Golden Geese and Other Goodies

I am now a month into my fellowship, and two weeks into my stay as a Fellow hosted at NSF. And I've been keeping quite busy!

On the work end of things, I’ve been running all over! I’ve been trying to get a feel for the various projects and foci of the CRS group within CNS in CISE at NSF. (And there are so many new acronyms to learn, too! Computer Systems Research; Computer Networking Systems; Computer and Information Science and Engineering; National Science Foundation; FYI.) I’ve been getting familiar with the building and it’s quirks (the elevators are VERY fancy -- so fancy, in fact, that I got stuck in one within 15 minutes of entering the building for the first time). NSF just moved locations so not only am *I* unfamiliar with the layout, so is everyone else! For this reason, I’ve been making a point of taking all the AV training and the like, so I can help my group with all the newness as best I can. I have my own work computer, I have an official badge I can ‘beep’ in and out of the building and the more secure floors with, and it seems like my group works on a lot of interesting things! Everything from grant panels, to outreach programs, to career/industry training, to online performances, to international collaborations.

I'm also attending a lot of events through my fellowship program. The AAAS fellowship program (another acronym -- as a reminder, this one is the American Association for the Advancement of Science) has a lot of different workshops, events, social groups, networking events, happy hours, and seminars that the fellows are invited to attend. For example, one of the social affinity groups basically just tries a new restaurant in DC every month. When I heard about it, I decided that it OBVIOUSLY was the best social group, don’t you think? 

Also through the AAAS group, I went to the “Golden Goose” award ceremony last Wednesday, which was a LOT of fun. The Golden Goose awards were created in order to honor science that had, shall we say, unusual, obscure, or controversial beginnings. This award was conceived of as a contrast a congressman's annual ‘golden fleece awards’ – highlighting projects that used federal funding that he felt were ‘fleecing’ the American taxpayer by funding silly research. But research can have very humble, or even silly origins, since it usually starts with a question which doesn’t have a obvious or even noticeably useful answer. One of the speakers at the event had a great quote from Isaac Asimov, where he said: "The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries, is not, 'Eureka! I've found it,' but, 'That's funny!'" It’s impossible to say where the next big breakthrough is going to come about, especially when research can be full of serendipity. 

So the awards on Wednesday honored three projects: mussels sticking to rocks, ‘fuzzy math’, and an obscure type of fungus that practically no one cared at all about for ages. Or rather: research that eventually turned into an adhesive that is currently in 60% of American-made plywood, dramatically changing the industry and removing the irritant formaldehyde for a far more eco-friendly adhesive. A method of analysis and statistics for situations where the answers and parameters aren’t always clear, with large commercial implications/applications in industry. And the answer to a decades old question of why certain populations of frogs seemed to die out with no immediate cause detected. The award ceremony was quite enjoyable -- I really enjoyed hearing about the science, the MC was very entertaining, plus we heard from at least 4 different representatives from congress. The reception was also particularly neat -- it was held in the beautiful hall of the Library of Congress, where we could wander over and view the reading room from above while drinking champagne and eating delicious grilled shrimp, mussels, and other hors d'oeuvres.

And last, by not least, on the home front, I’m enjoying being back in a city with all that THAT entails.  I’m living very close, within a half mile, of the new NSF building, so I can walk to work. The metro station is literally across the street from the building, so I can go into DC with ease. I'm within walking distance of Old Town Alexandria, which is full of adorable shops and delicious restaurants. There are excellent Korean and Vietnamese restaurants not even a 15 minute drive away, and I can and an excellent Mediterranean and great French restaurants literally on my walk to work. I’m going to miss Green Bank – the beauty the mountains, the quiet, the outdoor opportunities, but I gotta say, the number one thing I missed there were good restaurants within a reasonable distance! So, life is pretty good right now -- busy, but good!

A Few of my Favorite Things

Being a Baltimore girl, originally, my favorite food is crab - specifically, a nice big pile of Chesapeake-caught Blue Crabs steamed with Old Bay seasoning. This spread is, unfortunately, something that is not only seasonable but area specific. However, you can still get decent crab elsewhere in the country - but when I do so, I generally make sure I'm getting the whole crab, or obvious chunks of crab (legs, for example), rather than something that is 'stuffed with crab' - since I've found that unless you are particularly careful about your source, those sorts of dishes end up with more random filling than crab, or even utilize FAKE crab (which is an abomination of culinary arts.) 

