Special friend

I don't make friends easily - I'm picky, and I'm not overly social. I have a few good friends, and everyone else is an acquaintance. Don't get me wrong, I like people (most of the time), and I do enjoy meeting people (most of the time), but it just takes a lot for me to call someone a good friend.

I have a special, sort of secret friend, I think. I used to work full-time as a translator and one client had a lot of collaborative projects I worked on, and it just happened that I was often paired up with this one lady. For these projects we would spend anywhere from 1 to 3 hours on the phone, and being from the same corner of the world, but both living far from that corner, we quickly found that we had a lot in common, even though she is more than twice my age. We've collaborated on about 20 projects and every time we get to talk to each other we catch each other up on our lives, and just enjoy chatting away in what we both consider out native language.

So there. I have a secret friend. We've discussed the possibility of a real-life visit, and considering that she lives in a fairly well-known town that I wouldn't mind visiting (we're talking driving distance!), that just may happen at some point. But for now she's my not-so-secret-anymore phone friend.

Busy hands

One of the most important people in my life once told me to keep my hands busy. I was dealing with some things and struggling with life in general, and everything just felt out of place and unsettled. He told me to keep my hands busy because busy hands are happy hands. It sounds so corny, but, for me at least, it's so very true.

I grew up in a far-away place with lots of mountains, and went to a tiny elementary school. Part of our old-school curriculum was needle work and crafts. By the time I was twelve years old I had learned to crochet (flat things, patterns), knit (socks, mittens, hats), stitch (cross-stitching and a slew of other stitches I'd be hard-pressed to remember now), sew (simple bags and simple clothing by hand and sewing machine), and make those knotted bracelets that never seem to go out of style with tweens. Add to this a mother who, before having children, was a needle work and crafts teacher herself.

I always loved making things with my hands and even as an adult I've crocheted blankets and knitted scarves, and done some sewing. However, it seems that I forget that I know how to do these things! I haven't crocheted anything in a year, and if it wasn't for my visit to a friend, who was doing some crocheting, I would have never thought of starting a project myself.

So off I went to buy some yarn and a crochet hook (all my knitting needles and crochet hooks seem to run away when I don't use them for months at a time...), and here is the fruit of my labor:

The pattern is completely accidental, as the yarn was multicolored. I used 100% cotton yarn.

Rag #2 and the giant roll of yarn.

Life without a kitchen

In 4 short weeks I will be moving out of my apartment and into the house, no matter what kind of state the house is in. I hope I can have the downstairs hardwood floor refinished before then, and the kitchen painted. However, there definitely will not be a kitchen in the house yet. Cabinets take 4 weeks to order, and countertop takes 4, sometimes even 5 weeks. I am also very hesitant to order the cabinets and countertop before I've closed on the house, because you never know what might happen.

So, the bottom line is that I will be without a kitchen for about 2 weeks. I can't afford to eat out for every meal (my eating out budget is one dollar per day, which equals about 3-4 lower end eat-out occasions per month or 1 to 2 higher end occasions). I can't go to someone's house every day to eat, and I also can't use someone else's kitchen to cook.

I've tried to come up with a list of things one can eat without a stove, fridge and microwave. Basically, what can one eat without a kitchen? (luckily there is a sink in the bathroom)

• ketchup (does NOT need to be refrigerated)
• bread
• peanut butter (am I the only person who finds PB revolting?
• jam
• food that comes in a bag and is horribly unhealthy (chips, oreos, pretzels, etc.)
• fruit
• vegetables (if eaten fairly quickly after buying them)

Any other ideas out there? Maybe the water in the bathroom is hot enough to make instant noodles?

Just the sight of that list is making me hungry (as in - I don't want to eat those things for 2 weeks, so I'll probably end up being really hungry).

Some things are just more important

This past weekend I had about four minutes of me-time, when I was able to do whatever I wanted to do to my own pleasing. I got up at 5am on Saturday and at 6.30am on Sunday. On a school day you'd have a hard time finding me awake anytime before 7.30am.

By the time Sunday evening rolled around I was barely able to keep my eyes open anymore, but I did not regret a single thing I had done over the weekend. I saw friends I only get to see a few times a year, held babies, prepared food, comforted a sick friend, celebrated a child's birthday and spent time with people I care about very much. Reading, laying out in the sun and watching TV took a backseat, but they were not missed.

