For Science!

I’ve tried to go to Harvard Square two other times before and — no joke — each time I accidentally got on the T going the wrong direction. I’m just so used to going into Boston!

After Rae and I managed to make it there, we spent a couple of hours power-walking around the crowds of students and tourists (we can’t stand to walk slowly!) We spent some time browsing the Harvard Book Store, walked past a wedding, looked at consignment shops, and drank apple cider. We got hungry, so Rae introduced me to Border Cafe where I had my first ever empanada. Maybe I had never seen a vegetarian version before, or maybe I am just very dedicated to burritos, but I can’t believe I have been missing out on these all my life! Yum! Unfortunately all the empanadas put me in a food coma and I didn’t accomplish much aside from weeping profusely at the finale of the fourth season of Doctor Who!

I guess our exploration of Harvard Square wasn’t that adventurous, but it’s hard to believe how nice the weather still is! Just walking around outside is nice (though it doesn’t make for very interesting blogging…).

Our parents came to visit us this weekend for Columbus Day. Rae and I had been scouring Groupon for good things to do/places to eat. We used one at an Indian restaurant (Mela). They had a “vegetarian dinner for two” that was a good deal and came with all the extra stuff that I like (samosas, raita, and even dessert!). Yum!

A few weeks ago Rae and I had come across and ad for the show Two Kids, One Hall which featured two of the five members of the Canadian sketch comedy group The Kids in the Hall (Scott Thompson and Kevin McDonald). We were determined to see it because we’ve loved KitH since high school. Since they were only in town for one night, we convinced our parents to come too. Big mistake! We had already seen the group live and we’d been to Scott Thompson’s one-man show, so we thought we know what to expect: a little stand up, some monologues, and sketches. Turns out it was all stand up, which was fine. What was extremely awkward was that Scott talked about only the most racially charged and sexually explicit topics you can imagine! Not the kind of show you want to bring your parents to! Kevin’s material was less offensive, but he sang several overly-long songs that didn’t make any sense. Luckily our parents were good sports about the whole thing (at least one group in the not-packed theater walked out in the middle). Personally, I feel like I can handle the shocking content, but wasn’t even all that funny! Very disappointing. 😦 I’ll have to watch “Journey to the Top of the Stairs” a bunch of times to console myself!

On Sunday we used another Groupon at the MIT Museum. We thought it was really interesting: and nice combo of art and science and MIT history. Also, apparently Lady Gaga went there, so you know it’s cool. Plus I wanted to buy everything in their adorable gift shop! After that we went to Toscanini’s for ice cream — Mom had been determined to go ever since Rae told her that they have a malted vanilla flavor. Sadly, they didn’t have it that day, but she was happy with toasted coconut too. I got salty caramel and could barely eat one scoop! It was practically as thick as real caramel! Later, we ordered pizza from The Upper Crust and Dad helped us hang some pictures and the magnetic knife rack. Now we have a whole bunch of knives stuck to the wall, so no one had better sneak up on us!

So my convoluted vegan experiment is over today! In the end, the whole thing lasted 40 days: 31 as a vegan and 9 days where I fell off the wagon because I was visiting family or friends were visiting me. Not too shabby.

In the end, I don’t think I will become a full-time vegan, though I have nothing but respect for those who can stick to it! Eating this way has definitely been good for me, though. I ate a lot more vegetables and legumes than normal and a lot less dessert. I didn’t miss the extra sprinkle of cheese here and there, but there were a few things that I craved. Mostly dessert (of course) and, weirdly, seven-layer taco dip. I really want some taco dip for some reason!

I’ll probably indulge in the taco dip, but I can definitely see myself doing a similar challenge (with the same wishy-washy rules) again in the future.

You can probably tell from this post and the previous one that Rae and I are trying to get out every weekend while the weather is still nice! This weekend we saw a bit of Jamaica Plain, which is a neighborhood south of the downtown area. We took the orange line all the way out of Forest Hills and walked north along South St. and Centre St. Besides having a pleasant walk, the main goal for the afternoon was to find something cute and fall-appropriate at one of the thrift stores along the route. We had some luck at Boomerangs where we each bought a wool skirt that needs hemming and I bought a cute sweater dress for cheap.

