“…we’re gonna be arrested.”
I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve watched this video of Paula Deen’s heart attack burgers. Hey, if they cut the Krispy Kreme doughnuts in half and only use half of one for each of the buns, it could be the diet version!
Then, of course, the next recipe she’s making is a fruit yogurt parfait. Nicely done.
Go UVM!
http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/05/dancing-scientists-revealed/
Here’s a direct quote from the post:
…Besides gathering online responses, Dr. Bohannon also administered the quiz to eight live audiences in North America and Europe. For some reason — perhaps because they were more focused on the task — the live audiences were generally more accurate overall than the online audiences, although there were exceptions: a live audience at Harvard was less accurate than the online readers of Science, and did only about half as well as a live audience at the University of Vermont. I will leave it to others to explain Vermont’s superiority to Harvard, and whether it has more to do with dance or with science.
(Yup, playing more catch up)
A while back, many places in Vermont participated in the Maple Open House Weekend where there was much celebrating of spring and sweet sap flowing through tree veins, which led to maple syrup flowing through my veins. Yum.
Since this was also the same weekend that my parents came to visit, we decided to spend the day at Shelburne Farms, which as you will see, had many farm animals in addition to delicious maple syrup. I’ve also discovered that I’m in love with sheep, big sheep and little sheep (lambs) alike.
In contrast to all the gloomy, rainy weather we’ve been having lately, today was beautiful and sang of Spring. It was gloriously sunny – all day! – and the temperatures reached the mid-80s. I had no idea what that meant until I converted it to Celsius and whoa, that’s pretty warm!
Food-surfing the web reaps many delights. I stumbled upon this list of 100 Chinese Foods to Try Before You Die as written by Diana at Appetite for China, and thought it would be fun to go through it and see.
I took some photographs on my way to the lab this afternoon, and wanted to share them with you.
Hope you had a very relaxing break and a very happy holiday!
– Jacqueline
* * *
wish I had some of this haha
View of the Green Mountains from my lab
A little bit of holiday cheer
Merry Christmas and happy holidays!
The summer is nearly over and I have neglected to tell you about my weekly Farmer’s Market adventures! Every Saturday, local farmers and artisans sell their produce and special crafts in the Burlington City Hall Park – by produce and special crafts, I mean pretty much everything that’s in season: fresh herbs, squashes, tomatoes (including heirloom tomatoes), beans, artichokes, greens, eggs, flowers, honey, and, bakery style bread, apples, cheese and maple syrup because after all, I do live in Vermont.
I had a quiet but really nice weekend. Yesterday night, a bunch of friends and I went out to a restaurant called Tiny Thai for dinner to celebrate my birthday (which was today – well, oops, now technically yesterday). This morning, I declared it was “Baking Challah Day” and brought some freshly baked and oven-warm challah to the lab. There are no pictures, but I’ll write a post about challah… soon… but it was just the way I like it, pulled apart with my hands, with the loaf’s inside being pillowy soft and the bottom with a slightly crisp crust. Isn’t that the best way to enjoy bread? ^_^
I mentioned in my fresh strawberry tart post that I went over to a friend’s house to make Chinese sticky rice dumplings. These rice dumplings, or 粽子 (zongzi), are traditionally eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival on the fifth day of the fifth month of the lunar calendar. They can be likened to tamales or even humitas, but zongzi are typically a steamed package of bamboo leaves that impart a special fragrance to the glutinous (sticky) rice inside, which in turn reveals a filling that can be either savoury or sweet.
Wrapping zongzi was once a family affair, but they are quite common in Asian grocery stores now and not just available around Dragon Boat Festival time. I’m not good enough to be able to teach you how to wrap and make zongzi so the following will be text-light and photo-heavy.