I tend to go through life wishing I had more time in a day, or wishing it wasn't that late yet, or wishing I could sleep just a little bit longer. My pining for more time is rarely ever a pining for more time to do things for other people, but usually it's me wanting more time to do what *I* want to do.

This weekend I wanted to sleep, watch a movie, eat some good food, have fun, spend time outside, and just relax. I did sleep (a little), I did watch a movie (sporadically, from the kitchen), I did eat (with friends, and cooked for them), I did have fun (playing a character in a very impromptu skit in front of about 100 people), I did spend time outside (walking across parking lots mostly, and soothing a baby in the quiet shade), and I did relax (sitting with a sick friend).

And my approximately four minutes of me-time were spent doing, well, never mind, I'm pretty sure I was asleep for most of those four minutes.

Chocolate cheesecake

My latest baking adventure:

Chocolate cheesecake with a crust of crushed Oreos. I ate one piece for breakfast and one for dinner. I gave two pieces away to a friend who had a baby this week, and I cut the rest into individual servings, put them in plastic bags and stuck them in the freezer.

Cheesecake is just about the ultimate dessert to me. I like it best when it's ice cold, right out of the freezer and barely thawed. Almost like ultra-rich ice-cream. Last semester I would treat myself to a piece of store-bought cheesecake after a completed exam, and I spent about $1.50 per piece of cheesecake! Never doing that again...

I got the recipe from the back of a Baker's semi-sweet box of eight individually wrapped 1-oz. squares of baking chocolate.

Kitchen

The house I recently bought, and am waiting to close on, came without a kitchen. No appliances, no cabinets, no sink - just walls, windows, a water pipe and a gas pipe. I knew that there was no kitchen when I put a bid on the house, so I knew what I was in for. Here is the kitchen in all it's stuff-less glory:

Over the course of the past two weeks I have spent a total of almost 9 hours at two different kitchen planning places. One was a large, national DIY home improvement store (not the orange one...), and the other one was a specialized, local kitchen and bathroom place. I enjoyed the service at both places. The atmosphere was admittedly a little more ritzy at the small local place, whereas the prices were better at the large chain.

I could launch into a tirade on buying local and supporting the local economy, but the bottom line is: I only have so much money to spend on a kitchen. Sure, it would be nice to spend the money someplace other than a national chain, but it looks like I just can't afford it. Plus, no cabinets are made locally, so wherever I spend my money, the bulk of it will go someplace entirely unlocal anyways.

Wherever I end up buying the kitchen, I have to order it next week, since delivery takes four weeks and I'm moving out of my apartment at the end of May. Any advice on kitchen-buying would be appreciated.

Brand-new, adorable and clueless

I'm one of those things. The 2-day old baby I held for an hour this morning is the other two things.

A friend of mine had a beautiful baby girl with a beautiful old-fashioned-newly-revived name. One of the perks of working in/right next to the hospital is being able to sneak out of the lab to go visit new babies, and I couldn't get enough of the perfect little 6 pound bundle of adorableness. Mom and baby were doing well so the visit was all smiles and oooh's and aaah's and awww's. Plus, brand-new baby and I share a birthday, which makes her extra special.

Clueless is me. Until graduate school I was an excellent student, getting mostly A's. In graduate school my grades are still good, but I just feel like I know next to nothing! In college I almost always understood the lecture material and any reading I did. Now, on a good day, I understand about a third of what people say around me. They speak in acronyms and super secret science lingo and when everyone nods in agreement or makes appropriate gestures and facial expressions, the last thing I want to do is ask what they're talking about. I usually have a pad of paper on my desk with lists of words and questions that I google and look up in books. Most of the time this results in more words being added to my list and more google searches, which means more words on the list, and... you get the idea. However, ever so slowly, my command of the super secret science lingo is improving. I understand more words, terms, techniques and theories now than I did two months ago, and I like it. I no longer feel like the village idiot, but more like a clueless passerby who accidentally wandered in.

And now I'm going to wander out. The wonderful world of kitchen remodeling is waiting for me at Lowe's...

The more you know...

