Today was an early day. I waltzed into lab at 10:00, transformed my diluted, cloned, recombineered, and miniprepped DNA into a batch of competent XL 10-Gold cells, caught up on a couple days of data to organize, planned out the rest of my summer in lab, and waltzed out of the lab at 14:00 (or thereabouts).
GB's post having reminded me that it had been much too long since my last culinary adventure (at least a week) that I decided to carpe the diem out of today and make cheesecake.
The recipes I combined together to reach ideal taste and texture being excessive in proportions despite having been cut in half,
I found myself with a plate of leftover fresh, warm gingersnaps (whose brethren were used for the crust).
Fortunately, they did not have to suffer long.
After that, I still had to make dinner. I'd been craving risotto for some time, so I embarked on the long and perilous journey that is a traditional family dish without a seasoned expert at hand to counsel me.
Thanks to the wonderful cookbook in our possession (they weren't kidding when they chose the title), I found an easy recipe and immediately proceeded to modify it to fit my current stock of ingredients (no white wine, no chicken stock, no saffron, but carrots, mushrooms, diced tomatoes, and what could have once been an instant-broth cube).
I started to take pictures to document the process (taking pictures of various stages of preparation is fun, I need to do this more often)
but the tantalizing smell was too much for my poor stomach, and I busied myself by drooling for the rest of the procedure.
The result looked (and smelled) so tasty that Girl From Nicaragua offered me fresh Parmesan to grate to complete the dish.
I ate dinner while she turned on the television and watched the "news" (Michael Jackson's funeral), flipped channels to the "entertainment" (Michael Jackson's funeral), wandered over to the "news analysts" (Michael Jackson's funeral) and finally landed on the only watchable program (NOVA, unsurprisingly) where the topic was redback spider males' funerals (inside their better half's stomach).
We talked about the sorry state of the Texas School Board (still idiots? Yep.), the sorry state of the plumbing (still no temperature control in the shower), and the sorry state of the male mind (one of her ex-boyfriends is writing a book about 'his lovers', and it is apparently very... descriptive.)
I looked over my class schedule (or module timetable, if you will) for next semester, noticed I'd noted the hour wrong for a class (which slightly threw off my plans for uninterrupted lab time on Tuesdays), lamented the schedule change for Geeky Science Organization meetings (I will be unable to attend unless I can reschedule an Ochem lab which I had a world of trouble getting into in the first place), cobbled together a plan to sit in to the seminar I can't officially attend as it is at the same time as scheduled research meetings (research meetings should only be once every two or three weeks), decided a class on Ethics in Science (the seminar I am currently registered for) wasn't that bad considering it accidentally was the the class advertised on the flyer next to the elevator in the lab which I'd been looking at interestedly for the past month, and finding time for violin lessons.
Beautiful Music Friend introduced me to Pharyngula last night. Biology, Terry Pratchett, Evolution, Calvin and Hobbes, and Cephalopods? I'm so in love.
(later)
Speaking of which, I popped over there for a second and have now spent an hour and a half composing a Letter of Science™ to the director of the Missing Universe Museum (linkworthy just because it's so terrible) and answering the "impossible" questions on the Evolution Test.
It's much too late, so I'm done ranting for now.
GB's post having reminded me that it had been much too long since my last culinary adventure (at least a week) that I decided to carpe the diem out of today and make cheesecake.
The recipes I combined together to reach ideal taste and texture being excessive in proportions despite having been cut in half,
I found myself with a plate of leftover fresh, warm gingersnaps (whose brethren were used for the crust).
Fortunately, they did not have to suffer long.
After that, I still had to make dinner. I'd been craving risotto for some time, so I embarked on the long and perilous journey that is a traditional family dish without a seasoned expert at hand to counsel me.
Thanks to the wonderful cookbook in our possession (they weren't kidding when they chose the title), I found an easy recipe and immediately proceeded to modify it to fit my current stock of ingredients (no white wine, no chicken stock, no saffron, but carrots, mushrooms, diced tomatoes, and what could have once been an instant-broth cube).
I started to take pictures to document the process (taking pictures of various stages of preparation is fun, I need to do this more often)
but the tantalizing smell was too much for my poor stomach, and I busied myself by drooling for the rest of the procedure.
The result looked (and smelled) so tasty that Girl From Nicaragua offered me fresh Parmesan to grate to complete the dish.
I ate dinner while she turned on the television and watched the "news" (Michael Jackson's funeral), flipped channels to the "entertainment" (Michael Jackson's funeral), wandered over to the "news analysts" (Michael Jackson's funeral) and finally landed on the only watchable program (NOVA, unsurprisingly) where the topic was redback spider males' funerals (inside their better half's stomach).
We talked about the sorry state of the Texas School Board (still idiots? Yep.), the sorry state of the plumbing (still no temperature control in the shower), and the sorry state of the male mind (one of her ex-boyfriends is writing a book about 'his lovers', and it is apparently very... descriptive.)
I looked over my class schedule (or module timetable, if you will) for next semester, noticed I'd noted the hour wrong for a class (which slightly threw off my plans for uninterrupted lab time on Tuesdays), lamented the schedule change for Geeky Science Organization meetings (I will be unable to attend unless I can reschedule an Ochem lab which I had a world of trouble getting into in the first place), cobbled together a plan to sit in to the seminar I can't officially attend as it is at the same time as scheduled research meetings (research meetings should only be once every two or three weeks), decided a class on Ethics in Science (the seminar I am currently registered for) wasn't that bad considering it accidentally was the the class advertised on the flyer next to the elevator in the lab which I'd been looking at interestedly for the past month, and finding time for violin lessons.
Beautiful Music Friend introduced me to Pharyngula last night. Biology, Terry Pratchett, Evolution, Calvin and Hobbes, and Cephalopods? I'm so in love.
(later)
Speaking of which, I popped over there for a second and have now spent an hour and a half composing a Letter of Science™ to the director of the Missing Universe Museum (linkworthy just because it's so terrible) and answering the "impossible" questions on the Evolution Test.
It's much too late, so I'm done ranting for now.
1 comment:
WOW. When you get going it takes a while to keep up!
And we didn't see the finished cheesecake. Which is just as well. Just reading it made me feel hungry. And I love ginger!
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