Life at the GBT

The Green Bank Telescope -- my new workplace!

Hey all! I'm now about a month into my new postdoc at the Green Bank Telescope, and so far, so good! A lot of my time so far has just been getting familiar with everything -- attending meetings (whether I know what they're talking about or not), reading the various guides to observing and proposing for time on the telescope, and meeting lots and lots of new people. I've taken a tour of the telescope, and I'm going to be starting my formal training on dealing with the telescope and doing support work next week, which will be roughly half of what I do here (the other half, of course, being SCIENCE!).

For the past couple of weeks, I've also started getting back into my own science work. A project I'm on got some observations recently on the VLA, so I was going through data for that for a bit, and I'm starting to work my way through the referee report of a paper I wrote last fall. The paper in question came back to me right at the peak of my "Gah! Gotta finish my thesis!" push, so even though I've had the report for a while now, I only recently started to make corrections on it. So it feels pretty good to be thinking about science again.

My new house!

Green Bank itself is quite different from New York City, as you can imagine.  It's a very small town and is literally situated in a National Forest, and the entire area is beautiful. There is a lot of good hiking -- a couple folks from NRAO took me out hiking one Sunday for a hike up one of the nearby mountains, stopping for lunch at the top, and we saw a trio of bears on the way back down! (Momma and two cubs, so we kept our distance.) There are also regularly large numbers of deer in the field in front of my house, so that's rather neat, as well. Springtime is (hopefully) here, but we  can apparently get snow into May, according the the people here! For a while it seemed like the weather couldn't make up it's mind, it snowed one day and was gorgeous the next.

View from my back door a few weeks ago,
when there was still snow!

We *are* in the middle of the Radio Quiet Zone. This was established back in the 50's to keep the radio noise around the telescope as low as possible. This means there is NO cell phone reception or radio reception or wifi ANYWHERE in the surrounding area. I cannot have a microwave, wifi, or even a wireless phone in my house. It takes some adjustment -- honestly the thing that's throwing me the most is the lack of microwave and not being able to reheat leftovers in 5 minutes. That and the fact that, while there are a couple convenience stores in town, to do a *thorough* grocery store run I have to go at least an hour away. This past weekend I went to Lewisburg (1.5 hrs away) to go grocery shopping and go to the movies (I saw Zootopia -- fun movie!).


I am renting a house(!) about a mile from where I work -- this is the first time I've lived without a roommate, and I now I have a 3 bedroom 2 bath house all to myself. This is quite a change from my shared NYC apartment. I've set up one of the bedrooms into a guest room, and the other I am making into an office for myself. Well, that's the goal, anyway -- it's still kind of full of the boxes I haven't unpacked yet. I've unpacked all the *critical* stuff -- clothes, stuff for the kitchen, books, CD's and DVDs -- but I admit I'm being rather slow on the unpacking of things that I don't need on a daily basis.

That's all for now, just a short update. So many new things in my life right now!

Breakfast in Baltimore

I've been visiting my parents a bit more frequently these days, since my mother has been having some health issues, and holidays have been around. So I've been doing a fair bit more of my cooking there as well. When visiting my folks in Baltimore, we very often have our main meal of the day sometime in the middle of it - in other words, a nice big Brunch/Lunch! Breakfast foods are a staple here, in part because I don't make them as often for myself when I'm in New York. For example, I never think to make pancakes just for myself - it just feels a bit sad and lonely eating pancakes alone. There are exceptions: the recipe below for Dutch Baby is probably the breakfast food I make most often for myself at my apartment (aside from eggs, of course, because eggs are awesome), because it's easy to make just one serving with relatively little effort, and I always have the ingredients around. But I'd never make Swedish Pancakes (Crêpes) just for myself. Anyways, while I generally don't treat breakfast as the 'most important meal of the day' that it supposedly is, I DO quite enjoy a nice breakfast, even if it's a dinner time. So here are a pair of my favorite breakfast recipes that I have made (with my dad, generally) on recent visits to Baltimore. Both these recipes are just eggs, milk, salt, butter, flour (and a bit of sugar for the crêpes) - it's amazing the difference proportions can make!

