Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Cookies

As promised, the follow-up pumpkin recipe.  Soooooo goooooood!  Makes about 2-3 dozen cookies.

Chocolate chip pumpkin cookies: 
2c flour
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (or, 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/4 tsp nutmeg, 1/8 tsp cloves)
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter (room temp)
1 c sugar
1 egg
15 oz pureed pumpkin
1 c chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 degrees. Whisk together dry ingredients, except sugar. Cream butter and sugar in a separate bowl. Add egg. Add alternatively the flour mixture in two parts, adding the pumpkin puree in between. Do not over-mix! Dough will be somewhere between cookie dough and muffin batter texture. Fold in chocolate chips. Drop dough by heaping Tbsp onto a baking sheet lined with parchment paper (or Silpat mats if you have them). Space cookies about 1.5'' apart (do not spread much while baking). Bake approx 15-20 min until edges are golden and cookies are springy to the touch.

Queen of Pumpkin?

This fall, I have been doing a lot of baking.  This may be due to the fact that I have also been doing a lot of cyclocrossing, and cross is definitely better with a beer in one hand and fresh baked goods in the other.  At any rate, people have been quite taken with my pumpkin-related recipes - no idea why, but this year is the year of pumpkin EVERYTHING (just type pumpkin into Google and see what the most-searched terms are!) and I guess I've been perpetuating that trend.

So, without further ado, I post my very first blog recipe!  Yay!  Next Installment will be Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies.  Enjoy ~ Happy Deeds

Pumpkin Bread (from a dear friend of my mother's).  It tastes like pumpkin pie, but without all the rolling and shaping of the crust!  I would post a picture but this gets eaten too quickly to be caught on camera!

Group A Ingredients:
2c canned or home-pureed pumpkin
3c sugar
1c water
1c vegetable oil
4 eggs

Group B Ingredients:
3 1/2 c flour
2 tsp. baking soda
2 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
3/4 tsp. ground cloves

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease and flour two 9'' x 5'' baking pans.  In a large mixing bowl, combine Group A Ingredients and beat until well-mixed.  In a separate bowl, combine Group B Ingredients and whisk until mixed.  Add Group B to Group A and beat until smooth.  Pour batter into pans.  Bake 40-70 min or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.  Cool 10-15 min before removing pan from rack.  Serve plain, buttered, or with cream cheese/cream cheese frosting.

This also works well as muffins (makes at least 1 dozen - reduce cooking time to 10-20 min).

That's why they call it work!

I admittedly work pretty hard at my job. Graduate students, as a whole, work harder than the average 9-to-5'er because we are supposed to be driven by our love of the subject, so why is it that sometime I feel like graduate school has ruined my love of science?

I, like most young scientists, am constantly treated with the expectation that all I want for my life is to become an academic researcher. There are the "holy grails" of the academic scientist - HHMI funding, the Lasker Award, the Nobel Prize, the unofficial title of "rockstar PI," however as much as I once coveted these things I now find myself vehemently turned off by the prospect of devoting my career to their pursuit. I just don't want to have my life THAT devoted to generating data! I like thinking about science, I like discussing science, I have even jumped up and down with excitement as I interpreted a really major result. At the end of the day, though, my enthusiasm does not boarder enough on obsession to really compete with the people who are successful PIs. When I go home at night, 9 days out of 10 I am fed up and frustrated with science and complain bitterly to my husband that, "I can't believe I have to go back and do it all again tomorrow!" Somehow, I do not think that this bodes well for a career in academic science.

It seems like somewhere, out there in the real world, there are people who love their jobs. LOVE them. Like wake up every day excited to tackle work kind of love. How can I get to be one of these mythical people? What are the secrets they are not telling us? Classical tidbits of parent and guidance counselor wisdom have the following advice on the matter:

-It's not supposed to be fun! That's why they call it work!

-No one REALLY loves their job every single day.

-Your ideal career is what you would do if money was no object.

Ok, so I don't think I dislike my job because of the hard work. Graduate students don't exactly clock in and out, and we are not required to work a certain number of hours per week. I put in the occasional 12 or 14 hour day because I feel the need to get stuff done. Hard work is not intimidating to me.

I don't totally buy the one about how no one loves their job every single day. Some people honestly do. I think it's ok to get frustrated every now and then, but should your ideal job be like marriage? I occasionally get frustrated with my relationship, but at the end of every single day I have zero doubts about whether I should have married my husband - on the other hand I constantly question whether or not getting this PhD was the right career path to choose.

And if money was no object? I'd love to just stay at home and some days I would do cooking and some days I would knit, other days I would write, or ride my bike, or go hiking, or... well, you get the point.

There is still the issue of how passionate I am about science in general - I really do seek out science information, just for the fun of it. Getting bogged down in the research and the stress of churning out results is what's bumming me out.

So, blogosphere, what do you think? Am I just on a futile, fairy-tale quest for the kind of career that does not exist? Or should I keep foraging on, looking for a way to meld my love of science and of "real life?"

Till Next Time.

Not Happy Deeds

Take Two

Obviously, it's been a while since I've written. Like, two years. Enough time for me to finish a hellishly tough year of class, bumble around at the lab bench for a while, then take a hellishly tough qualifying exam, all the while participating in more than a few bike races.

