January Frenzy

Since my last post, everything has gotten started up again, which means that I have to convince myself that I do, indeed, have sufficient energy to work hard all day, work out in the evening, and then go to bible study or some other activity after (or before, depending on the day) that.  I'm back on the kind of schedule where I spend my whole weekend in the kitchen preparing food to eat during the upcoming week.  In fact, I'm so busy that yesterday, on my birthday, I didn't even have the time to do anything out of the ordinary.

Yes, I'm 25 now.  All comments about how scary being a quarter of a century old is supposed to be aside, I'm actually really content with where I am in life, and am excited to see where things will go in my future. I'll only start sulking about my age if I hit 30 and still don't have my PhD... but if I can stay focused on my research that will not happen.

I started teaching (reminder: I'm teaching elementary science education) this week, and I have to say that this is, by far, the most fun teaching gig I've ever had.  In class on Tuesday I had to discuss very philosophical things like how to ask good questions and uncertainty, and so - no joke - I had my students count noodles.  The point of this exercise was that I didn't specify what "full" meant for the cups they were filling, plus there is a natural variation in the settling of the noodles, so students got several different counts, and we talked about why that occurred.  It's very simple stuff, but the idea of this course is to highlight the points that are important to bring up when teaching science to K-4 students.  But yes, teaching is awesome.

The cookies I've made over the past couple weeks have also been pretty awesome, despite misgivings I had about both recipes:

133. Chrusciki Leaves
Chrusciki are Polish sour cream cookies that are fried instead of baked.  As a rule, I am not a fan of fried anything, and so the idea of these cookies was just disgusting to me.  The recipe claims a yield of 9-10 dozen, and, even knowing how the yields change completely with unspecified cookie cutters, I knew I would never be able to peddle off a full recipe's worth of these cookies.  Thus, I made a half batch, which still called for half a dozen eggs and yielded about 5 dozen cookies with a standard-sized cookie cutter.

These cookies are flavored with sour cream, vanilla, lemon and orange zest (but I only had orange), and Cognac.  The mix of these is very light, and the cookies themselves have hardly any sugar in them.  Actually, starting out, these cookies have a relatively healthy set of ingredients.

...And then I had to deep-fry them.  Ugh.  Gross.  My apartment smelled like hot oil for days.  But the cookies - oh, the cookies - turned out light and delightful, with a faint flavor that was brought out fantastically by the confectioners' sugar sprinkled on them.  Since they'd been rolled out and cut into leaf shapes, they had a pastry-like texture which I and my friends really enjoyed.  The funny thing is, there's probably the same amount of fat in these as there is in shortbread cookies.  Maybe I shouldn't be so grossed out after all (or maybe I'm going to have to start avoiding shortbread).

134. Raisin Bars
I mentioned that I had misgivings with both of the recipes I'm posting this week, and I guess the potential problem here comes from one of the few ways I am picky - I don't really like raisins very much.  That said, the recipe suggest substituting figs or dates, which are quite similar in flavor and texture, but when I can I try to do things as written.

The crust of these bars is made with vegetable shortening, brown sugar, lots of rolled oats, and the usual mixture of flour, baking soda, egg, vanilla, and salt.  Using vegetable shortening instead of butter made the crust more crisp, and the brown sugar gives it a nice rich flavor.  The filling is chopped raisins, lots of white sugar, apple cider, and water, boiled together with some cornstarch to thicken it.

The filling sandwiched with the oatmeal crumble dough (and baked, of course) was pretty amazing - I'm surprised that both elements were so sweet, but still weren't overwhelming.  I think it helped that there was a decent amount of salt in the crust.  I also, upon tasting these, was reminded of my great weakness: I have no ability to resist food nostalgia.  These raisin bars tasted so much like my Grandma Carol's date bars that I ate like five of them as soon as they were cool.  To be fair, my office-mates couldn't resist either, so maybe it's just the fault of these cookies tasting REALLY good.  Seriously, try making them.  They're simple, and if you're lazy/cheap like me and forgot/don't want to go out and buy apple cider, you can throw in some of a packed of instant cider mix and everything still turns out great.





