pasta with good stuff

Mid Simmer

it always takes me a while to get through all of the recipes that people send to me. this is undoubtedly related to my dislike for having to grocery shopping too often. but, i did finally get to this little gem that my mom sent to me not too, too long ago.  the ingredients were almost all things that i had anyway, save for the italian tomatoes. the really good news is that using the wheat noodles adds both flavor and health benefits. AND, except for the cheese, this is a saturated fat-free meal. which is good for those of you watching blood pressure and cholesterol (*hint, hint*). it's easy, super yummy, and makes quite a bit, so you'll have leftovers to bring to work with you (although it would be really easy to halve, if you're cooking for 1 and don't enjoy leftover pasta).

angel hair pasta with tomatoes, basil, and parmesan cheese
1 box pasta
3 tsp EVOO
1 garlic clove, minced

Yum!

1 28-oz can Italian tomatoes
1/2 tsp. crushed red pepper (more never hurts :)
1 tbsp clopped italian parsley
3 tbsp fresh basil, chopped
1/2 c. grated parmesan cheese

Cook pasta as directed on packaging. Heat oil in large skillet. Add garlic and saute until golden. Add tomatoes and pepper and simmer 5-10 minutes. Drain pasta and add to skillet. Add herbs and mix well. Add parmesan cheese, mix well, and serve.

roller derby, etc.

The Reservoir Dolls

i gave roller derby a second go-round this weekend. the first time in harrisburg was so much fun, i went with lauren, who is a grad student in hill's lab, her fiance kristopher, and four other friends that represented various degrees of graduate student and nongraduate student. as you might be able to tell, this venue was a little bit bigger. i think at the end of the night, they said that 15,000 people had attended (a number that is still pretty tough for me to believe). there were two bouts the night that we were there. the first half of both bouts were terrific. lots of action, lots of falling/knocking people down, lots of neck-and-neck scores. somehow this always gave way to a second half blowout. . . this was less fun to watch. still, i must say that for $10, it was a heck of a deal. this included a full night of entertainment, which actually shouldn't discount the between-bout hat contest. it was quite the evening.

the hat contest.

the rest of the weekend was fairly uninteresting. i had planned on doing  a lot of work. in actuality, i ended up doing only a small portion of what i had intended, both because i felt lazy and because the part that i did do ended up taking way longer than i had thought that it would. i should know by now that this is just how things work. . .progress always feels slow because you think you can do things about 3 times faster than you actually can. my optimism keeps getting the better of me, though. and i am both surprised and disappointed when things don't quite come together as quickly as i originally intended for them to. ah, well. such is life. this will be one of the important things that i learn as a post doc.

this week has felt very busy already for some reason. lauren and i were partners who presented at the emotion group meeting last night. today the emotion class that i'm sitting in on met in the afternoon, and tomorrow is wednesday already. the emotion group and emotion class are all related to the training grant that i'm on here. the group meets once each month and discussions are centered around journal articles that are chosen by the week's presenters. the class meets on tuesday afternoons. for this, the students (grad students & post docs) are divided into groups and take turns presenting on pre-selected articles. the articles are actually centered around the researchers that will be the presenters at the wisconsin emotion symposium in april. when the time of the symposium comes along, the students act as discussants following the talks of the presenters. my group presented last week on work by Kerry Ressler, some of which is discussed in this video; i know nothing more about this work than what i read in the articles, but it does seem very interesting.

what i would really like to accomplish this week is to get the bulk of some paper revisions (that i am working on with jenae, whose new website is up) completed and to put the final touches on a paper that we are hoping to send out of hill's lab for review very, very soon! the rational part of me says that i should remember that i am still waiting on feedback for the second of the two papers, so the timing of that may be out of my control. however, the optimist in me insists that both of these things are very doable. we'll see.

either way, i am headed to minneapolis tomorrow to visit karen. i am saving myself both money and lost work time and taking the megabus. for one low rate, i get a bus ride from UW to the twin cities that comes complete with wireless internet (seriously, how do they do that?)! i'll try to remember to take pictures.

happy day of love, everyone!

