Food

Yes I'm sitting here in the dark, again. While I would like to be writing, it is really too dark in here to do it without straining my eyes. Believe me, I've tried. I was trying to think about things I could do but there are only so many recipes I can look at so now I'm still here so I thought of something else. I have recently had a lot of conversations with my friends about things that I love to do. I realized that as much as I love to cook, I don't talk about my creations that much on here. So I'm going to tell you about some of my recent culinary attempts.
Lets see...
Last week I made his awesome chicken/tofu dinner. I dipped each of them in egg and then a "breading" made of things I had in the house. It was matzo meal, crushed French's fried onions, garlic salt, lemon pepper, and freshly shredded Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. I fried the tofu and chicken (separately) in a little bit of olive oil. When those were almost done, I boiled some soba noodles and then put them in a pan with more cheese, garlic salt, and a little more olive oil. We served it with the chicken or tofu on top of the noodles. It was fantastic. I didn't have any of the chicken but it smelled good and Matt assured me that it was very tasty.
When I first moved to Chapel Hill I bought myself some spring form pans with the intention of learning how to make cheesecake.  Well its nearly three years later and they hadn't been used yet.  This month in Bon Appétit had a bunch of delicious looking desserts, including a lemon cheesecake with brownie bottom.  I learned many things Easter weekend:  sometimes Alton Brown knows what he's talking about because to date none of my cheesecakes have cracked, my spring form pans are cheap and leak when following Mr. Browns directions, I'm really good at making cheesecake, sour cream mixed with sugar and baked is actually tasty. Don't worry about the leakage though, Matt saved the day by getting oven bags for the next cheesecake attempt.  At some point, I will get a nice pan from Williams Sonoma that won't leak when put in a water bath.  Since then I also made an Oreo cheesecake for Steph's wine party because I had a ton of Oreos left over from Catarina's going away party.  For that I made these Oreo truffles.  You grind up Oreos, mixed them with cream cheese, then dip them in chocolate.  MMMM, very good. This time I made three different kinds: regular Oreo, mint Oreo, and ones that were half regular Oreo half Nutter Butters.
Matt bought me an ice cream maker for my birthday, which I have been wanting for a long time.  I've made three batches of dark chocolate ice cream.  The most recent batch also had bits of reeses peanut butter cups.  I haven't really played around with it yet but I did make a mango lime sorbet that was pretty good.  I have plans to make Mexican chocolate ice cream next.  I think it'll be really good.  I have the base recipe down so now its just up to my imagination and Matt, Steph, and Linda's stomaches to come up with new ones.
I know I never talk about it, but I love cheese.  I made these really good bread thingys that were small slices of baguette topped with either goat's cheese and sauteed mushrooms or a mixture of fresh basil, blue cheese, and cream cheese.  This is bad, now I want cheese.  Well, I leave you with something that I learned yesterday while reading wikipedia entries about various cheeses that I like.  Yes I realize that is a pathetic sentence.  Apparently Spain and several Latin American countries like to put small chunks of white cheese in their hot chocolate and then when the cocoa is gone they eat the cheese.  I'm really excited to try this.  Spain generally uses manchego which is great because I love it.

A bit dusty around here

Its been quite some time since I last posted.  So much has happened since then.  I'll post all the fun pictures from my birthday bowling, Steph and Linda's wine party, and our lovely picnic at Duke gardens.  Once again I am sitting in the dark taking pictures of fly embryos.  They look really nice though.  The arm stripes are nearly perfect.  Mark has ok'ed the Roc1b wing discs and almost signed off on the brains too.  If I could just finish up the embryos I can begin to forget about them.  Of course I need to finish up the Roc2 pictures too but that is a story for another day. 
Matt and I celebrated our 30 monthaversary yesterday.  We had a lovely dinner at Maggiano's where we had a sort of uncomfortable conversation about the future.  Don't misunderstand, it was a good conversation.  Its hard to be an adult and figure out what you want to be when you grow up.  The whole grown up thing is pressing in on us with me graduating and Matt graduating in another year and a half or two.  He's not sure what he wants to do next, I don't blame him, I don't really know what I want to do either.  But it was very good to talk about.  Matt has a couple of ideas on what he likes and some people that he can talk to about future possibilities and ideas.  I had gnocchi and it was divine!  Matt had a chicken spaghetti with a pesto alfredo sauce.  We both decided on the larger portion since its only few dollars more and now we both have dinner for a couple of nights.  As a poor graduate students making a meal stretch is always an awesome thing.  Plus, now we don't have to think about what to make to dinner tonight, double bonus!  It was a really lovely evening. 

I just wanted to send a big hug and kiss to all my super supportive parents and brother and Moe.  You guys have been really great lately and it means a lot to me.