Thai "Chicken" Soup & Cast Iron Update

Made some truly wonderful thai "chicken" soup following this recipe. I think the real secret here is the Curry paste, which has fermented shrimp in it and is really quite flavorful. We used Quorn chicken cutlets, thawed them in the broth, and then took them out to cut into bite sized pieces. This allowed the cutlet to soak up broth as it was thawing, which is better than heating outside of the pot and adding after you cut it up.

We also made a more traditional curry following the same recipe with potato and red bell pepper added in. Its a pretty filling meal with rice!

The version I made was not actually vegan, what with the fish sauce and shrimp in the curry paste, but it can easily be made such.

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In the cast iron pan corner, the pan has turned out quite well and lives in the oven. I have baked bread on it multiple times and also made some eggs in it. Although I am still a little unclear as to how to clean baked-on food off of it.... It is a beautiful black color though.

Cast Iron Revisited

On further experimentation, I have deviated from the original method. The website I was following says to oil the pan with a very thin layer of oil and bake it for 1 hour at 500 F, after which you turn off the oven to let it cool. It is this cooling period that I don't see the point in. Once the oil has gone above its smoke point and polymerized, you should be able to add another layer of oil again, while the pan and oven is still hot.

This is what I did and what it accomplished saved energy and resulted in a very nice black pan in a more timely manner. Additionally, I focused on a cooking surface of the pan to try to get that glossy nonstick surface. Unfortunately, this seems to have resulted in an inadequate amount of oil on the bottom of the pan, so I am continuing the oiling and baking, this time with oiling the pan all over while it is still hot and allowing it to bake for 30 minutes before applying the next amount of oil. I am alternating between flaxseed oil and virgin coconut oil. A word on the coconut oil, it smokes quite a bit at that temperature so turn on the fan and don't be alarmed!

Reseasoning my cast iron... Again.

Maybe I shouldnt have nice things.

After stripping and seasoning a cast iron skillet I found at a thrift store, I allowed the cast iron to sit in the sink with food stuck on it and it proceeded to rust. Granted, I was mad at it because after one great flatbread, the second one proceeded to stick.

This time, I am trying a new method by encouraging the production of magnetite or "black rust" on the cooking surface of the skillet before I season it with oil. I sandpapered off the rust and all-over generally, leaving the older seasoning in the pits. Maybe this will permit a smoother cooking surface? To get the magnetite to form, I am following a method I didn't research at all and only saw once, but it seemed like a good idea at the time (See Joseph R. Kennedy's comment about a third of the way down). This involves boiling black tea in the pot, filled up to the level you want to be wonderful and smooth.

The magnetite production will supposedly result in a more protective coating for the iron and will allow the oil to better stick to the iron. In the previous attempt, I obviously didn't get the pan seasoned well enough because some foods still came out greyish, likely from the raw iron leaching out. More layers of seasoning will hopefully alleviate this.

I am also thinking about alternating oils, organic flaxseed with organic coconut oil. The flaxseed is supposed to leave a wonderful smooth finish because you are heating above the smoke point and polymerizing it. I have no reason to add the coconut oil to the mix, besides for adding a wider variety of fats, but it seems like the right thing to do.

I should also be rubbing oil on it in between uses, so I will try to be better about maintaining it. I want to get it in tip top shape so I can try baking breads in it!

UPDATE!:
Just got done with the tea magnetite procedure. The tea water turned nice and black and so did the pan, just like advertised! Now I will bake it in the oven at 450 for an hour to possibly set the magnetite and dry out the pan. After that, the first coat of oil. Need to decide on linseed or coconut. The tannins in the tea supposedly do something with this process over just boiling regular water. My water didn't even get to a full boil, but the water was totally black, as were the sides of the pan, so I decided that was enough.

Vegan Nachos!!!! & Sour Cream

Had some success today with Vegan Nachos. Inspired by the delicious nachos at Native Cafe, we thought, we can do this at home!!

Blue corn tortillas
Daiya cheddar shreds
black beans
black olives
Quorn grounds (sautéed with taco seasoning if you have time)

Arrange in layers to your desire.