We had some lunch at The Real Deal, which I like even though I find their menu board really hard to read. It’s a combination of the small writing and the fact that every sandwich is named after a person. I’m never quite sure what I’m ordering, but luckily I received the hummus wrap I wanted and not a meatball sub or something. Later we drank a double espresso at City Feed and Supply and watched people out the window (and then looked away and tried to pretend we hadn’t been looking at them when they caught us).

When we got home, Rae got to work on the skirt that she bought. I wish I had taken a “before” photo of what it used to look like, because she managed to change it from ridiculous 80s disaster into something extremely cute and wearable. First she hemmed it from calf-length to knee-length, which already made a huge difference. Then she decided to change the ugly-ish yellow color by dying it in a bucket in the bath tub. She kind of winged it with the dye, but it ended up an awesome dark purple. Now she has a fancy wool skirt for $5 and the cost of a box of dye. I’m very impressed!

If you’re wondering what I’ve done to my skirt, I haven’t even gotten started. To be honest, I don’t even know how to do a proper hem, but at least the skirt is grey, so no dying will be necessary. Whew!

Today, Rae and I went to Manchester, NH on a whim. We had seen some of the brick factory-like buildings from the highway while driving by that way. I actually expected it to be more of a touristy town with little shoppes — which must be pronounced “shop-ees” in order to be suitably quaint. It wasn’t overly quaint, but it was still nice to walk around on a beautiful day. Next time I probably wouldn’t go on a Sunday, though, because what shoppes there were were mostly closed!

Town hall was quite pretty. From a distance, we thought it was a church.

This fellow is apparently named John Stark. The whole street was named Stark Street, in fact. Rae and I have been reading too much A Song of Ice and Fire.

I told Rae to go in that phone booth so I could take her photo.

And this was the unhappy face she gave me after she realized it smelled strongly of urine in there.

This weekend my friend Martha visited me for the first time since I moved. We did a lot of fun touristy things like the Freedom Trail and the aquarium, but we also spent a fair amount of time baking because that’s just how we roll. Martha brought a book of macaron recipes for us to try out. She, Rae and I tasted French macarons for the first time this past spring when we were in Paris, and they were amazing (they were from Ladurée, so we went straight to the source!). I’ve been borderline obsessed with them for a long time and since we’re both experienced bakers, we thought we would try our hand at making our own. You can probably tell by the post title that it didn’t go exactly as expected.

You can find plenty of macaron recipes on the internet, but the one we used called for some pretty complicated ingredients that were unlike anything else I’d baked before. Stuff like ground almonds and caster sugar, which I had to google before we went to the grocery store. We managed to find a box of caster sugar and ground up our own almonds in the food processor. We decided to go with a chocolate cookie in order with a chocolate ganache filling to keep things simple, but the dark chocolate cocoa powder in the cookie seemed to suck all the moisture out of the batter. Our batter ended up so thick it could barely be piped!

Martha says the piping bag looks like the lung in a smoking PSA.

The end result. Not quite like the photos on the cover.

So instead of lovely, delicate pastries we ended up with ugly chocolate lumps. All was not lost, though, because they actually tasted quite good. They didn’t really taste like the macarons, but sort of like a chewy brownie. In fact, we took to calling them maca-brownies to make ourselves feel better. On the plus side, the ganache came out perfectly, so our baking egos aren’t bruised too badly.

Now I’ve got macarons on the brain, so I’ll have to check out some of the macaron purveyors of Boston!

I’m not going to give a whole PSA in favor of blood donation (which is not to say that I won’t be writing one in the future). Suffice it to say that I am in favor of it! When I lived in Binghamton, I was in the donation office so often that I  knew all of the technicians by name. Unfortunately, the reason I was in there so much was because I almost always failed my test for iron levels. But, undaunted, I would come back week after week for as long as it took before I was able to donate. To give you an idea of how much it was: I was only about to donate about three times in a year!

