A Mirror with a Memory

You might as well hear it from me rather than someone else... ;)

A Mirror with a Memory

A First Attempt

At work, as well as at home, some things require a definite mustering of courage to try something new. In chemistry, this is commonly known as an activation barrier. Basically, in terms of the progress of a reaction, there are some points which require more energy (or in layman's terms, a little more oomph), which when reached, everything else is downhill from that highest energy point. The easiest way to picture this concept is to imagine yourself walking along a path, and up ahead, you see a hill (a really, really big hill). You know that climbing the hill is going to be really awful, but once you get to the top you can 1. Roll down like a little kid to the bottom and 2. at the bottom there is a pool of cookie dough (or marshmallows or whatever else makes you giggle).

Graduate school has been a series of hills for me. Every technique I have learned in the past few months has required me to climb a really big hill, and not only break my back doing so, but also humble myself by constantly asking for help from my peers and labmates. Cooking and baking for me have been no different. I've had to really work up the courage to cook certain things.

This whole "working one's self up" to try a new technique (in the lab or in the kitchen) is ridiculous. My energy has constantly been placed in building courage and trying to harness my fear of failure.

Yesterday, I attempted a *sacred* Ryno family recipe for yeast rolls. Whenever my mother-in-law makes these, I try to eat my weight in them (as does everyone else in the family). They are indescribable. My first attempt was not a total failure, though it was certainly not a stones throw close to Tony's mom's rolls. Mistake 1 was using a glass pan versus a metal pan: the rolls cooked differently on the bottom than on the top. Mistake 2 was kneading the rolls for too long (or with a mixer dough hook versus by hand).

At any rate, these rolls were edible, and my dad ate about 4 within a day. I dare not divulge the recipe without permission, but you can see the fruit of my labor :).

Happy Holidays!

The Tapioca Disaster...

(from wikimedia, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Image:Tapioca_pearls_and_cranberry_seeds.jpg)

So I alluded to this story during my last post on figs. This is easily one of the more embarrassing things I have done in terms of cooking, particularly with my background being in the physical and natural sciences.

I used to LOVE tapioca when I was little. My mom would make the Jell-O cook and serve kind, and I thought it was the best stuff on the planet. Last winter when Tony and I were in Missouri for Christmas, Tony's mom and dad introduced me to the Mennonite store 20 minutes away from their house. (I would like to point out that there house is in the country, and their next door neighbors live far away. I wish I lived there :(...) Anyway, this store is like a little piece of heaven for me. It has locally made goods, such as jams and jellies, along with bulk items like whole wheat pastas, spices and teas. Walking along one of the aisles, I saw it. A massive bag of tapioca, for about $2. The recipe was on the side, and I was good to go.

Fast forward to about a month later. Tony had staff duty (guarding the barracks) and I was home alone. I decided that I was going to make tapioca for the both of us, and it would be a nice surprise for Tony after he had worked a long (ridiculous) shift.

Everything was going fine, until I learned the hard way about how a solute (in this case, protein) effects the boiling point of a solution. This is easy stuff. Milk is not water. One should never, EVER "boil" milk on the highest stove setting. *Flashback*:

"The "9 or 10" setting on your stovetop should really only be used for boiling water..."

"Yep. Got it, mom."

Needless to say, I wish I had a picture of the incredible catastrophe that occurred. It was frightening. It was gruesome. It was...well...milky :(. The milk boiled out of control, even after I removed it from the heat. Thankfully, there was another burner open for me to place it on. OH, WAIT. No, there wasn't another burner open, because we used to have the teeniest, tiniest kitchen on the face of the planet. So, the milk, boiling out of control, had to be held above the burner (because Lord knows the darn sink was still full of unwashed dishes). Then, there was smoke. Milk, particularly milk with some sugar in it, burns like a champ.

So there I was, holding a heavy pot full of boiling milk at arms length, coughing, gagging, probably (definitely) thinking/yelling very bad things. The damage that this stupid experiment-gone-wrong had done was pretty vast, so I did what any hard working, diligent, loving wife would do: leave it there until Tony came home.

Noooo, not so he would clean it up (though he helped), but instead so he could see the awesomeness of the milk+tapioca explosion that our kitchen now was.

Tony walks in the door:

"Hey Pook, is something burning???"

"Um, nothing's burning...now..."

"Really? It smells like fire..."

"Yeah...I know.."

My strong, handsome, loving husband walked around the corner into the kitchen.
"What the..... (*&^%#??!!??" (If you are Tony's momma or grandma ryno, feel free to insert "heck" in here...everyone else, use your imagination...)