I've had a cold for almost 3 weeks, accompanied by swollen lymph nodes, intermittent sinus pain and almost constant fatigue. Colds are supposed to last one week, or seven days. It has been well over two weeks, and I'm feeling almost worse than I did when this whole thing started. Some days my cold symptoms are very minor, but the swollen lymph nodes have been persistent.

Unfortunately I have a slight penchant for paranoia, especially when it comes to being sick. Headache? Brain tumor. Neck pain and a slight fever? Meningitis. Swollen lymph nodes? Lymphoma or a benign growth at best. Stomach pain? Appendicitis. You get the idea.

I'm pretty sure I am a little more overly concerned about my physical well-being than the average person. Maybe it's because I tend to be a little bit unlucky (broken bones, two orthopedic surgeries, post-surgical infection, but that's another post altogether), or maybe I just spend too much time thinking about myself. I think my discovery of Google about 10 years ago has only fueled this paranoia, as the Internet's answer to every search for a set of symptoms seems to be "you'll probably die young, writhing in pain".

My PhD program is located at a medical school, and some of the material and classes are medically oriented (some of my classes are in the medical school curriculum). Every time I hear or learn about a new disease I make sure I don't have it. So far I haven't self-diagnosed myself with anything awfully terrible, that is, until this lymph node thing. A visit to student health is probably in my near future, but I'm pretty sure they get their fair share of "I learned about this disease...".

So today is spent wishing I was more ignorant, because sometimes ignorance truly is bliss.

I have a job

I'm pretty sure this blog will be focused on my life outside of school/work. But I DO have a job. I'm in a Biomedical PhD program with a specialty yet to be determined (probably Cell & Developmental Biology & Anatomy). I basically spend some time in class and then spend the rest of my time in the lab doing research, some days more, some days less. It looks like I will be doing my work mostly with cells, and specifically a certain protein that is believed to play a part in how cells move around and invade other tissues (like cancer cells do).

This is a picture I took of a cell stained for the cytoskeletal protein actin.

Maybe I'll write about what research is like someday soon. It's lengthy, slow and tedious, but it's pretty thrilling when you get actual, usable results and data.

Thankful

Mondays are my least favorite day of the week. It's hard to get up, it's hard to find something to wear, it's hard to get to school on time (or at all, for that matter), and it's hard to be motivated to do much of anything.

Today was a particularly challenging Monday. Rain, a broken car, a bike that needs fixing, a cold that won't go away, and a generally malcontent attitude on my part. I moaned and whined and complained all day, and then I went home and had dinner and watched part of a movie.

And then I realized that really I am quite lucky. I am fortunate enough to get an education that comes with a (small) paycheck, I will soon move into my very first own home, I had a nutritious and delicious dinner, and I generally have everything I need in life, and many of the things I want.

So here's to being thankful.

Recession garden

The current economic recession has not really affected me personally, fortunately. A few weeks ago I first heard the term "Recession Garden" when the new first lady broke ground on what is to be an 1,100 square foot garden somewhere on her front lawn. The term "Victory Garden" was mentioned as well, referring to the vegetable gardens that were abundant during WWI and WWII, and helped to stave off food shortages. Now, with so many people unemployed, or afraid they might soon be unemployed, or simply trying to cut back on their spending, recession gardens are popping up all over the place apparently. Nine million American households are expected to plant a garden for the first time this year, and the seed company Burpee has seen an unprecedented rise in sales.

Apparently people have realized that with a little bit of money spent on seeds and supplies, and some good, earnest labor, they can grow their own vegetables! Produce makes up a large chunk of my grocery bill, and so I decided last winter that I would try to grow some of my own vegetables. In my usual all-or-nothing mentality of doing things I planted the first seeds about two months ago (a little too early for this latitude) in a mini plastic greenhouse on the windowsill. When the first green seedlings popped up I was ecstatic, and fueled by this success my attempt at gardening has taken over the back of the dining room, and is now spilling over into the living room.

This is how I start all seeds out. Little peat/soil pellets that are soaked in water and put into a plastic greenhouse (plastic tray with clear domed lid, about $3-4 at your home improvement store).

My garden as of a week ago.

One of my latest additions: large plants (zucchini, watermelon, squash)

Overall I am growing about 35 different vegetables (well, tomatoes are technically a fruit) and herbs, and I added my very first (real) fruit today: strawberries. I cheated and bought four little strawberry plants, but only because I couldn't find strawberry seeds.

