Food: more thoughts

1) I have no idea why I keep buying two eggplants when I only ever manage to eat one and I know that the texture gets all weird if I try to freeze it.

2) I can't tell the difference between maple sugar and cane sugar, so the wildly inventive decision to put maple syrup in my tea was anticlimatic.

3) Che-choui, the banana-coconut-tapioca pudding, is really not my taste. In fact it reminded me of how I thought I hated coconuts until I came to the US and discovered that I do, in fact, like fresh coconut, pina colada, and in fact coconut in baking (imagine my astonishment when I discovered coconut macaroons).

4) I still don't understand why people like tootsie rolls.

5) Don't remember if I mentioned gulab jamun yet but it's really good! It reminds me of baklava in the sense that I expect it to be too cloyingly sweet for my taste but I ended up liking it despite of the fact that it's much sweeter than stuff I usually eat. (The version I tried had rose water and I think that's the first time I've seen it in food.)

Cathe persuaded me to try pumpkin smoothie ("It can't be scarier than Cajun food."). It's got pumpkin and soymilk in it, is sweeter than I would've liked, but is somehow not as weird as it sounds -- mostly it tastes like icy pumpkin pie filling. It does, however, makes me want to make some time to try to track down a good recipe for pumpkin bread.

Also: milk is icky, soy milk is very nice, almond milk it tolerable, but rice milk is ...kind of awful. 

Conformity approved

Remodeling of lab is done, except it isn't -- there are parts of our ventilation that are different from the blueprint the construction workers got (read: a result of the duct-tape and glue patch-ups that have happened over the past decade), which meant that the crew is still wandering around, causing massive panic when they get lost in our building and propose to seal off a lab when they, in fact, meant the lab one floor up.

People are confusing with their naming of peppers

Dear all,

Today I have discovered the recipe for vegetarian chili. I have no idea what it's actually supposed to taste like but I like my version, so I'm going to count it as a win.

I also watched The Illusionist (2010 one) and my God, it's depressing. Think Mary and Max, but without the death and the hopeful ending. (Yeah you'd think it'd be happier without people dying but there's no redemption...just the slow fall of the curtain. Geez I need to find a happy short story or something, now, to balance my psyche.)  Really beautiful work though -- a style as unique as that of The Secret of Kells, and if it's a little slow paced -- well, it suits the mood. (Though it does make it feel even more like I'm steeped in melancholy.) (And now I'm going to imagine the rabbit went off on its own and learned magic tricks to perform for other rabbits and it was a success to make myself feel better.)

Heaters are good for drying shoes

So many facets of my life seems to boil down to "don't know what I'm doing, but keep going anyway" and then somehow, things magically get better. (Well, to be fair, occasionally pivoting helps provided I don't accidentally elbow someone in the face.)

Tried to get rid of the last of the wine by making wine cake. Sadly the batter tastes much better than the actual cake. (Get rid of the leavening agents and  use it as mix for gelato instead, y/y?) 

Have discovered that when I turn on the heater (what's with the weather, by the way?) the carbon monoxide light will flash. Not red or green, but white. The alarm doesn't actually sound however. Hunted up the instruction manual left from that day and discovered that the only copy left for me was, incidentally and inexplicably, in Spanish. And contains no information on what does the light mean if it's not red or green though now I know the words for "digital display".

In the meantime, have a song about Nicola Tesla. 

There's definitely seratonin around now

So: the science fair was awesome.

That being said, there were some issues of communication between the volunteer transport and the police (they had to cord off part of the streets for the fair but they were supposed to let the volunteer shuttles through) so that the shuttle drop off/ pick up point for us kept getting changed while we were waiting for our transport. So there was a lot of walking and crankiness.

But, an hour later, I finally managed to get home and rewarded myself by making French toast stuffed with cream cheese and strawberries and honey (idea from the super fancy mango-mascarpone-toast that I had last time Lucy and I went out for breakfast) to go with heavily honeyed tea so now I'm adrift in a sea of carb-induced bliss.

