Just in case there was any lingering doubt, Thuy sent me a link to a photo from a camping trip we went on last spring. That's me in the fleece with the hood and sunglasses trying to warm my hands over the pot of heating water. She thinks it's cute. I think she must have issues or just be a fan of dorks.
For the first time ever one of my papers is available online for free. You don't need a subscription or anything to read it.
Just go to the Proceedings of the Royal Academy website and scroll down to the photo of flowers and the link "Roots in Space."
A small warning though. It is math heavy. Most of the math is in the ESM file with a link at the bottom of the page that comes up when you click on the title link. To just get the gist of it all with minimal math you want to use one of the links to the right and I can even promise a few pretty pictures (okay they're all the result of computer simulations but they are still nice looking).
It's a bit of an honor for them to make the paper available this way so I'm fairly thrilled with it all.
Came up with crab cakes made from immitation crab meat????
One of the perks of working for my department is that we get five meals a week in the dinning halls. The idea is to foster greater interactions with the other faculty and students.
Today they had "crab cakes" and they looked good (and like they were not a ton of filler) so I grabbed two only to find that the crab was really "crab." I ate them anyway but what a disappointment. Here I was all prepared to go on about how good the students here have it (and me as well) but alas, it was not meant to be. The lunch service is still much better than many other places but fake crab cakes?
Pul-eze!
Okay, sadly it appears that we are experiencing some major problems here in Southern California. Some odd arctic blast (probably due to global warming -ah, at last LA's love of smog comes home to roost!) has hit the LA area and pipes are bursting, plants are dying and my cats have decided that they really are friends after all. There's really nothing like a cold house to bring two former feline adversaries together in love and friendship.
So in the spirit of all of those other bloggers that seem to need to post cat pics constantly, I bring you Sam (of the nicked jugular last year) and Moon.
and a close up:
The only other thing to do during a cold snap is to bake as far as I'm concerned. I haven't really been in the mood for anything super fancy so I made a rum bundt cake and chocolate chip cookies this weekend. The cake includes both a box of cake mix and a box of pudding mix in its ingredients and the cookies were off the back of the bag for anyone who was getting too comfortable calling me a foodie or a food snob. They are both tasty and easy recipes, so what's not to love? Particularly when you can get preservative and scary chemical free cake mixes these days that are as good as the stuff they stock an entire aisle with at your local big chain supermarket.
Okay, I know these photos are nearly two months late but many were so nice I still wanted to share them. It really is amazing how much you take for granted when you live in a place. Returning to Santa Barbara just reinforced how much I miss the farmers markets and CSA there.
I went back to Suzanne Dunaway's book for another recipe. This time I made her panne rustico.
I used the overnight cool proof method so that's what I'll give here.
It starts with a biga or sponge.
Biga
1 teaspoon active dry yeast
1 cup lukewarm water
3/4 cup unbleached bread flour
4 tablespoons rye flour
You just mix the ingedients together well (it helps to mix the yeast and water together before adding everything else), cover it tightly and let it sit overnight at room temperature.
The next day you mix the dough:
Bread
2cups lukewarm water
5.5 cups unbleached bread flour
2 teaspoons salt
1/4 cup flour for baking sheet and tops of loaves (plus some for the counter when shaping the loaves)
Mix the water, flour, biga and salt in a large bowl (really large) and stir until all of the flour is incorporated and the dough pulls away from the sides of the bowl. To prevent drying you can grease your hands and fold the dough a couple of times into a smooth ball (I didn't and it was fine).
Cover the bowl and refrigerate overnight. Remove 2 hours before shaping and let stand, covered, in a warm place.
Preheat the oven to 500F and dust a baking sheet with a few tablespoons of flour.
Turn the dough onto a floured work surface, keeping the dough as inflated as possible (I find it very difficult and so tend to let the dough rise twice at this point, first as a ball and then shaped as loaves).
Cut the dough in half and shape each piece into rectangles.
Fold the top third of each rectangle ove the middle third and the bottom third over that and seal the seam by pressing it together with the palm of your hand.
Place the loaves on the floured baking sheet and let them rise for 40 minutes or until doubled in size. Slash the surface a few times, turn the oven down to 400F and bake for 30-40 minutes until the tops are browned. Cool on a wire rack (or they will become slightly soggy).
We had a great time over the holidays. We spent nearly ten days in D.C. largely with my parents which has not happened since before we were married.
I, of course, ended up pulling an all nighter trying to get my brother's sweater finished in time (pics to come). Fortunately he spent the morning with his girlfriend's family in upstate New York so I was able to get a few hours sleep after breakfast.
Mom took great pleasure in freaking everyone out with presents they didn't expect which led to some great photos.
My "baby" brother
Marius and Mom
While Kevin and Jaime-Lyn were still in town, a trip to Peking Gourmet Inn for peking duck was required (and I swear you will never have better peking duck). This is a place that opened in the 70's and started its own farm to supply produce at a quality they couldn't find easily. The walls are coverd by a who's who of D.C. and many say that they are past their peak. Critics say that their success has changed them. Granted, it's changed them so that you often have to wait an hour even with a reservation and the entry is packed solid with people. However, the crab rangoons which are crab meat with the slightest hint of cream cheese to help hold them together are unequalled particularly when you eat them with the garlic honey sauce they're served with. I grew up eating these and it came as a bit of a shock to me to order rangoons at another place once I was in college. The ones made a Peking Gourmet Inn are another creature entirely.
Some people claim that the duck is dry these days (this is one of the few places where you can walk in and order peking duck on the spot). I go to this place once a year at a minimum and we even held our wedding rehearsal dinner there and I have yet to have a dry duck. These folks know what to do with a duck. The fat is almost entirely melted away and the skin is left crisp and wonderful while the duck is moist and tender. I'll admit that some days it has been more moist than others but it certainly would never qualify as dry. The server then carves these wonderful birds into perfectly beautiful thin slices of skin or meat and they will even help you assemble your first pancake if you're a novice. The garlic sprout stir-fries (stir-frys?) are also winners most nights (and the sprouts come from their farm).
Once Kevin and Jaime had returned to NYC, Marius and I took off to explore Monticello, which we learned I had never visited despite living only a few hours from there most of my life. We got lucky and had beautiful weather.
The rest of the time we spent hanging out with my parents and visiting a few friends. Most of the time was just spent like this.
All in all, a great holiday.
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