Picture Frames Without The Frame

Time really does go fast. It's hard to believe that it has been about a year since I've written anything in my blog. A lot has happened since then; I took a new position at a different institution, and I bought a house, among a lot of other not so major changes. I did it all within a matter of months, which I have found is generally how things happen. ALL AT THE SAME TIME.

Needless to say, I wasn't blogging much before all that chaos started anyway-so I'm going to try to start again. And just in case you were wondering I'm loving my new coworkers and I'm loving my new house. At some point I will write a blog post about all the things I learned when purchasing a house that's for sale by owner. However, I got to say it was rather easy. Easier than I thought it would ever be. Sign here, sign there. Show me where all your money comes from. Bam, you got a house.

Moving on. I've been messing around with watercolors and wanting something to display them or pictures I've taken. With that in mind, I went searching around for what I had on hand and for some inspiration on pinterest. And this is what I ended up doing.

All I needed were these few supplies and some scrap pieces of wood. I happen to have these pieces laying around. My dad brings them home with him from work and then I steal them. They happen to also be very good for starting fires-so I steal them a lot.

Anyway, I  sanded them down slightly by hand with fine grit sand paper. I stained them using the minwax stain shown above. Most of my floors and baseboards are all stained dark, so I kept with the trend. I smothered on lots of wood glue (and I mean lots) and pressed the wood pieces together. I let them dry over night, while clamped together tightly. Side note: I left them dry overnight on newspaper. Seemed like a perfect idea at the time, but some of the glue seeped through; gluing the newspaper to the wood. I spent the next day peeling the paper off the wood-not so good idea anymore; I'm pretty good at those. Lastly, I just attached a picture frame bracket with two finishing nails in the back and hot glued the twine around the top and bottom.

I used two small clothespins to hang the watercolor "paintings" to the twine and hung them right up on the wall. The wood I used is very light, so they didn't require anything special to hang them. And ta-da, picture "frames." You can see that the edges are not perfect or lined up exactly. I actually enjoy that fact, but who has time for that perfection nonsense anyway?




I hope their simplicity inspires someone to make "picture frames" of their own.  I'm so inspired I think I'm going to go enjoy a nice cup of hot tea, the rainy night and the new genetics textbook-unfortunately it's only rain. No snow.

Itty-Bitty Lemon Meringues

I figured I'd start off my week with a blog post. What do I have better to do on a cloudy Monday? You're right, nothing! Well, except maybe sleep, especially after this past weekend. I did very little sleeping, but a whole lot of memory making. In any case, staying up until the wee hours of the morning quickly reminds me that I'm no longer in my 20s.

Anyway, from time to time my mom makes cookies for people for special occasions. She made over 5,000 cookies from September to December last year. When she makes them she always ends up with some that aren't pretty enough or are slightly burnt that only make it to the "plate of mishap cookies." This plate sits at her house for the taking by anyone who passes through. Let me tell you, it's true, even too much of a good thing ("the plate of mishap cookies") is a bad thing.

So, I think my mom was getting tired of making cookies, because she started making pies. Just miniature ones. Which, don't be fooled, are pretty much still cookies if you ask me. But, perhaps, cookies with a lil' flare if you will. Lemon Meringue is her favorite pie. It is actually quite a few of the house passer throughers favorites too. Hence, her inspiration for these cookies, which I am dubbing Itty-Bitty Lemon Meringues. She also loves to put meringue on anything, if she can. I will admit it does make things look just a tad fancy.

These cookies are pretty simple if you have the right tools and the time. Also, when my Mom and I make cookies we always spend one day making the dough and then another actually baking the cookies. This works well, because most cookie dough needs to chill in the frig before handling.

Having the "tassey stomper" (shown above) and the small cookie scoop makes this all go a lot quicker. This is the pudding mix we use for lemon meringue anything. 

You'll also need some tassey pans. You can find them at pretty much any store that has bakeware. Once you have these things on hand, you're set to go. 

