Stir-fry cookies

Candidacy

2011-05-08T13:49:00.000-07:00

A nasty five-letter word punctuates the first two years of graduate school. Quals. You see, UC Berkeley needs to put its stamp of approval on any little snot precocious enough to attempt a doctorate program.

To be fair, my program does not formally QC as hard as other programs. We have no preliminary written exams, no comps, and *gasp* no thesis defense. That's right. Eventually I just hunt down the old guys and make them sign the dissertation. They don't get to put up a fight first. Perhaps that is why they go into hiding.

Nonetheless, simply because the department depends on WWI attrition tactics does not mean that my second year class cruised effortless through qualifying exams. I needed a paper bag to breathe into during the month's preparation for my three-hour interrogation. In the words of the older student, "If you don't have an emotional breakdown some time before the exam, you aren't doing it right."

So what did I do? I read thousands of pages on stuff, swang on the swings every day, and occasionally hid in trees. I talked to the neighborhood cats about biophysical chemistry. I compared my oven to protein binding sites. In other words, I took 'quirky' and turned into 'wtf'. But in the end I passed, and now I talk to cats less often. Also, I still have friends.

The weather matched my gloom. Those four weeks were filled with the cold, foggy wetness that seeps through the skin. I sulked under multiple sweaters, hoods, hats, and occasionally a snuggie. My nose froze and my hands wouldn't type. I drank boatloads of tea, but the fleeting heat of steeped water always left me yearning for the comfort of true warmth.

A PhD candidate is supposed to come up with solutions to problems in an experiment. I could do that! Well, maybe not. TWO snuggies would be excessive. However, I persevered.
Behold, the impossibly non-photogenic hot chocolate. Brandied hot chocolate with cayenne, to be exact. I take more pride of this creation than I do of my data. It's a drink that pulls you away from reality and beckons a minute's introspection. It is simple and easily adjusted to taste. However, it is REAL drinking chocolate--no powders or rehydratable marshmallows. Finally, there is no cloying sweetness to dominate each sip. The three flavors come together with a satisfying complexity. The dark chocolate, brandy, and cayenne play a nice trio: three individual players that you can sense solo and in harmony.

It's a triple threat to cold. Rich hot chocolate warms the insides better than tea: the fat substantiates the heat. However, 2% milk keeps the drink from being too heavy. Brandy gives a little fire to the stomach, while cayenne leaves your lips and mouth with just the right tingly heat. In the words of my friend, "Sounds like a nice drink to give to a lady friend." Sounds like a nice drink to give to myself. Every morning, forever and ever.

Charlene's favorite hot chocolate

1 c 2% fat milk (you need milkfat to emulsify the chocolate. I like 2%, but feel free to try whole)
dash salt
1/4 c chopped dark chocolate (50-75%)
Brown sugar, to taste (2T if using 72% chocolate and don't like cloying sweetness)
1/2 T brandy
Sprinkle cayenne pepper

Heat milk, salt, and sugar in a sauce pan until almost simmering. Take off heat. Add chocolate. Whisk until smooth. Add brandy and cayenne, to taste. MAke sure the sweetness is to your liking before serving.

Small things

2011-04-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

Our hamster died. Cis, the cutie with the gingersnap, died after almost three years of pawing around. Our lab is officially hamsterless.

We buried her... in front of our building. We placed her in a box and dug a deep hole in a secluded corner of dirt and dead leaves, careful to make sure no dog would sniff her out. Nothing about lab dynamics sinks in like realizing that you are digging a dirt hole with your PhD mentor like some minion of Vesalius.

If I ever graduate, I will have a doctorate in molecular biology. My thesis work will have included burying pet the hamsters that I brought to class. Best of all, people will think it's prestigious.

Pet Cemetary parodies aside, grad school is not all fun and funerals. The past two years have been the hardest mental and emotional struggle since puberty, and there is no Chicken soup for the jaded grad student soul to comfort my emo battles. The extended writing hiatus has been a partial refrain from being yet another whiny, mediocre diatribe on why the world sucks. Also, "feelings" turn me into a lazy bastard.

Nonetheless, things are looking up; better medical doctors, fewer grad-school stressers, and phenomenal friends go a long way to finding stability. Well, that and the satisfaction in simple things.

Holy writing-about-life-cliche, Batman! I was referencing medieval grave-robbing anatomists not three paragraphs before. Bet you didn't see THIS coming, eh? Well, cliches are not exclusively born in the cubicles of Hallmark. One thing I can confess: there is nothing that strips away contempt of the contrite like realizing some of it is true. Investing the effort to appreciate the simple goes a very long way.
For example, tomatoes. I crave tomatoes like I had terminal scurvy. They are such a friendly fruit; full of tasty vitamins and msg (yeah, that's right). My current favorite tomatoey treat is slow-roasting all day at very low heat. A friend first explained this phenomenon, and this is the best way to turn a mediocre tomato into tomato crack.

Simply halve them, toss in olive oil, season. If you want you can add some fresh basil. I popped in some garlic for aromatic (and gustatory) flourish. Five hours later my roommate and I piled roasted garlic, goat cheese, and tomatoes on slices of fresh baguette. An epic bite: teeth sink into the chewy bread and tomato. Concentrated tomato-red sunshine bursts into the mouth. The tang of goat cheese and mellow warmth of roasted garlic provide a backdrop for one's palette to fall back on post "tomato-red sunshine explosion" (who uses these words, anyways?). My next dinner get-together will feature these guys because they pair fancy and comfort in a splendidly simple manner.
De Lycopersiconi esculenti fabrica

To begin:
Oven to 250
Cut tomatoes in half. Roma work well, as do cherry/grape tomatoes. If you have snooty/fancy heirloom tomatoes, I'd spend them on some fancy, adjective-heavy adventure. Put on a baking pan

Coat with thin layer olive oil. Season with sea salt and cracked pepper.

Take either cloves of garlic or an entire head. Cut the top of the head of garlic and drizzle olive oil on top, or coat cloves in oil as well. Also put on pan.

Sprinkle torn or chiffoned basil over the tomatoes. Pop in oven.

Here is the battle. The longer you can wait at the low temperatures, the more sun-dried like they will be. However, if Christmas morning was always torture for you, turn the heat up to 400 15 min before you MUST eat them. The tomatoes will roast themselves done. However, it's worth the wait.

Take garlic out when it smells good and is fork tender (so, start checking it once the house smells like garlic. This will depend on how much you added and the oven temp.)

The tomatoes make great appetizers with garlic, cheese, and bread. They also taste good in simple pastas, sandwiches... you get the idea.

Ode to a Toaster

2010-07-15T19:05:00.000-07:00

THOU still unravish'd bride of breakfast
Thou foster-child of Bagel and Defrost
Able appliance, who canst thus toast
A perfect morsel crispier than sheer moisture lost

Suck it Keats. Who need ramble on the paradoxes of life and art when I have found the perfect toaster? Why expound on the paradox of dynamic life captured in a still vase when the Ideal Bagel hath graced thou'st breakfast plate?

This is my post on toast. 'Tis a toasty post, if you will.

I am still young. I have yet to experience much of the joys and sorrows of life. I have not found the depths of human love or the bitterness of piercing remorse. I live an innocent existence and burn holes in tables for the sake of s'mores.

I fell in love. My heart took off as if my chest were the Audubon. Breathing was so difficult I needed a protocol. I could not peel my eyes away from its sleek lines, shiny facade, and simple user display. Epiphany uncloaked itself in my perfectly toasted bagel.

Hyperbole, you question? Maybe. I care more about this toaster more than any baby I have ever seen. I like this toaster more than I like puppies. Puppies are pretty cool.

(picture from http://www.cuisinart.com/products/toasters/cpt-160.html)

The Cuisinart CPT-160 Metal Classic 2-slice toaster is cooler. It is simple in design. No fancy gadgets; it does not pretend it can reheat your pizza, cook your dinner, and wash the dishes, like other taosters. Nay, it knows that it can toast, and toast it does well. It's peers tell us that number 4 gives brown toast, but 4 in average-toaster speak = "burnt" This toaster does no such thing. Turn it to 4 and your toast is brown. Turn it to six and it is dark. Turn it to 1 and you wasted your time.

Why the declaration of affection? I adore carbs. I love toast. I worship bagels. Even when I was running six miles a day and living off vegetables and lean protein, I still had a toasted bagel every day. When I'm too lazy to cook, I live off toast and peanut butter.

Unfortunately for my diet, I have favored the latter lifestyle as of late. My advisor buying htis toaster for the lab chained me to the bench better than anything else: I'm convinced that I can pick up a dozen bagels at a local shop and move in for days.

Of course, it is also fun to dress toast up a little. Summer in California means all produce is fresh and cheap. I love adding romatina tomatoes and fresh basil to my morning bagel. My roommates STILL call me a food snob even though I have been living off toast for days. I'm not sure how that works.

My current favorite toasted treat is whole-grain bread with fresh avocado, baby heirloom taomatoes, and grated parmesan cheese. Avocados are like butter right now, and they are for once, affordable. Baby heirlooms bring out hidden girlishness. I would dropkick a small dog in a purse, but I happily coo over tiny tomatoes. They are so cute!! Ahem.

Anyway, my lab also thought this was overly fancy, but it took no time, and cost less than a boring sandwich. Better yet, it was filling and vegetarian, allowing omnivore and Berekley to live together in harmony.

Soft breads are sweet, but those toasted
Are sweeter; therefore, ye badass toaster
Toast on.

Favorite breakfast bagel

Poppy seed bagel
plain cream cheese
fresh basil
2-3 romatina tomatoes (cherry or grape also great)

slice tomatoes, tear/chiffon basil.

Toast bagel, spread with cream cheese, lay down tomatoes, top with basil

Avocado toast with baby heirloom tomatoes and Parmesan cheese

Whole grain bread
1 ripe avocado, sliced
1 c baby heirloom tomatoes, halved
fresh basil
parmesan cheese

Toast bread. Lay down avocados, then tomatoes. Sprinkle with basil and cheese.

Vuvuzela Warfare

2010-07-01T22:46:00.000-07:00

My mornings have ceased to exist. I scribble this now; dashing off a few lines during a brief moment of peace. It is the breath of calm in a storm Charybdis herself could not comprehend. For the first time in almost a month, there has not been soccer all morning long.

Thank goodness the world cup lasts only a month--much longer and society would devolve into hitting each other with sticks.

