Baking for a Chemistry Lab.

Our quantitative analysis chemistry lab has someone bring in baked goods every Monday.  This week it's my turn.

Here's what I plan to work with:

Apples
Pumpkin
Gluten-free (someone in the lab is gluten intolerant)

Simple to make for about 18 people.  I hope I'll figure it out soon.

Microbiology and diagonal cuts

I've heard that cutting chile peppers at a 45 degree angle makes for more flavorful cooking because it releases more of the oils from the pepper.

For those of you who've had the privilege of using a microscope to look at plant cells--for example, cells in an onion skin--once in a while looks rather rectangular if not trapezoidal.

Onion cells under a microscope!  Image credit to Lu Yi's Blog for biology on sachina.org

In a round-the-corner way, this brings us to a recurring topic on this blog: sandwiches. With exception to purposes of utilitarian eating and/or convenient preparation, I'm an advocate for diagonal sandwich slices.


For one, the shape of a triangle makes it automatically enticing--with all those angles, sharp corners on triangles are sometimes associated with dangerous things (heck, even all that italicizing looks slightly dangerous)--and yet most of the sandwiches we eat are devoid of danger in the form of laceration (HOWEVER, you may need be lively and watch out for food poisoning, diabetes, and/or obesity).


Two, and this is relevant to our "microbiology" section of this post, a diagonal cut exposes more surface area of a sandwich's insides.  Let us examine the following exchange about sandwiches as an analog to our exploration of plant cells.

"The amount of crust on a sandwich, he says, does not change, no matter how you cut it. But the amount of surface area without crust can change, depending on how many times you cut it and in which direction.


If your bread is square, and if each side is 4 inches long, you have 16 inches of crust. Cut that bread down the middle, and you get 8 inches of crust-free surface. Cut that same bread diagonally, [Paul] Calter [emeritus professor of mathematics at Vermont Technical College], calculates, and you end up with almost 11 inches of crustless surface. That's a substantial increase."(You an behold more glorious things about the triangular cut in sandwiches here: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120914097 )

Back to ruminations within this blog...
When cutting a pepper or any other plant cell, I suspect this has at least two advantages:


1. You're opening up more surface area per cell
2. You're more likely to cut open a cell from the get-go
3. (BONUS!!!) You've possibly made lots of little little little triangles if you assume most plant cells are somewhat rectangular due to their cell walls


Unfortunately, you've certainly killed a lot of cells, but that stuff happens when you're a heterotroph.  The best I can advise for this is to be respectful to your food and where/who/what it came from.




I hope I'll find my camera/a camera soon.  I finally started making foods worth photographing again.

Autumn flavors return

There's something about the autumn that makes my senses and imagination more acute and attuned to certain flavors.


Note that I've yet to make these combinations happen, but I'm convinced that they should work well (in theory at least)...


Here's a few that came to mind:
1) Butternut Squash soup with Curry.
Inspired by the aromas from an Ann Arbor Indian restaurant as I was walking on Maynard and Williams to the UM Undergraduate Library this past Saturday evening (the 29th).


2) Pumpkin+Apple bake (cinnamon is the common denominator for a pie or torte of sorts).


3) Pumpkin pie oatmeal with maple syrup and/or brown sugar. (an idea from last year, I still have yet to make this combination...)


The latter is decidedly very suburban--it was inspired by smelling an instant oatmeal packet being microwaved while I was working at the Engineering Society of Detroit.


Not quite related as I don't see this fitting in with the rest of the flavors or autumn, but this happened today and therefore shall be included in the list:


Pho with something on the side like dried pineapple slices with hummus. 


Dad made the vietnamese soup and I added a little too much Hoisin sauce (mostly sweet and a bit salty). This left me wanting something a bit more grounded, solid, and mellow in flavor.  Dried pineapple and hummus did the trick.

Bailey's and Butter Pecan Ice Cream

Suburban micro-adventure:

Bailey's lightly drizzled over butter pecan ice cream works well.

No photos this time, sorry, but it did taste good!

Disaster Averted Quiche

The house has several pounds of spinach sitting in the fridge, and some good cheese.
Since we had some eggs, I started making a quiche sans the pie crust.

I put three slices of butter into a pan, then covered it with olive oil, cajun seasoning (it was a good move), four eggs, two cheeses (Kiernan--kin to cheddar--and "Cheese Food Singles"--apparently the creators of American Cheese Singles at Land-O-Lakes found it irresponsible to consider them as real cheese). I started to add some milk and tried to fluff the egg mix a bit.

I then realized I had never cooked a quiche before, and had very little idea as to how one should make a quiche.

Thank goodness for the internet!

After a brief google search and a glance at several recipes, I realized I was supposed to bake the ingredients in some kind of grain-based carbohydrate substance.

Disaster averted, I added some pinto beans into the egg mix and carried on with my pan heating.

At the same time, I created a cavity inside of a cheap baguette, did some creative things with bread slices to hold the egg mix, dumped in the goodness, and put it in a toaster-oven.

Success!

Sprinkles and the New Year

I've been staying with my Godmother for the past few weeks and noticed a lonely bottle of sprinkles sitting on a rack in the pantry. Today, the first of the New Year, was the day I finally decided to put it to use.

It is perhaps the most juvenile concoction ever to have come to my mind: peanut butter, semisweet fudge, honey, and sprinkles on wheat bread.

I was going for a nutella/peanut butter type sandwich with sprinkles.  [side note: nutella contains palm oil, which very likely contributes to rainforest deforestation and habitat loss for orangutans among other things--I'm disappointed to find that it's in KitKat bars and used in Kar's Nut mixes too]

Since the fudge said semisweet, I reasoned that honey would be a good way to sweeten the deal.

The sprinkles contributed exquisite texture and color to the experience. The sandwich was acceptable, but really I'd rank it a 2 or 3 out of five. All in good fun, here's to 2011!