Have to go and deal with chores in a hour, but in the meanwhile: exercise + loads of starch & sugar = at peace with the world.

Key points of fair this year as noticed by me: elephant-brain-hat, live owl, live reptiles & tarantulas & squirrel, DNA extraction from strawberry, analysis of your snot, make-your-own skateboard (by lottery) booth, basket-ball-sized maze-navigating robots, something mysteriously small but definitely aerodynamic. Oh and balloon animals. Er. Molecules.

Still on the vigilance for ants

Dear all,

I realized that I haven't mentioned the ants problem in a while. It hasn't been solved...conclusively. I have left the landlady a note about it, received no reply, didn't have the time to bother her in person, and so a few weeks passed where there were errant ants, then there were fewer ants, followed by days when I swore the ants were gone, followed by a day of finding ants in the medicine cabinet (but only on one shelf, and why is that? They came out of a crack on the wall and disappeared into a crack on the wall so it is only one shelf that was infested), followed by now, another reprieve from ants that I may have just jinxed myself out of.

So there you have it: Ant Problem by Susan. Graded I for Incomplete.

Okay that's a lot of food

Parents came and parents left. After some consideration I've realized that parental visit this time around actually bore a striking similarity to the llama song (my God the llama song, I got it stuck in my head twice within a week of being introduced to it) -- in the sense that the first time you listen to it, after the 50 seconds of photos and inane lyrics flash by, you're left sitting thinking "What ...on earth just happened?"

They brought a HUGE load of food, asked me why I'm doing a PhD instead of a masters, I fed mom peptobismul (she was having stomach problems again), and I tried to update them on my life per their request (let's see...lab, lab, chores, lab, ooooh I volunteered at the Science Festival, that was fun, see this giant poster I have now? Nope, sorry mom, no boyfriend yet) while they randomly cleaned things. (I suspect that bring food & clean stuff may be in my genes as well, given their and my current tendencies, though so long as I refrain from procreating it may not get quite as bad.) It was good overall. Mom is flying back to Beijing in a few weeks and I confused both of my parents with the staple-less stapler. ("Is a card scanner?" "It doesn't require electricity?" "Is it a hole puncher?" "You can press down on it? What does it do? Did you just break it?")They brought over a catalog from "Bags and Bows" that they received in the mail because they remembered (!) that I like to flip through catalogs and occasionally I'd decide to keep one, and this one is definitely a keeper. It has patterns and color-coordination that is actually tasteful. I may have to start drawing Alice more so I can try to stick her in different color-theme inspired dresses.

Right. Off and about for the other stuff then.

Giant hamser balls

Right, so my first "official" talk as a grad student will be next Friday. The schedule for the day was sent out this week and seeing my name listed there gave me approximately 30 seconds worth of nausea. My lab mates assured me that I will be fine. My collaborators assured me I will be fine. I may even be able to believe that I will be fine provided that I somehow stop forgetting to cite random facts on slides two and eighteen. (Chromosome 11, it's on chromosome 11. There are 100-103 sequences in 92 species which are poorly annotated and required hand curation.)

Wendy continued on as before, post graduation. Now that the quarter is over she will be listed as a post-doc, until she leaves for either UCLA or UCSF almost a year from now. We went by the student offices building the other day for food, at which point she suddenly said something along the lines of "Look! A turtle!" Despite of the fact that we are surrounded by concrete and there is no logical reason of why there should be a turtle, I turned to look automatically anyway, and immediately suffered a pang of sympathy for Kowalski, who got pushed out of an airplane for doing the same thing. (Maybe it's just turtles. Or possibly unlikely animals. Or maybe just animals will do? This requires experimentation.) However, in my case, there was indeed a turtle picture posted, randomly, on the giant glass wall of the registrar's office, and no one was pushed off of any moving vehicle, so I counted it as a win.