That's about it for cookies, until tomorrow.  I did want to share one more brief thing, though.  Last weekend I tried a new vegan chili recipe (although it wasn't touted as such), for Sweet Potato and Black Bean Chili.  This is mostly a standard chili, but it has chunks of sweet potato in it, plus ground chipotle (or cut up dried chipotle since I couldn't find the original ingredient at the store) to give it a nice spicy, smoky flavor.  I am running out of gushing adjectives, but I was very impressed by the result of this recipe, and was thrilled to eat the leftovers during the week.  It was even better when I stole some of my boyfriend's spicy chipotle sauce to give the chili more kick (I thought it was a little too mellow).

when a snowball becomes an avalanche

In what shouldn't be any surprise whatsoever, I've found this semester to be nearly overwhelming in its demands on my time and energy.  I alternate between telling myself that this is just how graduate school is and that graduate school doesn't have to be this way.  Most recently, I'm starting to think that it's actually some combination of the two: graduate school is very demanding by design, and so I (still) need to learn to deliberately choose and limit my other activities in order to actually rest sometimes and not burn out again.  It's not easy to give things up, but I'm praying about it, and I have to trust that God knows what's best for me.

Now, without any appropriate segue, here are the past three weeks of cookies!

113. Oatmeal Bars with Dates and Walnuts
Lately I've been going after some of the healthier recipes in my cookbook, but after years of eating over-sweetened granola bars and poorly devised whole wheat concoctions, I am always skeptical of such recipes.  Especially when the little blurb under the title describes the cookie "like soft granola bars."  It turns out these cookie bars were really good!  Like, so good that my friends demanded the recipe.

The key to these cookies is oatmeal.  There's nearly 3C involved, half of it ground up before being mixed into the dough, which has a whole wheat (I used white whole wheat) and brown sugar base, along with cinnamon and allspice.  Finally, dates and walnuts give more flavor and texture.

These bars turned out soft and chewy, with a nice sweetness from the dates juxtaposed with the salt added to the dough.  They were amazingly easy to make, and a big hit with my bible study group, who thought I was lying when I told them that these were actually healthy.  I guess I'm not the only one who doesn't trust health food to taste good.

114. Hazelnut Cookies
I discovered, while making this cookies, that I still have no idea why I can't make meringues.  This recipe starts with whipping egg whites until they form soft peaks, adding sugar, and whipping the mixture to stiff peaks.  But every time I've tried this, the egg whites fall the instant I add the sugar, and I'm left with Elmer's glue in my bowl.  It still makes tasty cookies, but I think I'm mixing out on some amazing melt-in-your-mouth experience.

So after I made glue (okay, it's not glue, but that's what it looks like), I added ground toasted hazelnuts, flour, and vanilla, then chilled the dough, and then took it out and formed it into little pyramids for baking.  The result was kind of sloppy looking, but delicious.. until a bitter aftertaste showed up.  When I was at the grocery store, I was unable to find whole hazelnuts, and so I had a really hard time getting the skins off of the chopped ones I had to buy.  Those skins, I believe, are the source of this aftertaste.  Thankfully, that flavor faded after a day or two, and they were easy to share last Tuesday.

115. Whole-Wheat Date Bars
Do not be fooled by the appearance of these cookies.  They are not Fig Newtons.  They are not filled with figs, but rather with a puree of Medjool dates which were softened in boiling apple cider.  The cookie wrapped around them features whole wheat flour (the regular stuff this time), wheat bran, lemon zest, and applesauce.  All these put together give a soft, delicious cookie.  The apple flavors don't show up very strongly, although supposedly the applesauce is there to make these bars soft, which they are.  The lemon zest, however, has a very strong flavor, and adds an unexpected light contrast to the heartiness of the dates and whole wheat which otherwise dominate the cookies.

I have to say, I think these cookies are amazing.  They were very easy to make, not particularly expensive, healthy for cookies, they look good, and (most importantly) they taste good.  It may be hard for me to actually share these....

fruit -> fruit flies

This month I've put myself on a mostly vegan diet, which has meant giving up some things I really like to eat, like, um, meat and dairy.  Although it's a bit drastic, it's the best way I know to cut high-fat and in general junk food out of my diet.  What this has meant, however, is that I've been eating a hefty quantity of fruits and vegetables.