As my strong, handsome, loving husband walked around the corner, he saw a sight no man should behold: a milk bomb that his wife couldn't bear to witness all by herself. Needless to say, we used roughly an entire forest of paper towels to clean the milk from off the stove, refrigerator, cabinets, floor and sink. Then, we lifted off the burners to clean underneath, and found the other 3 cups I had misplaced. Did you know that milk+burnt-on stuff from 8 tenants ago= gray sludge that smells like feet? I owe Tony for that one, because while I was busy dry heaving in the corner of the apartment next to the hole where the rats got in (it was really not a nice place...but that's an entirely different story), he cleaned up that part of the mess.

Low and behold, I've never put milk on the stove again and turned the heat to above 4. I don't really care if it takes an eternity, but I suppose one wouldn't after witnessing milk Hiroshima in a 5'x2' kitchen.

-Lisa-

The Long and Short of It.

I donated my hair to Pantene Beautiful Lengths yesterday. I was very worried in the beginning, that I would look like some hideous short-haired goblin, or something. I think that I look much better with shorter hair. Infinitely better. I feel like I cut off a weight, in more ways than one.

My shower this morning took 5 minutes. 5 minutes, people. My stylist, Jeremy, was the "bomb dot com", as Veronica likes to say :). He made sure that I was emotionally stable enough to cut off the 12 inches I took off (not to mention the other 2-3 inches he took off styling it). He ensured that I would not have to use a curling iron or a flat iron, since I have no idea how to use them. Just a big roll-y brush and a hair dryer is necessary. Of course, I learned this morning, when styling it on my own, that I look like a baby moose taking its first steps when I am juggling a hair dryer and a brush. This is my own styling below. It's a little more relaxed, which I am okay with :).

On to a new life...without super-long hair ;).

Kitchen Reflections

So, let me preface this post by saying there is not going to be a recipe in this one tonight. My personal computer is being repaired, and I don't want to hassle with getting cooking photos onto my husband's. This is going to be more of a "reflection" post, rather than a recipe.

On the way home from work, while my wonderful husband was driving and talking about the future, I found myself zoning (sorry honey) and thinking about my day. I did not have the best day at work/school, and I was trying to think of things that lift my spirits. Of course, God, husband, family and friends are at the top of the list. I am, however, an intense person, and I had to dig deeper. I have become very passionate about cooking over the past year, and some of my happiest moments have been at the stove.

Being ridiculous, I rationalized this. My day job is a chemistry/biology graduate student. I spend most of the day either at the bench failing at seemingly simple tasks, or burying myself in the literature at my desk, trying to figure out why I am failing at the simple. When I come home to cook dinner, I am basically continuing my work at the lab bench. Things are carefully measured, appropriate temperatures are reached, and patience is exerted. Chemistry, however, is not glorified cooking. There is thought to cooking, but comparing it to chemistry would be comparing a molehill to a mountain, not to be trite. Cooking is like chemistry, in that having good hands leads to success and experimentation can be handsomely rewarded. Cooking does not require a broader picture, like science does. My sense is that you cook because you enjoy eating, and all things accompanied with gastronomy. Science is not so simple. One is a scientist because they want to improve the quality of life of the next generation, or explain our reality, from sub-atomic particles to heavenly bodies. Perhaps my view is biased (no doubt it is), because science is my job and food is my hobby. The more I think about the comparison between cooking and science, the more similar they can be. A foodie may only cook food for his or her own pleasure, but my guess is that there are people who are enamored with food, looking for the types of food that cure cancer, give longer life, and ultimately improve the quality of life for humanity.

Maybe, we are not so different after all.

Geez Louise

Okay, so obviously, I'm pretty terrible at this. It turns out being a graduate student + wife = full time (aka no time for yourself) job. I wish I could post (and remember to take pictures) all of my cooking adventures. It's just not going to happen easily, people. Perhaps the greatest hurdle I have is not owning a (working) computer right now. Cowering in the office while uploading recipes is not a good idea. HP, however, will fix my recalled product, and then I should be posting with a vengeance :). More to come!

The Weekend Wonder

Being a graduate student, I don't have a whole lot of "personal" time, which means normally I want things to get done as fast as possible so I can sit down in front of the TV and veg with my husband. This past 4th of July weekend, something in me changed. I have decided to say "NO!" to boring food that may require little effort, but is surely bad for my body, and say yes to bettering myself through cuisine.

I am also a thrifty gal, and so whenever I find a way to save money, I run with it. For example, this weekend, I made my own pita chips, hummus, and granola bars, all in about 1 hour of total work. Below are the recipes that I used (taken entirely from other sources but modified to fit my own taste). I calculated (yes...actually calculated) the money I saved versus buying processed versions from the store, and per serving I saved about $4. This may not seem like much, but taken in the context that there are normally 8 granola bars in a box, about 8 ounces of hummus per container and the pita chips were made with stale pita bread I was going to throw away otherwise, the outcome is significant.

Below (in my edit soon to come) are the recipes for these snacks. Enjoy, and remember to cite properly :). Intellectual theft is a terrible crime.