For those who haven't heard yet: Annie and I will be going to Greece this summer! I got a guidebook and she'll get a different guidebook and we spent a lot of time researching (there was a lot of me typing "BUT WHAT DOES THIS MEAN??" and her typing "IDK") and mutually agreeing that banging out the logistics is pretty darn painful (though I have discovered that there are apparently lots of Laundromats on Crete). Tentative plan is to fly out near the end of June for 10 day trip, after which she will get shipped off to field school on one of the islands and I'll fly back from Athens directly to the vivarium, grad school, where I will no doubt have mice waiting for me.

Comic con is sold out already. One of these next few years I will remember to order tickets in...December or something. See that, Lucy? ONE OF THESE YEARS. I WILL.

...I did find time this year to volunteer for the SD Science Festival again and my God, it just gets more and MORE elaborate each year. Orientation was last weekend and the festival's next weekend. We're expecting 30k+ people on Expo Day and I am stationed right by what they have projected will be the busiest gate. Drop by and say 'hi' if you come and I haven't gone crazy from the crowd yet -- will be in a yellow volunteer shirt under a red tent in a sea of white tents. There will be pools. With water. And a human sized hamster ball. The week long events start this weekend though and there is liquid nitrogen ice cream somewhere. Google if you want the schedule.

Wedding album have arrived and have given it to Ashley. She was here last Sunday for a "quick" visit which eventually turned into something where I am prepping food for the week in the kitchen and she's playing scrabble on her phone on the living room floor and we tried to figure out where we are going with our lives. It felt oddly domestic. Have tried to share my experimentation in food with her and got her to try tea (which she normally hated but she will accept the Caribbean Breeze one from Teavana), papaya (which she didn't like) and chayote (and the jury is still out on that one).

Speaking of food, my recent trials are with soup. I have been picking out a different type of canned soup every time to try. Tomato bisque is very good, corn chowder was kind of disgusting. Creme of mushroom was okay. Chicken tortilla should be less spicy and the "hearty" potato one was good. The chicken wild rice tastes just like chicken noodle, if you ignore the texture of the soup, which was frankly strange. Wendy's been attempting to explain artichoke to me, so I might try that next.

Oh and my parents want to come visit, so they'll probably be by some time early April. Have I mentioned that my cousin (five years older) got married? We don't keep in touch, really, but given she's been worrying about getting married since when I was just existing high school, I'm going to say good for her. (If what you want was to be married then marriage is more likely to suite you, right? Right?) My mom forwarded me the photos.

There are loads of other things that happened but this post is getting too long as it is. I'll mention that I tried the "text to donate" thing on my phone and for some reason it didn't work, so I'll have to do it online when I find the time tomorrow. For those who are wondering: no, the amount of supplementary iodine in salt will not protect you -- there is no point in hoarding salt.

Mm food

Experimenting with western food this weekend. Broccoli seems okay with parmesan in soup. Still don't particularly liked cooked carrots. Found Reynold's cupcake cup inherently hilarious because of immediate mental image of Mike in a commercial for cupcakes. Are there even commercials for cupcakes? Are there food commercials? Not as in commercial for butter substitutes but, you know, an actual item of food that has been cooked and is ready for consumption?

Polling the audience: where do you go to get things framed?

[edit 13:03]
Guys, guys, you know what I discovered? Masala-chai cupcakes with cream cheese & honey frosting! It's a recipe I adopted from something (also was originally going to try lavender-earl-grey combination but forgot to take some lavender with me when I was home for the holidays--FAIL) and the cupcakes are decent, nothing too special, and the frosting is ...kind of weird, actually, but acceptable, but the two together is like magic.
Now I just need to figure out why all the stuff came out flat-topped instead of dome-topped.

Salsa; the answer is salsa

Today is the start of Radioactivity, Round II. In between all the stuff I went over my poster with my PI and he'd like me to move around and change about half of the figures. Given that the conference technically starts Saturday, I want to be able to pick up the finished poster on Friday. Given the on-campus queue right now, that means I will have to finish my poster by...tomorrow.