This tourney has been full of interesting calls and raging let-downs: it is as if western Europe forgot how to play soccer. Thank goodness for the Spanish, Dutch, and Germans or the cup should be called "Americas and random Asia-Pacific Cup". It is amusing to watch the media turn so quickly on its idols. I guess if you play like a tsetse fly bit you on the ass, the papers have to make news out of something.

Of course, I'm brokenhearted that the US lost to Ghana again. Bigger issues lie at hand, however. Both fans and players in the US must learn consistency. 1) the US team must learn that there are NINETY minutes to a soccer game and one must play in ALL of them. 2) Fans should remember that there is this sport that the rest of the world watches. It involves athletes who aren't fat guys in some form of spandex, and they don't swing sticks or grab each other. (Note: I am a huge baseball and football fan. Golf not so much.)

On a different note: the infamous vuvuzela could be the answer to world peace. Give warring governments a bunch of these violent kazoos. Eventually one set of politicians will hemorrhage in the ears. The most complicated of treatises is suddenly self-resolving.

The South Africans (and Chinese who actually mass produce this newfangled trumpet) have inspired me to incorporate the stadium horn into my every-day life. I aim to hire a professional vuvuzelaist.

Imagine: it is time to wake up. Instead of somnolently hitting "snooze" and turning over, I'm blasted by the drone of Fitzwilliam, blaring his purple vuvuzela. I furiously awaken, sympathetic nervous system shot into high gear. From under my covers I pull out a second plastic vuvuzela. I use it not to make noise, but as a giant orange stick; I chase Fitzwilliam around my house. Fitzy, unable to perform AND sprint away from a pissed-off 23 yr old, will have to abandon his noise making schemes. Fates are decided by a full-scale combat. Crouching trumpet, hidden grad student. All before breakfast.

It gets better. Fitzwilliam will play his loudest concerto every time I'm stuck in traffic or next to some 'badass' junky car blaring rap music so loud the S.A. fault shook. Best of all--every time some uppity teenager has to talk on the phone about her shopping trips before prom, Fitzy will save my day. Meanwhile, my hearing would slowly go to shit.

I still dream of coming up with a vuvuzela shaped dessert. Perhaps I could make thin cookies and shape them into tiny trumpets. Perhaps I could take ice cream cones and turn them into vuvuzela cones. Perhaps I will try these things when I actually have time to clean up a kitchen coated in sugar. Yet, I do not kid: just wait for the latter recipe.

What I have managed to do, however, is make ice cream. I bought myself an ice cream maker as a congrats gift for snagging a fellowhip I bitched about immensely in the fall. Ice cream is quite simple to make. Although I am terrified of scalding milk or scrambling egg yolks, in reality making a rich ice cream base takes less than a batch of cookies dough.

Naturally, my first inclination was to add alcohol. Surprisingly I resisted the urge the first few times. Eventually however, I caved in.

Hence, Bailey's-chip ice cream. (pictures to come) The pale background with tiny chocolate chips makes a round scoop look almost like an edible soccer ball. Ok, it is a bit cheesy. I don't care. I merely hope my pants still fit after this ice cream binge. Besides, a scoop of this stuff in one's morning coffee while screaming at the television is better than beating people with plastic sticks.

Bailey's-chip ice cream

5 lg egg yolks
0.75 c sugar
2 c whole milk
1.25 c heavy cream
pinch salt
1/4 c Bailey's
1 c MINI chocolate chips

Whisk together yolks, salt, and sugar until mixture is pale, yellow, and thick.

Combine milk and cream. Heat until the edges bubble. Don't let boil. Remove from heat.

Temper yolks: add about 1 c of hot milk mixture to the yolk mixture, whisk briskly. Now that yolks are used to hot dairy, add yolks into the milk-cream and whisk.

Slowly cook over low heat until thermometer reads 170 F. Turn off heat. Mix will continue to heat until 175-180, depending on the pot. Stuff should coat the back of a spoon, and a line drawn down the back should hold.

Strain through a fine sieve (important! keeps mix silky). Chill in fridge, about three hours. Add Bailey's.

Pour into ice cream maker, follow directions. In the last 10 min of churning, add chocolate.

Once stuff is done it will be soft. If you can wait, put it in a container and let it age in the freezer for a couple hours. However, it is really good straight out of the machine.

Teddy bear campfires and kitchen tables

2010-06-22T15:12:00.000-07:00

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.

lipophilicity in San Francisco

2010-05-17T15:42:00.000-07:00

In the search for life's meaning there comes a time to bow to the cliche and carpe diem. Why? Some days you wake up and Indiana Jones is your soundtrack. Some days tantalizing possibilities beckon through your curtains like sirens to Ulysses. Some days excitement replaces the plasma coursing through your veins. Some days you have to get apple-bacon maple doughnuts in San Francisco.

Stereotypical, I know. Yet another reference to how much I like bacon. Yet I had heard of these mythical creatures since coming to Berkeley. Friends and food snobs alike had described this breakfast chimera of sweet and savory. United by a common dedication to fat, the bacon doughnut is proof that sometimes two lower-class foods can combine to attain 'gourmet' status at three dollars a pop. My roommate David and I had to experience this first had. It was the perfect excuse to invade the city.

Wandering around SF was a pleasure in itself. Dynamo Donuts is a tiny nook hidden in the Mission, a district of SanFran known for it's Latino sabor. Within five minutes David, born and raised in Mexico City, was scheming with me as to how we could schlep pounds of chicharron and mangos around the city. Murals covered buildings, suggesting that a young Siquieros was hiding behind a nearby shop counter. We strolled through the idyllic weather, assured that today would be a new echelon of wonderful.

We were correct. Bacon doughnuts give surreal a new name. Dali, wax your mustache and sit down, because bacon gives a salty surprise to the sweet fried dough, while apple and maple sing like blue jays in a coffee commercial. It defied every diet on the planet, and I did not care. That doughnut was Motown happiness on a plate.

What, then could be a proper chaser to such divinity? The city never fails. We waddled back towards Humphrey Slocombe. One of a handful of fancy-pants-all-organic-ice cream shops, all with too many adjectives, the chefs twine intriguing and delicious into one creamy, irresistible scoop. Our weapon of choice? Secret Breakfast: cornflakes and bourbon.

Bacon donut, check. Cornflake bourbon ice cream, check. Nunchucks in case we were attacked by angry nutritionists, check. Incapable of eating for the next several hours, we walked over to the MOMA for a little modern art. The next hours we mused over installations and paintings, some which merited awe, and others that drew ill-suppressed giggling. Wandering past these manifestations of artistic thought instills a pensive contentment; it makes one feel like a better human than that frumpy Babbit who rolls out of bed in plaid PJs every other day of the week. I took added satisfaction that I got my art-fix with too much bacon, bourbon, and doughnut rolling around my stomach. I can only imagine what would've happened if I was also lugging around pounds of fruit and Mexican sausage in my purse...

The rest of the day followed a symphonic scheme. We had a quick third movement scherzo of salami, pancetta, and prociutto from the best in charcuterie, Boccalone's. We then wandered up to Coit Tower, in hopes of finding both a fantastic view and a way to burn off colossal quantities of fat. The day ended with a west-coast Pacific sunset, drinks, and interesting people. We chatted up a man taking pictures of his girlfriend "Hell, I'm not even a tourist. I'm just Asian, I f*cking love taking pictures," and a young man who told us he flew F18s for the Navy, "Actually I thought I would tell you I worked as a chef in Napa--figured after hearing that crap you'd believe anything." We talked about sneaking flasks to baseball games and the genius of Carl Sagan.

Honestly, if I heard someone else tell me this story, I'd hate him/her a little. Perhaps some are impervious to jealousy, but I certainly am not. What do I suggest? Go buy some bourbon cornflake ice cream. Even if jealousy persists, the ice cream is so cold the tongue is too frozen to do anything other than enjoy.

What recipe would complement such a day? Ironically, I went vegetarian. Perhaps a herbivorous day is a karmic response. Perhaps my body was simply crying out for dark greens. Perhaps the subsequent sweet potato fontina pizza buried under peppery arugula is delicious any day.

Hubris aside, it is a great pizza. Fontina cheese does not merely melt. Nay, it sheds the confines of society and relaxes into creamy luxury. Sweet potatoes give a nice color and sweetness, and they have more beta carotene than carrots, double win. Arugula is to fontina as scandal is to politics: each has a following separately, but in reality the two are inextricable. It is more fun that way. A drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar on top and my friends feel validated in calling me a food snob. even though it took the same amount of time as an overglorified pasta dish.

Sweet potato fontina pizza with arugula

Favorite pizza dough (when I'm lazy I just pick up fresh dough from my local Trader Joes or grocery store)
Olive oil *
2 c Fontina, grated
1 small sweet potato, sliced as thin as possible
2 c Arugula
Parmesan cheese, balsamic vinegar, olive oil

Brush crust with oil. Sprinkle cheese on top of crust. Lay down potato slices to create a thin layer. Bake at 375 until cheese bubbles and potatoes are more or less tender. Pile on Arugula. Drizzle oil and vinegar on top, grate Parmesan over everything to garnish.

* If I'm feeling less lazy, I'll carmelize an onion: slice a small sweet onion, saute in olive oil until soft and translucent, add a splash of balsamic vinegar and water, let simmer until onions are really soft. Put that on the crust, drizzle olive oil on top.

Ethical hamsters and raspberry chili salmon

2010-04-20T15:18:00.000-07:00

Some days the spirit simply refuses to listen to the logical. I find these are the days I disappear from the world with a book, reveling in literary escapism, or insist on playing on the swings when I'm two hours late for work. Tonight I unfathomably refuse sleep and strangely want to write something with the word "lugubriously" in it.

Fortunately, I have no personal need for such a modifier. Of course I adore the little adverb--it flourishes its connotation so well. Truly, onomatopoeia is not limited to monosyllabic interjections from comic books. Yet still, this has nothing to do with hamsters.

Neither pet hamster in my current lab is definitively lugubrious. There are two, cis and trans, and they are strictly pets. The closest either gets to being an experiment is running over my desk and nibbling at my lab notebook. The cute little bastards do what hamsters do best: eat, pee, and look adorable.

I was coddling Cis while an experiment ran one day before I was unhappily reminded that I had ethics class in twenty minutes. (ironically, Trans has become incorrigibly fat and bites. Love may be blind, but hamsters merely warrant fascination, which can most certainly discriminate.)

