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Oh, right, my blog…

Erin — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 01:30:12 +0000

2+ years without a blog post. Whoops. Let’s see if I can provide a quick update.

Still in school.
Sept 2007 – Dan proposed
Juggled wedding planning and grad school – I don’t recommend it
Sept 2008 – Got married and went to Maui for our honeymoon
Yep, still in school. At least now I’m an official PhD *Candidate*. Yeehaw.
There’s no “average” day at lab, but at any given time I may be writing Matlab code, injecting mice with one thing or another, watching mice run on a treadmill, harvesting mouse bones (remember dissections in 7th grade science class?), cursing at the HPLC, breaking bones in a mechanical tester, reading journal articles, sitting through or presenting at meetings, writing, feeding cells, taking/analyzing micro-CT scans of mouse bones, etc. Consider this an incomplete list.
When do I graduate, you ask? Don’t you have any manners?

No Knead Bread

Administrator — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 21:13:02 +0000

Ok, I have to join the rest of the baker-blogger world and share my experience w/ No Knead Bread. The rage was started when Mark Bittman wrote an article for the NYT about Jim Lahey’s method.

The recipe Bittman put into print varies somewhat from the recipe in the associated video (same link), but the basic ideas are the same. Mix flour, yeast, salt and water in roughly defined proportions. Get really sticky dough, kind of like biscuit dough. Cover and let it rise for 12-18 hours at room temp. The yeast does its magic, helping to align and develop the gluten in the flour. Eventually you get a big poofy, sticky, bubbly blob. If you tilt the bowl, it pulls away from the sides very slowly w/ lots of long strands. Turn the dough out of the bowl onto a VERY floured surface. Pat it down, fold it on itself like a letter, sprinkle it with wheat bran or flour, and turn it over onto a dish towel (not terrycloth – it’ll stick more). Sprinkle the other side w/ bran, wrap the towel over to cover it loosely, and let it rise another couple of hours. Put a heavy ovensafe pot with lid (like a dutch oven) in the oven and preheat it to 450 or so for at least half an hour. You want a really hot pot, got it? Toss the dough seam-side up (seam from the folds you made earlier) into the pot, cover it, and let it bake for 30 minutes. Take the cover off, let it bake for as long as it takes for the crust to brown properly and the inside to reach 210F (use an instant read thermometer). Probably 10 or 15 more minutes.

Let it cool on a wire rack, and resist the temptation to cut it open before it cools completely.

Voila!

The Lease Hasn’t Been Signed…

Administrator — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 18:45:21 +0000

…but unless we find something better (pretty damn hard in this town), I think we’re living here come August. We get the 1st floor (it’s a duplex), one bay of the garage, as well as a ton of storage and our own washer/dryer in the basement. I don’t have any pics of the inside yet, but it’s really bright and airy, with wood floors covered by off-white area rugs, a fireplace, a black and white tiled bathroom, and a recently remodeled kitchen complete with almost-new dishwasher, oven and microwave. The fenced backyard is small, but it’s really private, paved with stones, and has lots of little flowers growing here there and everywhere; it’ll be a great spot to sit outside and read.

Pretty

Administrator — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 04:23:25 +0000

My room smells better than yours.

Meet My New Friend

Erin — Sun, 18 Dec 2005 20:48:34 +0000

I dubbed him the Beer Man. He showed up after I started to shovel off the balcony and thought, “there’s so much snow here I could build a snowman or something…”

YAY!!!!

Administrator — Sat, 12 Nov 2005 00:57:49 +0000

Edit: It shipped!! <12hrs after I put my order in. Insane - in a good way.

Happy Birthday to me, thanks in large part to a generous birthday check from my parents. Yay 30 gig video Ipod!!

I can’t wait!!!

Shots of Baltimore…

Erin — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 20:33:39 +0000

Mixed Signals

Nice Wheels