so fluffy!!!

has everyone seen despicable me already? i didn't really think that it looked like something that i was going to be interested in, but it is really cute. especially the littlest girl. she seems to be able to make me laugh every single time. tell me this doesn't at least get a giggle out of you:

so cute! i haven't been this endeared to an animated character since meet the robinsons came out. it's pretty adorable.

lasagna

well, i'm just starting to not be sore anymore from the rock climbing adventure. which is not a complaint so much as it is a statement of shock at how out of shape i am. perhaps it's time to really get going again on the p90x light. and maybe finish all 90 days this time. we'll see. . .

one thing i did get done on sunday post-rock-climb but pre-not-being-able-to-move was to cook a lasagna and boil some eggs (yes, for those of you who are wondering, my oven is fixed - yay!). i know that seems like an odd combination, but once you add in apples and and baked lays,  really it means that my lunches (egg salad sandwiches, an apple, and chips) and dinners (lasagna) are taken care of for the week. given that i've used up my subway gift cards from Christmas, it's been really nice.

i had actually been thinking that i should share more of the recipes and music that i'm coming across these days, as everyone can use a good tune and a delicious-tasting, low-cholesterol recipe once in a while, right? so, let's start with lasagna (although note that i added fresh mushrooms and crushed red pepper on each layer, which was delicious. and i would probably add less spinach if i knew i was going to be reheating it, since it's not very good warmed up). i have no recollection of where i got this recipe. but in the spirit of full disclosure, i did not make it up.

Vegetarian Lasagna

Ingredients: 16 oz. firm tofu
                        1/2 c. grated parmesan
                        2 eggs
                        3 garlic cloves, minced
                        8 oz shredded mozzarella
                       32 oz tomato or spaghetti sauce
                        4 oz (2 c.) fresh prewashed baby spinach
                        2 T each minced fresh basil, oregano, &
                            thyme (or 2tsp each dried)
                       cooked lasagna noodels (about 10 - 12)

To make:      Heat oven to 375 degrees. Combine tofu, parmesan, eggs, garlic, herbs, and pepper (to taste) in a medium bowl. Lightly coat a 13"x9" baking dish with vegetable cooking spray. Spread with about 1 cup of sauce. Arrange 1 layer of noodles on top. Spread with 1/2 of the tofu mixture, top with 1/2 the spinach, 1/2 of the remaining sauce, and 1/3 of the mozzarella. Repeat layers, ending with noodles, sauce, and mozzarella. Cover with aluminum foil and bake 30-35 minutes. Let stand 5 minutes before cutting.

You can cut even more fat and cholesterol by using soy cheese, but i won't ask for too much to happen at once :) It really is delicious, I promise! Notice how I couldn't even remember to take a picture before cutting into the final product :)

san diego etc.

so, another month has begun. i am finally starting to feel like the holidays are over; most notably, that the head-spinning rush associated with every holiday season has finally subsided. it helps that i currently possess zero plane tickets for trips to be taken in the next months. that's not to be saying that i won't be heading to ohio at some point, but at least i don't have plans to get on a plane anytime soon. yay. although this makes me uncertain where i'll be getting my crossword puzzles from. i guess the student newspaper will have to do.

Room View of the San Diego Sunset

for many reasons, i'm incredibly grateful that it has been forty degrees for the majority of the last week. not the least of these reasons is because it would have been a ridiculous adjustment to try to go from san diego's pseudosummer to a subzero winter back in madison. matt and i had a lovely trip to SoCal, staying several days near the gaslap district, and having a view of the bay that was absolutely lovely no matter what time of day you looked at it.

Every brunch should come with fresh kiwi

we also got some time in with josh, becca, cole, and even yuna, christine, erika, and all of the missouri folk that we find ourselves seeing much less frequently than we would like to. we found ourselves in an area that seemed to always have fresh fruit, perfectly rip avocados, and fish tacos, and a perfect poblano sauce that i would swear could be eaten with almost every meal. seriously, look at this fruit that came with my brunch. i can't even explain to you how excited i was. i have always considered myself a lover of northern-california things, but i must admit that the time i spent in san diego made me question whether i could exist in a SoCal locale. i don't have a lot of other stories from san diego. matt was conferencing and i was working in the hotel for most of the trip. but i do have a few more pictures that i will just continue to scatter throughout the blog.