And the one dish I avoid like the plague is "Maryland Style Crab Cakes" (when outside of the Chesapeake Bay area, that is, of course I've gotten decent crab cakes in both PA and VA and at home in Maryland). In Baltimore, the best crab cakes are from G&M's (not counting the homemade crab cakes of my Aunt Dot, but those aren't exactly available to everyone!). These crab cakes are the size of your fist, if you happen to have very large hands. They're bigger than my fists, anyway - they're literally half a pound each, and most of that is solid crab. You have huge chunks of backfin falling out of it, they're lovely! There are many other excellent crab cakes in Baltimore, of course, but these are my favorite. My point is, I have high standards for crab cakes. But with only the very rarest of exceptions, I've found crab cakes made elsewhere tend to consist of the barest flakes of crab, held together by massive amounts of something that ISN'T crab. I'm not saying that there aren't any good crab cakes away from home - just that I've gotten tired enough of being disappointed by crab cakes that I've stopped ordering them all together. And when I keep an eye out for other people's crab cakes orders, they generally confirm my impressions. 

You can often tell a crab cake is going to be bad by simply looking at it: if it looks like a firm, smoothish, patty - it's going to be mostly fill and crab flakes; a PROPER crab cake should be mostly crab, with some other stuff that holds it together - hopefully just barely enough other stuff to hold it together - and  the larger chunks of crab meat you can pick out, the better. And I've gone to restaurants, NICE restaurants, which have very good sea food in general and where I really enjoy the food, and seen crab cakes which make me wince just at the sight of them. So I've pretty much given up on LOOKING for decent crab cakes, unless chance favors upon me. I have found, by chance, exactly one place in New York City that has a decent crab cake sandwich - Red 58 has a solid crab cake BLT. I didn't order it the first time I was there, but a friend of mine did. And when I tried a bite I was most pleasantly surprised! I'm not saying its the best crab cake you'll ever have, but it, you know, actually tastes like a crab cake, which means it tastes good. So when we've gone back there for drinks and dinner, I've ordered it ever since. So now, I have one place in New York that I can go for such things. Again, I wouldn't be surprised if there are other places in NYC that have decent crab cakes, and if you know of one, please! Let me know!

When I consider non-crab favorite foods, there has always been one dish which springs to the top of my list. This is my favorite dish that is on my regular meal rotation, and has been for some time. Fettuccine Alfredo is both easy and straightforward to make, and absolutely delicious. Now, healthy? Not so much. My family's nickname for the dish is "heart attack on a plate," which is a fairly accurate descriptor: it's all butter and cream and cheese and deliciousness. It's been one of my favorite dishes for as long as I remember, before I ever even tried crabs, and is pretty much my ultimate comfort food.

Fettuccine Alfredo

1/4 c. (4 tbs) butter

1/2 c. heavy cream (or more, if you wish)

1/8 lb parmesan cheese (at a minimum – I tend to add extra)

Salt

Pepper (fresh ground)

1 lb fettuccini noodles

You can make this with pasta that isn't fettuccine as well, and to be honest, the above picture is technically linguini alfredo. But pasta substitutions are relatively minor - you might need a little more or less of everything to coat pasta variations with different amount of surface area, I guess. Additionally, something related to parmesan cheese, like asiago or romano cheese, are also valid substitutions. I like to buy solid blocks of cheese, then grate off the amount that I need - it tends both to be less expensive, and keep better. Cheese graters are handy things to have! 

Anyways, whatever your noodle choice, cook them as directed until they are tender - they should be more on the undercooked than the overcooked side, since you'll continue heating them as you add the additional ingredients, but cook them to your taste. Strain the noodles and put them in a pot on the stove top. Cut the butter into 1 tbs chunks or so, and mix into the noodles until they are well coated with butter and the butter is melted (this should be done over low heat). Add cream, continuing to mix over low heat - you want to keep mixing the noodles so that nothing scorches. Grind in generous amounts of pepper, to taste. My mother doesn't really like ground pepper, so when I'm making this at home, I always have to just put a little on and add the rest later to my own plate, but when I'm cooking in NYC, I can add all the pepper I like - which is quite a lot. I also tend to be a bit heavy handed with the salt. Next, still on low heat, add in the cheese slowly, and mix well - it should get nice and melty.  . Serve immediately. Add salt and any additional pepper to taste -this means grate fresh black pepper generously across your plate, and a nice extra dash of salt, as well!

If everything seems a bit dry, add a bit more heavy cream until it's properly moist. If it's too moist, just add more cheese. I like lots of cheese, so I end up with both a lot of cream AND a lot of cheese - this is not a bad thing. Honestly, I don't really bother to measure out the ingredients anymore since I'm so familiar with this recipe, I just add things in until it looks right. It's a pretty simple recipe, but a delicious one, and definitely one of my favorite things.