I just rambled about the ebb and flow of daily life, so I needn't bore you further on the matter. Allow me to present figure 1 instead:

Thus, you can imagine the appeal of sitting through the antiquated mumblings of a nice (yet ancient) professor on a topic that is inevitably oversimplified or overcomplicated. I joked to the lab "might as well as take the hamster with me for company."

Let me tell you, there comes a strange pleasure in showing up to a class on scientific ethics late, holding a 2 L flask with a hamster sloshing around inside. Ethics. hamster.

It wasn't as bad as it could have been. I did not show up to a vegan rally with a T-bone steak. Yet, the look on a friend post-doc's face when I sauntered in, tiny rodent cruising around the roomy glassware-turned-hamsterflask. suggested that I hide from the PETA Gestapo for a little while. I practiced as much discretion as a hamster in a flask will allow, and placed it at the feet of a bewildered classmate before promptly falling asleep.

I woke up halfway through class and played with Cis. She was having the time of her life. Imagine, your meager existence confined to a hamster cage! Makes one wonder about self-posing microcosms and loss of perspective. New smells, too much food, all of these strangers; why go back home? I nearly had an issue when runaway hamster jumped off my lap and scurried towards the 52 pairs of feet connected to students re-learning why James Watson is an utter bastard. Fortunately, my neighbor and I scooped her up.

Do not mistake me-- I think ethics are exceedingly important, interesting, and necessary for mental development in science. Ethics in fish are also very important. It is an amusingly awkward segway, but I did recently start reading about environmentally sound choices of fish. For some fish, it is best to buy farmed, while for others wild caught is better. Furthermore, although many 'pescatarians' suggest that eating fish is less of a crime against animals, eating certain kinds of fish can actually be quite damaging to both species and ecosystem.

Anyway, it's cool, you should check out the list before heading out to sushi:

http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/seafoodwatch.aspx

That being said, I was cool enough to buy a lot of Alaskan salmon from Costco, because Costco makes you forget you live on under 30K a year. My current fast and easy fish dish I happily made up a few months ago. Chili garlic sauce that I bought on a whim at the store for 2 dollars mixed with raspberry jam left over from a cake, splashed with some OJ makes an interesting sweet-spicy combination that compliments the meaty fish. Caramelizing some shallot or onion beforehand makes the entire thing very easy, healthy, and interesting.

I love to serve a small portion of fish with a mountain of spinach and arugula--that way I can be too lazy to prepare some sort of carb, and I can pretend I'm Popeye. Yet seriously, they provide a very nice canvas for the simple flavors at play. The colors even contrast so nicely that people think you are a far better cook than you are. I made this for a friend, and he thought he was special or something for such a meal. Little did he know I just knew I had to cook the fish, and it would take less time than making anything else. Buahahaha. Ethical? Delicious.

Raspberry chili salmon

Salmon: could be a slice of fillet, or even a salmon steak.
Salt, pepper
1/2 onion, diced finely

2 large spoonfuls of seedless raspberry jam
1/2 spoonful of chili garlic sauce
healthy splash oj

Pat dry salmon. Season with salt and peper. Heat some olive oil in a pan, sear fish over high eat, a few minutes on each side. Hint-- for fish, it will slide on the skillet when that side is done. If it doesn't move, don't poke it. Take fish, wrap in tin foil to make a loose packet, and pop in a 300 oven while you make sauce.

Pour olive oil into pan. Add onions, turn heat down, and cook until onions are tender and verging on carmelized. Add remaining ingredients, stir to mix. Let simmer down and allow onion to get really soft.

Pull fish out of oven every 10 min to ensure it is not over done. Hint-- fish is done when flesh is flaky, but does not look dry. If fish is still undercooked (deep pink in center, not flaking) just pop in microwave for 30 seconds and so. (Real fancy, eh?)

Plate salmon on bed of greens. Spoon sauce over fish.

Hiati

2010-04-13T11:02:00.000-07:00

What is the plural of hiatus? Hiatuses? How inelegant. Well, now that dyslexic Haitians everywhere dislike me, I'll continue.

What a better way to return to my forlorn blog than to ramble irritatingly on the cycles of life? CS Lewis snuck in a very apt quotation on the undulations of humanity in his The Screwtape Letters, but I don't remember it. Go read it yourself, it's short. Yet Lewis is right: our lives graph a series of oscillations. Energy levels, general luck, latest interests, my alcohol intake--not sure the identity of the function dictating my life-waves, but they most certainly propagate.

Things increasing as a function of time: (dy/dx >0)
Obsession with Tango
Obsession with Bacon

Hiati: (dy/dx < 0)
Blogging
Dancing on kitchen furniture instead of studying (ok, not really)

So life goes. Yet, amidst such fluctuation, some things stay constant. Perhaps it is these zero order life parameters that equate to crap like 'character'. I find such conjectures disturbing, as that may correlate my identity my popcorn air-popper, but compared to Dorian Gray or Rasputin, it's quite innocuous.

My constants:
Flirting with narcolepsy
Cooking with alcohol

Narcolepsy I have accepted. My latest favorite story happened on a Friday night of NCAA basketball games. I eagerly waited my experiments to fail so I could dash to the nearset sports bar while deluding myself that my bracket would not inevitably crumble under the avalanche of upsets that pelted the tournament this year. Later I was to join friends to go to the city for a much-needed wholesome evening of tequila, music, and borderline-inappropriate dancing.

Hence you can imagine my surprise when I end up texting my friends at 3am, "Sorry, fell asleep in a box of packing peanuts. Will explain later."

Not much of a surprise, actually. Sleeping is one of the few things I do better than almost anyone (devoid of a severe medical condition or tranquilizer addiction). After basketball and beer a few of us ended up at my house for more beer. One roommate just had a birthday. Clearly, her friends like her better than other friends like anyone else, because a veritable torrent of boxes had flooded our porch for a good week. One of them was half filed with styrofoam S-shaped peanuts. Drunk grad students + packing peanuts = indoor snow party. Obsession with fitting into small spaces + box = me sitting in a box of packaging material. My friends promptly proceeded to pile more peanuts on top and take pictures to ensure I never live a dignified existence.

It was in this setting that I made a fascinating discovery: packing peanuts are extremely comfortable. Lots of cush for the tush, while the insulating properties of styrofoam make it a wonderfully ghetto blanket. Outfitted as such, consciousness gave in to napping--rendering my eloquent 3am message.

Cooking with alcohol is pretty standard. I have been trying in vain to come up with a good whiskey brownie recipe. Don't get me wrong, the brownies always come out great--it is just that the whiskey inevitably fades into obscurity. So, I present instead the base recipe for the brownies: feel free to add coffee liquor, beer, scotch-- whatever you like to give it something extra. Whiskey caramel is a favorite touch of mine.

The batter is a great basic. Derived mostly from melted chocolate, it satisfies better than sissy cocoa-powder analogues. Also, I get the thing in the oven in under 30 minutes, giving me plenty of time to fall asleep in boxes before it burns. The topping shown is a bailey's ganache. Be wary, however, these suckers are very rich.

Brownies a la basic

2 eggs, lightly beaten
3/4 c white sugar
6 oz melted chocolate (I nuke mine at 30 s intervals on defrost, stirring in between)
1/2 c flour
3/4 t baking powser
1/2 t salt
1 stick butter, melted
2 T liquor/vanilla

Frosting:
1 c chocolate
1/2 c cream
1 T bailey's (a different liquor works as well)

Oven to 350

Combine eggs, sugar, and melted chocolate (careful if chocolate is hot to not scramble eggs!). Combine flour, salt, and b. powder in a separate bowl. Add flour mix to chocolate mix in three parts, stirring to combine. Stir in liquor. Pour into greased pan and bake for 30 min, or just until tester comes out clean.

Frosting:
Heat cream to a simmer, pour over chocolate. Let stand 2 min. Stir until smooth. Stir in bailey's (or other liquor). Let cool until semi-set, spatula over brownies.

Divine Urination

2010-01-31T12:47:00.000-08:00

Violets are blue
Roses are red
When it rains a lot
I get really wet.
~My roommates

Rain. The world reacts to few things with such a diversity of sentiment than it does to rain. Rain breathes life into barren austerity; it wipes out entire existences. It is the exhilarating drop-splash stimulating the body, and the dreary miasma blotting out happiness in a mundane world. Hemmingway, meet ee cummings.

My feelings directly reflect the rainy context. If I can stay inside in my PJs and drink warm tea while the rain patters on the window, rain is perfect. If I can dance a slow Argentine tango in the warm summer rain, I'm in love. If I am reduced to doubling my commute to work on the bus because God hasn't stopped peeing on Berkeley for a week, rain is Xanax-proof.

Actually, it is not that bad. Taking the bus instead of biking is fine, except for the time lost and the crazies met. Some crazies are fun: I've enjoyed a couple blues concerts on the bus and people ranting about racists when the door doesn't open. There are people who stare: both in the "If I keep looking at you, you might decide to sleep with me," and "I wonder how much I can get selling her internal organs on ebay?" One day I'll have the balls to stare back and figure out how much I could make auctioning off their internal organs. Who knew the things you could deduce by staring?

Apparently rain is the Bay area's version of winter. I cannot complain: I do not like cold. Rain evaporates without leaving dirty streets, it doesn't carve the shivering void in my viscera that ice does, and a hard shell and umbrella beats fifteen sweaters and snow boots. Yet, for a girl who spent four years in Phoenix, multiple days of rain in a row blows my neural circuitry. You must understand: Phoenix gets 8 hours of rain a year. The drainage system is the atmosphere, and people drive as if velociraptors were falling from the sky.

Yet here, it rains all the time. There is no core-shaking thunder or eye dazzling lightning. It is almost as if the rain was a normal part of life, and not some outside force trying scare the shit out of me. Imagine that.

So, I continue to adjust. The first rain when I came back home from my first year college, my mother nearly called a therapist. I guess I would too if my 20 year old daughter was singing and dancing in the downpour. I must squash my inner Arizonian and refrain from building any arks under such a leaky sky. Besides, I don't think you can make an ark out of Priuses, and I know I'll get an army of angry hippies if I try to use wood. Perhaps one can make a soy titanic. The Tofutanic! Oh wait... it sank.

Anyway, rain evokes varied emotions, and I find them more intense than those drummed up by other meteorological phenomena. Rain makes me crave the contentedness of hot cocoa and a soft blanket; it unleashes a torrent of energy that courses through my nerves like broken dam; it saps the world of color and leaves my soul drab and grey. Yet, at the end of the day, there is always a perfect response: milk and cookies.

