Ah, summer; a glorious release for the free spirit. Although I know I will eventually grow up and have a job that does not change with the seasons, I fiercely cling to the concept of summer vacation. The timbre has changed slightly: summer no longer signifies a chance to intern across the country, take up Polish, or backpack across Costa Rica. Yet, now summer is both a chance to be productive in lab and enjoy a flexible schedule. The undergrads are gone and class no longer dictates my experiment schedule. Best of all, extended sunlight dissipates long-day blues.
I do have small protests about the Berkeley summer. For one, it isn't actually summer. Being close to the Bay is meteorological thorazine: it assuages the bad, yet it numbs variation to a humdrum, flat line. I flat out refused to bike to work one day in May because it was freezing cold and raining. After four years in the hot sun I refused to be pathetically cold and wet just days away from June. In the worlds of a friend, "Yep, here you never quite put the pants away."
Climatic quibbling aside, I will be sad when summer ends. My roommate David celebrated his birthday in early June, so fellow roommate Maddie and I took him to dinner to celebrate the continued survival of his autonomic nervous system.
Sitcom-worthy chaos ensued before we picked a restaurant, and an hour of disoriented banter led us to a cozy table at a swanking Sicilian trattoria. The scrumptious Italian meal far outclassed us madcap graduate students, but we headed home afterwards the traditional birthday necessities of cake and candles.
I had made a Kahlua chocolate-swirl cheesecake for the occasion. Cheesecakes require three strict criteria: gradual temperature changes, even thermal distribution, and not too much air. These three culminate into one golden-custard rule: patience. Patience and I do not always get along. So, the cheesecake was a little cracked. No one cared, it was decadently creamy.
As we futilely tried to cram more calories into our overwhelmed stomachs, Maddie started playing with the candles. All of us are a touch pyro, so a slender match sending delicate drops of wax sliding down the curvy sides of a candle was fascinating. Yet life, like candlewax, is a slippery slope. One candle grew to two, to three, to all of them. This progression ended in a tiny bonfire on the plate: match sticks fueled by birthday wax.
Biological research is every day life for us, but the importance of NOT lighting fires INSIDE THE HOUSE is too difficult to grasp. Proudly, I brilliantly thought to roast mini-marshmallows (I always have a stock for making homemade fondant).
Which brings me to a recipe as idiotic as it is delicious: indoor teddy graham s'mores. Chocolate chips and teddy graham bears were on hand from the cheesecake. Mini marshmallows set aflame and waved around to loo like tiny sugar meteors quickly melt the chocolate and make adorable morsels.
the aftermath? Fortunately for us, (and to the chagrin of Smokey the Bear programs everywhere) we did not burn down the house. Unfortunately for us, we failed to understand that plates conduct heat. And wood burns with heat and oxygen. And our kitchen, like the rest of the atmosphere, is full of oxygen. so when the plate was lifted, there was a nice burned spot on the table. Oh well. Sandpaper and varnish is a well-worth chaser for such a delicious adventure.
Teddy Graham S'mores
Teddy grahams
Chocolate Chips
Mini-marshmallows
Step 1: light fire inside house
Step 2: don't think about it
Step 3: roast marshmallows
Step 4: put marshmallow on bear with chocolate chip on it
Step 5: pop in mouth, continue not thinking about it.
Repeat. They are tiny little bears.
