our hallucinating squirrel, Fritz. (see post on 'cracked out squirrels') It missed. That make my housemates and I the munchkins. Too bad we don't have those cool outfits.

One night after work I came home famished and short on time. So, I rolled out some of hte pizza dough I had made the weekend prior. I had no tomato sauce, but I did have roasted vegetable soup of approximate pizza sauce consistency. I threw together the weirdest topping combination of my life. Mozzarella, parmesan, and Danish blue cheeses, walnuts, and tomatoes. It worked remarkably well! The tang of the blue cheese complimented the earthy squash flavors in the soup-sauce, and the walnuts had a nice crunch against the oozy melted mozzarella. And added bonus? I managed to roll the crust into the shape of Australia. My housemates insisted on slicing it up along state lines:

So, how bad can life be, if you know that people are taxidermiing deceased rodent pets their chilldren accidentally kill? (Is that hamster-slaughter, instead of manslaughter?) You know you are better off than whatever frazzled parent decides buying this is a good idea... and you can make pizza shaped like any continent you like. Win win!

Roasted Vegetable soup:
half a butternut squash, cleaned out
half an onion
5 cloves garlic
2 portabella mushrooms
1 bunch leeks, cleaned well with green parts cut off
Whatever the hell you want.
Chicken stock

Chop vegetables roughly into big pieces. Dump on tray, drizzle with olive oil, season with salt and pepper. Roast at 400 F until fork tender, but take out garlic after 15 min, or it will char into little coal-cloves.

Dump veggies into a pot, cover with chicken stock, and simmer. Take immersion blender and blend until smooth, or pour into a blender.

The non-Australian Australian Pizza
Your favorite pizza crust (dough from local pizzeria, your own recipe, etc.)*
Tomato paste, or soup
Blue cheese
Mozzarella cheese
Parmesan cheese
Walnuts
1/2 tomato, sliced and quartered.

Oven to 375 F

roll out dough until you reach desired thickness. Poke holes in dough with a fork, brush with olive oil, and bake in oven 15 minutes-ish.

Remove from oven, spread sauce on crust. Sprinkle mozzarella cheese on sauce. Walnuts and blue cheese crumbles next, followed by tomato slices. Top with parmesan. Bake until crust is golden and cheese is bubbling, about 20 min.

*I promise, I'll post my favorite pizza dough recipe one day.