How to Write a Scientific Paper

As I enter the latter stages of my PhD, I'm working to summarize all the stuff I've done over these past four and a half years in a series of publications that will ultimately become my thesis. This sounds daunting and tedious, and it most certainly is...but not for the reasons you would think. Here is a guide for all you first-time paper writers out there!

Preparation

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Beginning to write the paper can go one of two ways:

1) you want to publish your work because you feel that you have finally gathered enough data to make an important contribution to the scientific literature
2) your advisor comes to you saying we need to publish this paper RIGHT NOW or your sworn enemy lab will scoop you

Gather your data. Discover that you didn't write down the one piece of relevant information that you need in your lab notebook. Panic, then try to rationalize how you can write the paper without that one critical piece of information.

Composition

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Frantically write the paper

Wait three months while the paper sits on your advisor's desk

Try to find your advisor. Discover that he has left the country for a month without telling anyone.

While you are waiting, perform an experiment that you think will support your paper's conclusions and add to the breadth of data. Experiment contradicts your previous results, and you need to change the entire paper.

Re-write paper in a frenzy and send out revised version

Wait again, as your advisor has gone to a conference for the week.

Revisions

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Receive edits from your advisor. Re-write the entire paper for a third time. 

More Edits.

Even MORE EDITS.

Co-author who hasn't said anything up to this point suddenly decides that everything is wrong in the paper and it needs to be rewritten. Re-write the paper for a fourth time.

MORE EDITS.

Endnote library crashes.

You decide to accept all of your advisor's edits because you are now nauseated by looking at this paper and don't care anymore. Time to submit! 

Submission

Almost there!

Attempt to fit your text into an excessively complicated Word template that was last published in Word 2003. Discover that Word 2003 and Word 2013 really don't like each other. Don't even get me started on Mac/PC compatibility.

Even though you already included your figures in their template, the journal requires that you upload every figure and table individually. Your image size will exceed the file size required for figures. Sucks. You're getting JPEGs, jerks.

Decision

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Accepted! 

This never happens just by itself. If your paper is simply "Accepted", there has likely been an error. 

Accepted with major revisions or Accepted with minor revisions

Major and minor are clearly in the eye of the beholder. Either category can range from redoing figure captions to redoing the experiments that the entire paper was based on.

Reviewer #3 will think your paper is terrible no matter what. Get out your thesaurus and figure out the most tactful way to say "You are an idiot" without insulting the editor.

Rejected

Try submitting to our sister journal that no one has ever heard of! Impact factor: 0.5

OR

Appeal the decision. Fight! Fight! Fight! This may or may not be successful, so proceed with caution. 

Congratulations! You have successfully written a scientific paper! Elapsed time: 18 months

Less Than 1 Week to My 10K Race!

I don't think I have talked about this at all on my blog, but over the past few months, I've been following a 10K training plan. I have run two official 5Ks in my life, and I wanted to up my game to a challenging but doable new level. When I started my training for the 10K, I had no expectations and didn't even sign up for a race. I have never run more than 3.5 miles at a time in my entire life. I didn't know how my body was going to respond to the increased mileage, so I didn't want to set an unreasonable goal until I knew a bit more about my capabilities. I didn't really start running at all until graduate school when I really decided to take control of my fitness and wanted something where I could easily measure my progress and set goals. Running fit the bill.

At first, I hated running. It was painful, and I couldn't even run for more than a few minutes without getting winded. I completed the Couch to 5K program to run my first 5K in summer of 2011. I followed the program again during summer 2013 to run my second 5K. At this point, I didn't feel like I wanted to die after the race and was even starting to enjoy running. Thus, I challenged myself to a 10K. I need structure, so having a plan to follow was key. I found one that matched my abilities and went to town.

Our Graduate Student Association at Northwestern does a 5K/10K every year, and the timing fortuitously lined up with my training schedule. The race is this Saturday (eep!). I'm feeling mostly ready. A bunch of MatScis are signed up for the race, so I'll be in good company. I even convinced my friend Ricardo to do the 5K, which will be his first race. Also, Andy will be running with me, so I'll have someone to cheer me on/make me keep running. :)

The plan I'm following started with a 1.5 mile run. The plan is nominally 8 weeks, but I have been following it more casually, so it has taken me a little bit longer. I completed a 5 mile run last week and felt awesome afterward. I even took a gym selfie to mark the occasion.

I probably looked like a weirdo in the gym, but whatev.

This week is my tapering week, so I'm only doing a 3 mile and a 2 mile run in addition to IM soccer and some stationary bike cross training. I'm really excited for the race on Saturday. I think it's safe to say that I (gasp) even enjoy running now. It clears my head and gives me some time all to myself without distraction. When the weather is nice, running is a great way to see new parts of Chicago. I think that it's true what they say about runner's high. After pushing through one race and vowing never to do it again, you just go right back and sign up for your next race. :)

Denmark: The Land of Licorice

Danish people love licorice. I mean, really love licorice. Think you are a huge fan of the stuff? Wrong. You do not like it as much as the Danes.