Dutch Baby: (serves 3)

3 tbs butter
3 eggs
3/4 cup milk
3/4 cup flour
pinch of salt









This is a 4 ingredient recipe (5, if you include salt), and all you need is an oven, a pan, and an Osterizer. Oh, you don't have an Osterizer? That would be the first mainstream blender ever sold in the United States, but unlike "Xerox-ing", "Osterizing" never really took hold as a household word - so any blender will suite your purposes here. My father estimates that our Osterizer is from somewhere between 1950-1955, so about 60 years old. And it still functions perfectly - let's see your fancy modern blender in 60 years, shall we? But yes, this super simple recipe is fast, easy, and delicious, looks beautiful, and is great for breakfast, brunch, or breakfast-for-dinner.


Preheat oven to 400F. Melt the butter in the pan, wobble the pan around so that the bottom is nicely coated with it. Add ingredients, in order, to the Osterizer, blending as you do so. Pour into pan, and bake for 10-15 minutes, until a loverly, puffy golden brown! And that's it! Eat right away (it starts to deflate a bit if you let it sit) with maple syrup (I always heat mine up prior to serving), or with powdered sugar and lemon, or with a bit of jam. Now note, this serves three quite nicely, and is also really really easy to divide by three. So if you want to scale up or down, it's really easy to do so! When I'm at my apartment, I occasionally make a 1/3 recipe for myself in a circular 8 inch pan, which is about right for one. If you want to make more or less, just change proportions and pan size.

Next, a more complicated but equally (or, dare I say, MORE) delicious breakfast food.

Swedish Pancakes (Crêpes)

3 eggs

1 tbs sugar

1-1/3 tsp salt

175 mL flour (~ a scant 3/4 cup)

500 mL milk (~ a generous 2 cups)

3 tbs butter – for cooking

These are just about ready to flip!

This recipe takes a bit more effort, but is extremely worth it and is wonderfully delicious. When I'm visiting home, we can use the cast iron skillet that my dad owns - we can put it atop of two burners to heat it up. However, you can also make these in a regular non-stick pan - it just harder to get the crepes out if you do it this way, and harder to maneuver around when flipping them.

Mix eggs, sugar, salt, and a little flour to the blender, and blend. Add the rest of milk and flour slowly to thin the mix and blend again, thoroughly. Let sit for a half hour before use (this is not, strictly speaking, required, but it is recommended. I've definitely forgone the half hour and it's turned out fine, though, and cut it down to ten minutes). Use a HOT skillet (the cast iron one mentioned before, or just a nice non-stick pan) thoroughly coated with butter. When we use the skillet, we generally keep a stick of butter in the freezer to keep it from melting, and between each batch we butter the skillet thoroughly with the stick to get a nice, even layer of butter. Pour out the crêpes large and thin - you can actually use some implement to make it more circular or you can tilt the pan, or blow on them in order to shape them a bit better. Watch the crepes carefully, and flip when it is just jelled, (and still has some moisture in the center) - there should be little bubble like features in the centre, see the picture. Let it sit for another minute or two, until the other side is cooked. You should be able to get under it easily with a spatula, and they should be a nice golden brown on both sides.

Now, you can just eat these like this, and they'll be wonderful. Dad and I generally have them with maple syrup, though my mother always is sure to comment when we do this that it's not the FRENCH thing to do. The 'French' thing to do is to have them with some sugar and a dash of lemon juice - this is how my mom eats them. But there are a lot of other ways you serve this base recipe that are also delicious! For example, once you've got the crepes flipped and mostly cooked, you can put a filling in the middle and fold the crepe in half, cooking it a little longer to warm the filling. If you want to make a more savory meal of it, you can use ham and cheese as a filling, letting it sit on the pan so the cheese melts. Or if you want to stick to the sweet side of things, honey and apples. Or just honey. Or berries and fresh whipped cream. Or chocolate chips (letting them melt a bit!) with bananas. Or PB&J. Or just the jam, or just the peanut butter. Or Nutella. Or go all out and make Crêpes Suzette with a grande marniere orange sauce and vanilla ice cream on the side! The point is, there are many amazing ways you can serve them, and it can be a lot fun to experiment. Bon Appétit!

Pardon the Delay: A Months Worth of Doings

So! It's been a busy month, or there abouts. Apologize to people for the delay, but I should be back on schedule now. So the question is, what have I been up to?

