Home for a while

Arroyo Burro beach in Santa Barbara

Finally. Conferences are over for the time being, no experiments are planned, and I get to live in the apartment I’m half paying for. Coming home is always a bit of a relief these days, after so much time away. Don’t get me wrong — I’m a lucky, lucky girl in many respects, and the opportunity to travel is why I went into this field, at least in part, but I guess I’m getting to be a homebody in my old age. Hah.

It was a great trip, though. I got to visit a good friend (after years and years of promising — slacker me), eat fancy food, check out a place I used to call home, and see some family. And yes, there was a conference involved somewhere. I have lots to say about all of it, but I’ll save that for my next night shift, because tonight, I’m supposed to be writing (thesis, not blog, though this sort of counts as a warm up, don’t you think?).

For now, I thought I’d tell you that this freezes quite well (I had some for dinner tonight). I didn’t do so well on the less meat / less unnecessary food during the conference, because, well, it was a conference, and there wasn’t anything else to do but drink copious amounts of beer and eat pub food. But I’m back on track now, and am training for a 5 mile race, finally, as of today. It’s so good to be back, even if I only have a 2 mile easy run to my name thus far. I’m excited to have a goal that doesn’t involve a defense or scariness of any sort. Just a run around a beach in the freezing cold. Sound like fun to you? The race is one of those Thanksgiving Day affairs, where you run off your guilt before going home and using those miles as an excuse to have second helpings of everything.  I figure I will have saved enough foregoing trips to the local coffee house in time to justify the $18 I spent on the entry fee, and it’ll be a good way to start a day full of cooking. We usually invite lab folks who will otherwise starve on Thanksgiving Day (ha) and whomever else wants to show up over for a roast of some sort at our house, so it’ll be a sort of crazy day. But no matter — it’ll be fun regardless.

Stay tuned for the next post on Friday morning. Los Angeles, Solvang, Santa Barbara, Fresno, and Oakland are coming right up.

A bit of crunch

I wasn’t even going to post today. It’s been one of those weeks, yet again, where we have no bread in the house, a random assortment of groceries we’re unlikely to get to, and a few too many takeout bills. But the lure of blog-related procrastination is a bit too much for me, it seems. Especially when I have a research proposal to write (due tomorrow!) for an experiment I’m not sure I’ll have time to do.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that this isn’t a real post. It’s just a place to share a few thoughts, and a recipe I wasn’t really sure I was going to share (notice the lack of prep photos?).  If you only have time to read one thing, check out Nathaniel Johnson’s article on raw milk in Harper’s Magazine (which I found via Bitten). It touches upon the history of pasteurization, what kind of farmers pasteurization regulations are actually trying to protect us from, and all in all, presents a pretty scary picture of the industrial dairy industry in this country. For the record, I’ll take my grass-fed raw milk from the friendly local farmer at the farmer’s market, thanks. Luckily, I have that choice here in Connecticut.

Otherwise, today was one of those days where it rains and rains until you think it’s never going to stop, and then transforms itself into a glorious, crisp evening, with streaming sunlight, chirping birds, and all sorts of other gorgeous signs of spring. The tulips even opened up, after a two-day hiatus. So what did I do? I went for a run, in my new, very funny looking shoes. I think they’re kind of hilarious, and I’m certain I look like a bit of a circus act running in them, but normal shoes seem to cause me trouble, so I thought I’d give them a try. They’re comfortable, and kind of awesome — provided you don’t spend too much time on concrete.

All this faux-barefoot running takes me back to about 18 years ago now, when I’d run around my grandmother’s neighborhood like a hoodlum, without shoes or fear of anything but the boy down the street that I sort of had a crush on (but only because I’d kissed his cheek when we were playing house one day, and it seemed appropriate somehow).  I’d run and run, playing pirates or princesses or some other nonsense, until it was time to go home for dinner, and I had to be coaxed into the car for the trip home. If I had been cooking back then, I think this jicama salad would have been the perfect antidote to a long day of playing pretend in the burning San Joaquin valley sun.