If you go to the grocery store, you will find entire shelving units in the candy aisle devoted to the stuff. However, the licorice here is not just any licorice. The local favorite is salty licorice, which is made salty by the addition of ammonium chloride, giving it a very pungent, slightly sour aftertaste. It is an acquired taste for sure. The concept sort of reminds me of the salted caramel fad that is common in the US. I like licorice a lot, but there are some kinds that are just too much for me. My favorite so far is the Pingvin Lakrids mix. A little salty, a little chewy, om nom nom.

How can you resist that cute little guy?

One of my colleagues from Sweden told us a story of how he was sharing a compartment with a bunch of Italian tourists on a train. Over the course of the trip, the Italian guys shared some wine with him. He was trying to think of the best thing he could share with them to reciprocate. "Ah, yes!" he thought, "Salty licorice!" However, as I said, it is quite the acquired taste, especially when you're not expecting it to be so astringent. Let's just say that he didn't get any more wine from the Italians after the sharing of the salty licorice. Ah, well. Maybe he should have brought along some kanelsnegles instead. :)

On a completely different note, I'm coming up on my final weeks at Risø. I have my last two TEM days on Thursday and Friday. Ahhh! I've got two more chances to get some awesome data to bring back to NU. I'm a bit anxious, as you can imagine, but hopefully, the experiments will go well. The upside of all this microscope time is that I can operate a TEM successfully without having a panic attack. Huzzah!

Tomorrow is a holiday, so I'll be working from home and exploring the area around my new digs. It's International Workers' Day (like our Labor Day), which is not an official holiday, but we get it off anyway. Maybe I'll go check out some political rallies? Who knows!

Denmark, brb

Greetings from Denmark!

I'm here working with my lab's collaborators at DTU Energy Conversion, which is on the Roskilde Fjord (yes, there really are fjords in Scandinavia) about an hour outside of Copenhagen. Even though I'm working in Roskilde (pronounce Ros-killa. More on how strange the Danish language is later), I'm living with my labmates Kyle and David in Copenhagen. Our apartment is in Vesterbro, which, I am told by every Copenhagen tourism website, is quite trendy these days, and the nearby Meatpacking District is apparently where all of the nightlife happens in these parts. So yes.

Even though we've only been here about a week and a half, I feel like we've seen a lot of Copenhagen already. We've discovered one of the most famous microbreweries (which collaborates with Indiana's Three Floyds. Who knew?), seen historic sights, and walked A LOT. I'm going to try to chronicle the journey along the way with some pictures. Here's a teaser!

Nyhavn, the waterfront district. Reminds me of Amsterdam!

Obligatory picture of The Little Mermaid.

The hardest thing here has been learning to understand Danish. It is the WEIRDEST language. Nothing is pronounced how it looks. Essentially, what you have to do is pick your favorite vowel from the word and then pronounce half of the consonants, which will get you sort of close to how the word actually sounds.

No! You snore! (It actually means "On a Leash")

I am a HUGE fan of the pastries here. What we call Danishes in the US are known here as wienerbrød, which translates to "Vienna bread." So Danishes are actually Austrian? I guess no one wants to take credit for such a delicious thing. Silly Europeans. My favorite pastries so far are the Wienerstang (a sort of long pastry with chocolate on top and some sort of almond cream in the middle) and the kanel snegle (which literally translated means "cinnamon snail"). So cute!

One of these is a cinnamon snail. One of these is an actual snail. Can you tell which is which?

I'm still learning my way around the country, and I'm happy to have you all along as I do! Skål for now!

Post-Qual & Baking with Ricotta

Hello, good people of the internet!

I know, it has been a good long while since I've posted anything. I have an excuse, I promise. At the beginning of February, I had my qualifying examination, which basically determined whether or not I got to become a PhD candidate. Gulp. I wrote a 20+ page qualifying document and presented a 30 (plus interruptions) min talk on what I've done, what I plan to do, and why I should be kept around for the duration of my PhD. Also, I shamelessly bribed my committee by making my crowd-pleasing whole wheat cherry scones.

I am happy to report that I passed(!) my exam, and Northwestern is stuck with me for a few more years. Woo! Since then, I've been keeping busy with lots of research stuff. There's no rest for the weary!

While I was working on my qual, I developed a habit of "stress baking" where when I just couldn't look at my paper anymore, I would go bake something. My research group gratefully accepted my offerings, as you can imagine.

The most exciting adventures during this time involved, of all things, ricotta cheese. I had a bunch of ricotta leftover from a Skinnytaste baked pasta recipe because when you buy ricotta cheese, it has to be in a half pound container or larger, even if you only need a 1/4 cup. Blah. Fortunately, I was inspired to use up the cheese, which led to the two recipes below.

I brought the orange ricotta muffins with me to Bloomington, IN where I visited my friend Lindsay for a weekend post-qual. They were met with rave reviews, so you have assurance that they are delicious from a non-biased source. The lemon cookies were one of the offerings that my lab received, and the cookies I brought in were gone in a matter of hours. I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as I did!

Side note: I finally joined Pinterest against my better judgement. I'm addicted. :) Click on the link above to follow me!