Various holidays - going to Baltimore for Saint Paddy's day, for one. My family has a tradition of going to Jenning's Pub (in Catonsville, MD, a hop skip and a jump from our house) every Saint Patrick's day since I was a kid, for corned beef and cabbage, and mulligan stew. Every year, they have those dishes (plus corn beef sandwiches) for $3.17 a plate - I get one of each, my dad gets 2 CB&C plates, and my mom usually gets a sandwich. And since then, I've added beer to the order. This was, in fact, the place where I had my first legal drink upon turning 21. We've had the same waitress for years --  Peggy -- she has an amazing memory for her customers, and its lovely to catch up with her. So it was nice that the week  of Columbia's spring break, I was able to start by heading to Baltimore and enjoying the meal there.

Sea Lion Colony

After St. Paddy's, I flew to Santa Barbara. Spent a few days there with Benson, then we rented a car and drove up California's Route 1 to San Francisco - it's the most amazing and beautiful drive! Benson and I have done this drive before, in the opposite direction - a few years back we took about a week, driving down through Santa Cruz to see relatives, stopping at a B&B in Monterey for a few days, followed by a couple days camping in Big Sur and trekking about, ending in Santa Barbara. This time, we did it in a single day. In addition to a marvelous view of the ocean there are several nice stops along the way for a day trip, most notably an elephant seal reserve and Nepenthe, a lovely restaurant in Big Sur with a stunning view of the ocean and marvelous food. We even could see whales in the distance, in addition to numerous birds, and of course enjoyed our delicious beet salad, and a meal of some very tasty roasted brussel sprouts.

The view from Nepenthe

This was followed by a long weekend in San Francisco. I've visited Benson there enough that I have already done most of the touristy things, and often we find ourselves simply trying to find ways to kill time between meals. Because one of the finest things about SF is the food. My uncle also lives in SF, so it is always nice to see him, as well - we all went to the Asian Art museum and the SF Symphony together, for example, in addition to wandering about and eating delicious food. Meals of note include Indian (http://www.dosasf.com/ - South Indian food with a very nice selection), Dim Sum,  Shanghai, Japanese (http://kappougomi.com/ - has AMAZING fish, very traditional Japanese, but no sushi whatsoever), and Moroccan (http://www.aziza-sf.com/ - this place hass a Michelin star, but Benson and I first ate there before it got it and raised all the prices. However, we still return semi-regularly because it has the MOST AMAZING LAMB SHANK EVER. We also tried another lamb dish there this time, which was also delicious. But the lamb shank is still the best.) So California was also lovely. And then I flew back to NY and returned to work, of course. And returned to Baltimore the following weekend for Easter. Where my family played scrabble, dyed Easter eggs, watched movies (The lovely documentary "Jiro Dreams of Sushi", and an old comedy called "Darling How Could You?").

The Easter Eggs were particularly fun - it had been a while since I actually dyed Easter eggs, since usually we visit my grandfather in New Jersey, but mom wasn't really up for traveling this year, so I went home instead. So I made sure to go all out on the eggs - in addition to the dye (standard Red/Yellow/Green/Blue dye in hot water with a bit of vinegar, then mixes of colors once I had the solids), I also got a couple of candles to experiment with wax drippings. Now, when I was in 3rd grade, my class made decorated eggs using some very fine wax something or others - I don't recall exactly what, but it allowed you to make super detailed designs in wax on your eggs, then dye the eggs, then remove the wax to reveal the patterns. My make shift double candle and toothpick system wasn't quite as good, to say the least. After a couple of dry runs with solid colors, my first waxy egg (with "Mom" written on it) had the wax fall off entirely when I dipped it into the dye. So that one was a bit of a wash, other than being a nice blue color. My second egg ("Jen") had the opposite problem - apparently I was a bit careless where I rested the egg when I was decorating it, because instead of the wax falling off, there was wax all over it, not just where I intended. So decorating that egg resulted in a kind of swirly pattern on half of it that LOOKED pretty cool, but wasn't wholly intentional and you couldn't see my name on it. The next one however ('Dad'), came out pretty clear. You can see in the picture that it's actually legible.  The last egg I did was first dyed a solid yellow. Then I drew large circles on it with wax and dyed THAT green, so it came out green with yellow polka dots. I was quite happy with that one - it still had a bit of a swirl thing going on for part of it, but it looked pretty cool.

Easter Egg Waxing in Progress!
While the process failed on THIS egg, it worked
well in general, so I'd recommend giving it a try.