I wasn't very happy with this and, at one point where the PI was suggesting other ways for me to analyze the data I flat out told him that I was just going to toss out the other two figures because I don't have the time to deal with them on top of the experiments that I'm running this week. Astonishingly, he didn't lose his temper then, either. I have passed the "talk about data without releasing sensitive data" part, at least -- all the information that could theoretically lead to limelight-stealing has been censored.

Now I just have to shuffle stuff around and make sure all the fonts are the right fonts and size and everything lines up properly. Dammit. I have spent far too many hours doing formatting on powerpoint slides this quarter. I haven't spent this much time eyeballing alignments and making sure the hues of background match since when I did web-designing back in the days. And that was without juggling two classes and four different experiments in three different species. It makes me long for the days when our frustration can be relieved by hauling paper out to the barbecue place by the pool and setting them on fire. I can't set Daemon on fire -- there's too much useful stuff on here and not to mention I'm quite fond of Daemon, what with it being my first laptop. I can draw things burning in graphic detail -- but that requires time, which I'm a bit short on. Thus, as of today, I'm mostly reduced to glaring murder at my slides and sighing.

C'est la vie, right?

Speaking of which: R.I.P., Ivy. The IT (finally remembered to go in today, yes) diagnosis is "most likely hardware problem" and I was informed that it'd cost more to fix it than to just get another netbook. Dad will probably want it for the spare parts, if nothing else, because that's what he does. But he might want to play around with it, back where all his tools are, so we'll see -- there is yet hope for a functional Frankenivy.

Lara sent me the transcript of the closing speech of the Steward / Colbert Rally, which was pretty awesome and also allowed me to track down the collection of truly hilarious signs people were carrying for the event. My current favorite was the one that proclaimed "Guacamole", and then included the ingredients for guacamole. I was remarking to Wendy that perhaps world peace can be achieved through food, and doesn't avocado make everything better? Then after a brief sorting out we realized that neither of us actually eat avocado, thereby provoking outrage from the guys next bay over who heard us, who demanded to know what on earth do we eat our chips with...

...random food conversations are kind of fun, actually, and currently the highlight of the day.

...well that, and the fact that the postdoc's baby's due today! We are all sort of anticipatory today but alas, unlike the other two babies, this baby's parents don't utilize Facebook at all.... (This is the last baby expected in our lab, by the way.)

Frilliness

Enough pleasant things happened today that it felt like a day where life rewarded me for attempting to have a life outside of lab. It started off with a nice morning where the neighbor's girlfriend's children did not stay over, thereby waking me up with their screeching on the two days a week where I'd try to sleep in. (I don't think I'm asking for much. Just until 8am is all I ask and my life would be complete. Which it was, today.) Despite of all the timing confusion and email last night I did manage to meet up with Ashley today (it's kind of crazy to think of how long we've been living in the same city together -- and I mean years-- and only met up now), during which I described my recent adventures in grad school and she flailed about wedding planning. I don't remember if I mentioned this before, but she's getting married in February and so she's up to her eyebrows in florists and invites and what-have-you. I promised to help do the placement cards (note to self: go dig out the calligraphy kit Anna gave me and try to find out where in the closet those bottles of ink have migrated to), though I did have to ask her to explain exactly what's entailed in a wedding ceremony, as that I've never been to one before. There's a sort of Mission Impossible feel to it, from what I gathered, and the sort of attention to colors that is frankly astonishing. (White is apparently passe, ivory is in, Ashley's dress is in "almond metallic" or something -- yeah we're not entirely sure about the name either -- but I gather that "soy" is not a romantic enough color for wedding fabric when compared to "almond".) This was made even more absurd by the fact that Ashley has never been to the wedding before either, and neither of us ever really figured out all the details to the enigma of articles of feminine mystique such as make-up and some kind of religious experience involving many pairs of shoes. The ceremony should be hair-raising -- and beautiful and touching -- once she stops panicking about how the wedding is eating her brain and "happy" is the only thing left. (She can't keep on panicking from now to February right? Human psyche can't maintain that high level of constant stress. My Psych101 instructor said so.)