San Diego

the drama of the last four weeks was definitely an issue with my car. it was stuck. . . well "stuck." i had originally thought the problem was the 6" of snow that we got in the span of a couple of days and my lack of driving it (i.e., scooping it out) with enough frequency to prevent it being snowed in by the elements. SO. . . ever the problem solver, i went and got myself a shovel and freed my car from the walls of snow surrounding it on three sides. as it turns out, the real problem was that it was sitting a on a thick sheet of ice. this, of course, meant that no amount of wheel spinning was going to get me free. it seemed like a really ridiculous problem to have, but nevertheless was not an easy one to resolve. luckily, there have been enough above-freezing days in a row now that i was able to back out of my parking space on thursday, get myself some groceries, and feel like a normal human being again. i still do most of my traveling on the bus. i just like the security of knowing that if i need to get across town, it isn't going to mean an extra half an hour of travel time, bus changing, and frequent stops.

View of S.D. and Petco Park from a Rooftop Bar

i am finishing up my first manuscript here at uw, hoping to submit it for review sometime in the next week. i feel like i should have about three of these under my belt at this point, but i have learned that nothing ever moves quite as quickly as one hopes. often times, it is nobody's fault; it is simply a product of the time things take and our own inabilities to predict what the duration of any one project will be. but hopefully this is the start of many months of productivity ahead. keep your fingers crossed.

today i am heading out with paula and a few others to take advantage of a groupon deal that came through in january. for $5, we will be scaling the indoor walls of boulder's climbing gym. i'm pretty sure that i haven't done any version of climbing since cj took us out to one of the state parks in PA. it was a good time, though. and it's a chance to meet a few new people - someone has started a google group & mailing list for the post docs here, which is where this groupon-oriented event began.  it should be interesting! i'll fill you in on it later.

happy super bowl sunday, everyone! and have a wonderful week.

Follow-up and words of wisdom

this isn't a full-scale blog entry per se, but i did have two things to add from today. the first is that i somehow forgot to mention that during my travels back i ended up in the airport sitting back-to-back with a man who was transporting. . . birds. yep, some sort of noisy, crate-like contraption filled with what i assume were baby chicks (although at this point, i think that everyone knows i am a terrible identifier of animals, despite dr. weihe's best efforts and a modest A- in my "diversity of life" class ["but paul you say. . . "] only karen will understand that reference, but the amount that she will appreciate it makes it totally worth it. . . ). as you'll notice by the picture, too much noisy chirping results in some sort of pop-can-crate-resembling lid being closed over said carrier contraption. i'm sure those baby chicks learned their lesson.

the second point - more a passing along of words of wisdom - come from a friend of mine (and amazing writer), who posted a blog today about the continuing need for us to think carefully about the words we use when we're talking. even if we think we're being casual, words have real meanings and taking a second to think about what it is that you mean vs. what you are saying can save a number of people hurt feelings and heartache. her post is here, and was (i think) inspired by another beautifully written piece written and posted here (make sure you read all the way to the bottom on both, not only because the message is both well-articulated and important, but also because you are rewarded with pictures of adorable children). i know that a few years ago, a couple of my nieces & nephews heard me correct them on the usage of this term. i think these writings articulate better than i ever have where such corrections come from. this reminds me of another choose your words carefully campaign currently making its rounds on tv. . .

okay, back to work. i'm thinking of rewarding myself with a baby ruth in a few more minutes. . .

happy new blogyear

Madison's first snow back in December

i can't believe that it's already been 4 weeks since my last post. although i kind of can given the way that december flew by. i kind of keep forgetting that classes are out, it's winter, there's a new year, etc. maybe it's been the lack of snow (save for today, of course). or perhaps it's been the lack of lack of work (yeah. . .take a minute with that one). or maybe it was the insane travel schedule between october and now. whatever it is, there has been a strange sentiment to this holiday. though going home for Christmas and spending the last week and half in ohio were no less wonderful than any other year.

