Seminarcolepsy

Later today I’ll be meeting up with my friend and we’re going to a genomics seminar. Academic science seminars are famous for being a place for naps because they happen late in the afternoon, after your coffee crash, after lunch, after a full day of bench work or staring at a computer screen. The coffee and cookies outside the seminar room do their best to perk you up, but usually they just set you up for a bigger crash. You enter the seminar room, the air is stifling, the room is hot, the lights are low, and the monotone voice and delivery of data are boring…. boring…. boring…. Actually, that last part doesn’t even need to be true. It can be hard to stay alert and awake in the most dynamic presentations on topics of great interest.

For example, I once fell asleep in a seminar given by one of my academic heros. I’d had breakfast with him earlier that morning, and we had a great conversation about each other’s research. He’s pretty well-known in the ecology and evolution field and his work is multidisciplinary, so his talk attracted a large audience that packed the seminar room. I ended up sitting in the back row, against the wall. The seminar started, and it was engaging, but not enough to combat the somniferous facets of the environment. At some point in the lecture, I fell asleep, my head fell backwards and CRACKED against the wall! It instantly woke me up, along with other people that had apparently fallen asleep, and it was loud enough that several people in the room turned around to look in my direction. Embarassing.

But you really can’t be too embarrassed. The phenomenon is pretty general. So general, in fact, that my friend Wendy wrote a song about it called “Seminarcolepsy”. She is quite deft in the art of science pop songcraft, and the lyrics of her song describe the phenomenon much better than I have here. Enjoy!

The Stained Glass Window of Life

Cephalopoda, originally uploaded by Arenamontanus.

Sometimes a good thing is hard to improve upon.

Hierarchical classification schemes for living things go way back in Western throught, evolving from Aristotle’s Scala Naturae to Carolus Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae in the 1700s. Later, phylogenetic trees were used to represent the evolutionary relationships among organisms and like many concepts in evolution, their use dates to Darwin’s time. In fact, Darwin scrawled something of a phylogenetic tree in his notebooks and published a tree in the Origin of Species.

Aquabats – Worms Make Dirt

Speaking of vermicomposting, this is my favorite song by the Aquabats, “Worms Make Dirt!” and here is a silly video with some sweet MS Paint and sock puppetry set to that music.

from www.youtube.com posted with vodpod

Of Worms, Oysters*, Home Brew, Birch Beer

I compost my food with worms, which I then feed to my pet box turtle. This week I got an invitation to post my worm bin on the map of vermicomposters around the world.  Haven’t added a picture yet, but there are some good ones on there, like this one: http://flickr.com/photos/robindegrassi/2042100224/

If you compost with worms, check out these links: add yourself to the Vermicomposters.com map or join the Vermicomposters.com Ning ! These sites will also take you to more information on composting with worms… there’s a lot out there.

Right now I am composting with a species of worm that isn’t a very efficient composter. I’m not sure what species it is, but it is not the Eisenia fetida that is commonly used for composting. The worms are much larger, and they don’t reach the high densities that the E. fetida can achieve. We’ve also been having a problem with fruit flies in our bin (and in our house). The worm bin got moved to the porch, I recently split it into two bins, and now they are both sitting next to the bucket of Starbucks (R) coffee grounds that serve as growth media for Oyster* Mushrooms (currently on their third crop)! The Oyster mushrooms came from spores and media from Fungi Perfecti. We got an enokitake kit from them that sprouted a lovely crop in December.

This weekend I’ll be picking up home brew from my friends house. Steam Beer! The kit came from Karp’s Home Brew.

Also, I am thinking about making Birch/Sassafras Beer. I’m looking at recipes from the usual suspect: Stalking the Wild Asparagus by Euell Gibbons. Do you have a birch beer recipe to share? Leave a comment!

Got a question about cooking? Want to be on the Food Network?

A while back I made a cooking show that caught the attention of Darin Bresnitz, who works for the Food Network. While I didn’t end up with my own cooking show (still holding out hope on that one!), I did make a new internet friend!