Anyway, the point is that I’m dedicated to blood donation! Since I donated right before I left Binghamton, today was my first donation since coming to Boston. I went to the center at 276 Tremont (soon to be relocating) and everyone was very nice. After how much I loved the Johnson City staff, I was nervous that their shoes would be too big to fill, but apparently the Red Cross only employs extremely nice people. I can tell that this staff and I will be BFFs soon.

The woman taking my vitals let me know that the area has a critical need for platelets and asked if I would consider platelet donation. Your typical blood donation (what they call “whole blood”) only takes 15 minutes or so, but platelet donation is quite different and takes several hours. The needle that they put in your arm looks the same, but it’s actually connected to two tubes that are connected to an apheresis machine. The blood gets taken out of your arm and goes into the machine where a centrifuge spins it around really fast. The components of the blood are separated by density and the desired part (in my case, platelets) is filtered out The rest of your blood is pumped back into your vein through the same needle. Pretty cool!

I had never donated platelets before, but since I passed the iron test, and I didn’t have any pressing appointments, I decided to give it a try. My honest assessment: I will do it again, but it’s not my favorite feeling in the world. Because they’re taking your blood out, running it through a machine and then putting it back into your vein, they add an anticoagulant to prevent clotting. The side effect is that it makes you feel really cold. Naturally, they warned me about this ahead of time, but I guess the unseasonably warm weather made me forget how much I hate being cold! Blech! The feeling was really pervasive and made me groggy, whereas I normally feel fine after a whole blood donation.

On the plus side, they gave me several blankets to snuggle in, hot from the dryer, and all the snacks I could eat. The staff kept checking on me to make sure I didn’t need anything. They set up a TV for me to watch a movie (I chose Blazing Saddles). The entire appointment from the time I walked in to the time I walked out was about three hours, but the time passed pretty quickly. The needle they used seemed normal: a sharp pinch at first, but then you hardly feel it (though you can’t move your arm for a long time). I also has a little bit of cramping in my legs, but they fixed me right up by giving me some Tums to chew on. Next time they’ll give it to me beforehand to ward off cramps before they start.

Your blood regenerates much faster after platelet donation than whole blood, so I’ll be able to donate again in two weeks. I have a feeling it will go much better this time, since I’ll know what to expect.

I’m experimenting with veganism lately. I have a 30 before 30 list (inspired by this project) and going vegan for a month is on it. Unfortunately, as much as I think veganism is a healthy and sustainable diet, the challenge has been tough for me (though maybe not for the reason you’d think).

For a long time (as in over 15 years), I was a vegetarian who also ate fish. Last year I mostly cut the fish out, only indulging once in a while when going out for sushi or when someone cooked fish especially for me and I didn’t want to be rude. So far eating as a vegan at home has been really easy — it’s barely any different from what I would normally be eating. The problem is when I try to eat outside the house. I guess I’m not 100% committed, because I can’t bring myself to inconvenience anyone for the sake of my vegan challenge. I go with my friends to regular restaurants (not vegan ones, since I’m not sure they would like it) and I try my best to order something vegan. Unfortunately, sometimes it’s out of my control — like when the plain pasta I ordered the other day came out with a ton of cheese already on it. I’m not about to make the waiter throw out a perfectly good plate of food because of an experiment. Also, when people cook for me, like my parents did on a recent trip to my hometown, I want to insist on a separate meal. Though I was at least partial motivated by not wanting to miss out on the goat cheese and roasted tomato penne with nutella smores for dessert!

I might sound hopefully un-assertive, but I promise that if I was going to be vegan full-time then I would warn all my friends and family. I managed it just fine when I became a vegetarian at the tender age of 11. If the pasta in the restaurant scenario above had be slathered in meat sauce, I wouldn’t hesitate to ask for another one. But for a 30-day challenge, it seems like overkill.

So the verdict is that I can definitely complete 30 days of veganism… I’m just not sure if they will be 30 days in a row. That’s probably cheating, but it’s my 30 before 30 list so I’ll cheat if I want! So far I’m at 10 days vegan, 5 days not, and I’ve only ever caved because of friends/family (not because I felt like eating an ice cream cone that day). In the meantime, here is my vegan chocolate chip cookie recipe that I adapted. I had a lot of fun reading about the chemistry of vegan baking. The butter is pretty easy to replace with oil, but since eggs are leavening agents, you need something to make the cookies puff up. In the vegan recipes, they often use baking powder and a little vinegar for leavening. The apple sauce is to replace the egg’s wetness. Interesting!