I love this time of year because I can go to the farmers' market and to the grocery store and find peaches, berries, cherries, asparagus, zucchini, and so on for low prices.  What I don't love about this time of year is the hitchhikers that come along with the produce I purchase.  Yes, this is the time of year when fruit flies buzz all around my kitchen.  Well, not just my kitchen, but the kitchens of all produce-buying people in the area.  When I first moved here, I was shocked by the number of flies that hovered around even a very clean kitchen, so I did some research and came up with the following solution, which I will share in case anyone is interested.

1. Put your produce in the refrigerator.  I know this is not ideal, but as long as it's sitting out, flies will be attracted to it, and will lay eggs in it too.
2. Make a trap.  I use a shallow plastic cup with some cider vinegar in it (shown to the right).  The cup is covered with plastic wrap with a few holes in it.  The flies, attracted to the vinegar, climb into the cup and are too dumb to find their way out.

Keep in mind, for this to work, your kitchen has to be clean.  That means no fruit peels in an open garbage can, or other things the flies will be more attracted to.

Among other things, this also meant that I had to quickly put away the cookies I made this week, although the recipe recommends freezing them to keep them fresh, so I don't have a problem with it.

107. Blueberry Bonanza Bars
I'm not so sure about the bonanza part, but I like these bar cookies.  In this recipe, a pre-cooked crust filled with ground up toasted almonds is topped with blueberry jam and almond-coconut granola.  My cookbook instructed me to mix the crust exclusively in my food processor.  For me, this was impossible, as I only have a 3-cup KitchenAid, so I did all the necessary food processing in smaller batches.  I also had to make my own granola, which was a successful first for me.  The recipe I followed (on the same page as the cookie recipe) yielded about 2C too much granola, so I've been enjoying it for breakfast.

These cookies are better than I expected.  The toasted almonds have a pretty strong flavor, and they keep the blueberry jam from being too overwhelming - this was a big concern of mine, because I'm not a big fan of blueberry jam, and think that I might use apricot preserves instead if I repeat this recipe.  The granola on top provides a nice texture, because no fruit bar is complete without a crumbly topping.

Ok, that's it for tonight.  I've got to clean my kitchen so that more fruit flies can die.

and I keep rollin' on

Well, I've done it again.  I keep saying I'll post more regularly, and then I take longer and longer breaks from actual cookie posts (although I've put up a couple other random things to prove I didn't die).  This time, some of it is due to an attempt to go to bed by midnight on school nights.  Tonight, clearly, is a fail on that.  Some of my non-posting is due to just being insanely busy - this semester I'm taking a Quantum Information class and a Jazz dance class, teaching intro Physics, still active in a bible study group with GCF, baking and cooking on a regular basis, doing research in the lab (a never-ending and hugely time-consuming thing) and flitting around doing silly things with my boyfriend.  As my dad has said before, I do well when I build up a certain level of chaos and then maintain it through the semester.

In what I imagine to be a slight break in the chaos (read: I got my homework done early and am waiting for something in the kitchen to finish), I present yet another cookie update!

79.  01.02.10 Peanut Butter Swirl Brownies
I made these the day before leaving my dad's house to return back to the middle of nowhere, and so I chose something that wouldn't involve outlandish ingredients, and would hopefully be eaten quickly.  These are made with a basic brownie batter, with a filling that is mostly peanut butter and confectioners' sugar swirled around in the batter.  The idea is nice - after all, chocolate and peanut butter are delicious together, when done properly - but the execution was a bit mediocre.  When I ate these, all I could taste was the peanut butter, and not the (expensive) chocolate melted in the brownies.  Although it tasted good, I think that if I want to the taste of eating peanut butter straight, I'll forgo the baking for a spoon and the PB jar.