My garden population currently includes the following, spread over seven planters/pots:
cilantro
hot Portugal peppers
sweet Cayenne peppers
Santiago hybrid peppers
sweet pepper mix (yellow, red, purple)
red rubin basil
dark opal purple basil
sweet basil
oregano
lettuce leaf basil
parsley
spinach
microgreens
hot shot spicy green mix (I swear, that's what the package says)
black beauty eggplant
rosa bianca eggplant
sweet reba acorn
black OP zucchini
rocky ford muskmelon
moon & stars watermelon
cantaloupe
artichoke
yellow perfection tomatoes
yellow pear tomatoes
early girl hybrid tomatoes
jubilee tomatoes
green zebra tomato (I kid you not)
jelly bean hybrid tomatoes
rainbow heirloom tomatoes (supposedly includes Omars Lebanese, Dutchman, Golden Sunburst, Black Russian, Aunt Ruby's German Green, Djena Lee's Golden Girl)
red cherry tomatoes
tomatillos
sage (it's growing like a weed, and I have NO idea what to do with it... anyone?)
rosemary (is holding on to dear life as we speak)
summerlong basil
lemon lime basil
brussel sprouts

I really have no idea what some of these plants will look like, or how large they will get. My future yard is small, and I will use whatever space I can to grow as many of these to fruition as possible. I don't know how much it will cost to water these come summer, or how much labor will be necessary to maintain, weed and pick all of these. I'm not too sure how much money this garden will save me, but so far I've spent somewhere around $160 on seeds, soil and planters. About $40 of that was for planters, which are reusable. Plus, I gave some seeds to some friends of mine, since I cannot possibly grow all my seeds into plants.

Austrian chocolate cake.

Until I turned 18, moved out of my parents' house and went to college the most cooking and baking I had done was scrambled eggs and some rather disastrous attempts at Indian food. My college scholarship/financial aid included unlimited visits to the dining hall, so I didn't do too much cooking during the school year. In the summers I sometimes lived on rice and lentils for weeks, and considered milk and cereal a real treat.

Since graduating from college I have taken it upon myself to learn how to cook and bake. Initially it was mostly out of necessity, but it's become a fairly central part of my life. I like trying out new recipes, and I almost prefer baking over cooking. There's just something about making a meal or a dessert from scratch and eating it and watching others eat it.

Yesterday I made my first attempt at what is probably the most famous Austrian cake there is: Sachertorte. It's a little bit like Coca Cola. The recipe is in a vault, except with chocolate instead of ascorbic acid. I had to rely on various online sources for imitation recipes. I found one that looked promising, and here is the result

Here is the original, sold only in two places in Austria, at exorbitant prices:


The most exciting part was the chocolate glaze, and I'm happy to say that it's NOT fondant, nor does it contain any added sugar, granulated or powdered. It's simply half semi-sweet Baker's chocolate (54% cocoa) and half margarine/Crisco. Melts very nicely and hardens nicely too. I figured out too late that I should use a spatula of some sort to shape the chocolate, thus the lumps and bumps on my cake. The target audience for this cake didn't seem to mind though, as the entire thing was eaten and compliments were uttered. I'm not sure I'll make it again any time soon, but I'll definitely be making the chocolate glaze again, since I have about 1.5lbs of Baker's chocolate left over.

I guess I have to make some jam now

I went to the store this past week to buy two canning jars, but apparently you can't just buy one or two. They come in boxes of a dozen. I am not the proud owner of 12 canning jars. For now 10 of the jars are on the shelf, while the other two are being used as sprout-growing vessels. This blog is about the 10 jars I have left. Perhaps I will make some jam.

This blog is also about my other pursuits to make life just a little more bearable and fun. I go to school during the day, but when I get home I like to garden (in a 4th floor apartment). Due to a lucky sequence of events I am about to become a first-time homeowner, so my 4th floor garden will move into my very small yard in a few weeks. This blog is also about the house, and the garden, and my attempts to take care of them. I don't own a screwdriver or a shovel (other than the snow kind), so please join me on my journey to becoming a gardening, homesteading single female graduate student. My house came without a kitchen, so the next few weeks should be interesting.

Welcome. Take a seat, but please, make sure you don't accidentally break any jars. They only come by the dozen!