Itty-Bitty Lemon Meringes

Crust: 

8 oz. cream cheese

2.5 sticks margarine

3 cups flour

Filling:

1 2.9 oz. package of cook and serve lemon pudding and pie filling

1/2 cup sugar

2-1/4 cup water

2 beaten egg yolks

Meringue:

3 egg whites

1/3 cup sugar

Start by making the crust the day before. To make the crust, cream together the cream cheese and margarine with a mixer. Add the flour. Refrigerate over night. If the dough is too wet the next day add a little more flour. Roll the dough into small balls. The size all depends on how dainty you really want to make these cookies. I usually roll the balls into roughly a bouncy ball size or a little bigger. Set the ball into the tassey pan. Dip the tassey stomper into flour and then "stomp" your dough ball. Slow, gentle and steady is the way to go here. Trying to get all walls of the tassie even is more difficult than it looks. You also do not want really thick walls (you don't want all dough and hardly any filling), so finding the right size dough ball for your pan may take a few tries. Practice makes perfect.

Bake the tassies at 375 degrees F for 12 minutes on the top rack (putting only 4 trays in the oven at one time seems to work best). They'll be slightly golden. Remove from oven, let cool for a few seconds and then restomp the cookies down. Return to oven and bake only 4 more minutes (do not let them get very brown). Remove from oven and remove the tassey cups from the tassey pans once cool enough.

While the cookie part is cooling make the filling. Stir the pudding mix, sugar, 1/4 cup water and the egg yolks in medium saucepan. Stir in the remaining 2 cups of water and bring to a full boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and cool 5 minutes, stir twice. Scoop into the cookie crust using the cookie scoop or a small ice cream scoop, you want to fill them to the top. Let cool while making the meringue.

To make the meringue beat 3 egg whites in a large bowl (I have the best luck in a chilled clean and dry bowl) until foamy. Add the sugar and beat until the whites form stiff peaks. Once stiff, spread the meringue over the lemon filling. You want to be sure that the meringue covers the entire top, and seals against the crust. If the meringue does not touch the cookie or crust it will pull away from the edges and shrink on the top of your cookie. This goes for pies too or anything you're making with meringue. Use a spoon to pull the meringue to a point or to make a design. Bake the meringue/cookies at 375 degrees F for 5 minutes or until it starts to brown. You really want to keep an eye on the meringue.

And Voila! you're done and they're ready to enjoy.

They're just too cute.

So, I hope you had a chance to make lots of memories this past weekend too. And are enjoying your Monday, even if it is a cloudy, chilly, hard to roll out of bed kind of day.

Rhubarb Iced Tea

Wow, how time flies. It has been almost a year since I posted anything within my blog. I have no idea where the time went, but I think it probably went to preparing lectures, grading papers and making students cry. Just kidding. I would never purposely make a student cry.

That doesn't mean they don't cry though. They do. More often than you'd imagine. Mostly because they waited until the last minute to care about their grade.

Plus, it was a really loooong winter. Incredibly long and I love winter. I really do. I love big warm sweaters, comfy boots and hot chocolate. However, by the end of April I was ready for some desirable weather....where the AIR didn't burn the skin on my face, or freeze the snot in my nose.

So, we've finally come to have some weather that doesn't require a warm scarf. This could mean one of two things, I have more time or I'm just motivated to do more than just crawl up in a ball under some heavy blankets.

And here we are at spring. Beautiful beautiful spring. With spring comes lots of delicious things like rhubarb and enough mud to make me dread letting my dog out to pee.

We were planting in the garden today, but a bunch of storms came through which cut our planting time short. So, while I was retreating in doors I decided to look up some new and different recipes for rhubarb. At the time, I was thirsty so this iced tea really caught my attention. It definitely quenched my thirst and there was nothing difficult about it.


I found the recipe in a Martha Stewart magazine from probably a decade ago and then I found it on Pinterest.

Rhubarb Iced Tea

10 cups water

10 rhubarb stems (cut into halves or thirds)

1/2 cup sugar (or more to taste)

Add the 10 cups of water and rhubarb stems into a large saucepan, bring to a boil and then simmer for roughly an hour. Strain the liquid into a pitcher and add 1/2 cup sugar while hot. Stir. Chill before serving. 