Why not soup? Or tea? Hot chocolate spiked with too much peppermint schnapps? Those are expected. Perfect milk and cookies bring both spark to a dull day and comfort to a harried soul. It reminds us that five years old is always the perfect age, and brings out all positive connotations of rain. Not to mention that I feel 'all grown-up' since I can now make my own milk and cookies, so I don't need my mother to yell at me for leaving wet clothes on the chair and offer me warm morsels of buttery paradise.

However, I am not five years old. So I can do milk and cookies my way! I present one of my first cookie recipes: Irish-chocolate chocolate chip cookies, and grown up milk.

The cookie has a healthy splash of Baileys, which blends with the cocoa in a spiced-up childhood way. The added fat makes the cookies very moist, but the extra liquid keeps them from being particularly chewy (which you can fix by adding less baileys or a touch of corn syrup, which I dislike...) but trust me, these cookies lack nothing. They pair perfectly with milk blended with Kahlua and Baileys. If that doesn't make your day brighter, I suggest you move to the surface of the sun.

Baileys chocolate chocolate-chip cookies
2.25 c flour
.5 c white sugar
.5 c brown sugar, lightly packed
2 eggs, room temp
2 sticks butter, room temp
.5 c cocoa
1 t baking soda
1.25 t salt
1/3 c baileys, scant
2 c chocolate chips

Sift dry ingredients: flour, soda, salt, and cocoa in a bowl, set aside.
Cream butter and sugar. Beat in eggs. Beat in Baileys. Slowly beat or fold in dry ingredients, 1/3 at a time. Fold in chocolate chips. Batter will be wetter than normal.

Drop by generous spoonfulls on a baking sheet. Bake for 12 min at 375 until cookies just barely bake (the tops should almost look browner than the cocoa). Let cool.

Milk: In a normal glass, add 1 shot Baileys, 1 shot Kahlua, and fill with cold milk.

Deck the halls with cheerful lunatics

2010-01-05T08:37:00.000-08:00

I felt like singing "I will survive" at the top of my lungs friday afternoon as I walked out of my final exam. No more science for two whole weeks. I could now vainly attempt to re-acclimate to society and pretend to be normal! Merry Christmas indeed.

Too bad society is not normal. In fact, society is terrifying. Forget Homeland Secuirty: the average highway has more terrorists driving than the CIA should allow. I'd like to see Bin Laden flee from the army of SUV driving soccer moms barelling down the I 10 in search of last minute presents. We must notify Obama that a torture far more sinister than water boarding persists far closer than Guantanamo: Christmas shopping.

I left the night vision goggles and sniper scope at home. Of course I didn't need night vision goggles, that would be silly. However, I could've used more than a scope on the highway. James Bond has nothing on Phoenix. Evade the bludger SUVs, skirt the barely moving Buicks, don't forget to exit. Jason Bourne can drive through tiny European streets with people shooting at him. Who gives? I can ninja from the West to East valley in under an hour.

Yet, the highway is the easy part. I cannot stand traffic, and as I got into the first of many lines trying to find a parking spot, I yearned for a paper bag and some chocolate pudding. It was worse than Lord of the Flies. Every car for itself, just trying to park and happy to be alive.

If the parking lot is a frying pan, a shopping mall is a bonfire to be recokoned with. Screaming children. Stressed out Santas. Irritating teenagers who refuse to talk in normal octaves. Harried mothers. Armies of old men asleep on chairs, waiting for their wives. Phalanxes of families looking for their spears and shields. No statin would bring down my blood pressure.

I do confess: I am to crowds as a cat is to thunderstorms. I don't mind performing in front of them, and I'm not phased by public speaking. However, actually assimilating into the Borg puts me on edge. My sister laughs at her sibling who usually can handle inordinate amounts of stress but has to be talked off a ledge every time she gets near a Macy's.

This is not new. It is nearly tradition, actually. Every year my wonderful parents ask what I need for Christmas. Every year I need new clothing. Every year I have to try on clothing. Every year the legions of clothing overwhelm me, and my mother finds me curled up in a dressing room, hiding from reality. The upside to this is that I've figured out which stores have the best napping spaces. Finally, every year my family resuscitates their daughter, who proceeds to rant about indoctrinated materialism and consumer whores. Fortunately, before said daughter decides to join an ashram in the Himalayas and live off wheat grass, it is time for lunch.

Of course, the antidote to post-shopping paralysis is comfort food. However, I was desperate to avoid my devolving holiday diet of sugar, fat, and beer. So, at the suggestion of my mother, I came up with a winter soup using up some left over turkey sausage and kale. It apparently also echoes of the kale soup at the Olive Garden, although I'm sure this is much healthier.

Kale screams comfort to me: it is one of the few greens I like to eat wilted or in soup- it is so sturdy it doesn't feel slimy at all. It lends a heartiness that almost makes me understand how vegetarians are not constantly starving. Turkey sausage is by no means vegetarian, but it is low in fat and full of flavor, so you needn't add a bunch of spices to the thing, nor drain out rendered grease. It is incredibly fast to make. I add a little whole milk, potatoes, and onions to make an easy winter soup that would soothe a cat pushed into a bathtub by an entire mall full of menacing shoppers.

Sausage and Kale Soup: Shopping Antidote

1 lb hot italian turkey sausage, either removed from casing or cut into 3/4 in pieces
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 onion, diced
1 head of kale, rinsed and roughly chopped
3 small red potatoes, or two small normal ones, diced
salt/pepper
optional seasonings: paprika, dried rosemary, fennel seed
3 cans chicken broth or stock
2 c whole milk

Cook sausage, onions, garlic, and potatoes in a bit of olive oil in a large soup pot over med-high heat. Once sausage is browned and potatoes are less like rocks, add kale and let cook down a few more minutes. Season. Add chicken broth, and stir to deglaze pan. Bring to a boil. Bring down to a simmer and cook for 10 more min. Keep heat low and add milk. Stir occasionally until soup is just ready to simmer again.

Beans can be thrown in if you like that sort of thing. One can of white beans or garbanzos could be thrown in with the stock, giving more body to the dish.

Turkey heroin and an orphan thanksgiving.

2009-12-10T23:43:00.001-08:00

Ah yes. This is late. You'll get over it.

Foodies say they hate thanksgiving. It is the one holiday where people focus on food. Yet, do the hoi polloi actually enjoy the food? Is this quintessential meal a celebration of flavors, an occasion of people finally pushing back that unhealthy monotony of fast food and frozen comestibles?

No! Thanksgiving is often a logistical nightmare for the food enthusiast. The turkey can't be dry. The sides must cook at the same time. Everything has to be hot. Aunt Cathy's son has spilled the mulled cider. Your mother in law is searching for the most infinitesimal lump in the gravy.

Ok, set down the paper bag. After all, if we take a philosophical step back, we'd realize that this turkey day meal reflects human nature: inevitably imperfect, mildly under-appreciated, and generally o k. With the full spectrum of catastrophic variety and consequent hilarity, of course.

Yet, I am still quite naive in my cooking; I still daydream of the day when I can host a tasteful thanksgiving meal, complete with adorable appetizers, elegant desserts, and an exquisite main course. Anyone who knows my utter lack of logistical management, however, could realistically anticipate a meal that is late, a bit quirky, but pretty darn good. A girl can still dream, however.

Dreams, delusions, they're all the same, aren't they? Such lovely musings caused me to volunteer making the turkey for a first-year grad student orphan thanksgiving. It would be a bonding potluck, a sort of 'best of' celebration. That is, unless I utterly destroyed the 25 lb bird.

That's right. 25 lbs. That is twice the size of a normal turkey, but we didn't have the room to roast two smaller birds simultaneously. In order to keep it's flavor while roasting the necessary 6 hours, my friend and I decided to try an intriguing technique: brining.

Step 1: call up my friend who's at Davis. She's a) a fantastic cook, and we cook well together, and b) she's the queen of the universe, and therefore great karmic protection against the Gods of Rubbery Poultry. We started our brining investigation.

Brining: a magical process that keeps lipid-lacking meat moist. I have not read any scientific literature on the matter, but my guess is that equilibrating the turkey cells in massive amounts of salt and sugar makes them hypertonic, which keeps them from releasing water early on in cooking. If the juices aren't in the pan, they must be in the bird. So, we shoved the thing into a cooler and soaked it in brine poured over ice (1 lb salt, 1 lb brown sugar dissolved in chicken stock, and some random seasonings).

Equipment: I do not own a baster. Ok, I had one in the times of yore, but I destroyed it in an entirely different story. Who wants to spend money on a cheap plastic tube with a cheap plastic ball? The scientist's solution: steal a 60mL syringe from lab. Done.

A backup plan: I was still worried that the sheer mass of the turkey would bump the cooking time up so high that the breast would dry out before the rest cooked. So, I hunted arond for a sterile needle that would fit my syringe, thinking I could inject meat with fat/flavor later if needed.

Unfortunately, the average structural biology lab does not have large needles. We have small needles... the equivalent of acupuncture needles as far as a turkey is concerned. I asked a fellow grad student and cooking aficionado his opinion on needle sizes. I got a witty yet condescending reply along the lines of, "Well, if you insist on poking holes in your food..." Well, balls to him. One of my roommates pokes rat brains with needles. He grabbed one that could work as an injection-backup apparatus.

Now, few things look as unappealing as whole, raw poultry. To me there is something almost perverse about naked, gutted birds. They might be the SVU of the culinary world. The whole thing looks so awkward and wrong, but you can't look away. Mainly because pulling a cold, slimy, heavy turkey out of a murky cooler takes focus. We rinsed it off, patted it dry, and artfully plopped it on our improvised roasting rack of carrots and celery. We further molested it by stuffing garlic, lemon, cinnamon, onions, and herbs up the head and ass. It was seasoned and brushed with oil before shoving it in the oven.

Commence the marathon! The miracle was that when it came time to baste it every 20 min or so, there were no pan juices! I had to add chicken stock to the bottom of the pan, and use that to baste. Which meant that I never needed to inject any part of the bird. My daydreams of eagerly injecting mLs of turkey heroin never materialized. Brining is the antidrug of brining.

Our ugly sex-crime victim blossomed into a supermodel fit for any table runway. It was so tender we didn't need knives to cut the meat, once carved. This was good--we didn't have any knives. Even better, my classmates arrived bearing the best dishes from their families. It was a best-of feast, and we all ate so much I'm surprised my body can still produce insulin.