Megan’s Vegan Cookies
A combination of my normal (and amazing) non-vegan recipe and this vegan recipe I found on YouTube. These taste just like those Freihofer’s chocolate chip cookies but bigger and fluffier and, thus, better.

1 cup brown sugar
½ cup white sugar
½ tsp salt
2 tsp baking powder
2 cup all purpose flour
2/3 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp vanilla extract
½ cup applesauce
1 tbsp vinegar
1-2 cup vegan chocolate chips (some normal brands are accidentally vegan, google and check the labels)

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Mix the dry ingredients together in a big bowl. Mix the wet ingredients together in the measuring cup that you used to measure the oil. Add the wet to the dry and stir with a wooden spoon until combined (don’t use a mixer). Add as many chocolate chips as you like. Line the baking sheets with parchment paper and portion out the cookies (makes 20-30). Bake for 15-20 minutes until they’re just barely turning brown. Scarf them down (well, let them cool off first).

Today I took a day trip to New York City to meet my Parisian friend, A. who was in town for vacation. Online dating notwithstanding, A. is the only person I have gotten to know online before meeting IRL. We first bonded on LiveJournal because we were both studying chemistry (she is a chemical engineer), because I was studying French and she <i>is</i> French, and because we shared a love of the same TV shows.

We decided to check out the American Museum of Natural History. I used to go there fairly often when I was a kid, but a lot of things are different than I remember. The dinosaurs and prehistoric animals area is much improved, based on my vague memories. But on the other hand, is it just me or is the blue whale hanging from the ceiling in the Oceans exhibit not the same one that was there twenty years ago? I kind of miss the old one — it never gave me the impression that it was diving toward the floor in order to suck me into its baleen.

One thing that hasn’t changed in the Ocean exhibit is “the squid and the whale” as referenced in that movie with Jeff Daniels. That exhibit looks exactly the same as it did when I was a little kid, and it still freaks me out just as much! Something about how dark it is in there makes me feel like the diorama goes on forever. Looking at it gives me the same sense of vertigo that I felt when I was snorkeling in the real ocean in the deep water where I couldn’t see the bottom. I get creepy chills just thinking about it! (The real ocean, not the exhibit. It is only a diorama after all!).

Another section that hasn’t changed is my favorite exhibit: the minerals and gems. In fact, from the looks of it, I wouldn’t be surprised if it hadn’t changed since the seventies! I have always loved rocks better than animals. In the third grade I did a science project where I took photos of all the minerals in the exhibit that struck my fancy and my parents had them developed into slides. Does anyone even remember slides? This was in the days before PowerPoint! For my project I presented the slides with blurb that I had researched and written about each mineral. At the time I thought I wanted to be a geologist, but I think I compromised pretty well by studying materials science and crystal structure. I get to learn about rocks and chemicals at the same time!

I did my graduate work in Binghamton, NY so I lived in the area for six years. In the summer of 2006 we had a really bad flood, though it hardly affected me personally. We didn’t get any flooding in the apartment where I lived and none of my friends had anything worse than a slightly soggy basement. The university campus was also fine, but because there was a state of emergency in the area, I had to take two days off from work (something about not wanting us to work in chemistry labs when all the emergency personnel are off campus). While there was certainly a lot of damage, I mostly remember it as “those couple of days when I couldn’t do any experiments”.

Now the record flooding from 2006 is being beaten by even worse flooding going on now. Due to a bad combination of the saturated ground from Irene and days of heavy storms, Binghamton and the surrounding area is under feet of water. I don’t live there anymore, yet I feel like it’s affecting me much more this time. A lot of my friends in the area are teachers who had barely gotten the first week started before all the schools closed down. One friend was evacuated from her neighborhood, and another had her house fill with over a foot of water. The photo above (credit to Bill Walsh and http://www.wbng.com) shows the downtown area. You can barely distinguish the rivers from the streets!

I’m wishing everyone in the area a speedy recovery! Stay dry!