Tips: If you want the pretty pink color, pick the younger thinner rhubarb stems. They have more red than green and will make your ice tea the appealing pink color you want, instead of green. Also, add the sugar while it's hot so that it can dissolve into the tea easier.

You know what else is abundant during spring? These orange poppy flowers. They'll brighten up any yard.

Enjoy the rhubarb iced tea! 

Sizzling Salsa

I hate shopping on Amazon. Hate it. When I type leather messenger bag into the search engine I do not want to sift through 45, 956 result items. 20 pages of messenger bags? That seems a little over zealous Amazon.

You need to do a better job at reading my mind. If facebook can figure out that photography is a hobby of mine, that I exercise and take my nutrition seriously, that I am a science nerd and I dislike the color pink all on it's own and then supply me with random in your face advertisements on a routine basis, then you, Amazon, can at least narrow down the search results to a select few.

Does this irritate anyone else?

Change of subject. The end of the summer, means everything is in season. Yippee...except I can only eat cucumbers and tomatoes 18 days in a row before I start to dream of cucumbers and tomatoes. And I'm going to go ahead and make the executive decision and say that once you start dreaming of the vegetables you're eating, you're probably spending too much time with them.

The other day I decided to make cucumber salsa after I was inspired by a picture I saw on pinterest. I like salsa, a lot. I think it's pretty versatile. I used up anything I could find in my garden. This is what I had and some.

Tomato and Cucumber Salsa

1 c tomato, seeded and chopped

4 c cucumber, seeded and chopped

1/2 c red onion, chopped

1 jalapeno pepper, chopped

1 chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, chopped

2 cloves garlic, chopped

1 tblsp basil, chopped

1/4 c sour cream

1/4 c greek yogurt

3 tsp lemon juice

1/2 tsp cumin

1/4 tsp smoked paprika

1/4 tsp salt

Prepare your vegetables. You really only want the 'meat' of your vegetables, so you need to seed them. You do not want watered down salsa right? Mix the first 7 ingredients together once prepared in a medium sized bowl. In a separate bowl mix the remaining ingredients (sour cream, yogurt, lemon juice and seasonings). Add the wet ingredients to your vegetables and mix. Serve with tortillas or whatever you want, but eat immediately. The longer it sits the more watery it gets.

This salsa has a little kick to it. So if you don't like spicy hot, don't use the jalapenos or chipotle in adobo sauce.

This would be amazing in fish tacos!

 Enjoy!

The Nervous System, Food Induced Comas and Pizza....

I napped today. Napped!! Nothing feels as good as a Monday late afternoon nap. Nothing. I don't know about you, but I'm a sleeper. I need to sleep. Maybe this is one clue that I'm not yet a mother. However, if I could, I would sleep all day. I don't even really have to be tired. Unfortunately, that never gets to happen.  Nonetheless, I have never ever laid my head down on a pillow and had a hard time falling to sleep. Even when I'm stressed or worried. 

I feel for those who have trouble sleeping. And those whose minds wont let them. 

A full belly always puts me to sleep. For physiological reasons of course. It has everything to do with your parasympathetic nervous system and insulins enzymatic pathway (and little to do with that well known amino acid culprit known as tryptophan. In fact, turkey contains the same amount of tryptophan as most meats). Scientists and the likes often refer to the parasympathetic nervous system as the rest and digest branch of your peripheral nervous system or autonomic nervous system. It's called this because it signals your body to rest and restore energy. It can cause the pupils of your eyes to contract, promote digestion of food and slow your heart rate, breathing rate and lower blood pressure. The mass of food in your stomach signals the parasympathetic nervous system and your body to slow down. And it's all involuntary so you can't even be like "hey, stop it, I'm not tired!"