Orange Ricotta White Chocolate Chip Muffins

Yield: 12 muffins
Adapted from Two Peas & Their Pod

1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup whole wheat flour
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup granulated sugar
Zest of 1 orange (I bought navel oranges, so I had A LOT of zest. To me, this is a good thing.)
1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup low-fat ricotta cheese
1 large egg
1 tablespoon orange juice
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 cup white chocolate chips

For the glaze:
1 cup powdered sugar
1/2 teaspoon orange zest
2 tablespoons orange juice

Directions:
1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line 12 muffin cups with paper liners. Set aside.

2. In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Set aside. In a small bowl, add the sugar and orange zest. Rub the orange zest and sugar together with your fingers.

3. Using an electric mixer, beat the butter and sugar and orange zest mixture together until light and fluffy, about two minutes. Add the ricotta cheese and beat until smooth. Beat in the egg, orange juice, and vanilla extract.

4. Add the dry ingredients and mix until just blended. Stir in the white chocolate chips. Divide the batter evenly between the 12 muffin cups.

5. Bake muffins for about 18-20 minutes, or until the tops are slightly golden brown. Let muffins cool completely.

6. While the muffins are cooking, make the glaze. In a medium bowl, whisk together powdered sugar, orange zest, and orange juice. Drizzle glaze over muffins. Let the muffins sit until glaze hardens.

Lemon Ricotta Meltaways

Yield: About two dozen cookies
Adapted from Secret Life of a Chef's Wife


Cookie:
1/2 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup gran­u­lated sugar
1 large egg
1/2 tea­spoon almond extract
2 tablespoons lemon juice
3/4 cup low-fat ricotta cheese
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 tea­spoon bak­ing powder
1/2 tea­spoon bak­ing soda
1/4 tea­spoon salt
zest from 1 lemon

Lemon glaze:
1 cup pow­dered sugar
2 table­spoons fresh lemon juice
Instruc­tions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Line cookie sheets with parchment paper. Set aside.

Cream together the but­ter and gran­u­lated sugar in a mix­ing bowl fit­ted with a whisk. Add the egg and mix well. Add the ricotta cheese, almond extract, and the lemon juice. Blend well.

Mix the dry ingre­di­ents and lemon zest together in a separate bowl, and and add them to the butter mixture. Mix until incor­po­rated without over-mixing.

Roll dough into balls, and place about two inches apart on cookie sheet. Using the bottom of a glass covered with flour, flatten each cookie into a circle.

Bake for 14 minutes. (The original recipe only called for 8 minutes, but my cookies were raw at that time. I needed a much longer baking time, but be sure to check on your cookies periodically for doneness!) The cook­ies will begin to brown on the bot­toms, but not the tops.

Let rest 2-3 minutes on sheet, and then remove to cooking rack. Let cookies cool completely.

For the glaze:
Mix ingredients together in a bowl, and driz­zle on cooled cook­ies.

(Source)

Happy New Year and Holiday Leftovers

Happy new year, friends!

I hope everyone had a glorious, relaxing holiday. Can you believe it's 2013 already? The world didn't end, so I guess we're stuck with it whether we like it or not. Maybe the world will end again in a few years. Keep the canned goods and bottled water at the ready!

My office holiday decoration this year. A tiny USB Christmas tree!

I love the holidays, and I try to get as much holiday cheer (see my Christmas tree above) and noms in as I can during November and December. As a result, I often have lots of leftover holiday goodies hanging around into the later winter months. If you're like me, you probably have some leftover egg nog in your fridge. If you're really like me, this egg nog is not actually leftover from the holiday, but egg nog purchased in January at half-price when the stores are trying to get rid of it. Oops!

Now what to do with this excess of egg nog? While perusing the interwebs today, it struck me. Why not take one of the easiest and most delicious things to make and add egg nog to it?

Behold! Egg nog puppy chow was born!

I wasn't sure how this idea would turn out, but this stuff is really tasty, albeit a bit rich. I made a small batch to start, but the recipe could be easily doubled to yield the normal quantity of puppy chow that you would get if you followed the recipe on the back of the Chex box.

Egg Nog Puppy Chow

4 cups Chex cereal (I used a combo of rice and corn because that's what we had)
3/4 cup white chocolate chips
1 1/2 tbsp butter
1/4 tsp nutmeg
2 tbsp egg nog (I used light egg nog, but any kind should work fine!)
1 - 1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

1) Place Chex cereal in a large mixing bowl. Set aside.

2) In a microwave-safe bowl, microwave the butter and the white chocolate chips on 50% power for one minute. Remove and stir the mixture,breaking up any lumps. Microwave on high for an additional 30 seconds or until smooth.

3) Remove the mixture from the microwave, and stir in the nutmeg and the egg nog.

4) Pour the egg nog mixture over the cereal. Stir to coat evenly.

5) Place half of the powdered sugar into a gallon-size Ziploc bag. Pour cereal mixture into bag. Add the rest of the powdered sugar. Seal the bag and shake to coat the cereal with the powdered sugar.

6) Line a cookie sheet with wax paper, and spread the puppy chow on the wax paper to cool. Store in the refrigerator for up to four days.

Enjoy!

The Final Day: Back to Argonne

After a brief off-site respite, I am back at the Advanced Photon Source once more. I was just about to start running my sample, when the beam cut out. Then I had to reload my sample and restart not once, not twice, but three times. My sample just got started in the past hour. Oh well. The data looks okay-ish now, so hopefully, this keeps up! Right now, I am manually recording the temperature at which each pattern is being taken. I will personally pay for Argonne to automate this process if it means that I do not have to do this again when I come back.