So I had a nice Easter. Since then, I've mostly just been focusing on work and catching up on things. Not that I'm just working. I've gone out with friends a few times (I have a semi-regular "girls night" with some friends from undergrad, for example). I've cooked a few things around the apartment, but nothing particularly special. I've been rereading (since getting back from South Africa) the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. The final book of the series was released recently, and it's been a while since I've read them and it's a LONG series and I've forgotten a lot of the plot threads. So the re-read is an ongoing project - I've just started "A Path of Daggers" (book 8/14) so I'm over half-way there! However, I'm going to have to put it on hold for a little bit, as some folks in my department are doing a read of "The Great Gatsby" in preparation for the movie coming out in a few weeks - so I'll be reading that at some point soon.

I'm actually home in Baltimore this weekend, and anticipate being here for the next several weekends (and back in NYC during the week), because my mother has just had hip-replacement surgery. So I'll be visiting with her, and helping out Dad, and generally just being around. I doubt I'll be going out much while here, other than to the hospital. She should be home by the time I visit next weekend, though, so I'll mainly be around the house. Plenty of work I can do at home, one of the nice things about being an astro grad is a flexible work schedule and being able to just work off my computer, pretty much anywhere. So that's that for now! I'll be aiming to start up my once a week blogging again, not quite sure how I got out of it - I skipped one week and then all of a sudden I hadn't updated the site in a month. Oh well!

Christmas Cookie Spectacular

Dad and I, decorating the tree
and stringing the lights

Christmas season is well upon us, and I, of course, headed home to Baltimore for the holidays. I spent several days, and had many productive hours decorating the tree, making cookies and Christmas Eve dinner, and generally spending quality time with family. Then on Christmas day, my parents and I headed up to New Jersey, to spend day with my grandfather. Since Poppop doesn't really do much cooking, (or like much cooking to be done in his kitchen) we all went out for dinner at a local diner - which are quite plentiful in New Jersey. Then today, it was back to NYC. Over the break, Benson will be visiting, and we'll be going on a cruise with him and two friends from college, which I'm looking very much forwards to!

Holiday traditions are always nice, and of course, the most classic one is that of the Christmas Cookie! While we do tend to vary exactly which cookies get made every year, we made two of our favorite standbys this season. The first is the  fantastically delicious and quite simple to make Hello Dolly Bars. I've also seen these listed elsewhere as Magic Cookie Bars, but the name "Hello Dolly" just has a bit more pizzazz. The second is the more traditional Chocolate Chip Cookie:  literally the standard recipe that you get off the bag of chocolate chips, though I do put in some notes about technique. But these are pretty classic, you HAVE to have chocolate chip cookies for Christmas, if nothing else!



Hello Dollys (aka Magic Cookie Bars)

1/2 cup butter
1.5 cups graham cracker crumbs  (8-ish graham crackers, crushed)
1 (14 oz) can of Eagle Brand Sweetened Condensed Milk
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 (3.5 oz) can flacked coconut (or 1 1/3 cups of coconut)
1 cup chopped walnuts.

mmmm... toasty!

Preheat the oven to 350F. Melt the butter completely in a 13x9 baking dish. Make sure to tilt the pan so the butter is even over the bottom surface, then sprinkle the graham cracker crumbs over the butter evenly. Next, pour the milk over the surface (evenly).  Note that this is easier said than done: sweetened condensed milk is THICK, and I usually have to  spread out the last bits with a spatula, and tilt the pan back and forth a bit before it is even... and there are usually a few holes leftover. As long as they're small, this is fine. Follow with the rest of the layers (chocolate chips, then coconut, and finally the walnuts) - making sure each layer is nice and even, and that you don't neglect the edges of the pan. Press all of this down firmly so it's nicely packed. Bake for 25-30 minutes until the coconut is nice and toasty brown, and the chocolate chips are starting to get nice and gooey. Remove from the oven and let cool, then cut into bars. You can store these at room temperature. (Makes 24-36 bars, depending on how big you cut them). These are delicious, rich, and chocolatey, and absolutely one of my favorite cookies every year.



Next, onto the classic. Chocolate chip cookies are an absolute MUST for the Christmas season!





Nestle Tollhouse Chocolate Chip Cookies
2.25 cups white flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 cup (2 sticks) softened butter
3/4 cups white sugar
3/4 cups brown sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
2 large eggs
2 cups chocolate chips
1 cup nuts (optional)

Softened butter, sugar, and vanilla!
For a nice creamy texture.