Really, you should actually probably blame the copious amounts of mashed potatoes and rolls the next time you eat thanksgiving dinner or any meal high in carbohydrates. It has been shown that meals high in carbohydrates signal the release of insulin. Insulin then signals for certain amino acids (protein building blocks) to be taken up and turned into muscle. But tryptophan is not used for muscle building, so it's levels become elevated compared to the other amino acids present. So, the body says hey, I have an increased level of tryptophan and nothing competing against those levels or fighting against it to get to the brain. (Your body is a battle field of concentration/pressure/electrical gradients...and they duke it out using different types of diffusion). So, tryptophan glides right through to the fluid in the brain. And there it is converted into serotonin (Richard J Wurtman and Judith J Wurtman, et al. 2003. Effects of normal meals rich in carbohydrates or proteins on plasma tryptophan and tyrosine ratios. Am J Clin Nutr  vol. 77 no. 1 128-132). Ha, and from there you don't have a chance of fighting the tired feeling. Serotonin is further converted into melatonin and bam! Full blown food coma. 

THANK YOU mashed potatoes and gravy, I totally wanted to be unresponsive for the rest of the day.

Lucky for you I have the perfect food coma meal to share with you. French Bread Pizza. I promise, if you eat enough it's coma inducing. Thank me later.

I saw this recipe over at the Cozy Apron. It looked rather good, so I thought I'd give it a try with what I had on hand. 

Artichoke French Bread Pizza

1 loaf french bread, sliced in half

1 c mozzarella and brick cheese (just mix the two)

1/4 c black olives, halved

6 slices salami (I had genoa)

1 15 oz jar quartered artichoke hearts, drained and patted dry

6 large basil leaves, chopped

1 15 oz jar fire roasted tomatoes

1 15 oz jar crushed tomatoes

pinch of red pepper flakes

1 jalapeno, minced

4 garlic gloves, minced

1 tsp oregano 

salt and pepper

2 tblsp olive oil and some to drizzle

I made the tomato sauce first. It's the logical thing to do. Heat the 2 tblsp of olive oil on medium heat. Throw in the garlic, red pepper flakes and jalapeno. You want to be sure that the olive oil is not too hot or that you do not over cook the garlic (It is really easy to burn garlic if you ask me and then it tastes super bitter and well....gross). You just want to infuse the oil with the flavors, so cook until the garlic just starts to turn golden in color.  Then mix in the fire roasted tomatoes, crushed tomatoes, oregano and salt and pepper to taste. Let simmer on low while you make the pizza.

Drizzle the french bread with olive oil and toast in oven for 5-10 minutes on 350 degrees F. You just want the pizza to start to get crusty. Once golden brown remove it from the oven and take a clove of garlic and scrape it against the toasted french bread. While the bread is toasting you can fry the artichokes and salami. I threw the salami in the skillet first on med to high heat, and then fried the artichokes in the fat from the salami. The salami will bubble up a little when finished and the artichokes will turn a nice brown color. 

Now you're ready to assemble your pizza.  Add a layer of your tomato sauce, the cheese, the salami, the artichokes and olives. Cover with foil and bake in oven for 10 minutes or until cheese is melted at 350 degrees F. I covered the pizza because I did not want the bread to toast any more, it was crusty enough. However, if you like it extra crusty leave it uncovered. Finish it with a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil and the basil. 

Of course there are some of those in my family that are astonished by the fact that I would put artichokes on pizza. So, the traditional french bread pizza, with just some cheese and pepperoni is shown on the left. You can see that this recipe is easily interchangeable and the topping possibilities are endless. 

I, consequently, loved the artichokes. I'm sure you will too. Enjoy!

Rock Candy Turned Science Project

Have you ever seen that commercial by the Girl Scouts of America, where the little girl asks her father why the sky is blue and when he gives her a lame answer ("to match the color of your eyes") she tells him the scientifically correct one? Which by the way is not so lame.

Well, that's me. I love that commercial and I hope that it does inspire girls to be more involved in the sciences. I always try to give the scientifically correct answer to any question my little friends or family members ask. It's the scientist in me.  I have quite a few little cousins around, so any opportunity I get I turn something into a science project.

