Red Rocks of Sedona

Last weekend I went up to Sedona to see my aunt and her family who are vacationing in northern Arizona for the week. The town of Sedona is pretty much like a western version of Cape Cod - super cheesy and touristy but beautiful when you get away from town. Unfortunate it rained pretty much the entire weekend, so we didn't get to do one of the things I wanted to do (Slide Rock State Park), but on the upside it wasn't 100 degrees out and we did some things I otherwise wouldn't have thought to do (Riordon Mansion in Flagstaff). Despite all the grief my uncle gave me over the weather - hey, I told them to bring rain jackets because it's monsoon season - it was really great to see some family since I only see my immediate family about twice a year and extended family on my mom's side maybe once a year.

We did a light hike in Red Rock State Park. The rocks around Sedona really are red. Sorry my pictures are all fairly crappy - the perpetually gray, rainy, cloudy weather wasn't so awesome for getting good photos with realistic color.


Even though this is from the "ghost" town of Jerome, an amusing reminder that Arizona still is the "wild west" in a lot of ways...


P.S. All the links are to Google image searches, the websites for the Arizona state park system are terrible. They look like some 4th grader made them in the mid-90s.

Level Up

I think I finally have to give in and admit that I'm a 4th year grad student now. I even went so far as to change it in my description. The new 1st years are starting to show up - the international students this week, the domestic students next week. Not that I'm taking any (woohoo!!), but classes will start in less than 3 weeks, and then I'll really have no excuse for not calling myself a 4th year.

The most recent 1st years (now 2nd years) were eager to promote themselves, so by default in their mind I'd logically be promoted too. I'm not sure why they were so eager to officially be 2nd years, but I'm pretty adamant about not being the next year older until I really have to be. So I've always defined what year I am relative to the newest cohort of grad students around. So the coming academic year's 1st years are arriving? I guess that makes me a 4th year. When do you consider yourself the next year/grade/rank up?

I haven't been particularly eager to "level up" since high school, because it seems that the older I get, the faster time goes by, not to mention the farther you get through whatever tier of education the more responsibility you have. And after being the oldest child in my family, I eventually realized that it's nice to not always be responsible. The farther you get in grad school, the more responsibility you have, not just for yourself, but for lab equipment and younger students. Because of my fellowship situation, I was independent in the lab a lot sooner than most younger grad students, which was actually awesome for a little while, because I could do my own experiments without feeling like I was pestering anybody, but I didn't yet have to fix all the $h!t other people break. At this point in grad school I sometimes feels like all I ever do is trouble shoot instrument problems, fix said instrument problems, help people find things, clean up messes, and restock supplies (that everybody else uses). Most of time I don't mind (too much), especially with first years. Somebody has to teach them, and I was really lucky to have an awesome mentor when I was a 1st year, and the 1st years (well, most of them) deserve to have an awesome mentor too (not saying I'm an awesome mentor, besides I've been teaching/guiding the first years more generally - I'm not so far along that I need to line up somebody to more directly take over my project). What actually bugs me is non-1st year students who didn't take the initiative to learn what they should have when they were 1st years, and now they're taking up my time because they suddenly realize they need to get their $h!t together.

The additional responsibility is an annoyance, but not a freak-out factor. What's freaky about being a 4th year is that means there are relatively few people senior to me in the lab (i.e. relatively few people who can help when I need it). I have three-four labmates that are a year ahead of me, at least 2 of them will graduate next May or August. Those that may not graduate then aren't exactly the most functional, contributing members of the lab. That pretty much leaves me as the senior student in the lab. Which is just plain scary. I have two labmates who are my year, but one of them is a joint student and spends almost all her time in her other lab and the other, while productive and very bright, doesn't really take on any leadership responsibility.

What's even scarier is that being a 4th year means I'm only a year away from being a 5th year, which puts me only 2 years away from graduating and having to figure out what I'm doing next. Lately I've been feeling the itch to move again, to live somewhere new, but I'm the idea of having to figure that out actually being reality is weird.

Much cuter.

Apparently I need to start a creatures-living-on-my-porch label, because last night I came home to find this guy on the screen:


My labmate tells me this is a gecko. I was just gonna go with "lizard," but sure we can call him a gecko. Whatever he is, he's much cuter than this guy.

Not everything on the Internet is smut.

This is a really neat idea. Sounds much better than I ever would have imagined.

http://mashable.com/2010/03/23/youtube-choir-eric-whitacre/

Neat

The other day at the gym I was watching the USA v. Japan "world cup" softball game (yes, softball calls their international championship a "world cup" as well, and to make it lamer, they have one every year there isn't a summer olympics).

Like all other televised sports, the announcers were filling time with random tidbits about all the players, and they commented that one woman took last year off on maternity leave.

It struck me as odd at first, definitely not something you hear about very often. There aren't very many professional sports leagues/venues for female athletes, and most seem to "retire" before reaching child bearing age and situation. I've decided it's quite cool though, that there is at least one member of the US women's softball team with a child.

Drowning in produce. Specifically, melon. Send help.

Summer CSA is my favorite by far, but this week has been quite the challenge. Let's set the stage here. Normally I split my share with my friend E (and indirectly with her boyfriend J), while my roommate K8 splits her share with her friend Nick. Well, K8 and Nick are both out of town, so E and I have their share too. This alone is problematic as I have a hard time getting through my half-share if I don't plan and make some effort.