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!

Travelogue: First Days as a Tourist

My first day in Cape Town, I arrived at 10:30 in the morning, exhausted, went through security, took a shuttle to the hostel, and took a shower and a nap. A seven hour time difference following a 36 hour trip (12 of those hours, admittedly, spent in Munich) did not leave me feeling much like a tourist. By the later afternoon, however, I was feeling much better - and, more importantly, hungry. Not knowing the area, I just looked on the hostel board for what might be a good place to eat. And the first place I set my eye on was an Ethiopian restaurant (Addis in Cape). Now, I'm a HUGE fan of Ethiopian food: the Baltimore Washington area (and I'm originally from B-more) has a lot of very good Ethiopian restaurants, and New York has a good number of decent ones as well. Indeed, my go-to local takeout place is the Ethiopian restaurant not 2 blocks from me. So, when I saw the local Ethiopian restaurant in cape town, which seemed to have good reviews, I figured, 'Hey! I'm in Africa, lets give it a go!'

In retrospect, I guess going to South Africa and expecting the most amazing Ethiopian food would be like going to Germany and expecting awesome spaghetti. It was... fine. The mains were well cooked, nice and spicy. But the ijira didn't have the lovely tangy taste that one usually gets - I was informed that they used rice flour rather than the usual teff that traditional Ethiopian generally has. But I love injira, so this was rather a disappointment - like I said, the main courses were tasty, but every bite you take of Ethiopian food, you use the injira to take it to your mouth - so I couldn't avoid the teff-less bread. Ah well. It's not like I didn't enjoy the meal - even mediocre Ethiopian is usually pretty darn delicious. Not the best first meal in South Africa, however.

However, my second days lunch and breakfast more than made up for it! Every Saturday, there is an open market at the Old Biscuit mill in one of the local suburbs around Cape town - and this was the only saturday I'd have a chance to go. So i got up bright in the morning, went to the market via taxi, and was delighted by the numerous free samples, which pretty much made up my breakfast. Most notable was a local honey wine, which they were serving in tiny chocolate cups (ok, that one wasn't free, it cost 10 rand~$1.20) - you took the honey wine as a (tiny) shot, then ate the cup immediately after. Yum! Also notable was traditionally dried and spiced fish, fresh lemonade, various dried sausage, pestos and spreads galore, and I bought some of the popular local curry powder for future use (named "mother in law" - the spiciest curry they have around here!). So that, (and lots of chocolate samples during my tour of the local chocolate shop - which showed how they made the chocolate and let me taste the beans and chocolate at various stages) was breakfast, admittedly stretching into my lunch.

But oh... lunch...my mouth drools just thinking about it. As readers of this blog may have noticed, I rather enjoy food. So when I travel to a new place, I always let myself splurge on at least one really nice meal wherever I happen to be traveling. So I happened to be looking at a list of the top 100 restaurants worldwide (seen here), and noticed that one of them was in Cape Town. Now, while it's not a goal of mine to try to eat at EVERY awesome restaurant in the world, I certainly wouldn't mind increasing my count from "zero" to "one." And the lunch tasting menu looked like a pretty decent deal, giving you 5 courses - especially considering it looked pretty hard to get dinner reservations. And the restaurant was walking distance from the strongly recommended Saturday morning market. So, I thought I'd try to get a seat for lunch, and, happily, they had room at the counter for one!

A delicious salmon sashimi with three preparations of cabbage (a powder, a gel, and a crunchy salad with horseradish emulsion). Lightly seared beef with pears and walnuts, garlic and nutmeg. Garlic roasted sweet potatoes, with jellied beets, and a goat cheese mousse. Perfectly cooked fish with the most delicious saffron foam, and a tomato ragout with calamari. A dessert caprese, with tomatoes soaked an almost sweet black pepper sauce, frozen yogurt snowballs, and basil sorbet. Amazing! I was sitting at the counter, so I could watch them prep some of the food right in front of me, which was also pretty nifty.

After lunch, I went for a nice long afternoon on the beach (the days are so long here!) in which I fully submerged myself in this side of the Atlantic exactly once, just to say I did it, and hightailed it out of the water because it was freezing. The rest of the afternoon was spent lying on the sand in the sun, reading and relaxing. It got a bit windy, but was otherwise lovely. Even took a long stroll from beach to beach, so I could see several different ones!

That's all for now, I'll post about the actual conference itself at a later date - but right now, I actually have to go practice my talk a little bit, which is tomorrow (Thursday) morning!