In the time that the beam was down, I trolled around Pinterest for a while. Now, I'm not actually on Pinterest because I know that I would turn into that person who is ALWAYS on Pinterest. But that doesn't mean that I can't troll around on it occasionally. (Revelation: I just realized that Pinterest is a play on "interest." Don't judge. Just because I'm in grad school, that doesn't mean that I can't be slow to get things some times. :P Also, it is 2 or 3 in the morning.) I dug up a bunch of fun recipes, so I'll have plenty of things to blog about in the coming weeks. :)

We have about six more hours of beam time left before we head back to Evanston/Chicago. It's been a good experience, albeit a tiring one. Being here and seeing the capabilities has given me a bunch of ideas on stuff that I want to try. That's the problem with research sometimes....one idea can lead to twenty more (or sometimes, one meeting with your advisor can turn into three months of work).

I've got to go tend to my sample now, but until next time!

Argonne, Day Three

Day Three: Coffee consumption increases exponentially

Or, as our sector manager Greg said, day three is when the pessimism starts to kick in. But seriously, all in all, I think our session is going pretty well. We've broken just about everything you can break in our experimental setup, but at least we're learning what not to do and are getting some pretty legit data (okay, maybe that was some of the pessimism right there). Here is a list of the things I've observed so far at the APS.

1) You don't actually need special training to ride the tricycles. However, I discovered that I am really, really bad at riding them. Luckily, I made this discovery at 9 PM at night when no one but my colleagues were around to see me unceremoniously plow into the wall of our sector. Practice makes perfect?

2) The food at the APS is kind of icky. The "401 Grill" is basically a temporary desk put at the edge of the kitchen in Building 401 and serves generic burgers, sandwiches, salads, etc. Also, we are on the direct opposite side of the APS from where the food is. However, the breakfast buffet at the Argonne Guest House is delicious. Sweet potato pancakes with boysenberry sauce? Cinnamon rolls completely covered in frosting? Yes, yes, yes.

3) I can't understand anything that the audible alert system says. I just have to hope that what they're saying means that I won't get zapped with x-rays while I'm changing a sample.

4) The screensavers on the computer monitors for our sector are freaky. Especially at 2 AM. There's one of a cow that just bounces up and down for a good ten minutes. There's also another one that makes me think the girl from The Ring is going to jump out of the screen at me. Odd choices.

5) Opening and closing the door to the beamline hutch makes me feel like I'm in Star Wars. Also, the fact that everything is called a sector makes me think that I should be reporting my distances in parsecs or lightyears rather than meters and feet.

Tonight, I'm going offsite for a bit, but I'm going to be working the 2 PM to 8 AM overnight shift from Saturday into Sunday. Look for more updates to come! Cheers!

Argonne After Dark

Long nights in lab seem like the perfect time to write blog posts, don't you think? Well, this time it's not really my lab exactly. I'm out at Argonne National Laboratory with a few of my collegues at the Advanced Photon Source. The thing about the APS is that when your beamtime is scheduled from 8 am on Wednesday to 8 am on Sunday, this means that you start at 8 am on Wednesday and run 24/7 until 8 am on Sunday, not only-day-time-hours-between-8am-Wednesday-and-8am-Sunday. Thus, I am writing this post in the wee hours of the morning during an overnight shift monitoring our data collection. In the words of Lionel Richie, I am chillin' out at Argonne allll niiiight loooong.

Even though I'm being facetious about this whole thing (probably due to lack of sleep and overabundance of cookies), the opportunity to be out at the APS is kind of awesome. I thought that I wouldn't really have need to come out here given the nature of my research, but I'm really glad that the cookie crumbled such that it was possible. You can get data here that you really can't get anywhere else. People come from all over the world to work here, and it's right in our backyard!

In between frantic periods of sample changing and gas line fiddling, there's a whole lot of waiting, as you can tell by the fact that I'm writing this post now instead of hovering over an instrument somewhere. Luckily, the folks at the APS thought of this and gave us office space full of spinning, rolling office chairs. Hours of entertainment. Also, to get around the APS, there are, I kid you not, adult-size tricycles. I think you need special training to ride them, but oh man. Oh man.

More on Argonne adventures later...now it's time for some frantic gas line fiddling!

Sweet Home Chicago

Can you believe that it's almost the end of September already?! Where did the summer go? I've been back in Chicago for a little over a week now. And this time, when I say Chicago, I actually mean Chicago proper. Andy and I moved down to the city on the border of Lakeview and Lincoln Park, and so far, I am loving our new location! We're close to restaurants and the El, and our neighborhood is quiet enough that we can hear ourselves think yet busy enough that I feel safe walking around. We're still unpacking and such, but soon our place will be all spiffy and homey-like.

For those of you who have followed me around the country this summer, I hope you've enjoyed exploring the west with me. From the high desert of Albuquerque to the rolling hills of Livermore, I've tried to share my ups and downs with all of you, for better or worse. It's hard to encapsulate the summer in just one blog post, but I thought I could at least share a few musings that have been on my mind over the past few days. 