It is a good idea to put out your butter a couple hours in advance, so that it softens naturally and you don't have to microwave it to soften it and risk melting it altogether. You want SOFT butter, not melted butter, to get the batter texture right and for the best cookies (yes, how you put in the butter actually matters for the finished product!). So do this well in advance! This is a good plan for any cookies or cakes which require softened butter. Honestly, butter doesn't really need to be refrigerated as much as you might assume - while you don't want it in a super hot place, if you keep it out in a relatively cool area, you really won't have any problems. However, I still tend to stick it in the fridge, where it will last longer. But if I'm eating a lovely loaf of homemade bread, or something, I will occasionally leave out a half a stick of butter so that its soft and easily spreadable!

Sifty sift

Another note, for your dry ingredients: when making Christmas cookies, we (my father and I) ALWAYS sift the flour before adding it, and similarly, we ALWAYS sift the sugar. This avoids lumps in the batter! Admittedly, when making cookies on my own, I don't always do this. But Christmas cookies are worth the extra work!

Preheat oven to 375F. First, combine (sifted!) flour, baking soda, and salt in a small bowl and mix well. In a larger bowl, thoroughly mix the softened butter with the (sifted!) white sugar, (sifted!) brown sugar, and (not sifted, silly!) vanilla extract. To this, add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Then gradually add the flour mixture to this. Do this SLOWLY, a bit at a time, so that it doesn't lump up, or get uneven, or whatnot. This part is probably the most strenuous - we always do it by hand, and it gets quite thick after a while. In fact, this can get to be a problem. Years back, my dad and I made an extremely large batch of cookies, a triple recipe or so. Dad did the bulk of the stirring at that time, though we switched off a little, and his arm got QUITE sore. In fact, the next day, his elbow still ached.   And the day after that, it STILL ached. In fact, Dad had what we dubbed "chocolate-chip-cookie-elbow" for several months following that Christmas. Since then, I've done the bulk of the stirring when we make cookies - and we haven't made quite so large a batch, either.

Chop chop chop!

Once you've mixed the dough, you can now add the chocolate chips! Mix well until they're evenly distributed.  You can then add nuts at this point, if you so desire. While my mother is a big fan of chocolate chip cookies with nuts, my father and I aren't such fans. Therefore, we always weigh out the cookie dough precisely and make 1/3 with nuts, and 2/3 without. This saves much family argument.

My dad, putting the last few cookies
onto the tray

Now, all that's left is to bake them before you eat all of the delicious cookie dough. That's always my temptation, the dough is as good as the cookies, I swear. In college, the campus convenience store sold pre-made cookie dough which you could buy with your meal plan. As such, there was often a thing of cookie dough in my dorm fridge, of which my roommate Zahava and I always ate a lot, and our other roommate, Dahlia, protested about it's presence as too much temptation (but she still ate a LITTLE bit anyway!). I have, in fact, at least on one occasion, made a half batch of this cookie dough and failed to get any actual cookies out of it. I'm generally not concerned about raw eggs and such, since the odds of getting ill from that are quite low.

But anyway,  make rounded tablespoons of dough and place them on an ungreased cookie sheet, with a bit of space between them, then bake for about 10 minutes, until they're nice and brown on the bottom. Then transfer the cookies either to cooling racks, or lay them out on the table on top of a brown paper bag (which you can cut up for this purpose as a makeshift cooling rack!). And there you have it! Delicious chocolate chip cookies. You can store them in cookie tins or whatever you have on hand. I will note that when I store a few chocolate chip cookies in a container with a few Hello Dollies,  the Hello Dollys actually keep the chocolate chip cookies softer than they would be otherwise, which is nice!

All in all, I had a wonderful Christmas. Key gifts include an iPad Mini, some very fine mittens, and, on the foodie front, a nice set of springform pans! So expect a cheesecake post at some point in the future.

Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Pork Wellington

I'm currently visiting my parents (as is my uncle) just in time for the hurricane. And what is the best thing to do on a day when you don't feel like going out? Cook a delicious meal, of course! And best of all, since I'm making food for four, that means I can go all out and make something LARGE.

One of the things I dislike about living by yourself (or with a roommate who doesn't eat with you much), is that when I cook I have to eat everything myself - which means I get all the leftovers. So my options are 1) cooking things that freeze well; 2) cooking only very small batches of things; or 3) get ready to eat that curry all week long. But when I'm at home, I can do things like roast entire chickens or ducks and other large-scale projects, and then I get to cook again the next day, if so I chose, and make something entirely different. So by request of my mother, I repeated a dish today that I last made for my family with the aid of my boyfriend, Benson, that I haven't made since last spring.

