This one's for the ladies

The ladies of twitter, that is!* I was chatting earlier this evening with the lovely @Geeka, @biochembelle, @Gerty-Z, @enniscath, @modernscientist, and @_modscientist_ (DIFFERENT PEOPLE!) about the beauty that is gin.

I love gin. Now, gin is not something whose taste appeals to everyone right away--it's somewhat acquired, and it needs to be done right. But when it is done right, it adds a dimension to cocktails to which no vodka could ever come close.  With the obvious exception of the bloody mary, vodka does not touch Dr. Becca's lips. It does not please me.

Anyway, all that ginny tweeting made me thirsty, and so I decided to make one of my absolute favorite gin cocktails--the Archangel. Fittingly, the Archangel was invented by one of my favorite bartenders in all the city, Richie Boccato--formerly of Milk & Honey, currently proprietor of Dutch Kills and Painkiller. This man is quality through and through.

The Archangel is so elegant and so delicious, there is almost no pre-dinner cocktail I prefer.  It is light and crisp and only a tiny bit sweet, and it only contains alcohol, so to those of you who are used to taking your gin with 3 parts tonic, watch out.

You will need the following:

a few slices of cucumber (seedless is best)
gin
Aperol
lemon twist

Aperol is an aperitif that's similar to Campari, but far less bitter and less alcoholic. It is a more delicate Campari, which is important since we're dealing with delicate flavors here.  Some of you might scoff at my choice of gin here, but I actually like the taste of Beefeater better than that of Tanqueray and Bombay Sapphire--it's cleaner. Hendrick's is for special occasions and martinis only, until I am rich.

So. Take your pint glass and put the cucumbers in.  Give them a couple of punches with a muddler or spoon, but don't pulverize them.  You just want to...loosen them up a little.  Put in a ton of ice, and then add 2.5 oz gin and 1 oz Aperol.  There should be so much ice that it sticks up above the level of the liquid, comme ça:

I have no idea why this isn't centering like it's supposed to. 

Stick in a long spoon, let it all sit for a minute, and then stir for at least another minute. OK, 30 seconds should be fine. You want it to be really cold, though!

Twist your lemon twist so that the oils start to ooze out of the skin. Drop it in the martini glass, and strain the contents of the pint glass on top of that.  When you look closely, you should be able to see the lemon oil floating on the surface. Enjoy!!!

Oh, and feel free to munch on the gin-and-Aperol-soaked cucumbers from your pint glass.  They're delicious!!

*This is also for Genomic Repairman, who had a shitty day.

Can't read my- can't read my- no, I can't read my PI's poker face

In case you've not yet made the switch over to Lab Spaces, here's what I wrote earlier today:


If this post's title has you all "Wha?", have a listen here. Yeah, I'm referencing Lady Gaga, you want to make something of it?

Famous Collaborator Dude/probable future PI (if you've been following along on blogspot) is awesome. He's totally brilliant, and has been incredibly generous with his lab resources and time. He's also really good at emailing me back immediately when I have a question, which is nice, although sometimes he gets back to me so fast (and so without punctuation and capital letters) I wonder if he actually read the thing that I sent to him for comments?

There is one thing, though--I can't read him! 

Normally, picking up on social cues is my forté-- in person and even in writing--and it's gotten me far. And by "far" I mean "free stuff," sometimes. I didn't realize how much I rely on it to guide my interpersonal behavior, though, until I met him. He's impenetrable! And it's making me feel like I'm freaking Rainman or something. Not a good feeling.

I think I'm finding all of this especially unnerving because I'm the new kid, you know? I want to join his lab for real, and so I want to make him happy and do good work to prove my worth. But I can't tell if I'm making him happy! I just finished a manuscript on which he's last author, and he had almost no comments. Is this good or bad? I don't know!!! Some of you are PIs, right? Would you allow one of your trainees to submit a paper with your name on it that you weren't thoroughly pleased with?

I can sense that my thoughts are devolving into those of a neurotic teenager who isn't sure if the guy who sits behind her in geometry is into her. I feel it's only appropriate, then, that I send Famous Collaborator Dude this note:

I need a montage!

Getting back into the swing of things after a meeting is never the smoothest of transitions, but this week's post-Experimental Biology re-entry has been especially bumpy.  I returned to a stack of exams to grade, an experiment to finish, a lecture to prepare, and general feelings of uneasiness about my future.  The exams took fucking forever longer than I'd have liked, and then my stupid control experiment (the only thing I need before writing it up) produced nothing measurable, so I have to troubleshoot and do it again.  Waahh.

Whatever, I do it again, not a big deal.  What is a big deal is that I also met with my boss this week, and for the first time we out-loud acknowledged what we've been ignoring for a while now: there is no definite funding for my project after the summer.  This means that there's no funding for me unless I want to switch to working on the lab's main project, which is significantly different from what I've been doing so far.   Now, not only do I not want to be on that project, but I don't think it would be a good move, career-wise.  This is the time I'm supposed to be defining myself, doing work that's explicitly my own; on this project I'd literally be just a set of hands.