Since thanksgiving, I've become enamored with roasting. It is cheap, tasty, and easy. Rather than post the turkey recipe (which no one would use for a year) Here is a super-simple chicken idea. The seasoning and stuffing is merely a suggestion: use whatever you want. No syringes or needles, necessary.

Roasted Clementine Red-Pepper Chicken

1 medium sized chicken (~7lbs)
1/2 head of garlic, sliced in half
3 cloves garlic, minced

3-4 clementines (or 1/2 orange), zested and sliced in half.
1/2 onion, roughly sliced
1 T red pepper flakes
whatever herbs you want, dry or fresh
salt/pepper
oil.

Oven --> 400 F

Mix salt, pepper, garlic, zest, and red pepper flakes in a small bowl. Take chicken, remove insides, rinse under cold water, and pat dry. Rub mixture over chicken. Put garlic, lemon, clementine halves and herbs inside bird. place in roasting dish, drizzle with oil.

Roast at 400 for 10-15 min, until skin crisps. Decrease heat to 375 and continue cooking until juices run clear when thigh is pierced, or until thermometer inserted between thigh and body reads 180 F.

Save the carcass to boil down for delicious soups and stews.

Thou Shalt Not lie. Thou Shalt Bake Muffins.

2009-11-13T08:29:00.001-08:00

We. All. Lie. Don't deny it, we all do. To what degree may vary, but there is some deviation from the truth relayed in nearly every facet of human communication. We've amusingly color-coded this sin in English, which makes me anticipate a political-correctness group to demand we stop such racist metaphor usage. Nonetheless, even if our lies are primarily white, we cannot ignore their existence.

I therefore must confess: sometimes, I enjoy lying. Specifically, I like meaningless, gratuitous lying at bars and parties. I'm Susie, Paige, Michelle... why name children when you can name yourself? I've been a linguistics student, history teacher, a life coach, all in two hours. I told a crazy old guy at a blues bar that I had a medical condition that prevented me from dancing. If someone were to call my number, they'd get the outgoing phone message of ASU. It's amazing how many sundevils wouldn't recognize '965 8300' as NOT a private cell phone.

Why lie? It's not that I lie to every guy I meet. When a random guy on the bus wants to know my name, why lie? I will never see this person again. I won't remain more anonymous because I gave an alias. In fact, these guys probably hit on every female they see who does not have leprosy. So, why? It's fun! Even if it does not do anything in the mind of the li-ee, it gives me space as the li-ar. There is something exciting about being someone else, and I get the added satisfaction that this complete stranger who wants access to my is not privy into my personal microcosm. I guess lying is the most fun and creative safety barrier one can construct. Take that, therapists.

Ironically, real lying is no fun at all. For example, the National Science Foundation fellowship applications for grads in life sciences were due this past week. Even though everyone in my program is fully funded, the external money equates to getting priority in lab choosing, a better CV, and a few extra bucks. This application will round out a square dozen that I've completed in the past year. I would then know a bit about the application processes. It s u c k s. Why? It is a tightrope feat in lying.

These programs say multiple essays help get a more in-depth picture of the applicant: they want to get to know you better. Hence, we are to be ourselves. However, this picture is being fit into a very different frame: the outline of the ideal candidate.

It is the dichotomy between this frame and that picture that drives us poor little polaroids insane. Afraid of being just another vanilla social security number sucking up lab funding, we apply for fellowships and awards. The deities at the funding committees like people who came to the US not speaking English from the Ukraine, learned the language and customs (along with those of seven other countries,) and now have published six Nature papers, while helping orphans in the Ukraine embrace education as he once did. Sorry, I was born into a middle class family, led a middle class life, and don't know any orphans in Ukraine. In fact, I used to draw on the walls with crayon and probably ate paste when I was four. I do science too. Don't I count?

Everything comes down to 'spin'. You want to present the truth in exactly the right light to make you seem desirable. I feel like a grad student equivalent of a cougar who makes sure that every date is at a dimly lit restaurant, gets botox one week beforehand, and only wears hideous pantsuits that vainly attempt to cover love handles.

There you go. The truth is dead. That's terrible marketing, and no fun. I guess the postmoderns were right; we are all swimming in a meaningless pool of ambiguity.

Wrong. Why? Because God made muffins. And so should we. I love muffins. You can put them on sticks. They also lie. They scream, "We're cute like cupcakes, but we're morning food! Look, we have fruit, we must be healthy!" and then the unsuspecting victim pops five of the suckers in his or her mouth. Insulin shock and diabetes then ensue. Muffins are not healthy. They have a lot of fat and sugar. That is why they taste good.

Yet surely, homemade muffins exude coziness. Sometimes I feel like I am enjoying a leisurely breakfast in my forest cottage, not gingerly peeling silicone baking cups off piping hot muffins before dashing off to lab. Muffins and tea infuse contentment: I think of leisurely days and O'Henry short stories when I reach for some oolong and a muffin.

These muffins are 95% not my recipe. Rather, I woke up one day and wanted comfort. So, I googled the ingredients that were in our fridge (minus the non-muffin potential ones) and hit the jackpot: a delicious sounding recipe that amazingly uses things that you have. More importantly, they make a swanking photo.

So, humans lie. Muffins lie. It is better to make muffins than to tell lies. Unless they are meaningless exercises in creativity. Right?

Ok, maybe I'll put down the ethics and pick up the baking.

Cran-Apple carrot muffins.

2 c apples, diced fine
1 c sugar
1 c chopped fresh cranberries (food processor would make life easy)
1 c shredded carrots
1/2 c veggie oil
2 eggs, lightly beaten
2.5 c flour
1 T baking powder
2 t baking soda
1 T cinnamon
1 t allspice
1/2 t cloves
1 t ground ginger
1/2 t salt

oven to 375 F

Sift flour, salt, spices, baking powder and soda in a bowl, set aside.

Mix carrots, apples, sugar, and cranberries, let sit five min. Add eggs and oil, stir. Stir in dry ingredients in batches. Spoon into a greased muffin pan. Bake at 375 F for 25 min, or until inserted toothpick comes out clean.

Halloween: Trick or fellowship?

2009-11-01T18:14:00.000-08:00

When I was young, Halloween was an exercise in creatively wearing snowpants. Such is life when you life in wretched Iowa and snow starts in October. The artistry stemmed from creating a costume that could be worn under fifteen layers of clothing and still made you look like Tinkerbell, not a giant Technicolor marshmallow.

Halloween always drums up nostalgia: waddling around in the cold and delighting over the candy procured. Everyone would have the best houses mapped out, and we'd all try to convince our parents that we should go trick-or-treating six miles from home, because those houses had king sized candy bars, but Mrs. Richter down the street handed out stale old raisins.

However, as one ages, Halloween transforms from a practice in dressing warmly to a practice in freezing one's ass off. Soon Mom and Dad don't have to worry about their precious little children catching cold because the little munchkins are now college students parading around as slutty bumblebees. Perhaps it's part of the fundamental human preponderance of identity: we do not know who we are, but becoming who we are not allows us to break constraining mores and explore life outside the Self. Or, maybe too much alcohol and gratuitous sex doesn't count when you're a sexy astronaut.

I guess I never fully understood collegiate Halloween. Grad school sheds new light to the holiday, however. Suddenly nerdy costumes dominate, even if some are nerdy-sexy costumes. Many a student went as the organisms they study: pond scum, sea squirts, garden variety prokaryotes galore. I had friends who went as a trio of scientific journals, and a few others who went as enzymes.

For me, this year brought out neither nerdy nor sexy side. Rather, it awoke a far more dangerous facet: kleptomania.

It began innocently enough. I joked about a bright orange dress I own that makes me look like a traffic cone (albeit a nice traffic cone). The next morning there was a battered, but endearing traffic cone in front of my bedroom door in the hallway. I have fantastic roommates. We swapped it for a really pretty cone the next evening. The next thing I knew, I was clipping caution tape from an abandoned construction site at a Home Depot. It was a narrow section of the parking lot and cars were honking angrily at my friend who pulled over while I surreptitiously scuttled across the street and snipped precious yards of "CAUTION CUIDADO" repeats.

Some finds were easy. I nabbed a foot or so of the "DANGER DO NOT ENTER" red tape on the way to an interview with a professor. Yet, if I was to really pull off the costume, I needed something definitive. I wanted a cone. Not the cute dweeby cone sitting in our kitchen, although it was shiny and adorable. I wanted the cylindrical pillar-looking traffic cones. It would be the ideal cane. I would become the Gandolf of road construction--my orange stave would boom authority as I shouted "Though shalt not pass!" Or something. Hard as I looked, there were none to be found that weren't bolted to the ground.

Serendipitously, the day before Halloween, a miracle struck. I was innocently wandering to my biochemistry discussion section. There, in the grass, was a traffic pillar. MY traffic pillar. It was beaten, detached from it's heavy base, and merely relaxing in the yard. I looked around. No construction to be seen. Someone had stolen it and tired of its novelty. It was unwanted, abandoned, and alone; devalued in our careless materialistic society. I picked it up. It was perfect, fitting into my hand and lending the perfect amount of weight for a cane. It made the perfect armrest. I brought it to class. "What did you do now?" "She mugged a construction worker, clearly." My professor could only laugh when he walked in to see a bright orange pillar behind my desk.

After that there was no hope. I became a full-fledged construction paraphernalia kleptomaniac. I took one of the scores of construction signs on site at school. I found an expired 'no parking, construction zone' sign on my way home. Everywhere I saw signs and cones I could take for my costume. In short, I was drastically increasing my chances of being the first grad student in my class to quit because she was sent to jail. Why go Grand Theft Auto when you can go Grand Theft Traffic Cone?

It was glorious. I made barricades to wear. One guy kept calling me 'cuidado lady' because I wore the bilingual tape as a headband. There was just one thing spoiling a marvelous weekend. Work. This week brings a second midterm and the NSF fellowship deadline. Neither of which are particularly daunting if I was capable of working like a normal human being. Alas, I write at the whopping speed of three sentences a night. They aren't even good sentences. The fellowhsip involves three essays: personal statement, research history, and proposed project. The pitiful thing is that I only have the proposal to write! The other two essays I have already written, and I managed to win other things with them, so they can't be that bad. I can write the proposal on my current rotation project. It should be straightforward and simple. Yet... three sentences every six hours. It also looks like a peer-reviewed journal threw up in my room.