Darin is producing segments for a show on food network called “Ask Aida”.  The idea is to get people to submit questions (and entertaining video questions) about what’s got them stumped in the kitchen.  Sounds like a fun idea. Check out the official word on the show from Darin (scroll down to comments) and find out how to submit your own video to the Food Network.

Knotweed on Vimeo

This is a partial episode (because my camera died) on how to pick the invasive knotweed (Polygonum cuspidatum) for use in soup. See previous posts tagged soup and knotweed for recipes good and bad!

from www.vimeo.com posted with vodpod

Knot so bad soup!

Earlier I reported on a soup with knotweed that was knot so good. Alright, it was heinous. So it was to my surprise that I made a soup with knotweed on Friday that was really pretty good. It was also a little surprising that I was able to get a dozen or more takers on eating the soup with me, and they enjoyed it too!

Friday morning I collected knotweed and garlic mustard from the West Meadow Beach area. I chose this spot because it is closed to automobiles and there is little chance of pesticide or herbicide use. Its also nice to clear out invasive species from an area that is undergoing ecological restoration, although I can say that my collection is not likely to have much of an impact. I was actually surprised to find only one patch of knotweed, but this patch (probably a single clonal individual) was large enough to provide me with a grocery bag full of young tender stalks.

I was much more selective about which stalks I collected this time: stalks that were 6-18 inches and with a diameter at least the size of my pinkie. I was also a little more selective about what parts I used when I chopped them up. First I stripped the leaves and took off the bits right at the base of the leaves (these may actually be the most tender parts, so I might try them again in the future). I also discarded the fattest parts at the bottom of the stalks, and I discarded a section if the stalk started splitting lengthwise as I chopped. I think this was part of why the soup was more successful.

The soup was also totally different from before. I elaborated on Steve Brill’s recipe, because I didn’t have enough knotweed (being so selective left me with only 4 cups of chopped stems), and I wasn’t very keen on the combination of the knotweed with the tofu spread from the previous experience. Instead I made a big pot of vegetable broth (36 cups of water and 18 cubes of veggie bouillon; I was preparing to feed as many as 30) and brought it to a boil. I sautéed a couple of chopped onions, a couple cloves of garlic, and 8 sliced carrots in olive oil and then added them to the pot, along with 3 chopped yukon gold potatoes. I waited a few minutes for the carrot and potato to cook and soften, and then I decided that there was way too much onion in there, so I used a strainer to remove most of them (they still provided flavor, but they didn’t get in the way of the other good stuff coming). I added 2 cans of corn and 1 can of whole peeled tomatoes (I broke up the tomatoes first and added just a little bit of the juice from the can). Last I added about 4 cups of chopped knotweed, a tablespoon or so of sugar, returned the soup to a boil, and then let it cool.

Unlike the other recipe, this one was not overwhelmingly “knotweed-y” and any odors particular to the weed were masked by the other ingredients. This isn’t to say that you couldn’t taste the knotweed; it retained its tang, but delivered it most when you had a piece on your spoon. I served this soup with another invasive species as a garnish: Garlic mustard Alliaria petiolota. I just chopped up the young leaves and flowers ad offered them raw.

Breaking the Rules

I have to make soup for my department tomorrow…. I am very tempted to break the challenge. But we’ll see what happens.

Update: Yep. It happened. Last night we had a send-off for a couple of friends. Even though I was able to get my friends to buy me a couple, I eventually bought a drink for a friend (and she one for me), $6. Also, this morning, I stopped at the grocery and spent $7 on vegetable bouillon and a loaf of bread (see next post).

The challenge slogs forward…

A couple nights ago I roasted artichokes, fried eggplants, and made some pasta. I took out some frozen pesto that was made last summer from my farm share. I had it for dinner (well, I ate while I made it) and then again for lunch. Last night I made some bread and, come to think of it, I guess I skipped dinner. This morning I made up for that with some of the fresh bread, a banana, bacon and egg, milk and coffee. Still no purchases made and I am finding that I’m not even tempted, but that may change over time!

The salad greens in our garden are looking awesome as are the potatoes, and the temperature didn’t drop last night as much as we feared it would.