On the side:
Salsa
Vegan Sour Cream

I altered this recipe from food.com by adding Nutritional Yeast, which I think adds a sort of "animal" flavor that it was missing. What with yeasts being eukaryotes and all.

Vegan Sour Cream
1 block silken tofu (16 oz)
1 Tbsp olive oil
1 small lemon, juiced or 5 Tbsp lemon juice
1 Tbsp apple cidar vinegar
1/2 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp salt
1 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast

I blended up the liquids and 1/4 of the tofu, and then added the rest of the tofu a little at a time as it blended up. I used an immersion blender. The key to this is really the silken tofu, which breaks apart really easily and is so soft. The texture was great!

All in all, the flavors melded together into a very replica of some of my favorite nachos in town. Something about the olives I think!

The Daiya shreds are important, they are currently my favorite fake cheese. If you're going vegan, it's important to have useful tools to help you stay strong! Another one of my tricks is my recipe for Cheezy Sprinkles, which I would put on anything that I otherwise would have grated cheese on for flavor.

Cheezy Sprinkles
2 Tbsp Nutritional Yeast
1 tsp salt
1 tsp garlic
1 tsp onion powder
1 tsp sumac (optional)
1/2 tsp white pepper

The sumac is totally optional, and I only included it because I have it around. I'm still unsure as to what the flavor is, but supposedly its good for you!

Amazing Hummus Recipe!

Tried out a new hummus recipe today! Have not had very good results in the past, perhaps from not following any recipe very closely. This one really does turn out smooth and amazing.

http://www.inspiredtaste.net/15938/easy-and-smooth-hummus-recipe/

Maybe gonna try this pita bread recipe for tomorrow!

http://mideastfood.about.com/od/breadsrice/r/pitabreadrecipe.htm

Update!
Here is a picture!:

The pitas are still amazingly soft. Overall, maybe my best baking experience EVER.

THE KITSUNE HAS LANDED

VOTE HERE!!!!

Vote for me, a 5 for me, please for me, Japan for me!!!

It's a Threadless contest where the grand prize is a trip to Japan! Runners up get their t-shirts printed.

My idea is a meeting of mythological creatures - the kitsune (or foxes) in Japan and Bigfoot from America. Bigfoot some how ends up in strange territory and we all know how shy he is, especially when the kitsune light up their foxfires!!

I was inspired by Hiroshige's classic woodblock print called "Fox Fires on New Year's Eve at the Garment Nettle Tree at Oji". I originally drew Bigfoot in a more comic book style, but he's much cuter this way!

お酒 と きつね！

O-sake and kitsune, that is!

My nascent sake smells amazing and the weather is cooperating, giving us below freezing temps here in CO. Of course, the sake doesn't want to be that cold, but it helps to keep the closet where the sake lives nice and chilly- between 45 and 50, preferably. Luckily, my apt has cinderblock walls, so the chilly air gets in nicely. You might think its odd that I saw "luckily" with regards to my leaky apartment, but in the case of making sake, it is very lucky! I guess you could say that if I had a less leaky apartment, I could spend the extra money I save on the electric bill on store-bought sake, but that's no fun, now is it? Tomorrow begins the preparation for the もろみ Moromi or "dancing ferment".

On the other hand, the ales I'm making do not so much like the cold weather, and we've actually had to raise the thermostat up to a balmy 66 degrees so the yeast don't putter out and give us a stuck fermentation. My heaviest beer to date is currently fermenting, so let's hope the yeast can handle the sub-par temps and give me a delicious vanilla porter!

ANNNNNDDD I am officially a proud submitter of t-shirt designs to Threadless! Hooray! They are having a contest with the theme "East meets West", and I managed to come up with something just under the wire! I had a bunch of good ideas, but only the time to execute a group of Foxfire Kitsune bumping into a lost Bigfoot in a nameless Japanese forest. I think its pretty cute! I will post a link when I get the word from Threadless that its live!

Microbes in soil can work with plants to fight off disease

http://www.the-scientist.com/?articles.view/articleNo/33703/title/Fighting-Microbes-with-Microbes/

It is a very interesting article, albeit long. A summary:

There are 30,000 species of microbes in soil samples, vs 10K in humans. Current ag methods kill most but not all microbes, creating a vacuum for opportunistics.