A few bullet point reflections of the past twelve weeks:

• Livermore is cute and quaint, and the Bay Area is lovely. Seven weeks there wasn't nearly enough time to see everything. This clearly means that I need to go back soon!
• Albuquerque is weird for reasons I can't quite put my finger on. We had sort of a rough time of it while I was there. The food is AWESOME, though. Ten points for Flying Star, green chile, and sopaipillas! I feel like to be fair, I need to give ABQ another try some time in the future. Maybe during the balloon fiesta?
• I really like biking everywhere. Livermore was super bike friendly, and I have a new respect for people who bike around Chicago. Maybe I'll get myself a spiffy new helmet and lights and stuff and become one of those people, too!
• Nature is amazing. Grand Canyon? Yosemite? I can't remember the last time my breath was taken away by something so beautiful. Nothing that humans can make rivals that which occurs in these places. Pictures don't do it justice; you need to see it yourself.
• You definitely need to have a car anywhere west of the Rockies. They're not built for public transportation. Gripe as you will, but the El is amazing.
• National labs are neat little places. They're a bit looser than the corporate world but still have that feel of academia. Perhaps a place for a post doc? 
• Even though the places I've visited were pretty nifty, there's no place like sweet home Chicago.

Weekend in Cleveland and Italian Quinoa

Happy Tuesday, friends! I hope you had a chance to get out an enjoy the beautiful weather we've been having over the past few days in the Midwest and on the East Coast. It's almost like it's spring or summer or something.

Cleveland

This past weekend to continue with my month of perpetual travel, Andy and I visited Cleveland to see his sister Robin graduate from Case Western Reserve University. We spent six and a half hours in the car each way to spend 24 hours at our destination. Woof. Needless to say, it was a tiring trip.

I have to say, I kind of like Cleveland. It's trying so hard to get rid of the stigma of being Cleveland and the still fresh memories of LeBron James. The area around Case is really nice and urban in a friendly way. Also, they have Yuengling there, which we purchased on our way out of the city. So yes. Two points for Cleveland! If I haven't made you want to go there, maybe this video or this video will.

Case's commencement speaker this year was Paul Buchheit. Even if that name doesn't ring a bell, you definitely know this guy's work. Paul invented Gmail (which I currently have open in more than one window as we speak) as well as AdSense, that nifty little program that reads your mind to anticipate what you want to buy on the internet and tailors your ads to meet your needs. However, I was a little underwhelmed by the performance. Although he claimed to have thought about this speech for several months, he said that he decided he would rather discover the speech with his audience than write down trite words on paper. So it was kind of disorganized. At least I can say that I saw the Gmail guy speak?

Robin's apartment was located in the Little Italy section of the city (also a very nifty area of Cleveland) adjacent to the campus. While the masses were descending on the commencement to grab seats, Andy and I grabbed a cinnamon bun and a cup of coffee at Presti's Bakery. It was a really cute local place, and it was great to have a moment to relax on a generally busy graduation weekend.

Andy's sister and mom really like to bake, and they made these adorable graduation cookies. They all had different names of her friends who were graduating or encouraging sayings like the one below. I aim to emulate these skills. So cute!

The sprinkles are even in Case Western's colors. Awesome!

On our way back to Evanston, we drove through downtown Chicago because all of the ruckus being caused by the NATO summit meant that Lake Shore Drive was closed off. We discovered that LSD was closed on our way out of the city when we ran into a barricade of SNOWPLOWS which were blocking the road. Chicago has so many, so at least they found a use for them in the off-season?

In an attempt to get off of I-90/94, we drove up Michigan Ave and found these guys hanging out.

Riot police!

I asked Andy if it would be tacky if I took pictures of the police. He said yes, but I took them anyway. They'll never know it was me. Mwahaha. If you wanted to commit a crime in Chicago anywhere but downtown, these two days would have been your opportunity. Apparently, all of the police were on this street. Further down, more snowplow barricades were discovered. Important personage need their space.

The off-season use of Chicago's snowplows

Evanston

After an eventful weekend, I unfortunately had to come back to reality. Today in my Analytical Electron Microscopy class, I took my last exam EVER. Remember that class I almost didn't go to in the beginning of the quarter because I forgot that I was taking a class? Yup, that's the one. It's such a strange feeling but also a relief to not have exams hanging over my head anymore. Woooo! Now I get to do research all the time. Hooray?

To reward myself for getting through my last exam, I decided to take time off tonight and do some cooking. I've been craving quinoa (pronounced keen-WAH) and am getting bored with sandwiches, so I decided to make some yummy lunches for the rest of the week. If you aren't familiar with this grain, it's kind of like a cross between rice and cous-cous but with tons of protein. More on quinoa here from Wikipedia. I bought it in bulk at Whole Foods, so it was super cheap. The only caveat is that you have to wash it yourself to remove the bitter outer coating on the grain. No big deal to save lots of monies!

Quinoa in its bulk form

After trolling around the interwebs, I decided on an Italian dish based on the fact that we had a lot of ingredients in our pantry, and I needed to make some use of my basil plant. It took it pretty well, I think.