Awhile ago when my little cousin was in to visit we made 'rock candy' on popsicle sticks. This is incredibly easy to turn into a science project discussing evaporation, saturation of a solution and crystal formation.

The big question that always gets asked is WHY or HOW do the crystals form? You can answer that question in the 'lame' way or you could tell them something along the lines of this.

First, there are a few things we need to define before we can answer why the crystals actually form. For instance, what are solutions or what the heck is a crystal anyway? What is evaporation? All of those things are important in understanding the making of 'rock candy.'

A solution by definition is a homogeneous mixture that remains in one phase (solid, liquid or gas). It is a mixture of a solute and a solvent. The solute will be a substance that will dissolve in another substance. The substance that does the dissolving is the solvent. So, in the case of rock candy the solution is a mixture of sugar and water, where the sugar is the solute and the water is the solvent, and the phase of the solution is liquid. Quite frankly you can discuss solvents and solutes in a number of ways, with all different phases. You could use oxygen in water. Here oxygen is a gas acting as a solute in water a liquid solvent. It however can get complicated when we talk about gases as solvents. Really only gases dissolve in gases and generally they are referred to as mixtures (which by the way is very different than a solution), not solutions.

The solubility (the property of a solute to dissolve in a solvent) of a solute depends on a ton of things. Solubility will be greatly affected by physical and chemical properties of a solute and solvent, as well as the temperature, pH and pressure of the solution. At some point the solvent can no longer take on anymore solute and the solution becomes saturated, meaning adding more solute does not increase the concentration (amount of solute in solvent) of the solution. Honestly, I think this is the most important part of being able to make crystallization to occur. You have to be sure that your sugar water solution is supersaturated. However, you don't want to heavily saturate it either, because that can cause spontaneous crystallization, and is a lot harder to control the process. And to allow crystals to form on just the stick or string. If you refer to the graph below you'll see that there isn't much separating soluble, supersaturated or heavily supersaturated. They are also variable depending on your environment. The lines represent general assumptions about solubility.

When making your sugar water solution you need to do a few things. Start out with an equal ratio of sugar and water (1 cup water to 1 cup sugar). You need to boil the sugar water mixture, raising the temperature of the solvent (water) increases the solubility of the solute (sugar). You can also aid solubility by stirring. I'm not going to go into why, that's too much chemistry than even I enjoy.  Once the first cup of sugar has dissolved, start adding more sugar 1/2 cup at a time. Wait for it to dissolve. Add another 1/2. At some point the sugar is going to stop dissolving, meaning the solute is going to stay solid in the solvent. You'll start to see the sugar. At this point the solution is most likely supersaturated and you should stop adding the sugar. When I made my supersaturated solution it worked out to be a ratio of roughly 3 cup sugar to 1 cup water. So, a 3:1 ratio. This will or can vary for you.

Another note, when making this solution, be sure you are using pure sugar and clean water. Any other solid solutes in the water can lead to changes in your sugars solubility. Also, it will provide other sites for nucleation (starts) of the crystals. Meaning the crystals will form on anything solid they can get their tiny little crystal fingers on, even a tiny dust particle. So, if you have dirt in your water crystals will form throughout the water and just not on the stick or string. We will talk a little more about this in a bit.

Moving along to....crystals. What are they? Basically they are the arrangement of the atoms of a substance in an ordered pattern in all dimensions. Snowflakes are good examples of crystals. Remember how no two are the same? That is the same for crystals. Which can tell you a lot about the composition of a substance. That is why we use crystallography to study substance composition. If we can determine the 3D crystal shape we can figure out the composition of the atoms within the substance. In a long drawn out round about way, but nonetheless it's very useful. I could go on and on about crystals, but I will spare you all. I'm well aware that not everyone loves science as much as I do.
In the case of rock candy, you are making sugar crystals. The sugar atoms never reach equilibrium because the crystallization steps will occur too quickly, forming the crystals.