On the up side, I have gotten good at swinging at the neighborhood playground, making weird shouting noises, talking to the neighborhood cats, and creating pumpkin pie smoothies.

I love pumpkin custard. It is so creamy, perfectly spiced, and an overall reminder of the gentle decadence fall can bring. Only pumpkin pies take time! Crust takes patience and is 50% fat. I can't handle that. Instead, I now have a smoothie. It's a drinkable pumpkin pie--perfect to satisfy that sweet craving when you don't have the time to waste on a full-out pie. I like to put honey teddy grahams as I eat it, to give it some crunchy crust.

NSF, you better watch out. If I'm capable of stealing cones from the institution that pays my stipend, imagine what I'll do if you don't give me that fellowship. Needless to say, you won't get a smoothie.

Pumpkin Pie Smoothie
1 c pureed pumpkin
1/2 c vanilla lowfat or full-fat yogurt. (Recommended, mountain high)
1/2 c evaporated milk (or a healthy splash of normal milk)
pinch nutmeg, allspice, and clove
healthy pinch cinnamon
whipped cream/topping for garnish
teddy grahams.

Mix first five ingredients until homogeneous. Add dollop of cream, sprinkle a little more cinnamon, and garnish with teddy grahams. It's fun to make screaming noises as you eat the tiny bears. Or not.

Will Tango for Bacon

2009-10-28T18:21:00.000-07:00

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.

2009-10-18T11:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-11T19:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-05T08:13:00.000-07:00

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.

Berlioz and MLK: delusions and putting the "re" in research.

2009-09-27T11:16:00.000-07:00

I had a dream. Actually, I have lots of dreams. Many of them involve exploding glassware and past violin professors lecturing me. Then we all play soccer against some very talented talking chipmunks and dance tango. Turn that into a Symphonie Fantastique, Berlioz. Some people don't need opiates... but I digress.

As I was sitting in immunology (I think this class is much better for my culinary tangents than actual learning,) flavors tiptoed into my head. Antibodies morphed into sesame seeds. B-cell development whispered of crystalline ginger. Orange zest seduced my senses long before class got to VDJ recombination. Honestly, I will fail this class.

Yet, it was a cookie: a daring fusion of Asian and butter. It would command the senses, stimulate the palate, and save old ladies from being hit by buses. Crunch, zing, and sweetness in one fattening bite. I pulled out a legal pad, and started designing.

A candy-like cookie that could be cooled into cup-like shapes, filled with a ginger-chocolate ganache, garnished with candied orange zest and ginger. I only had to wait for the week to end.

That day of cooking research went much like normal research: death. Two main problems: don't make anything relating to candy without proper equipment. Thus, a buttered and floured cookie sheet will NOT substitute a silicone mat. The cookie came out as a lacy, sticky disaster that bubbled into the pan and wouldn't come off. Instead of a cup that could hold something, I got a delicate coral-esque garnishe that I had to pry off the pan with the finesse of a bulldozer lifting a concrete foundation. The kitchen radiated a miasma of a sugared Asia and bad cooking aura. The cookies, once cooled, were cute and would not hold anything.

How does this parallel my research. Ah. My enzyme assay result proved exciting at first. It suggested that our interesting hypothesis might hold true. Wait, something actually worked? Elation. That is, until the following week where I managed to destroy everything I touched. In a procedure where sample wells must be free of air bubbles, I made one sample look like Mr. Bubble assaulted the NIH. I forgot to save results. I saved results and realized they sucked. I redu the unsaved experiment, and realize the results sucked. This is why they call it "research" and not "shit we figured out that lives in this test tube".

So, I was left with a delicious chocolate ganache (mixture of cream and chocolate used to make fondue, truffles, etc.) that had a spicy ginger finish, candied ginger, a zested orange, and black roasted sesame seeds. I refused to declare defeat. Yet there was no way in hell I was baking anything else that night.

What else does a girl do? Make the most pretentious ice cream sundae at home, naturally. Vanilla ice cream provides the perfect backdrop for a spicy bite and citrus finish. I didn't even have to candy the orange zest, which was nice. It was sexy in a bowl. My roommates approved. They should: something like this would cost a bunch on a restaurant menu.

[Insert pretentious name here]/ Sexy Asian Sundae

Candied Ginger and syrup:
2 in ginger root, sliced as thinly as possible. Don't slice off fingers, they probably taste terrible.
Water
Sugar

Chocolate Sauce:
1:1 ratio chocolate chips to cream.
Ginger syrup (I used 1 T for about 1 c sauce)

Sundae:
Vanilla icecream (breyer's natural vanilla!)
Black roasted sesame seeds
Zest from 1/2 orange
Candied ginger

To candy ginger:
put ginger in a small saucepot, cover with water. Bring to a boil. Let simmer 15 min, then strain out water. Cover again with water and add sugar. (Try to have an equal ginger:sugar ratio by weight. I guessed.) Bring to a simmer and let simmer for at least 30 min. If water boils too low, add more.

Remove ginger and let syrup reduce down a few min more. Let ginger drain and dry over a baking rack for at least an hour (I put it on tin foil... but I imagine a rack would be better.) Tos with granulated sugar.

Chocolate sauce: the lazy man's ganache:
Heat cream in microwave in 1 min increments until simmering. Pour over chocolate, let stand 2 min. Stir until smooth and shiny. Add in syrup to taste.

Assemble:
Scoop ice cream into a sexy bowl. Not a normal one. Chic will do
Sprinkle sesame seeds
Sprinkle orange zest
Drizzle chocolate ginger sauce
Garnish with candied ginger

My roommates are superheroes, and I'm the Narcoleptic Ostrich

2009-09-19T15:38:00.000-07:00

The Beatles should write a song about me.
Oh wait. They're mostly dead.

Yes. I have awesome roommates. In fact, I'm pretty sure one of them is superwoman. Instead of an invisible jet, she wears a headlamp when biking at night. Moreover, I'm pretty sure that after working ridiculous hours and reading way too many scientific papers, she fights crime on the streets of Berkeley.

Another roommate manages to do well and know what the hell is going on, while still watching remarkable amounts of television. Not to mention his research rather freaks me out. Weird Neuroscientists. The third roomate, other than being generally awesome, can make tasty sweet-potato burritos. Finally, my incredible ex-roommate from ASU is Queen of the Universe, and doesn't even have to wait for more than an hour at the DMV.

I'm pretty sure they'll go out and save the world one day. I'll watch and make popcorn.

Ah yes, the narcoleptic ostrich. That would be me. As it should be, because blogs are essentially narcissitic writing exercises in cyber-space. right?

One great travesty of my life is a complete resistance to caffeine. Alas, coffee, energy drinks, amphetamine precursors--I am impervious to all. Not only that, but when tired, my body shuts down immediately, giving rise to plenty f interesting scenarios where I'm found sleeping on the dining room table, the floor, under my lab bench, etc. I have fallen asleep in the middle of scale practice (Jesus must've kept me from dropping my violin), during experiments (failed ones, mind you) and in piano bars on busy Friday nights.

So you can imagine my struggle to stay awake in class. So far I have been woken up by a professor snidely commenting, "...well, it's better than nodding off in a warm classroom" and a fellow student poking me in the arm and asking if I was ok. Either I definitely belong in grad school, or they should kick me out tomorrow. I'm not sure which.

My other skill apparently involves hiding my face. Actually, I don't really understand how this evolved, but I think my penchant for folding myself into weird contortions morphed into me always hiding my face. Actually, I have no clue. Self analysis fails here. I'm well aware of the cowardly implications of my new title, but I wouldn't consider myself one to run from danger... I live in Oakland. (And I've paid for it--if you ever read the first post.)

This falls in line with most of the past week. It has neither been the best of times nor the worst of times, but just one of those stretches where you just can't seem to excel at anything. You are good at falling behind or just scraping by, but actually being on top seems unreachable. It's an optimization of mediocrity, if you will.

Even when cooking I have missed the mark. I have yet to get a proper rising out of a loaf of bread, even when the proofed yeast is so raring to go the bowl of milk and honey looks like a cheap sci-fi movie. I guess my yeasty friends can sense the aura of inadequacy radiating from my bewildered hands.

Similarly, I have dreamed of making baked mac and cheese for my dish to bring for lunch for the week. I prefer to add chicken to increase protein and use roasted butternut squash in place of a fatty traditional roux (roo: the thickener of butter and flour). I had seen similar versions online, and even made mine before at home. This time I had optimized the strategy and was ready to go.

Alas! 'twasn't meant to be. I stupidly kept the heat on after adding the cheese to the mixture, breaking the emulsion. Instead of a thick, creamy cheese sauce with roasted squash undertones, I got cheesy blobs in milk. Yum. Nonetheless it came out ok, just lacking a textural homogeneity key to the comfort-food character of the dish.

Surprisingly, the pasta was amazing as leftovers. I don't know why, or if I was just starving after moderately sucking at science, but reheated it was tasty and satisfying.

Here's the recipe- with the proper directions I failed to follow. As always, adjust to your taste, because it's adjusted to mine. I swear, it should come out right if you aren't... me. :)

Baked Mac 'n cheese

1/2 lb chicken, marinated. (I used a little Dijon mustard, olive oil, garlic, onion, marjoram, and salt/pepper)
1/2 lb pasta (or more, if you want it to last. Doesn't have to be macaroni)
Half onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 t paprika
1 t cayenne pepper
2 t ground mustard
~1.5 c of 2 cheeses, preferably semi-soft ones that melt well. (I used extra-sharp cheddar and monterey jack.)
1 c roasted butternut squash (skin squash, cube half of it into 1 in pieces. Drizzle with olive oil and season. Roast at 400 F until fork tender. You can roast the whole squash one night and toss half with blue cheese crumbles and pecans as a side dish, then use the rest for this.)
1 c lowfat milk
few handfulls Panko (japanese breadcrumbs. or rice krispies, if you can't find those)
olive oil or butter
1/4 c grated parmesan cheese

Roast squash (see above.) When done, mash up and set aside. Marinate chicken, turn oven temp down to 350 when squash is done.

Boil pasta, set aside.

Pan to med-high, add olive oil. Saute small part of onions, garlic, and all of chicken. Set aside.

Turn heat down to med. Add onions and garlic, stir until onions are translucent. Add spices. Add squash, make sure it is very puree-like (I use an immersion blender beforehand if I'm not feeling lazy.) Add milk, bring to simmer.