80.  01.10.10 Cappuccino-Chocolate Bites
The weekend after I returned to my apartment, I flew down to Louisiana to visit my sister and brother-in-law, who are both actual rocket scientists.  This was actually interesting times, because my original flight was canceled due to lots of snow in Central Illinois, and I had to fly the next day.  I was totally okay with that, since I learned to drive in South Florida and am still terrified of snow driving.  But yes, the cookies.  I decided to make these because my brother-in-law is into making his own espresso, which meant that I could easily acquire the 1T of ground espresso beans the recipe called for, without ending up with a bag of coffee I couldn't use.  The ground espresso was mixed into the cookies, which otherwise had a basic shortbread texture (you know, butter, confectioners' sugar, that kind of thing).  These cookies were then sandwiched with a milk-chocolate ganache and sprinkled with cocoa powder and confectioners' sugar to make them look very pretty.  In general, I find milk chocolate to be inferior to, well, everything ever, but in this case the richness of the ganache (yes, I consider milk chocolate to be rich) helped to mellow out the espresso so that every bite was a good experience.  Of course, it is wise not to eat these late at night, but I believe the ones I left at my sister's house were eaten for breakfast the next day (cookies for breakfast are always a lovely idea).

81.  01.16.10 Oatmeal Raisin Cookies
Feeling that it was time to make some good, traditional cookies after all the rich and fancy stuff I'd made recently, I went to the the store and finally picked up the special ingredient for these cookies.  These are ordinary oatmeal raisin cookies, except that they also have toasted wheat germ in them.  In theory, this helps to make the cookies more hearty (and maybe more healthy, although health and cookies aren't too often put together).  Wheat germ is hidden by things like oatmeal in the grocery store, and is unfortunately sold in fairly large quantities.  However, these were pretty good cookies, so I don't mind making them again to use up the left over ingredients.  This time around I messed up a little: I was baking these while folding laundry, or some other such chore, and so didn't get a chance to check one of the earlier batches for baking time.  Thus, it turned out that these were a little crunchier than I think oatmeal cookies ought to be, but I think in the future if I reduce the baking time by 2 or 3 minutes they should come out close to perfect.

82.  01.23.10 Cherry Almond Biscotti
Since the last week had gotten me all excited about specialty ingredients (and I wanted to use up some old dried cherries sitting in my kitchen) I went to the grocery store and bought some amaretto (almond-flavored liqueur) to make these biscotti.  I'll point out as a side note, amaretto is tasty stuff.  But back to the topic at hand: here the dried cherries are boiled in amaretto until properly hydrated, and then added to the biscotti dough along with blanched almonds and a little bit of the leftover cooking amaretto.  The dough is baked first in a log, and then sliced and baked again, as is done for biscotti in general.  I found that these were very delicious - although the texture of the cherries was a little unexpected in the otherwise crumbly biscotti texture, they added a nice taste, as did the amaretto, which was pretty subtle.  I'm not sure about the feasibility of making these again, though, as you may recall, I've complained before about how expensive dried cherries are.  Maybe someday when I get a fancy job I'll be able to afford lots of crazy ingredients, but for now I'll try to live within my means.

83.  01.31.10 Butter Cookie Sandwiches with Chestnut Cream
Well, these guys look fancy enough, although they weren't particularly complicated to make.  The cookies are basic shortbread cut into 1-1/2" rounds, so they're quite small.  The centerpiece of this recipe is supposed to be the chestnut cream filling, which is made of butter, confectioners' sugar, and chestnut cream (crème de marron, to be fancy about it).  These sandwiched cookies are then dipped in melted semi-sweet chocolate to get their nice appearance.  Although they look very nice, I was a little disappointed with these cookies - the chestnut cream was difficult to find and expensive to buy, so when I tasted these and the filling tasted just of butter, I lamented the waste of money this turned into.  The chestnut cream itself tastes of chestnuts, as it ought, considering it's made of chestnuts and sugar, but the flavor just didn't come through all the other things going on in the recipe.

84.  02.06.10 Gingersnap-Raspberry Sandwiches
I have always been a big fan of molasses/ginger cookies, and although this one doesn't have any molasses in it, it sure had potential to be delicious: aside from regular cookie ingredients, this recipe features a large dose of ground ginger and maple syrup.  Unfortunately, I messed up when baking these cookies and did not bake them quite long enough, leaving them with a funny taste that didn't let the ginger shine through properly.  Although the recipe calls for putting raspberry jam between these cookies, I found that doing so was a hassle, as the jam oozed out all over the place and didn't taste very good with these kind of funny-tasting cookies.  Ah well, perhaps I'll have success with these another time.