I am pleased to announce that:

1) I'm now a married lady. Sorry to dash anyone's hopes...

2) You can call me a PhD Candidate (more importantly, I can include that in my e-mail signature)

3) I now partake in both road AND cyclocross races!

Learning to balance all three of the above things is an ongoing process for me - I will admit, when my racing is going well, my lab work might not be the foremost thing on my mind, and when I'm working hard in the lab, I'm not the nicest person for my husband to deal with. That's just life, I guess: trying to integrate all the things you love to do and somehow manage to find a few spare hours to eat and sleep!

Each one of my interest distracts a bit from the next, which is why I'm a little embarrassed to say I've recently added a new distraction to the list: Twitter-creeping (tweeping?) on the Tour de France peloton. I blame Cycling News because a few days ago they posted an article recommending whose Twitter feeds to follow during the tour. Being that experiments are usually very boring and I am in the lab for an eternity anyways, I decided it couldn't hurt to join Twitter just to "follow" (and by follow I definitely mean creep on) my favorite riders to entertain myself during the day. I really don't think I'm alone in this endeavor, seeing as Mark Cavendish has like 65,000 followers. Anyways, I was right, it HAS been entertaining, however it has also been distracting. I guess the one productive thing about my entry into the world of Twitter is that I also subscribe to Nature magazine's Twitter feed, and they post "educational" tweets and articles. I personally have not tweeted yet, so I don't advise looking me up and following my feed. You will be disappointed.

Stay tuned, I will try and make more regular blog posts.

-Happy Deeds

On being a bum...

So...

I know that the last time I posted was in January. I apologize about this but I have been quite busy with trying to get into grad school and trying not to get blown off the back in every bike race I enter. In these endeavors I was mostly successful: I am pleased to announce that I will be moving to Maryland in a few months to begin grad school (yay) and I found my way to the middle of the pack by the end of the bike season (double yay).

Now that I have finished all that school stuff and the collegiate racing season is over, I can concentrate on what I have been describing as "my summer as a bum." A foreign concept to a work-a-holic such as myself, I have not experienced such a clear agenda since I was about fifteen years old. After about one week of bumming around, I can honestly say that I am afraid I might become addicted.

Speaking of addiction, much of my time has been devoted to catching up on a blog that one of my friends recently introduced to me: Bike Snob NYC (http://www.bikesnobnyc.blogspot.com/). The man's a genius, honestly, the stuff that he comes up with has kept me entertained for days. If you are a cyclist of any sort, I recommend checking it out.

As I sat around on my couch this morning, pleased to be drinking my coffee and enjoying my cinnamon toast crunch, I was interrupted by a strange melody floating through my window. Turns out one of my strange neighbors across the street has become even stranger and begun to play the accordion (!) on the second-floor deck overlooking a busy MPLS street. I could hardly believe this myself so I took a picture:

Yep, accordion. And on that bombshell... goodnight.

2009 is off to a great start!

Not to rip on my life in the year of 2008, but it was pretty average. There were some ups, some downs, a couple big highlights.... I am, however, hoping that 2009 will bring me some new and interesting life changes. I think that graduating will have a lot to do with these changes (big surprise there), but who knows - maybe some other major things will happen as well? Only time will tell, but for now I will sincerely enjoy the month of January. It's always a great start to the new year when you can spend time pondering all the possibilities of what lies ahead as you lounge on your parents' sofa and indulge in the pure laziness that is only achieved during winter break.
My 2009 got off to a great start because I toasted the new year with my loving family and best guy in a luxurious codo in Winter Park, Colorado, before going to bed early and waking up to abuse my legs in the moguls on the ski hill. Nothing like a ski vacation to start the year out right! My best guy also took me out on New Year's Day for the hands-down BEST date ever - how can you improve on seared duck breast and braised elk while looking out at the mountains?
Well, I hope that every one else's 2009 has gotten off to a terrific start and, if it has not, it soon turns around :)
Au Revoir,
Deeds

paranoia sets in

I really start to hate the middle weeks of December. Not only am I finishing up last-minute essays and quizzes for all my courses, I also have to start studying for my harrowing finals and somehow, some way, squeeze in my remaining graduate school applications? What, I'm not done with those yet? No, no I am not, because my P.O.S. computer got a wicked, nasty virus and has been out of order for about a week. Yesterday, I was able to recover my personal statement files but needless to say the damage to my work ethic has already been done. Thus, I am here writing on my blog instead of focusing on my future.

I have an uncanny ability to ignore responsibilities until the last possible second, which is kind of funny since I have a lot of responsibilities, what with my various student groups and class work and research, etc. I would like to say I am doing something to manage this, but sadly I don't try very hard to fix it. I like my relaxation time I guess :)

Anyways, what prompted this post was my recent reading of a post on science-professor.blogspot.com regarding applications to graduate school. A friend sent me the link because she found it funny, but unfortunately she, already being in graduate school, probably did not realize that to those that actively applying to graduate school, the humor in the post was lost and replaced instead by paranoia and anxiety. If you are post-graduate school admission, I recommend you read it because from the comments, it seems like a lot of people found the entry funny. If you are still applying... well, it's your choice.

Well, enough ignoring my responsibilities: I have a lot of time to sit down and do nothing but apply to graduate school so I believe I shall take advantage of that and get some work done. Ciao.