So there's that!  You might say I've got some shit to figure out.  Do I look for a new lab that's doing things more in sync with my interests?  Suck it up and help out with my current lab's big project for a bit while I apply for grants of my own (many thanks to Drug Monkey's Twitter advice and link re: R vs K awards)?  Give up completely?

Whenever people in the movies reach that pivotal point at which they go from feeling beat-down to getting their act together to accomplish their Big Goal, there's a montage to demonstrate the person's journey from beat-down-ness to awesomeness.  A particularly on-point commentary on this phenomenon can be found in the near-classic film Team America: World Police



I feel like I need a montage.  In my montage, you'll see me alternately: having thoughtful sciencey discussions with potential future collaborators in downtown cafes; pipetting; typing late at night (to demonstrate lateness, you'll see J come over to me at my desk, kiss me on the forehead, and stumble sleepily off to bed, shaking his head in disbelief at how hard I'm working); looking at beautiful fluorescent things in a microscope; hitting "submit manuscript" with a satisfied and accomplished look on my face; etc!

Oh and also there'll be a shot of me teaching as students look on, totally engaged and totally not checking facebook.  Today I gave my first bona fide lecture that I put together myself completely from scratch, and even though I was very stressed out when I was making it last night at 2 am (this is the way you professors do things, yes?), I think it went very well.  The professor in charge of the class seemed really happy with my decisions on what to include, and when I was up there talking I remember thinking at one point, "Wow!  People are actually writing down the things that I'm saying!"  I mean, obviously this happens at meetings or whatever all the time, but for some reason this felt different.  I was molding young minds!

ANYway...yeah.  To conclude, montages are totally motivational and I really need to get pumped up here.  It's going to be an interesting couple of months...

Ph.Dishes - Meat Stock, and saving the environment

I really really really wanted to write a post for biochem belle's excellent Scientiae Carnival on Sustainability this month, but re-working my former advisor's talk for this upcoming meeting on top of an evil, not-going-away cough has me not quite capable of putting thoughts together in a coherent way.  Or maybe it's just all the Nyquil?  I'll admit, too, that when I hear the word "sustainability" I first think of things like grass-fed beef and supporting local farmers and whatnot.  You know, the environment!  And how it relates to food.

So on that note, I'm going to tell you how I make meat stock, which is useful not only for actual soup, but for things like risotto, chicken marsala,  and red wine mushroom sauce as well.  What does this have to do with the environment?  Well, you can make stock almost exclusively from things you were just going to throw away, so it's like recycling!  You will need:


1. A carcass.  Any kind will do--the bones from a chicken or turkey you recently roasted, lamb leg bone, pork shoulder bone, etc.  Shrimp heads, leftover beef, anything, really!
2.  Your veggie discards freezer bag.  This takes a little planning, but starting TODAY, every time you peel a carrot or take off the outer onion layer or chop the tops from celery, put it in a freezer bag.  If you don't cook with these things enough for this to be all that realistic, just go buy the veggies. 
3.  Some fresh herbs.  It doesn't really matter too much what kind; I usually just throw in whatever I happen to have in the fridge.  But that said, I'd recommend dill, rosemary, parsley, sage, etc.  Pretty much anything but mint.  If you live in NYC, I highly encourage getting your herbs from FreshDirect (if you can't make it to the farmers market, of course!)--they're super cheap and you get like 5 times as much as you get in those crappy plastic containers at Whole Foods or wherever.


So you throw it all in a stockpot, dump in a ton of kosher salt and grind a bunch of pepper over it, fill the thing with water, and let it simmer for maybe 2 hrs.  Here's what it will look like if you're using the pork shoulder you smoked a couple of weeks ago:

You may want to stir it once in a while, but it doesn't need a whole lot of attention.  Plus, the kitties will keep an eye on things for you:

When it's finished, let it cool a little and then pour through a colander into tupperware.  You can freeze it if you like!  Toss all the mushy veggies and herbs, conscience clean that you at least used them before throwing them out.  Also, you'll never have to buy bouillon again!

The latest in lab fashion

Today was my birthday (NO FOOLING), and I officially have the coolest boyfriend anywhere, because he got me this:

Namaste.

He chose the Pearl Station patch because it's where Dharma researchers purportedly observe, record, and report the behavior of the button-pushers in the Swan Station, much like I observe, record, and report the behavior of my rats.  However, as we learn in the final episodes of Season 2 ("Live Together/Die Alone"), the reports actually just end up in a big pile in the middle of the island somewhere, never to be read.  Much like my papers, but the island in this metaphor is PubMed, or the internet or something.

It's Brain Awareness Week, Everybody!

To celebrate the best week of the year, I made you, my lovely readers, this card:

For more official information on BAW, check out the Dana Foundation.  Yay brains!