Lunch was Vietnamese. Pho can be quite good but spring roll will never cease reminding me of eating a roll held together by serran wrap. Egg rolls are still better. I now know what a "brisket" is and that the population of trees in Yellow Stone Nation Park is largely coniferous, with a few hardy deciduous species such as cottonwood and aspen.

Speaking of food. Has anyone ever tried matcha? There's this green tea pastry recipe I want to try out but I don't think I can substitute in jasmine and I'm not sure if matcha is anything like plain green tea that you'd get at from Good Earth or something. I'm going to try to make sponge cake tomorrow, though I've never been able to get the hang of beating egg white until they become stiff. I think I should aim for an electric mixture someday. Or a contraption like the one from Annie that Kate and I accidentally creamed the potatoes with, that one time, back in Davis.

Food post, mostly

I was at 99 Ranch today when I saw shao-mai (or "shumai", as wikipedia calls it) and thought, "Huh, I haven't had that in a long time. I wonder why." Then around lunch time I remembered that oh yeah, I don't have the apparatus for steaming things. I mean I figured out a rough estimate using the microwave, but it's not quite the same. The difference (somehow) becomes more pronounced when the food cools, which is a problem for me given that I tend to cook more than I can eat in one meal. Despite of that, the Kimbo shrimp shao-mai was quite good.

I am still sampling different gum. The Trident strawberry one was not very good. It's too sweet for one thing, and has this weird aftertaste like it's thinking about being minty, but never quite got past the thinking stage to the doing stage. To complete the short but very recent dislike of strawberries: one of the ones I got this week had a caterpillar in it. The outside wasn't noticeably marked either. I just took a bite, looked inside the empty space that sometimes form inside the fruit, and saw a very green, very plumb, and no doubt very confused caterpillar.

Now I'm paranoid and don't dare to eat anymore. At least not while I'm occupied with other stuff such as reading.

There was also chayote. One of these days I will remember that one chayote is enough to last me a week, because when I'm buying them I usually think "hmm, vegetable is about the size of my fist. I should get two." Then after I finish cutting one and see the pile of it on the cutting-board I'd think, stupidly, "Oh." And possibly, "Oops. Maybe I can freeze the other one?"
(I also tend to have a similar problem with potatoes, leading usually to a scenario where I'd have one lonely potato sitting in the fridge.)

The darkest red honey stick (there are four reddish ones) is, I think, cinnamon.

And now for something completely different:

Today as I was exiting the store I saw a dog on a car. It was sitting on the roof, over the driver's seat. The car is empty and not moving. The dog (smallish in size) looked kind of bereft -- it'd shuffle around a little, sit down, and stare off into space. I don't think it's tied down, though it was wearing a collar and I didn't get close enough to investigate. But dogs -- even the non-Diefenbaker variety -- should still be able to get off the roof via the hood or the trunk if they wanted to, right?

While walking through downtown PB I also saw, in front of an empty, abandoned store, two TI-83s laying on the ground, side by side. The calculators were off. There was nothing else or anyone else nearby. They were laying face-up in the yin-yang orientation. There were no stores nearby that sold calculators, so I'm at a loss. Besides, those things are pretty expensive so ...I don't know. The little mysteries in life. Or rather, in this case there is only one mystery: people.

Anyone else heard about the window phone 7? I'm actually pretty excited with the policy they're employing to attract developers. Gives the product a lot of potential if it survives the initial debut.

The things you learn about a place

I live in a city where the nearest public library only operates five days out of seven per week. (And two of those days it opens at noon, one of those closes at 2pm.)

And here I thought I'd finally gotten over my earlier misgivings about this place.

Tourist cities are weird.

