Salted caramel apple empanadas
Fine, I will give out my recipe! But be warned with great empanadas come great responsibilities! In other words, once you make these for your friends or family you’ll be obligated to make more. Ask me how I know! That said, I never bothered to write down the recipe, I’ve always made it by “feel,” but since I’ve shared pictures twice now of the result I keep getting the request for it.
(more…)A marathon of cooking
Well it’s been an interesting few days. Since I don’t get to have a traditional holiday experience (due to COVID), like most people I know, I opted to make enough food to feed a small army so I could share some with basically everyone in a safer manner than having one big celebration. Over the past two days I’ve spent a total of 18 hours in the kitchen, but who’s counting? Me, I’m counting.
(more…)‘Tis the season!
Well I wish I could say that today is a regularly scheduled day of relaxing. In a way it kind of is? Today is my regularly scheduled prep for tomorrow’s dinner. Now I don’t have a traditional family, but I do have friends and what not, so I’m making a rather large meal. The plan (as it is every year) is to have plenty of leftovers for myself, but also to have enough to hand out to friends and coworkers when Monday rolls around.
(more…)A small celebration
It’s my Co-PI’s birthday and to celebrate I’ve been busy. The rest of the lab took care of getting a cake and hanging the decorations. Since I split my time between two labs at the moment, I wasn’t around to help and I felt slightly guilty about it. I like my Co-PI and even though he’s (probably) leaving soon I at least wanted to do something nice for him. So in spite of all the work I had to do I got to baking.
(more…)Fish, mercury, and pregnancy: Good news for seafood lovers
People freak out when they hear mercury is in something and sometimes for good reasons. In vaccinations for example a very small amount of ethyl-mercury WAS used as a preservative in vaccines, people got scared so now it is not used in most vaccines. Methylmercury* however is found in seafood and larger fish in particular (in much, much higher concentrations than in vaccines mind you). They may sound the same, but the methylmercury in fish is far more toxic. That said, it turns out that fish isn’t as toxic as we thought, so all you pregnant women who love fish will be happy to hear this.
Steak is bad for the heart and now we know why
“Red meat is bad for your heart”, that is typically the story we hear from people. While some might take this as meat is bad for us, or that it is wrong to eat red meat, science has been trying to find a better answer to that question. After all it wouldn’t do for science to say, it just does. Well as luck may have it, new research provides details on how gut bacteria turn a nutrient found in red meat into metabolites that increase the risk of developing heart disease. The findings may lead to new strategies for safeguarding individuals’ cardiovascular health.
Colony Collapse Disorder and Pesticides, Or Save the Bees!
Die hard, the bee version.
Bees, who needs them? They are scary, they sting and they seem to find magical ways into your securely locked home. I’m not bias, even though I run screaming like a little girl when I see one… okay maybe a little. But as it turns out we need the bees!! Who knew, right? After the colony collapse that came out of nowhere and could not be explained [at the time] everything from global warming to government conspiracy was being blamed. But now a new study helps strengthen the cause of the collapse.
Two widely used insecticides– in the class called neonicotinoids [for those of you who think you will be tested on this at the end]– appear to do significant damage to honey bee colonies over the winter, particularly in bad winters [hello global warming, I’m looking at you].
Lunatic Laboratories 