Turn off heat, stir in cheese. Dump chicken, pasta, and sauce in a casserole dish, toss together.

Mix breadcrumbs with a couple tablespoons of olive oil or melted butter. Mix in parmesan cheese. Sprinkle mixture over pasta. Bake about 25 min, or until top is golden brown and sauce bubbling.

Don't forget-- even if you screw it up, it still tastes good. My kind of cooking.

In discombobulated daydreaming, veritas

2009-09-13T20:59:00.001-07:00

"Oh I wish I were an Oscar-Meyer wiener, that is what I truly wish to be...
for if I were an Oscar-Meyer wiener... I wouldn't have to get my PhD!"

I believe it is Cal Tech that compares educating undergrads to blasting them in the face with a fire hydrant. I don't think the hydrant has quite opened on my face, but I think a dog is peeing on it and I'm running the other direction. Constant mental engagement is not the specialty of people who have the neural equivalent of sugared-up chipmunks playing freezetag.

It is not that the science isn't interesting. It is, and it is taught (generally) very well. The thing is that when science is crammed down my throat every waking moment, my inner ADHD wakes up and starts dancing the cha-cha. Or maybe the hustle.

An interesting consequence of such mental choreography is that the instant class material is NOT presented in a structured, fascinating manner, I go off the deep end. In fact, I'm surprised I am still in advanced immunology. Quick preface: if physical biochemistry is essentially math, immunology is essentially Icelandish. This wretched field has so many acronyms and names (acronyms of acronyms, actually) that you almost need a bilingual dictionary to survive.

Thus, I alternate between deep concentration (read: desperation) and composing music/writing recipes on my scientific articles. I focus pretty well at lectures, as long as I spend time before class checking ESPN for latest soccer and football news. However, discussions are student led. Which means that Charlene often spends her time dreaming about steak and sweet potato fries, whole wheat Bavarian pretzels, and prosecco-sorbato floats. Last discussion I wrote an eight bar piece in A minor and common time that made no sense at all and filled the margins with random comments that did not pertain at ALL to the cross priming of CD8 T cells.

For example, the professor was discussing the significance of results in vitro, (test tube) to those done in vivo, (shit, it's alive!). My mind went down this profound path instead:

in vivo, veritas
in vino, veritas
in tequila, veritas.

Amen.

Similarly, I forget to be intelligent. So, when I ask a question about how a diptheria toxin technique in mice can be used to study organ transplants, I end up saying things like "but, the mice aren't groovy with being injected with toxin every day, how can this be a long term model?" "Not groovy" is an unprofessional way of saying "dead." oops.

Non-sequitur: pseudo chili
I like to make big dishes that will last through the week. Finally, I nailed my pseudo-chili. So here it is... for posterity. Or to clutter up the internet. You never know.

1 1.5 qt crockpot
1lb stew meat (I used round steak)
half an onion, sliced
3 cloves garlic, minced
spices/herbs (I used salt, pepper, cumin, cilantro, and paprica)
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (maybe 3 T sauce)
1 dark beer (1554! still cooking my way through it)
Olive oil
Tomato paste
crushed tomatoes (about 12 oz)
12 oz black beans
Fresh avocado, for garnish

Pat meat dry. Sprinkle seasonings over meat. Heat olive oil in skillet on high. Sear meat, turning frequently. As soon as all sides are browned, transfer to crock-pot. Sautee onions and garlic in skillet util house smells amazing.

Douse meat in olive oil. Add onions and garlic on top. Pour in beer. Add chipotle peppers. Cook on low heat in the crock-pot for several hours, until meat falls apart under a fork.

Add crushed tomatoes and paste. Heat a while longer. Transfer to bigger container and mix in beans.

To serve, spoon into bowl. Dice fresh avocado and place on top. I actually eat an entire small avocado with one big bowl. You think it might not work. It does.

Cracked out squirrels and wino watermelons

2009-09-07T10:10:00.000-07:00

I love pretty flowers. Don't we all? Such delicate symbols of life and beauty, reminding us all that in this chaotic world of jaded souls and consumerist idolatry, nature will always exude a stunning subtlety we can never achieve. That is, until the pretty flowers growing en masse next to your porch are actually angel's trumpets: a member of the hallucinogenic nightshade family (belladona being the most famous member). These babies are chock-full of anti-cholinergics: compounds that reduce the acetylcholine balance in your system. This means increased heart rate, dilated pupils (a sign of beauty in midieval times, hence the name belladonna) and hallucinations in certain doses. However, since nerve gas actually causes acetylcholine to build up in your synapses until you drown in your own bodily fluids, should we ever be attacked, we could light the bush on fire and live an extra five minutes.

I don't know the dosage for getting high on the charming flowers on your patio. However, I do know Fritz: the cracked out squirrel that lives on the property. I named him Fritz after watching him dart around schizophrenically on the trees and porch. Squirrels buzz around rather comically; but this dude definitely needs to lay off the drugs. Nothing quite like an idyllic bay area morning. A light breeze lilts through the kitchen while that ever-elusive sun fills the day with wide-eyed optimism. You steep some tea, put on a little Sinatra, and walk out on the porch to water the basil. There is Fritz, staring at you like you lived in the House of Usher. After an intense moment of squirrel stare down, he darts around erratically until he ends up in the psychedelic foliage. His movements have an edginess that transcend 'squirrely' into 'definitely a crackhead'. Ah, I love pleasant mornings, don't you?

Sunday crept in lazily, and the house prepared to relax for the evening. I had snagged a new viognier (a grape I've become obsessed with, despite my preference for red wines.) Now, I have no problem drinking wine out of a plastic cup, straight out of the bottle, in a big gulp... pretty much in any form. In fact, I like to drink "in half steps" which involves blowing across the top of the bottle to get a pitch, then trying to drink the right amount of wine so that the next note is a half step lower. I'm a classy gal. Yet tonight I busted out my nice pinot noir glasses a friend gave me for Christmas. We put on Mozart opera (I prefer his operas to everything else. To me, they exude a brilliance and depth that connects at every level.) Everything was set for a classy evening.

Until the ASU genes kicked in. Rather than cook dinner, I split a baby seedless watermelon in half and grabbed a spoon. Tasty. It complemented the citrusy notes of the viognier. That is when brilliance struck. I had scooped out a smallhole in the watermelon. To the bemusement of my roommates, I tipped my French wine in the fancy glass into the watermelon. It was fantastic. The ripe fruit melded with the crisp wine. I tipped the miniature melon half into my mouth. A playful duet. Tasty! I felt like a genius. Never mind the fact that I turned a potentially elegant evening into... well, wine drinking out of a watermelon.

Wino watermelon:
One small, personal-sized seedless watermelon, ripe.
A white wine of choice (recommended: McManus Viognier, Bears Lair Viognier, or Long Tail Lizard white table wine from Preston wineries, which you can only find in the Tri cities).
1 spoon.

Eat some melon to make a small hole. Fill with wine. Scoop watermelon bites so that they are dipped in wine before tasting. Raise your half melon for any toasts. Pat yourself on the back for combining a quiet evening at home with the county fair.

Leech segmentation development and playing with my pelvis: one day in grad school

2009-09-06T11:42:00.000-07:00

All in your average Wednesday...

In the end, regardless of the tale being told, time moves on and eventually no one cares. Apathy takes over the small stretch of time that governs our minuscule existences, and we, in short, get over ourselves.

I find myself nearing equilibrium between managing everyday life and having small, cataclysmic identity crises that result in plans to run out of a room screaming, join the peace corps, and become a rafting guide in the Pacific northwest when I return.

Yoga helps with mental stability. Lab rotations don't start until Tuesday, so I tried out a few different yoga classes. I was ecstatic to find an Ashtanga class on campus! The primary series of ashtanga consists of 119 poses intended to bring healing, but actually tie you in impossible knots and then have you unravel your legs while balanced on your hands in order to pull into a handstand before floating back into a push-up. It was essentially free and on campus?? I was in heaven.

Alas, I must still be in yoga purgatory, because it was atrocious. The teacher didn't follow the series at all, and he kept saying "play with your pelvis... until you find alignment and the energy makes you float up easily!" As a yoga-addict, I get a lot of crap for the sexual innuendos of my hobby. Nonetheless, I nearly exploded with laughter, which is bad news if you are in a headstand. Needless to say, play with your pelvis... with care. I'm not going back.

The class nearly made me late to the faculty evening research presentations (cutely called 'ferps'). I'm part of an enormous umbrella program--so we have people looking at brains, proteins, evolution, and genes. The approaches these scientists take are exciting and leave me rather giddy as I wonder how a fabulous place like Berkeley admitted an absurd little nut-job like me.

However, there are just some days when you can't care anymore. The evolution of leech segmentation did it for me. I can understand studying flies, yeast, infectious bacteria, non-infectious bacteria, cats, dogs, democrats, republicans, and little vials of stuff you forgot to label. Leeches? I cannot care about leeches. So I went online to 'pull off papers to read for class' which turned into 'reading college football news on ESPN.' (As a side note--although this will only continue to foster the "lack-9" shit our conference gets, I was happy as hell to see Oregon lose. Ever since Fiesta Bowl 2007 when Boise State showed the world what's up by beating Oklahoma with absurd plays that made them look like the Harlem globetrotters of football, I have been a small Broncos fan. Besides, some ducks are mean and sucker punch people after the game.)

Ahem. So... biology! The presentations are fascinating. I love to contrast the professor styles. Business casual to 'shouldn't be seen in public' to tshirts and jeans. Some professors speak as if it were a conference, while others crack jokes, "Eukaryotes are fun to sleep with, but I'd never want to work on one."

The moral of the sotry? I'll probably survive my first year. I start lab in two days, so failed experiments will give me something else to bitch about. Yet, I managed to fall asleep in two different libraries in three days; clearly, I am home. Sometimes, life is about getting over yourself. Even if you are supposed to play with your pelvis.

Swingin' smoothie dreamsicle ;-)

It's a delightful little pick-me-up for when you're short of time and tired--so, always! One day I decided to make a smoothie with whatever smoothie-like ingredients I had. This drink is now my favorite, and tastes just like those orange Popsicle-icecream bars from childhood.

1 pt vanilla yoghurt
1 pt vanilla soymilk
1 pt orange juice

Mix together first two in a glass with a spoon. Make a lot of noise, so that it blends better and your roommates think an earthquake started. Add OJ and blend.