Unrelated: the transparent light green (there are three different green ones) honey stick is lime flavored. Yes I am trying to keep track. I think I may need to print out the photo so I can label it or something.

Because explody things can be fun

Okay so I did end up closing two of my accounts (the intell' ones) and opening another one under OkCupid to maintain my three-accounts count. (Still haven't found the stalker button yet, Lucy.) Which then promptly sent me ... well several emails, but the one that caught my attention and caused much lolz is one titled "World Map of Your Matches" where, as the subject line indicates, they generated a heat map of where each person's best matches are around US and around the world. According to my map within the US I should be thinking about Hawaii, North Dakota, Alaska, Virginia, and Delaware. (Hawaii is warm. I approve.)On a world map US didn't even make it onto the list. Instead I got Slovakia (yes I know), Sweden, Israel, Singapore, and Slovenia. (And I had to look up where Slovenia is because I can't for the life of me remember.)

Also? I messaged someone, who did message back so now he's teaching me how to make potato-cannons! (No I didn't message him just to get the instructions. OkCupid did send a message with all possible matches and this guy's over 90% matched.) Given the email exchange this is probably going to the extend of my involvement with the Cannon guy, but oh my god projectiles. I was disappointed that we didn't do any projectile stuff (egg drop doesn't count) in physics the way I was disappointed we didn't do any origami stuff in geometry, so this is very exciting. (Do people still fire actual potatoes?) Not that I can really build one because although I know where to get pvc pipes I have no drill. Which is a crying shame but alas, life is cruel that way.

(It's worth signing up for these instructions alone.)

...does anyone own a drill and want to collaborate?

(P.S. Yes I'm still penpals with Xylene. We've moved on to medicare-type dilemmas now, I think. With lingering hints of alien conspiracy theories.)

---------------

Not related at all, but those vanilla Almond Dream Bites (chocolate-covered non-dairy ice cream balls) are way addictive. Think chocolate-covered almonds. Except as ice cream.

I was going to put something else here, but I forgot

I'm currently talking to Lucy about the UCLA commencement speaker issue(s) and how they might get someone from Lincoln Park. I'm ashamed to admit that I completely forgot who those people are (maybe my subconscious was trying to protect itself by repressing the memory) until Lucy sent me the link to "Somewhere I Belong." I suddenly recalled very vividly the presentations they made us sit through in high school.

It's an unfortunate association. Even more so since if they do get that person, then Lucy's graduation from college will remind her of high school. When she wanted to know why they can't find something more original I got a sudden flashback of Kate singing "Cows In the Morning." Whatever else you might say about it, THAT certainly would be original. (Though perhaps it's more suited for UCD graduation, and not UCLA.)

... ...

A week in conclusion: the seminar class has ended. I've spent a great deal of time sitting behind the curtain imaging cells at 100x, which looks very cool but drives your eyes nuts since you are sitting in the dark, staring through a microscope at dimly florescent things for hours. The issue with my account turned out (after being sent from the program coordinator to the student business office and back again) to be a change in my funding source, which resulted in half of my stipend now being deposited via payroll and the other half being sent through my school account, which is not enrolled in direct deposit. At least I know both sums are mine, which makes me happy since the half of the salary that got deposited in my bank account is enough to cover my housing, but that's about it.
So yay food. I ought to go and eat chocolate, to celebrate.

Final project's due on Tuesday. I'm going to look at an apartment tomorrow. It's further and slightly cheaper, but mostly I'm after a safer area and a place that doesn't quite so resemble the North Pole. (Though I'm keeping the polar bear.) There have been no other promising postings of places for rent so far, but then again, I haven't been haunting the sites and probably won't do so until after Tuesday.

Cheers.

[edit 21:28]

Ahh almost forgot! I found the neutrophil-chasing-a-bacterium video that I mentioned a long time ago (the one where my classmates and I cheered for the neutrophil).

The round things floating around are red blood cells. The vibrating black speck is a bacterium.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is your white blood cell at work.

Go neutrophil go!

And now I can sleep.