Hawkeye Slippers

the time at home was great. there's something about going home, as everyone knows. there is also something about being able to drive home (rather than travel there on a plane) that is also pretty delightful. that's been pretty great this year. i only spent a few days at home this year, both because a lot of stuff is going on in the lab (note: one needs to be extremely productive in the year before applying for jobs. . .) and because i don't need to go 6-8 months in between trips home anymore, which kind of rocks. my sister amy is still in florida, so i didn't get to see her or her family, but i did get to see mom and dad, dy, kassi, gabe, and izacc. presents were opened, games were played, and lots (LOTS!) of food was eaten. i really loved all of my thoughtful gifts this year, but best present had to be these oversized, stuffed slippers that kassi gave to my dad. both because she she bought them and because he wore them. which generally equates to two of the best people and one of the best gifts ever.

i spent a few days working back in madison before heading to ohio. i actually flew out the same day that a bunch of badger fans were headed to the bowl game. everyone at the airport was kind of adorable. lots of extra signs were up to help people (although this girl found them to make everything way more confusing at 5 am), everyone everywhere was wearing red, and amazingly excited and peppy airport workers were setting up a makeshift bloody mary bar/baked goods stand one gate over from mine. i can't imagine wanting a bloody mary or a cinnamon roll before 8 am, but i appreciate the sentiment.

matt and i really didn't do much in ohio, which it turned out was just the time together that we both needed. we did spend a few nights with some of his coworkers, i met another of his high school friends during new years eve, and we (of course) tried our hand at a few new recipes. matt had found a recipe for spring rolls and gotten some peanut sauce from the local grocery store. as it turns out, spring rolls are really hard to. . . well, roll. as it turns out, those little wrappers are really sticky. or maybe you all already knew that. i did not. and although i tried several different techniques, i never quite perfected it. the way to go may have been matt's way of selecting a single technique and sticking with it - trying to get it right. his ended up looking slightly better than mine, i think. but the pad thai that i put together later that week also looked and tasted pretty good. so. . . i would say that we're even, right? although i don't have a picture with them that is as adorable as this one of matt and the finished spring rolls. *ho hum*.

the only truly unfortunate part of the trip (aside from having to leave, of course) was that right around friday i started developing my first cold of the winter. it was pretty spectacular friday and saturday, which probably made me less fun than i might have been otherwise on the day that we went to lancaster with peggy, but thankfully ebbed a bit on monday so that my head didn't explode on the flight home. i'm not going to lie, it's been stuffy over the course of the last few days, but i'm hoping that i'm on my way to bouncing back after avoiding going out in the wintery mess today (and yes, that parking space that i rented two months ago is totally paying for itself right now). so, keep your fingers crossed.

Winter = Veggie Chili!

now i have several weeks of just being a person and working for the next few weeks. for some reason, this sounds kind of delightful to me. i need to go get groceries at some point, but i'm not interested in all of the work that it would take me to dig my car out right now. if i ever didn't think that public transportation was important for environmental reasons, the conveniences that i have been provided by the bus system in madison would be enough to convince me. the only problem tends to be that i buy giant containers of water (my tapwater. . . and apparently all of the tapwater on the isthmus. . . is gross) that i keep in my fridge - and these are not things that i want to schlep around on the bus.

also, i think most of you know this, but i definitely bought my wedding dress last month. it's beautiful, i love it, it was on sale, and after a brief moment in which i thought it had slipped through my fingers, i bought it (or rather, mom and dad bought it. thanks mom and dad!) so, now it has been added to the things that i'm hoping is covered by my renter's insurance.

okay, i think that is a long enough post for now. plus, the only picture that i have left is the one that matt took of the my hair from the back so that i could see what it looked like (yeah. . . i asked him if he was still sure that he wanted to get married and he said yes :) EXCEPT to say happy birthday to my big sister, dyanna. how often do i actually post on someone's birthday?!

it's going to be a(nother) big year. happy 2012, everyone!