100 posts from 2007

There's a really famous "CD shop" in London where a certain someone likes to spend his time.  This past summer he not only brought me back the His Dark Material series, but he also took a risk and bought a random CD for me which turned out to be quite awesome.  Bats for Lashes was nominated for the Mercury Prize, but lost out to the Klaxons (another band I adore).

Here's one of their standout tracks, along with some psychotically captivating synchronized bike tricks.

I made cookies last night for a departmental party we are having today.  I will probably never make them again because they are the cookies from hell.  So difficult to make!  Although they taste really really good.I am debating on sharing the recipe.  They are so horrible to work with!  I'm sure there are people much more talented than me though at baking, so maybe this recipe will be for them. 

They taste like a cross between meringue and macaron.  Since...uh, that's what they're made of.  No flour or anything.  They're called "Zimtsterne" or "Zimsterne" and I guess they are popular in Germany and Switzerland, as well as being a Jewish tradition.  Obviously I have adulterated the original Zimsterne, but they're still cute, no?

They are actually flour-free cookies.  So anyone with celiac disease can eat them with no problem.  Basically, in the recipe I referenced, you mix a meringue made with powdered sugar and lemon zest with some almond flour and cinnamon (aka, ground up almonds).  This is the difficult part because they dough is really sticky and difficult to work with and even more annoying to cut with a cookie cutter.  I think I will have to adjust the amount of meringue with the amount of almonds.  Maybe I just used too much egg whites or something.  There definitely needs to be some tweaking.  So I guess I lied when I said I wouldn't make them again!  Hey, I enjoy a good challenge.  :)  Then in a serious bout of non-orthodox baking, I drizzed dark chocolate all over the cookies.  Mmmm.  Drizzle.

I will let you know how well it goes down.  Taste the pain, friends!  TASTE IT.

I have been (and will probably continue to be through this "grad school" biz-ness) a terrible blogger/updater.  But do you know what?  A very good blogger has just joined Vox and I invite you to read it in all it's poignant and hilarious GLORY.  (For a taste of the past, check here.)

So read her blog!  And sometimes when the moon is blue and the pigs have tired wings, I will post about my horribly boring life of cats, science and British boyfriends.

A while ago a friend and I drank delicious Japanese beer and I taught her how to make maki sushi.  It was really fun!  Too bad I'm just blogging about it now, even though it was like, months ago.

We filled the maki with (from left to right) fried egg seasoned with some soy sauce, blanched asparagus, cucumbers, imitation crab meat (because we a poor grad students):

We also made a nice hot sauce from mayo and "insanity" sauce.  I didn't take a picture of it, but it was a pleasing peach color and tasted great inside some of the rolls.

Here's a beer recommendation from me (a rarity I know):

Here's the finished product, where you can see we didn't drink THAT much beer because they came out rather nicely:
You can see in the background I attempted to make a uramaki, but it didn't turn out that well so we only tried it once.  And I thought this picture was cute because we were trying to keep the asparagus fresh:
And last night I was treated to a Japanese meal with a friend's dad and his girlfriend after going to an art gallery and attending an awards ceremony where said girlfriend won an award for her drawing.  Exciting night and yummy sashimi afterwards!  I tend to order a dish called "chirashi" when I go to Japanese restaurants because I love the sashimi and the seasoned rice.  Deconstructed maki, if you will.  Edomae chirashi is awesome if you like lots of different kinds of sashimi, but if you only like tuna, try the tekka-don.  Mmmm. 

Great, now I gave myself a sushi craving.

Work has finally died down to an almost reasonable pace (as in, no more 12-14 hour work days) and I have been itching for some  fiction to read.  Even though I literally have a stack of books that I have been meaning to read, much of it is non-fiction.   This is currently what I am addicted to and am reading like CANDY:

I am reading the "His Dark Materials" trilogy by Philip Pullman.  They are so good!  I highly recommend them if you are a Lord of the Rings/Harry Potter type person.  I am even being very accurate with my picture uploads because what I have are the UK editions that Elroy brought back from his visit home this past summer. I mean, books that are banned usually tend to be really good books.

I mean, I guess I'm glad that they are interested in the...entertaining part of science?

Pardon the terribleness of the shots, but I just woke up and saw this so I grabbed the camera:

I don't love rugby or anything, but I watched this weekend's World Cup final between England and South Africa.  It was really fun, we were up in Boston at an Irish pub (The Lir).  We stood downstairs and watched the rugger among a huge crowd of English with a few South African supporters firmly defending their territory at the corner of the bar.  The rest of the green jersey-wearing folk were upstairs, and we could hear their cheering after South Africa scored penalty after penalty.  It was awesome to see 1/3 of the British population of Boston in the pub and hilarious to note that when Setanta showed Gordon Brown on the screen just about everyone laughed.  Ahhh, unity in complete disregard for the country's current leader.

More pics from Boston to come.  Congrats, South Africa!

They announced the winners of the 2007 Nobel Prize in Medicine yesterday.  YAY!  It is going to be divided three ways among the pioneers of genetically manipulated mice and gene targeting strategies.  Mario Capecchi has an amazing story, which goes to show how you can go from being an orphan living on the streets, to a career at MIT and Harvard and then spurning the ivy leagues to winning the Nobel Prize.  Just plain awesome.

I'm feeling like I should go check on my experiments.  Hurray for science!