Naked basil plant

I also made two batches of pesto, which I froze into individual portions in an ice cube tray. I make the pesto with everything but the cheese and add that when I thaw it. It doesn't get all weird that way and tastes fresh for a longer time. Also, I put a little extra olive oil on top of each cube to prevent the basil from turning black and funky. Brilliant!

To make life easier, I use those takeout containers that soup comes in when you order Chinese food to portion out lunches for the week. This way, I have no excuse not to pack my lunch because all I have to do is grab it and go.

Boom! Lunch!

 I also have the basil in a separate bag so I can just grab that, too!

Bag of non-suspicious green herbs

I hope you give quinoa a try and enjoy it as much as I do!

 So looking forward to nomming this tomorrow!

Italian-Style Quinoa

Makes four servings of ~1 cup each

1 cup uncooked quinoa, washed
1 can fat free, reduced sodium chicken broth (about 2 cups)
2 tbsp lemon juice

1/3 cup sun-dried tomatoes, soaked in warm water to soften and chopped
1/2 cup red onion, chopped
1/4 cup pine nuts
1 clove garlic, minced
1/8 tsp oregano
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper
1-2 tsp olive oil
1-2 tsp lemon juice
fresh basil, chopped

Place quinoa, chicken broth, and lemon juice in a medium saucepan. Bring to a boil. Lower heat to medium-low, cover and simmer until quinoa is tender and liquid is absorbed, about 18-20 minutes.

Meanwhile, toast the pine nuts in a skillet until they become fragrant and golden. Roughly chop the pine nuts.

Once quinoa is done cooking, add sun-dried tomatoes, red onion, pine nuts, garlic, and spices. Drizzle lemon juice and olive oil over the mixture and stir to combine. Add basil to quinoa just before eating to maintain freshness. Enjoy!

Week in Review

Happy Thursday, all! It's been a scattered week so far, and I've been negligent with my blog. Sorry, guys! I'll write a quick post to update all the goings on of the aforementioned scattered week.

Life

I went home to the great state of Pennsylvania this past weekend. As my mom's birthday was on Friday and Mother's Day was on Sunday, I thought it was a good excuse to go home for a few days. I haven't been home since the holidays. I actually didn't realize it had been that long. It's funny how we get so caught up in day to day life that all of a sudden, poof! five months have gone by. In addition to seeing my mom and dad (and my dog Lola!), I was also able to meet up with some friends from home. It also struck me how disconnected I've been from the East Coast. A lot of people seem like they haven't really left or have left and moved back. I guess I'm the one getting farther and farther away. Each move I've made has been further west. Pretty soon I'll have moved so far west that I'll be back in PA again!

We ate out a lot and ate lots of cake (ice cream cake! why waste time eating them separately when you can GET THEM TOGETHER?!) for my mom's birthday. We were also able to go to the Michener Art Museum where my parents are members to see a special exhibit Offering of the Angels, which features lots of Italian Renaissance art from the Uffizi gallery in Florence. Apparently, the Michener was one of only a handful of museums in the US to get this exhibit, so I felt really fortunate to be able to go see the works. The art was truly breathtaking. Renaissance art has such subtleties to it, which aren't often seen in more modern pieces. The exhibit also had a really nice audio tour, which I usually think are kind of hokey, but which was really insightful and informative.

This weekend, Andy and I are fleeing to the Cleve to see his sister graduate from Case Western Reserve University. All this travel is very exciting, but I'm definitely going to napping hardcore when I get home.

Grad School

I promised some more grad school-ish things in my updates, so here they are. Research has been super frustrating lately. I feel like for every moderate success I have, I have about 50 failures. That may sound somewhat pessimistic, but such is life. The grad student mentality must sound so funny if you aren't a grad student. "Hey, I just failed for the 30th time, so let me get started on way number 31 of trying to get this to work!" Ah, well. At least I can set my own schedule.

Today is arguably our department's banner event of the year: The Hilliard Symposium. This event consists of two keynote speakers and a bunch of twenty minute talks from the graduate students who are defending this year. The morning keynote was John Cahn, an ex-Northwestern affiliate who is a big wig in phase transformations in materials science. I was super excited to see someone speak who actually created something I've used in my classes. Euler? Fourier? Dead. Never going to meet them. But Cahn of the Cahn-Hilliard equation in the flesh? Magic! He gave a nice conversational talk that wasn't very technical, but instead chronicled his interactions with Hilliard and some research things. All in all, a very cool way to start the day.

Food!

ALSO in reading my blog roll, I saw this delicious Mexican mole dish over at What's Good at Trader Joe's? I LOVE mole sauce. Like, more than I can describe. I will be jumping over to my local TJ's. I still need to buy pork buns, too!

I hope everyone has a great weekend! See ya on the other side.

Pinata Results and Fun Things

Pinata Cookie Outcome

Hello, friends! I wanted to bring some closure to the weekend extravaganza of cooking and baking with the results of the pinata cookies. I'm sure you've all been waiting with bated breath for the results. Because I was a little uncertain about the dough in the original recipe, I decided to use a basic sugar cookie recipe for my cookies instead. Simple and makes 60(!) cookies. It gave me about 20 pinata cookies with a few spare cookies in case of breakage.