85.  02.14.10 Raspberry Honey Financiers
For all that I complain about the silliness surrounding Valentine's Day, I have to say that I had a lovely day spending time doing non-consumerist things with my boyfriend, and sharing these cookies (well, more like mini muffins) with him.  The dough for these is made with butter, lots of honey, toasted and ground blanched almonds, sugar, cake flour, and egg whites.  The honey and almonds are the strong point here, to give a nice sweet taste and a little bit of crunch.  The red hearts shown in the picture are raspberry juice strained out from a puree.  The raspberry taste wasn't particularly strong, but the hearts were cute, and that was exactly the effect I was going for (well, and that the recipe told me to do).

86.  02.20.10 Ne Plus Ultra Cookies
Since winter insists on hanging on, and the Midwest has turned into a mess of snow and rain and potholes the size of a small vehicle, I decided it was time to make some comfort cookies.  That means simple tastes and chewy cookies, preferably the kind that can be eaten warm out of the oven with a glass of milk while watching the Winter Olympics.  This recipe gave me exactly what I was after: these are basically over-sized chocolate chip cookies with pecans and raisins added to them.  Usually I would object to nuts and raisins getting between me and chocolate chips, but because these cookies were so large, these ingredients prevented the cookie from being too rich to eat in one go.  To any novice bakers out there, I would suggest these cookies as a good project.  They are extremely simple to make, and they taste just a little bit better than standard chocolate chip cookies (and about a million times better than that nasty pre-made dough they sell at the grocery store. ick).  As usual, if anyone is interested I am happy to share the recipe.


...And that brings me up to date with my cookies.  This means, unless I've had a counting fail, that I am at 84 recipes already, which is nearly halfway through the book.  I may have to start organizing my efforts so that I'm not left with all the difficult recipes in my last year of this project.  For now, though, it's time to get some sleep, so I can get back to aligning optics in the morning.

epic backlog - recovery!

After I finished with my Qual, it was time for work. And homework. And catching up with all the people I'd been neglecting. I took the next several weeks to make tasty cookies, but I didn't really get around to posting. Nothing was too exciting about life, so I'll just talk briefly about the cookies.

(Marked as a best cookie) (63) To be brief about these first cookies will be difficult, because they were very delicious! I had carrots left over from making a carrot cake, so I used them to make carrot cake cookies. The cookies are a basic recipe, with carrot, raisins, and oats, as well as cinnamon and nutmeg. The filling is a standard cream cheese frosting. The cookies turned out nice and soft, and paired with the frosting kind of tasted like the Little Debbie oatmeal pies that I used to eat as a kid... except that these are a lot healthier, and the filling has no weird unidentified hydrogenated death oils. Honestly, I think this is the tastiest recipe yet. Hooray!


These next cookies were chosen so that I wouldn't get totally stuck in a pattern of cookies with filling, and so that I could get them done a bit quickly - I spent all day Saturday being involved in a wedding (congratulations Josh and Janine!!). Although, actually, these are blondies. Here, a basic blondie batter (you know, brown sugar, flour, eggs, butter) is mixed with (and covered with) chocolate chips, coconut, walnuts, and dried cranberries, then put in cupcake tins. Unfortunately, some of the stuff on top was a little loose, and fell off when people were eating them. The blondies were pretty good, but if I make them again I'll definitely be putting more cranberries in them. (64)

The week after I went on a baking spree (this is the same week I made those cake balls) and made what my cookbook calls Sarah Bernhardt cookies (65). According to Wikipedia, which is the source of all credible knowledge, Sarah Bernhardt was an exceptionally famous French stage actress in the late 19th century. My cookbook claims that this name is due to the many layers of these cookies resembling the layers of characters Bernhardt played. Or something like that. I don't know about these things, but I do know that I really like these cookies: these are almond macaroons (which kind of taste like marzipan) with a dollop of chocolate mousse on top of them. The whole ensemble is coated in semi-sweet chocolate mixed with just a little bit of vegetable shortening. Since they were covered in chocolate, I had to work hard to get people to eat them, but once they tried them, they were impressed. I like to describe their taste as very high class, and considering the cost of the almond paste in the macaroons and the amount of time taken in preparation, I think the description is fairly accurate. Maybe I'll make these again sometime for something fancy.

