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