The pinata cookies became a bit more of an agglomeration of every holiday cookies. In theory, they are still true to the spirit of the pinata. Holiday #1 - Cinco de Mayo. However, they became a bit more conceptually abstract as the process progressed. As I mentioned before, I couldn't find mini M&M's anywhere (has anyone found them since?), so instead, I decided to use what we had in the pantry: red and green M&M's. Holiday #2 - Christmas.

Over the years, I've inherited a bunch of baking supplies from my grandma and have thus accumulated a LOT of cookie cutters. We're talking bags upon bags of cookies cutters. Among the bags, I discovered that I had concentric heart-shaped cookie cutters and decided to use these as the inspiration for my shapes. Holiday #3 - Valentine's Day. It also means that unlike in the original recipe, you can cut out all of your shapes before you bake and can take advantage of the symmetry of the cookies during assembly. Nice!

Heart-shaped cookie cutters

When the cookies were hot from the oven, I simply cut out a smaller middle heart in every third cookie. Each cookie requires a sandwich of three individual cookies. The side benefit of this procedure is a bunch of heart-shaped little cookies in addition to your big cookies!

Bonus cookies!

The cookies were assembled using a powdered sugar and milk "glue" that I applied between the layers. The middle cookie has the hole in it and contains the M&M pinata filling.

Almost too much cookie to handle

I ran out of time to make the snazzy stripes out of dough a la pinata, so I simply decided to add some visual interest with a pink, purple, and white powdered sugar/milk drizzle. It gave the cookies a nice modern look and a little extra sweetness. Ta da!

I would definitely attempt these cookies again with different shapes, colors, and fillings. I feel like they would be really fun additions to any summer party!

Fun Things

1. I love baseball. There's nothing quite like a cool summer evening in a ballpark with friends, a hot dog, and a beer. My department's graduate student organization hosted a baseball game this past Monday at Wrigley Field. Tickets were free from my department, and we had a bunch of people come out. It was a great time! AND the Cubs actually won! I've been to three Cubs games since moving to Chicago, and this is the first one I've been to where the Cubs were victorious. Also, the Cubs were running all kinds of promotions, so I was able to score a free Qdoba burrito and a free Dunkin' Donuts iced coffee. I basically got paid to go to this game. Awesome!
   
2. College and grad school have made me regress to my earlier days. In college, I resumed the long-forgotten tradition of napping. In grad school, I've begun eating Lunchables again. This made me wonder: whatever happened to peanut butter and celery? It's simple, classic, and not too unhealthy. Thus, in order to embrace my youth again, I made myself ants on a log for a snack from the celery I had left over from the bolognese sauce a week or two ago. However, since I'm not too keen on raisins, I used dried cranberries. I call it - fire ants on a log. The first grader inside me was jumping for joy.

I'll be updating with more research-y things in the coming days, but I hope you've gotten some inspiration from these baking and cooking ideas. Cheers until next time!

The Grad Student E-mail Decoder

I get an obscene amount of email each day. Only about 5% of it really requires my attention. Maybe 10% on a good day. Most of it is for talks or forwards from our department's staff telling me about irrelevant job openings or fellowship programs for international students/men/upper year students/anyone with traits other than the ones I possess. Sometimes, I even get three emails about the same talk or fellowship. Plus a reminder. Or four.

To save your time and mine, I have devised a decoder list of things to consider when contemplating whether an email is worth your time to act as a helpful guide to fend off the overwhelming tidal wave of email. Enjoy!

Sender

Your Department's Administrative Staff

• What to expect: Forwards that may or may not be relevant from professors who were too lazy to forward them on themselves.
• What should you do?: Skim and move on.

Project Cafe

• What to expect: Cryptic number strings. Messages regarding completed upgrades you had no idea were happening. 
• What should you do?: Does anyone actually know what these things are? Why do I need a digest of them? Ignore.

Can you break the code?

Advisor

• What to expect: Colons, brevity, and email signatures consisting exclusively of initials.
• What should you do?: Open it and read it, fool. This person gives you the cash monies. Scan for important words such "meeting," "results," and "data."

Bruce Lindvall

• What to expect: yellow highlighting, blue italicized text, or ALL CAPS ADDITIONS TO THE TOP OF AN ALREADY WRITTEN EMAIL FROM SOMEONE ELSE
• What should you do?: Create a filter to redirect these emails out of your main inbox. If you decide to open it now, brace yourself to be overcome by embedded images. Open to avoid having unread emails in your inbox. Scan for the phrase "free food." (see Food section below)

Bruce's emails are bursting with so much enthusiasm that it cannot be contained on your screen

Subject

"Seminar" or "Colloquium"

• What this means: A talk that is most likely irrelevant to your research is occurring anywhere from RIGHT THIS SECOND to six months from now.
• What should you do?: Assess the quality of food being offered. Determine whether seminar is required and attendance is being taken. If not required, determine desire to procrastinate that day's work in order to decide whether you should go or not.

"Workshop"

• What this means: You are expected to interact with other people in some way most likely involving networking, resume building, or sexual harassment training.
• What should you do? Determine if food is being offered. If not, ignore. If so, determine whether quality of food is worth potential interaction with other people.