Tomato plants communicate via a fungal network in the soil. Infected plants grown in the presence of this fungus warn neighbors about the disease, inducing the plant to produce disease fighting proteins.

A beneficial bacteria B subtilis establishes itself in the soil by blocking plant defenses, producing an antimicrobial at the same time, which may protect the plants roots while it is establishing. Other plants that were infected with bad bacteria Pseudomonas produced a sugar food source for B subtilis to encourage it's colonization of the roots. This triggered the plant to produce defensive chemicals. They worked together! Progeny of plants that were grown with B subtilis had better defense systems even if B subtilis wasn't around - it lasts across generations.

Plants grown under drought conditions had more bacteria that enhance growth and photosynthesis, enabling the plant to better withstand drought.

In infected plants, B subtilis colonization induced the plant to close its stomata (the pores in the leaves that allow gas exchange), which would prevent further infection (this particular disease can enter the plant through the stomata).

Microbial communities that were more genetically distinct resisted establishment of pathogens better - there was no niche for the pathogen. However, some communities with "too many" species were less able to ward off pathogens - they were not working synergistically in this case. You can imagine there may be a way to encourage certain beneficial microbial communities to best help the plant.

Of the plots sampled, a plot planted with a mixture of grasses and herbs had the strongest microbial community for fighting off disease.

You can draw a comparison between using antibiotics and the effect on your gut microbes, and the use of fungicides and insecticides on the soil microbes. Studies suggest that crop rotation, tilling and fertilizing are better ways to establish a strong soil microbial community.

Rapeseed seed meal can help beneficial bacteria streptomyces colonize soil and prevent root rot and help the plant grow as much as introducing streptomyces itself. A combination of seedmeals was better able to resist colonization by pathogens, because they contain different glucosinolates that break down, producing a variety of anti pathogen chemicals.

Cultivating healthy soil and hence, microbial communities, can help plants reduce disease, growing better, and curtailing the reliance on blunt-force chemicals.

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I think this research is very interesting because it shows how little we understand about nature. I am not a fan of the cover-all techniques we use in a lot of modern science and I think science is really going to move in the direction of using what nature has already provided via microbes. Microbes are the next big thing!

So many hobbies!

This was a very busy weekend. In fact, most of my weekends lately seem to be this busy.

This weekend, I wrapped up koji growing for my sake, miso AND shoyu projects. The sake is going very well and I expect it to be a great success. The miso and shoyu, however, are total experiments because of course I went off recipe and used spent grains from brewing instead of more traditional grains for koji. As a result, the grains were too wet I think for really good koji growth. Something was definitely happening, just not sure what. I think it would be cool to be able to sequence some of these home ferments and see what is actually going on in there. Towards the end, I think some yeasts started going to work in the spent grain koji, as it acquired a sort of sharp, alcoholic smell. Well, only thing to do is wait! The sweet miso will be ready in 4 to 6 weeks, the salty miso in some amount of months, and the shoyu in... a year! I tend to think that the salt will prohibit more ethanol production, but thats just a hunch.

ALSO, I am engaging in an expt with my fishtank. The poor fish have been lethargic and have had their dorsal fins down for quite a while. I have switched to a canister filter because I wanted to try to boost my plant growth, by reducing the surface turbulence and trapping the CO2 the fish produce in the tank. My oxygen is suffering, however, because I woke up this morning to heavily breathing fish with dark red gills. Turn on the air stone and they were fine in 15, but it was a little scary. Not sure if I should add more light so that the plants do a better job photosynthesizing - is CO2 still the limiting reagent, or is it light? I think there is a lot of confusion about this on the forums. People inject CO2 into their tanks but then have surface turbulence, which I would think would cause the CO2 to degas and regain equilibrium with the environment. Goldfish are really dirty, so I would think they would produce plenty of CO2. I don't really know though.