Now, in general, I'm not a huge fan of pork as a meal. Bacon, yes. Ribs, delicious. Sausage, the BEST pizza topping. But a pork chop, or roast ham.... meh. However, when we were looking for a fun recipe last spring, Benson thought this recipe looked like it would be awesome. I was not, at first, that enthused by the idea of a pork dish, but I was willing to give it a go. And boy am I glad I did: this dish is fun and straightforward to make, looks beautiful, and tastes absolutely scrumptious.

So I was happy to try making it again: from Alton Brown's Good Eats, a delicious Pork Wellington. That link has a handy video of Alton Brown making and explaining the dish, which is probably a far better explanation than what follows.

1 egg, whisked with about a tbs of water.
a few oz of chopped dried or fresh apple (1 small apple's worth)
1 whole pork tenderloin, ~1lb, but larger is fine as long as you can stretch pastry!
4.5 oz proscuitto
salt, pepper, thyme (preferably freshly chopped)
flour
1 sheet thawed puff pastry
1 tbs mustard
Optional but tasty: sliced mushrooms!

Preheat your oven to 400F. You want the tenderloin in 2 long pieces, and you want to remove the fat, silver skin, and gristly parts before proceeding.

First, roll out your puff pastry to be the length of the tenderloin, and wide enough to wrap around it - about 12x14 inches should be fine. You want this well floured so it doesn't stick to the tin or anything, and if you have parchment paper, you're going to end up baking everything on that in the end, so you can put the pastry on that. You'll want to spread a bit of mustard on a strip down the length of the pastry, so that you will have a nice, but not overwhelming, tangy tast. I used dijon mustard, that worked fine.

Next, in a separate space, layer your proscuitto on some parchment paper (I used wax paper, since we didn't have any parchment - that works fine for this part, too) out to the length of your tenderloin and press down, so it sticks to itself well, then sprinkle that with salt, pepper, and thyme. Place the tenderloins down on this, one on top of the other, with the apples in between. This is also where you want to put any delicious mushrooms you want to add: I used mushrooms the first time, but this time we didn't have any around. Adding them just adds another layer of tastiness to your resulting meal, but they aren't required.

Now, this is the tricky part: ROLL. You'll kind of roll it  up WITH the parchment paper, but you don't want the paper to get caught up in the tenderloin - you just want the proscuitto in a nice tight bundle around the pork. So if you've ever rolled something on a sushi mat, it's kind of like that - roll a bit, shift the paper, roll a bit more, shift the paper a bit more out of the way. Then transfer the whole thing onto the puff pastry, still holding it in the parchment paper to make sure it stays together during the transfer, then removing the paper once it's on the pastry. Now the wrapping is a bit more straightforward - you can just lift up the pastry over the tenderloin, and tuck in the edges. You should use some of the egg mixture to moisten the edges so that the pastry sticks to itself. You want to tuck in the ends, as well, so it's in once nice secure bundle.

Brush the whole thing well with the egg mix, so you get a nice toasty colour at the end and the pastry remains moist, and bake it! For a pound, this will be 30 minutes or so. Mine was actually 2 pounds, but I managed to stretch everything around it just fine, so I didn't really need to double anything, I just added extra apples, and maybe a bit extra proscuitto. You'll want to use a meat thermometer to make sure it's done, however, at least 140F inside temperature. When it's done, rest 10 minutes so the juices don't run. We didn't actually have any parchment paper, so I just baked the thing on the pan straight. So it stuck to the pan a bit. Not a huge deal, it looked gorgeous and would have gotten a bit messed up when we cut it anyway.

Aiming for dinner at 6, I was pleased that I was going to get the food into the oven at 5:30. It was at this point - putting it in the oven - that I discovered that Hurricane Sandy had knocked out some, but not all, of the outlets in our house, including the oven. This resulted in my uncle and my father physically tilting the oven forward so I could grab the cord, and stretching said cord to another, functional outlet. This resulted in a significantly delayed dinner - made longer by the fact that I didn't actually REALIZE that my father had given me a 2 lb tenderloin, when I was looking at a recipe with a cooking time designed for one pound.


However, all's well that ends well! Here is the delicious result:

Absolutely beautiful