To make this somewhat more frustrating, we've been getting an usually large quantity of melons lately. It's pretty normal to get one melon per share each week over the summer. This is about the perfect amount for me. Melon's ok, but it's definitely not my favorite fruit by a long shot, so half a melon is about what I can go through before it goes bad and before we get more without being crabby. Well, apparently melon does really well in this climate (i.e. extremely hot with almost no rain), so the farm planted melon as their "back up" crop this year. And it so happens that the corn and cucumber crops haven't been so hot this year (sad face!), so we've been getting the "back up" melon in addition to what we'd normally get. So that's 4 melons for just me and E (well and Joe)! I've been eating melon with almost every breakfast and lunch since Wednesday, and am currently snacking on a melon and strawberry smoothie. If we get another 4 melons next week (K8 and Nick will still be out of town) I'm going to have to puree and freeze it for future smoothies. I don't know what else to do with it.

Aside from absurd quantities of melon, we got okra, tomatoes, tomatillos, summer squash, beets, and goat cheese (which is technically an extra CSA purchase, not included in the produce share). The beets got traded for more okra, as I despise beets (Unfortunately K8 LOVES them, while I think the smell is revolting. Fortunately K8 is an awesome roommate, and puts up with my insanity, and eats her beets first and at the opposite end of the sofa from me.) and we both utterly adore okra.

Thursday night we fried okra and made pizza. The pizza had chopped tomatoes in the homemade sauce (go us! making progress using up odds and ends in my pantry/freezer!), and was topped with mozzarella, sliced tomatoes, sliced zucchini, onions, and goat cheese. While fried isn't exactly the healthiest means of preparing okra, I'd be inclined to argue that it is the most delicious...

Before and after baking below. The rest of this herb-crusted goat cheese got put in the freezer so we can make this particular concoction again. Goat cheese pizza was totally my favorite pizza when I studied abroad in France. I didn't realize I'd missed it. :)

Friday night I had popcorn for dinner (much to J's dismay and horror) as we went to see Despicable Me (It was good, not awesome, and unlike some of the other recent animated movies released in 3-D, I wouldn't say this one was worth it.), but Saturday night we cooked up almost everything else.

The 2 1/2 pounds of tomatillos became green sauce. Delicious green sauce that went on enchiladas. We made this recipe last summer when we had tomatillos, and E and I both loved it, so we went with the same recipe. Just a warning that if you're going to make this, be super careful when adding peppers. We used jalapenos rather than serranos (jalapenos are supposed to be less spicy), and while we prepared nearly as many jalapenos as the recipe called for, it was more than spicy enough with only perhaps a third of what the sauce was meant to have! I know we're wimpy white girls, but I prefer to be able to taste and enjoy my food. Anyways, a warning that there can be a VERY wide range in pepper to pepper spiciness! We had sauteed summer squash and onions on the side.


We also made a zucchini tarte to save for later from a recipe that I found a few years ago, where I don't remember. I really like this dish, it's an excuse to use my tarte pan (which I love) and it uses up a TON of zucchini (bonus!). The crust is pretty much a savory pie crust - there's a holy ton of thyme in it. I've made this on a cookie sheet before, back in the dark days before I had a tarte pan. I love my tarte pan for 3 reasons: 1. It's cool. 2. It gives you cool ripply edges. 3. The bottom is a separate piece, so it's super easy to remove the edge of the pan, and slide your tarte off the bottom, either on to a pretty serving dish, or in our case, on to a cutting board so you can can cut it without ruining whatever you baked it on.


Here's the recipe:

Swiss Cheese Zucchini Tart

Pastry:
1 1/2 c flour
6 tsp fresh thyme or 1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp salt
8 tbsp chilled butter
2-4 tbsp ice water

Filling:
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp butter
1 c sliced onions
3 c zucchini, cut in fine julienne
1 1/2 tbsp fresh basil or 1 1/2 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp thyme
2 cloves garlic, minced
salt + pepper to taste
1 c grated swiss cheese

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Blend flour, thyme, salt, pepper in food processor. Using on/off turns, cut in butter until pea size pieces form. With machine running add enough water by tablespoonfuls to form moist clumps. Gather dough into ball, flatten into disc. Wrap in plastic wrap and chill 1 hour or until firm.

Heat oil over medium heat on stovetop. Add butter. Once butter has melted add zucchini and onions. Cook until the onions are translucent and the juice from the zucchini has nearly evaporated, 5-8 minutes. Add basil, thyme, and garlic - stir 2 minutes. Salt and pepper to taste. Set aside.

On a floured surface, roll dough into about 12" circle. Place in 10-12" tart pan. If you don't have a big enough pan, place on cookie sheet w/ parchment paper under it. Crimp the edges and prick the bottom with a fork about 20 times. Bake until light golden brown, about 15 minutes.

Remove from oven and reduce temp to 350 degrees.

Sprinkle cheese over the pastry evenly. Top with zucchini mixture. Spread evenly. Bake until well heated & cheese has melted, ~15 minutes. Garnish with fresh basil or thyme. Serves 6.

I made a black bean salad with almost all of my remaining tomatoes (just threw together a can of black beans, frozen corn, a chopped green bell pepper, and chopped tomatoes). And with that we have prepared all of the piles, and piles of produce!! Now we'll see if I actually eat this much before we get more Wednesday night... I think I might be trying to pawn some off this off on my roommate (Jen, the only one of three in town at the moment)...

Awesome "Fact" of the Day

Courtesy of my labmate's little sister who is currently studying abroad in Australia, did you know that 3 Australians die per year from jiggling a vending machine and having it fall on them?

And speaking of little sisters, mine should really answer the damn phone when I call!!