An epic tale

It's been a very stressful month since my last post, but somehow (and probably not wisely) I have kept up my baking, and even remembered to take pictures of the results.

And thus begins my epic tale of the Qual.

For those of you not well-acquainted with the world of academia, I'll explain the situation a little:
The path of pilgrimage to the Ivory Tower is fraught with obstacles, trials, and rites of passage to weed out those who lack the ability or determination to achieve the final goal, which is Knowledge. The Qualifying Exam occurs a little ways down the path, after one has toughed it out through the Undergraduate Education and Graduate School Admissions, as well as the First Year of graduate school.

In the Qualifying Exam, pilgrims are asked questions that should allow them to demonstrate their proficiency in their chosen subject. In the specific case of Physics in the Cornfield, eight questions in what are considered the four Main Topics of Physics must be answered in two three-hour sessions. To pass this test, the pilgrim must have sufficient knowledge of concepts and equations from his or her senior level undergraduate courses and be able to write very quickly. Upon passing, he may continue along towards his PhD. However, if he fails, he must try again in a year, and if he fails again, he is no longer allowed to pursue his degree.

Knowing this fully, I entered into my studying much later than my brighter peers, and had significant trouble forcing myself to focus and start working through the many old problems available online. I spent time reading textbooks, making formula sheets, cleaning my apartment, sleeping a lot, and getting very frustrated with old problems from 1995.

That weekend, I made brownies (59), because brownies are simple, and because marbled things are pretty. I failed to realize in advance that the coconut and condensed milk in the light part would not have a very strong taste, and so I was sorely disappointed to taste a brownie, and to only have the coconut texture to let me know it was actually in there. Without the taste, the texture just made the brownies seem weird.

Riding on the tails of this disappointment came terrible unhappiness at my lack of work ethic, and the realization that the only way I could possibly get through would be by God's grace. So after some serious praying, I dove into the next week.

Early in that week, it dawned upon me that it was foolishness to continue on my quest alone, and so I joined two of my stronger (i.e. smarter) friends in their studying. Their motivation was catching, and my difficulty with the subjects was alarming, and so the next several weeks passed in a panicked flurry of practice problems and pasta. For, indeed, I switched over into a mode where I spared little time for non-Physics endeavors, including food.

When I did spare a little time for cookie baking, I attempted to make chocolate meringues (60). Clearly, I did not leave enough time for whipping them, as the one shown in the picture on the left had the most shape. Aesthetically, these were a complete failure. However, they still tasted good, and although they required two hours in the oven, I was able to spend those two hours busy with... you guessed it... more practice problems.

In the final week before the Qual, my peers and I started doing practice runs of the exam - we would take old exam sets and sit down from 7-10pm in a poorly-lit and steeply-inclined auditorium, in order to get used to the misery of the real test. After each practice test, we'd get together and compare answers. Or, rather, I would look at what my friends had done, since I wasn't really able to do a lot of things. My level of panic growing, I stayed for later nights as my more prepared peers took evenings off, making lists of the things I knew I needed to understand, finding problems related to those concepts, and working on them until I thought I maybe had some idea.

At this point I was desperate. My list of concepts ran four pages long, and each of those concepts took at least half an hour to master. By the weekend, I knew that I had to forgo the practice exam schedule and just focus on my weak points. So I worked out problems, skipped the Annie Get Your Gun cast party, and tried my hardest not to do anything too unwise before the test.

During a short break I whipped up some ANZAC Biscuits (61), which seemed appropriate as they're the cookies Australian families would send to soldiers in World War 1. This wasn't war, but I certainly had no time to go the grocery store or to roll out dough, so these were a great way for me to keep up with my baking. The taste of these was rather sweet - perhaps because I could only find sweetened coconut, and the only real flavor came from the golden syrup the recipe called for. Unfortunately, this was another case of coconut providing texture but not much flavor.