If you don't like soymilk, use normal milk. If you don't have vanilla versions of stuff, add honey and vanilla to taste.

Settling in; officially a lunatic; Soup Rant

2009-09-01T08:08:00.000-07:00

Transitions suck. But you don't need to hear my angsty emotional goings-on. That is what Lifetime movies and irritating people are for. Yet slowly, the transition has begun from blissful post-graduation bum stretched out on a beach in Costa Rica to focused graduate student reading papers and engaged in science.

I recieved my CA drivers' license. The universe, et al, established that California drivers are lunatics who wish to test Gods' patience by nearly killing something every time they drive. (J. of Life, 2005). And now I'm officially one of them. Oh goody.

Moreover, my roommates have figured out that I'm weird. Too bad for them, we've already signed a lease, muahaha. Fortunately, I end up baking and cooking for the people I live with enough that people tend to forgive the roommate who makes cat noises and does handstands in the hallway.

So what can I cook that provides substance, comfort, and is NOT an alcohol-infused sweet? I adore making soup. Homemade soup epitomizes a sense of peace in the world. Cue John Lennon. It is an orgy of healthy flavors that meld together in a symphony of taste-bud happiness. It even tastes better as it sits in the fridge! Why people confine themselves to those over-preserved sodium traps confuses me. Soup is not hard to make. Some freeze indefinitely. Don't get me wrong, canned convenience is ok, but there is life outside of Campbell's.

Tomato soup is a staple in my diet. I believe the genesis of this method (not recipe) came from Michael Chiarello, but this is my pseudo-protocol. It isn't precise, and never is. Everything is to taste.

Hearty Tomato Soup
2 12 oz cans canned Tomato (whole or diced)
2-4 cloves garlic, peeled (keep in mind I'm asian and addicted to garlic)
Equal pts diced onion, carrot, and celery (I never have celery, and often do w/o)
Chicken Stock (depends on how thick a soup you want.)
Herbs (suggested: basil, thyme, marjoram, or oregano. Dry = 3x stronger than fresh)
Olive oil
Healthy Tbs grape jelly. (Yeah, you heard me)

Oven to 400

Spread tomatoes on a baking sheet. Add garlic cloves. Fresh tomatoes can be sliced into thick steaks and added. Drizzle with olive oil, and salt and pepper. Put into oven until everything is roasted and caramelized and garlic is fork tender. Time will vary on what you've got.

Heat soup pot with olive oil, saute onions, carrot, and celery until it smells fantastic and onions are translucent. Add roasted stuff and stir. Add chicken stock to cover veggies, and sprinkle herbs.

Simmer. You can forget about the soup here and do something else, just keep it covered. This soup is forgiving. Otherwise, 5 min, ish.

Take off heat. Use an immersion blender (looks like a boat motor) and blend to textured soup consistency. Or pour into blender. Add more chicken stock if you wish.

Return to heat, add grape jelly (takes edge off acidity). I also add cayenne, pepper flakes, or Siracha at this point. Test the seasoning.

You can add a small amount of cream, butter, sour cream, full-fat greek yogurt or more olive oil, to taste. Fat scares me, so I don't.

So, recap: Roast, Saute, Combine. Simmer, Blend. Simmer, season, Eat.

Compare to "open can, dump in bowl, nuke." it's harder. Yet soup is like life. You can "emerge from womb. Live. Die." or you can add some flavor to your bland existence and make some damn soup. Yes, it's that important.

Ye olde Stout Wedding Cake: a practice in inefficiency

2009-08-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

It all started when a very good friend asked me to make her wedding cake this winter. Let's be frank: my cakes often taste good. They NEVER look good. I demurely told her, "I would be delighted!" (Ok, actually my jaw dropped and I demanded, "are you out of your mind?!"). My brain screamed, "Dear GOD, I am going to die." Painful visions of drawn-out royal icing torture and buttercream-boarding flashed before my eyes. "Death by offset spatula." I was going to be THAT girl. The failed Martha Stewart suicide victim. And have you seen Ms. Stewart? Epic fail.

I started digging through my cake recipes to put together the tiers. So many parameters to consider--cake flour or all-purpose? What gluten content is ideal? Sour cream, oil, or butter for the fat? Chocolate, white, fruitcake? Why won't my oven turn on? It's a difficult process.

Then the bride, whom I love dearly and willingly risk an ignoble pastry death for, calls me.

"The top layer, the one we get to keep--can you put beer in it?"

Oh shit.

"Do you want me to cut a hole in it and fill it with beer?"

"Hahaha. No, I mean, can it be beer flavored?"

Now, I probably cook with beer more than I drink it. (I'm in grad school. This is a serious statement.) I have put beer in cookies, brownies, chicken stock, chili, pastas, bbq sauce, and hundreds of marinades. Never in cake. Why? The perfect cake precariously rests on a precise balance of leavening, four, and wet ingredients. The idea of putting beer--a leavening wet ingredient with high acidity--is terrifying.

When in doubt, copy someone else. I stole a recipe from Bon Appetit that featured chocolate stout. A fellow grad student also wanted to bake, so she came over and we got cracking.

First: my kitchen is partially covered in baby powder. This is because a very crazy species of harmless ant is attacking the freezer. Why? No clue. They must have some sort of Napoleon/Hitler complex and like invading cold climates. The outside of the thing is spotless, and the ants that teleport inside (it's sealed. How do they get inside?!) die. Baby powder deters the critters. So, it looks like a cocaine New Year's party in the kitchen. And we haven't even started.

Second: this cake is a calorie whore. Beer, cocoa, and butter are melted. This is whisked into egg and sour cream before dry ingredients are sifted in. Holy triple-bypass, batman!

Third: The resulting cake was chocolaty, moist, smelled terrific, and didn't taste like beer AT ALL. Infuriating!

Fourth: the white chocolate ganache smelt like a warzone of sugar and fat. That is what white chocolate ganache is. Brilliantly, I poured a cup of beer in the pan. Magically, the stuff didn't seize up. (Beer is acidic. This is bad for a fat emulsion that doesn't even like added water). But now it had to reduce. Damnit. Much stirring later, it was ready to be cooled. But our freezer was currently the Leningrad of the Kamikaze Eskimo-wannabe ants.

Shit.

Every ice tray was emptied into a big bowl and showered in salt. The pot of icing was carefully submerged, and I stirred and prayed. The Pastry Gods were merciful; it stiffened into a caramel-colored hybrid frosting. The cake was smothered in it, and now had enough calories to kill on first sight. It looked like a dilapidated trailer-park cake. For fat people. I should totally make wedding cakes for a living.

Conclusion: It is easy to make tasty beer frosting. It is harder to make tasty beer-cake. But never fear. I have a plan, and when the perfect cake emerges, you will know.

Until then leave me alone. I have to clean up a kitchen that resembles what would happen if you tried to make crack and cupcakes simultaneously.

And that is how a nut-job-grad-student-baker extraordinaire prepares for her first wedding cake.

Stout Frosting:

2 c white chocolate
1 c heavy cream
1 c stout (used young's double chocolate)

Heat beer until reduced in half. Add cream and bring to a simmer. Add chocolate, let stand two min. Stir until smooth, chill until frosting consistency. Wear your fat pants the next day.

Moving is a bitch: the beautiful bay area, proof I should leave, and self-medication.

2009-08-24T20:45:00.000-07:00

Ah, the momentous first post. It's like a first date: you want to be witty and charming, yet you don't want to lie too much. That's just waiting for a horrible second date, when the other person gets up and leaves before dessert because they realize you're either boring, an idiot, or you sleep with a stuffed elephant named hubert.

I'm a doofus. It isn't boring, but certainly isn't brilliant. I have realized that I must be a cleaver doofus, because somehow I convinced a lot of smart people that I too am intelligent. Silly, silly professors. Now I'm stuck in grad school, wondering what I'm doing and where the free food is.

The bay area is beautiful. This is a well established fact. However, it is a freezing area. After four years in the desert, I only own four long sleeved shirts. I'm fairly sure that the lack of sunlight will have me coping with rickets from lack of vitamin D. Oh well, that is why God made sweatshirts and fortified milk.

We all know moving is a bitch. No one likes it, everyone complains, and the human population continues hating change on every level. Why would you want to read about my move? Because I have divine proof I should leave Berkeley: also known as the 'I got hit by a cracked out hobo' story.

Biking is the way to go over here. It is fast, cheap, better for you, and doesn't give you dirty looks from environmentalists. I was on a search for a cheap yet functional bike--and failing spectacularly. My definition of cheap and bike shops' definition of cheap vary drastically.

I was test riding a bicycle near a shop and just rounding my first corner when a small old man jumped out at me, swearing obscenely and waving his hands at me, trying to scare scare me of the bike. Clearly the man was on drugs, mentally ill, or both. Fortunately, my undergrad was at a state school where males notify females that they are capable of reproduction by honking loudly and shouting. Four years ago I would've fallen off the bike and then gone on a feminist tirade when I returned. Now I'm in grad school: I'm chill. No problems.

The rest of the ride was great. I was contemplating how to afford such a bike when, 10 min later, I rounded the other corner of the block. Now, my Derrogatory Asshole Blocking Skills (or DABS) were in high gear. This is great when all people do is shout or honk. This is very bad when cracked out hobos get angry, jump out at you, and hit you straight across the face. In fact, DABS is a fantastic way to not feel your face for a good 10 minutes while you digest the fact that you just were attacked by a nutjob the size of Frodo and you haven't even been in the city for five days. Welcome to Berkeley.

Now I must phase out of DABS and learn the sacred art of BSDAK (Bicycle Self Defense and Ass-kicking: pronounced like Nasdaq). I will be ready for a rematch. Until then, I still have to adjust to a new area, new life, and new life crises.

Self medication: What does a girl crave for comfort? Sugar and fat. What does a grad student crave? alcohol. So, the following recipe was born. It's fantastic if you move into a new kitchen and forget certain baking essentials, like baking soda. This is the first generation recipe, so if you don't like it, fix it yourself. Don't blame the girl who got hit by a hobo.

New Belgium Ales 1554 Chocolate Chip Cookies
2.5 c Flour
1 t Salt
1 c Butter, softened
2 Eggs
1 c ea White and Brown sugar
1 t Vanilla
5 T 1554 or similar Beer
1 c Chocolate Chips

Make like normal choclate chip cookies, but add the beer before thse chocolate chips. Bake, unless you like raw cookie dough and don't believe in salmonella.