Anyway, I think my fish have some sort of parasite, they flash and yawn and twitch. PraziPro didn't clear it up so I thought maybe it is Trichodina? The stupid Petsmart and Petco here didn't have the Malachite Green + Formalin product I was looking for, so I ended up with this herbal stuff. Hopefully it works anyway because I hear the Malachite can stain the sealant in the aquarium. Weird. The herbal thing probably won't work but I guess its worth a shot since it's not an emergency. I turned the air stone back on for the treatment, to make the fish comfortable as well. The plants will just have to wait.

In other news, I have yet to start my presentation for Biophysical Society, which is in 2 weeks. And I also need to finish my design for Threadless so maybe I can win and go to Japan!!! Unlikely, but its worth a shot! Busy busy!

Surviving Graduate School

Several interesting internet stumbles have appeared since my last post, and in my mind, they are related.

We have the hilarious #overlyhonestmethods Twitter hashtag.

And more seriously, some discussion about mental health in graduate school.
About a panic attack by See Arr Oh
An interchange between someone in and someone out by Chemjobber and Vinylogous.
I prefer the first piece, which was actually written in response the second. It feels totally honest and hit home with me in some ways. The second piece (which is actually a series and as of writing this, is unfinished) asks a lot of good questions but for me, doesn't feel as poignant or compelling.

I guess what prompted me to write this post is that I had similar experiences to See Arr Oh in my time here at graduate school (which continues). There was a period where I felt anxious on a daily basis, developed a social anxiety where I similarly felt trapped in seminars, and felt like the only thing that really helped fight the anxiety was alcohol. It didn't culminate in a panic attack, luckily, but did lead to crying bouts (usually not at work) and unmotivation in lab.

I think what helped me get through that time was a supportive baymate (ie the person you sit right next to in lab, where the benches back each other, like a bay), and past history with worse anxiety that gave me some coping mechanisms. Besides listening to my moaning, my baymate advised me that maybe actually achieving something in lab would help with my motivation. That by staying busy and celebrating small successes, I would regain some motivation. This worked to some extent, but was probably hindered by her enabling behaviors of wanting to drink with me. Obviously drinking is a poor choice in coping mechanism, and was one that developed in graduate school, but during my undergraduate, I had developed others that probably helped keep my head above water.

Bare with me now, but mostly it has to do with how you think of the cycles of anxiety and your mind. Developed from brushes with Eastern-influenced New Age thinking via my mother, I came to see that the thinking that builds anxiety is extremely cyclical and superfluous. In my case, my anxiety revolved around the future and the thoughts were often formed by "what if" questions, the answers to which are unknown - well, because it hasn't happened yet. You can see why this is a self-defeating and pointless circle, but the insidious nature of anxiety is that you get trapped inside and spiral downward. The second important point is that although your mind is very powerful and good at creating these self-defeating cycles, it is also under your control (to some extent). You can let it control you, or you can choose to control it, if its being rowdy. Different teachers have different opinions about what to do with dangerous thoughts, but the point is, you don't have to believe them. Either by pushing the thoughts away or confronting them to see what is really scaring you, you can stop the cycle or at least hinder it before you get too deep.

So, things are mostly better now. I can go to seminars, I'm not a complete alcoholic and I don't have crushing anxiety at every moment. But the anxiety is still there under the surface. One stray thought and it is back, but only as a shadow. There are periods of months where I don't have it at all. I basically have resigned myself to it as long as I'm in graduate school, especially with the uncertainness of my future as it is. Hopefully in the coming months, I will cement down a option for post-graduation.

One thing that I'm a little confused on, though... I continue to have a life outside of the lab which is fulfilling, with various hobbies and friends. However, in my own experience, and by looking at others, thinking about your project outside of lab can lead to much better productivity. In times when I was feeling the best about my project, and things were going well, I would think about my project all the time. So there has to be some tradeoff between hobbies and thinking of research outside of lab. In some sense, I understand profs when they don't want people to have hobbies, because for me, the hobbies are sort of a sign that I'm just not that into my project right now, and that I need other successes to build up my lab-eroded confidence. Of course, having profs require a lack of hobbies is unlikely to work and what probably leads to greater mental decline among students. Who is to say, I don't have the answers though...