Monday came, and I was a mess. I was so scared about the exam that night that I couldn't eat and had to force myself not to listen to the voice in the back of my head, repeating over and over, "I can't do this. I'm going to fail." Fortunately, several friends and family members emailed and called, wishing me luck and reminding me that they believed in me (which totally sounds like the climax of an 80s movie or a 90s anime where the heroine is just about to give up).

So on Monday night I took the first half of my test. Some of it was alright, some of it was awful, and I came out of it totally numb. After an evening of beer and Rock Band, I returned home to sleep. I awoke on Tuesday more scared than I had been the day before - although I knew that the four specific topics from the night before wouldn't be repeated, they still could ask anything else, and there were still so many topics I hadn't mastered. In addition, I figured I had only gotten half of the points on the first part of the test, which meant the pressure was on to perform better on the second part. Knowing this, I entered into another studying frenzy, until the exam was near enough that I had to go to the Physics building.

I entered into the second part of this ordeal completely aware of the inadequacy of my preparation, and completely terrified. When the exam had concluded, I had no idea if I had done well enough to pass. By the time the letters were distributed on Friday I had completely convinced myself that I had not passed and would have to go through it all over again next year. So as I opened my letter, I steeled myself for the "I regret to inform you..." that meant failure, but instead I found:

I am delighted to be able to tell you that on the basis of your written qualifying examination and your record as a graduate student in this department, the Qualifying Examination Committee recommends you as a candidate for the Ph.D. degree in Physics.

Unlike the Committee Chairman, I was not delighted - or, rather, not just delighted - I was ecstatic, incredulous, completely in shock. I had to read the letter again to make sure it was real.

It was definitely real. The letter is now stuck my refrigerator as a monument of the fact that miracles do happen, and as a reminder that someone, at some point, thought that I am good enough to be in this program, and to be chasing after this PhD.

So, bridge crossed and giant defeated, I celebrated that weekend with fancier baking: vanilla cookies made into a sandwich with white chocolate raspberry filling (62). The filling was made with the juice from fresh pureed raspberries, heavy cream, and white chocolate, which means that I was in heaven. Somehow it ended up that too much liquid got into the filling, so it was very runny, but I added more white chocolate and that (mostly) solved the problem. It was good, in this case, that the actual cookies were very simple and not too sweet, as they were necessary to balance out the richness of the filling.


It would be nice to end the story here, to say that all has been well and calm ever since, but that is far from true - the long journey towards my degree continues, with small trials (like dysfunctional circuits), and other milestones (like the Preliminary Exam) to be passed on the way. For now I fill my time with research, exercise when I can get it, and my ever-continuing baking projects.

put 'em all together and a-whaddya get?

The first week of classes was moderately uneventful but still full of random blessings.

One such fortuitous event occurred on Tuesday, the very first day of classes, when I missed my bus. Now, taking the bus means that my time getting to school is quantized, meaning that instead of being able to be as many minutes late as I leave the house, I can be ten minutes early, five minutes late, or twenty minutes late, all depending on the bus. Having missed the bus that would get me to campus on time, I resigned myself to taking the next bus and being embarrassed by being late to my first class. As I stood outside waiting for the next bus to come, my friend Cory drove by, saw me, and gave me a ride. It was fantastic, I didn't have to set such a bad precedent for the semester (because my plan is to go to ALL my classes instead of skipping practically every morning class, as I did last semester).

There are a few extra things I'm trying to do regularly or to cut out this semester. A recent one, and a behavior I really hope to keep up beyond the "one-month wonder" range is spending time at the gym. My friends and I set up a schedule where we go to the pool twice a week, the gym twice a week, and have a day where we decide which one we want to do. So far, it's been doable, and actually quite nice - the gym facilities here at UI are well kept, and free for students to use.

Another thing I'm up to that I think is very important is making myself take a day off from physics (that day being Saturday). As such, it's my Sabbath: I realized that school has been an idol in my life for years, and taking a day off allows me to reassert that there is something much more important ruling my life, namely God. Taking a sabbath doesn't mean sitting around on the couch all day. I went to the gym in the morning, I did some reading, I went out with my friends, and I made cookies.