Food

"Refreshments"

• What this means: Most likely cookies and mediocre coffee or Jewel Osco tea
• Likelihood of attending? 50-90% (higher percentage if the cookies are the sugar cookies with sprinkles from Einstein's)

These babies make it all worthwhile. Source

"Reception"

• What this means: Important personage are in town, and the university wants to up the ante. Fancy finger food and punch awaits!
• Likelihood of attending? 60% (reception = possible encounters with professors and/or distinguished guests. Only attend if food is known to be delicious and worth subjecting oneself to pithy banter.)

"Lunch"

• What this means: Deliciousness and a midday break from research. If coupled with "seminar," food will be provided with little or no effort required from you. Score!
• Likelihood of attending? Pizza: 75%, Other: 90% (will rearrange schedule if food offered is good enough)

University programs are what keep these guys in business. Source

Phew! Now that I've finally sorted through my emails and procrastinated a bit, it's time to return to the world of electron microscopy. Happy hump day!


Public Service Announcement: If you like books, coffee, traveling, and hearing insightful things about life in general, you should check out my lovely friend Heather's blog over at Wordpress. You'll be glad you did!

Current Obsessions

It's been a busy week here at Science and Cupcakes, so in the spirit of keeping things current, I thought I would try to smoosh all the goings on of the past week or two into one giant list of the things currently occupying space in my brain other than research. Brevity is the soul of wit. Or something.

1. Wisconsin

Andy and I took a really awesome trip to Door County, WI to do some wine tasting, hiking, and general relaxing to celebrate our anniversary. Door County is a neat little place that's sort of part Cape Cod, part New Hampshire, and part Midwest farming town. We made a few stops along the way like the Miller brewery in Milwaukee (free samples wooo!) and Lambeau Field  in Green Bay (cheeseheads wooo!). Basically, I didn't want to come back. I've been left with a small obsession with America's Dairyland. Cheese, beer, bratwursts, wine, and football? Awesome. 

Bonus sub-obsession: cheese curds

I don't know where these have been all my life, but now I am a cheese curd convert. Like mozzarella sticks but lighter. Yum! I need to find a good place in the Chicagoland area for these, stat. 

2. Trader Joe's

Having worked at Whole Foods Market for four years during high school and college, I was a little bit skeptical when Trader Joe's moved into my hometown. However, I have come to love, love, love Trader Joe's. Mandarin orange chicken? Premade pizza dough? Hummus?! AND I just discovered that they make PORK BUNS, too? Sign me up.

Note: Since I couldn't find the links on Trader Joe's website, the links are from one of my favorite food blogs, What's Good at Trader Joe's? Check it out if you want to drool over delicious things at Trader Joe's. 

3. Skinnytaste

I've been doing WeightWatchers for the past six months or so, and let me tell you, sometimes finding yummy recipes can be sort of difficult. Especially when I get home from work at 7 PM and don't really feel like moving anymore. Enter Skinnytaste, a blog that seems to have read my mind. Andy and I made this Bolognese sauce yesterday, which was absolutely fabulous. We've also made these spinach meatballs as well as our entire Super Bowl spread (potato skins, mozzarella sticks, and chicken nuggets, oh my!) from here. It's a really great website, even if you're not doing WW and just love tasty things that don't make you slip into a food coma after you eat them. NOM.

4. This video

Having spent a good part of this past weekend exploring the greater Lakeview area, this video speaks to me in a way others cannot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBXrTnw3oEc&noredirect=1

As one of my labmates pointed out, this video also conjures up images of a better time in another city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AVmq9dq6Nsg

EDIT: Let it be known that KYLE was the one who showed me this video. :)

Lab Commandments

We're closing in on the end of the first third of spring quarter, which means that even if I wanted to pretend that classes don't exist, I have to face reality. As I take fewer classes, a real problem becomes whether I will actually go to my classes. Not in the undergrad way of "uhhh, I don't WANT to go to class. I guess I'll skip." but more in the "oh crap, it's Tuesday? I forgot to go to class today because I was doing lab work." sort of way. I was even ten minutes late to my first class of the quarter because I FORGOT I was taking a class. I take this as a sign that I have completed the transition from undergraduate to graduate mentality. Hooray?


Another sign that I have made this transition is that I'm beginning to morph into a crotchety old grad student. I shake my fist at the young'uns. I haven't quite hit the "back in my day..." stage, but there's still plenty of time for that, so let's not rush things. One of the things that really burns my bagel is people who don't really know how to function in a laboratory with other people. *shakes fist* Things such as "sharing" and "communication" don't often translate from real life to lab life. As such, I have set out to create a set of Lab Commandments to encourage harmonious lab interactions. Here's a few to start:

The Lab Commandments

1. Thou shalt order replacement labware when thou notices that thy lab is lacking in its quantity.
2. Thou shalt not relocate thy neighbor's samples without thy neighbor's permission.
3. Don't touch my furnace. No, seriously. Back away right now. 
4. Honor thy lab's sign-up sheets.
5. Don't leave the undergrads alone with the chemicals. This goes for the postdocs, too.
6. Thou shalt label thy samples and clean up after oneself. 

That's only about one tablet's worth of commandments, but it's a start. Moses doesn't have any competition yet. Any other ideas for lab rules to live by?