That leaves us with evaporation. The whole process that triggers crystal formation. We all know that evaporation is the change of liquid to vapor. Evaporation occurs when we add enough energy (heat from the sun) to the water molecules that they overcome their polar and cohesion properties to break away. When we remove the liquid (water) from our solution through evaporation, we are left with the sugar atoms. They are left to begin the crystallization process. Evaporation is also why you need a clear container, a sunny spot and good air flow. All of these things will increase the rate of evaporation. The clear open container allows the sun to penetrate supplying energy to the water molecules slowly and allowing it to be exposed to the air, allowing the water molecules to break away and escape to form vapor/gas.

The string or popsicle stick is absorbent, so it will  draw in the solution. The string or stick is also a solid material and the crystals are looking for something to attach to or a nuclei site since the water is evaporating. You can also increase the chance of crystal formation on the stick or string by seeding it, covering it in sugar before placing it in the solution. They'll attach to this solid and instead of building a bunch of new sites they will grow on each other. Nature will always try to take the easiest possible way. It is more efficient for them to build upon each other than to start new nucleation. The answers are in all the laws of thermodynamics; that I am not going to into here. Unless of course you ask, then I most definitely will. This is also why you need a very clean container and water. So there are not other solid sources for nucleation. You also do not want to disrupt the solution, to avoid new nucleation sites.

I think that sums up the why and how. It turned out to be a lot lengthier than I intended. Oh well. Hopefully now you know.

So here is what you'll need:

sugar

water

glass/clear containers

food coloring

popsicle sticks

clothes pins

a cool/sunny/breezy area

Create your sugar solution as I stated above. Let cool slowly for about 15 mins. You still want it to be warm to touch because that slow cooling process aids in the formation of crystals. Funnel the sugar solution into your clear containers.  Add drops of food coloring to your desired color consistency. Stir. Dip the stick in water and then roll in sugar to coat (seeding the stick). Attach a clothespin to the end of the popsicle stick and place it into the solution. Move the containers to a window seal or something of the like. And wait....days. Maybe even 2 weeks. Without touching it. You should start seeing crystal formation within 5 days if everything is right. If you do everything exactly as stated above it should turn out well. If you start to see a crust on the top of your container, break it away so that evaporation can continue to occur and that site does not allow more crystal formation, and taking away formation on your stick.

Here are some photos from our Rock Candy Experiment. 

 Preparing (seeding) the sticks.

Attaching the clothes pins and placing the sticks in the solution.

The end product! 

Blueberry Basil Smoothie

So, I am currently teaching a very content laden course in just 5 weeks. This course is usually taught on a normal 15 week schedule and can be overwhelming even then. I understand why students register for this class, it seems like a great idea at first. Two main courses knocked off in just 10 weeks. Plus, most of them need to pass it to get into the nursing program that starts in the fall. I promise, it's not a great idea.

This week is week 4 or week 9 for those who took the first and second classes back to back. I could tell today that it was getting to them. They would not stop giggling!

At one point there was a story about a a girl (who had the misfortune to lose her arm at some point) who is friends with a little person (they were not politically correct, by the way). Apparently, they both got drunk one night and the story went on until it ended with one of the students going around mimicking the camel from that Geico commercial asking everyone what day it was. I have no idea how those two things came together, but they did.

It was hump day. And apparently that was a very funny fact.

One of these days I'm going to have enough smarts to write down the crazy things my students say when they're supposed to be working.

Fyi...giggling is contagious. I might have caught the affliction by the end of our 4 hours together too. But, I'll take it, because truth be told I'm usually dealing more with tears than giggles at this point in the course.

So, any good summer day that included copious amounts of giggling also needed to include a fabulous smoothie. You know, because giggling makes me thirsty.

You can now add this to your smoothie repertoire; if you enjoy basil and blueberries. I know I certainly do.

Blueberry Basil Smoothie

1 c blueberries

1/4 c almond milk

1 tblsp honey

5-7 medium/small  sized fresh basil leaves

handful of ice cubes

Throw everything in the blender (liquid first) and blend blend blend. You can add more honey to your sweet tooth liking.

Enjoy!