On Friday, when I did my grocery shopping, I was perusing through my book trying to decide what cookies to bake, when I realized that I've been making very chocolate-y things in the past couple weeks, and decided it would be good to take a break from that. So when I saw the recipe for Peanut Butter-Chocolate Chip Oatmeal Cookies (30), I decided they were just the variety I wanted.

Looking over the recipe, I realized that I'm starting to pick up on the basic ingredients for chocolate chip cookies, as compared to other cookies. I find that chocolate chip cookies have equal parts white and brown sugar, and lots of butter. But the brown sugar, I think, is the thing that gives them a lot of their characteristic taste, and it's in these cookies, too. The recipe I used yesterday was actually very interesting because it called for 3 cups of oats and only 1/3 cups of flour (and whole wheat flour, at that). I thought perhaps this was an error, but with the low viscosity of the natural peanut butter and the absorbency of the oats, the cookies weren't goopy at all. You'll notice I mentioned natural peanut butter: this basically means it doesn't have salt, sugar, and other random stuff added, which gives it a different taste and makes it a lot less solid. There's also salted peanuts in the cookies, which puts the salt right back in.

I thought I might not like these too much: I usually don't like cookies with peanuts in them, I'm wary about peanut butter, and I always worry about too many flavors and textures going into a recipe, but I think these cookies are delicious. They're a different take on the whole chocolate chip thing, but they're just as easy to make (with about equal yield), and the oatmeal and peanuts go together to make these cookies delightfully crunchy. This recipe is definitely getting a comment written in for quality.


That's about it for now. I've got a problem set to knock out and a lesson plan to prepare, so that hopefully I can do what I want on my birthday instead of losing the day to the demands of grad school.

Cookie backlog

So basically I'm a pretty busy person these days. This doesn't mean I haven't been making my cookies, though! I don't have a whole lot to say about the cookies, but I'll put something in, I suppose.

I'll just do this in chronological order, I suppose.

Week 1: Peanut Butter cookies (12)
I think there was something wrong in this recipe - the dough was far too sticky and the cooking time was so long that I burnt the first batch. The sticky dough was particularly unfortunate, because it meant that I was completely unable to include the cross-hatch pattern that everyone expects out of peanut butter cookies. Clearly, in the future I will be using my own recipe.

Week 2: Brandy Snaps (13)
The cookie title is deceptive - there is no brandy in these. However, I did have to go to the international food store to pick up a jar of Lyle's Golden Syrup, which is a British corn syrup concoction. These were actually a lot easier to make than they look... there's no baking soda or eggs or anything silly like that, so they just baked out flat, then I had to roll them around the handle of a whisk as they cooled.

Week 3: Coconut Macaroons (14)
I always thought macaroons were difficult to make. I was wrong. The recipe called for something like five ingredients, and then you make lumps, put them in the oven, and, voila! macaroons.
The picture on the right was taken in my office... you can see my Statistical Mechanics book chilling out in the corner, and the hat I was knitting just chilling out. The guys like to make fun of the three girls who knit, but I think that's because there's not much else to make fun of us for (well, except for being women studying physics, but that's a line that doesn't get crossed).

Week 4: Snickerdoodles (15)
These were a much bigger hit than I anticipated. I made these cookies on the suggestion of a friend, and then it turned out that everyone ever (except me) ate these as a kid when their grandmother/mom/babysitter/dog made them. I never had snickerdoodles until I was in college, and I never was particularly excited about them, although they taste pretty good. My friends who ate them enjoyed them thoroughly, which leads me to wonder about the power of nostalgia as a spice.


Week 5 (today!): Oatmeal Apple cookies (16)
After a very long week, I decided that it would make me happy to spend some extra time cooking. That decision made, these cookies seemed like a good decision. I made applesauce Thursday night while my cousin was visiting, and put half a cup of it in my cookies today. The cookies themselves have oatmeal, applesauce, and golden raisins in them. I find that the applesauce doesn't have a very strong flavor, but the raisins are nice. The frosting is your typical stuff: confectioner's sugar and water, with a few tablespoons of maple syrup added in to complement the taste of the cookies.

Hopefully next week I'll actually be motivated to post on time, and maybe even talk about something interesting. For now, however, physics has taken my soul hostage, and I don't expect to get it back until Friday.