Making life choices

A few days ago, Will turned toward me and said, "I feel like we've been making a lot of really good life choices recently." He was smiling, with a look of genuine contentment on his face. Initially I wasn't sure what he meant. When I think of life choices, I tend to think of Life Choices - those big choices that you agonize over, wondering what the downstream effects of your choice will be. Marriage. Accepting a job. Quitting a job. School. Where to live. Hair stylist.

Yet, as I thought about it, I realized we have made quite a few life choices recently. We decided to sell Will's old, extremely well-used car for a newer car that won't require him to devote multiple Saturday afternoons to repairs. We decided to move from our somewhat fancy apartment complex to an older duplex that's not only a better fit for our budget, but also for our personalities. I decided, with Will's constant encouragement, to apply to a PhD program. We decided to replace my 8-year-old laptop with a newer version that can run multiple programs simultaneously. Individually, they didn't feel like huge, life-altering choices but each choice has helped bring a measure of ease or calm into our life. Collectively, I imagine the downstream effects will be subtle but positive.

As I write this, I'm reminded of a conversation I had with my mom back in my mid-twenties when I was single. That day, I was feeling completely despondent about dating and love. I asked my mom, "What does it even mean to love someone or to be in love? After all of this, I don't even know if I know what I'm looking for." My mom was quiet for a minute and then said, "I don't really know. I know that I love your dad and that we are in love, but I'm not sure what that means exactly. When we were dating, I knew I respected him and that I thought he was funny and all of that. But when I think back on it, what I really liked was solving problems with him. I felt like we worked well together when we had to solve problems. I think that helped me feel in love with him and feel okay about the idea of marrying him. Which is good, because it turns out marriage is basically about solving problems together." Her comment helped calm me in that moment. It also helped me gain a little perspective in the dating world by giving me a more grounding way to think about relationships. I can honestly say Will is an excellent problem-solving partner for me. He helps me make good life choices, both for me and for us. Our anniversary was a month ago, so this is belated but whatever: Happy Anniversary, my love. You are my favorite.

A few photos of the life choices:

Will's car was good to us. It even pulled our moving trailer (full of boxes, a couch, a bed, bookshelves, chairs and way too many kitchen appliances) across half of the United States with hardly any complaint.

 

Nonetheless, it was time to let go of that car and add this one to our insurance bill. We bought it from a nice elderly man who, as part of the purchasing package, also gave us some fossils and rocks he collected in west Texas. I loved that.

We'll miss the cozy layout of our current apartment

 

and the enormous island

 

and the big windows with the golden afternoon light. 

We are excited for our next place though, even its aqua and pink bathroom. 

Photos to come soon.

Independence Day

Happy Independence Day to all! Earlier this week we had talked about going camping to celebrate the holiday and the completion of Will's 220 page(!) thesis, but we abandoned that idea when we read the weather forecast for July 4th: rain, rain, rain.

So, instead we stayed home, cozied up against the rain. We watched the fireworks on the 3rd. It was the first time in Boston's history that they chose to move the fireworks and concert from the 4th, but it ended up being a good call. They barely missed the storm. Within five minutes of the firework finale,  lightening and rain rolled in from the west, drenching everyone trying to get home.

On the 4th, we slept in and then had waffles with whipped cream and berries for breakfast. I knitted while Will read about rye sourdough starters and then we drove to the store to pick up some rye flour (this may be the beginning of a new hobby for Will), picking up our CSA share along the way. It had been raining so much there were large puddles blocking the entrance to Clover (our CSA pick-up site). I had to take a running leap from the road with my umbrella in-hand to reach the sidewalk, startling all the tourists watching from inside Clover. And then we had a simple dinner and watched a movie. We did go on a nice bike ride and do some grilling today, but overall this holiday weekend has been a quiet affair. It's very different from the July 4th celebrations of my childhood, which were filled with small town parades, sunburns, extended family dinners, and watching fireworks from Melba's football field (I still believe Melba has the best firework display in the nation). But I loved it nonetheless. It was the first time I can remember Will being home for an entire holiday since our marriage, other than holidays where we travel to see family. I loved just hanging out with him. And I found myself reflecting on how grateful I am that I can sit peacefully at home with family, with good food and clean water. Thank goodness for these blessings.

Chicken scratch on a paper towel, while writing The Thesis

This is the face of a PhD student, 5 weeks into writing The Thesis

Another recent project - a baby quilt for Will's labmate and our good friend. I really like how it turned out!

CSA share = So much produce! The plants are taking over our fridge.

A young rye sourdough starter. Here's hoping Will takes up a (delicious) new hobby.

Birthday dessert, birthday push-ups

I had a wonderful birthday. I received some fun gifts from Will and our parents (thank you!), had a relaxing day reading and talking with friends who called to wish me happy birthday (thank you!), and then Will treated me to dinner at Bondir (thank you!). Bondir is a restaurant in Cambridge I've been wanting to go to for years. It has a reputation for excellence and it definitely lived up to that reputation. It was impressive. All of the food was super tasty, but I honestly think my favorite part was the dessert.

We ordered their house hot chocolate (it was cold and rainy outside so it seemed fitting) and the Milk & Honey Genoise to share for dessert. The genoise was topped with Grapefruit Brulée, Tarragon Crème Fraiche, White Chocolate Crémeaux, and Anise Seed Lace Cookie (I had to copy that directly from the online menu because clearly my memory isn't going to capture all of that). We weren't sure what some of the words meant, but we knew we liked the ones we recognized so we went with it. Basically, all those words, when combined into one dish, just mean delicious. Delicious cake, delicious mystery sauces, delicious caramel-like crisps, delicious toasted citrus. Will said it's probably the best dessert he's ever had at a restaurant which might be true for me too. If nothing else, their hot chocolate was definitely the best hot chocolate I've ever had. It was topped with a spiced marshmallow cream that I loved. I've actually tried calling the restaurant to see if they'll tell me which spices were used in the marshmallow because I'd love to recreate it if I can. Here's hoping that works out.

It other news related to my birthday, I've decided since I'm now 31 I am going to do 31 push-ups every day in May. Will does push-ups nearly every day which kind of inspired this new little goal. He encouraged me to do pushups where my chest barely touches the ground before I push back up (I used to just touch my nose to the ground). Let me tell you, that extra inch or two inches makes it a lot harder for me! It's only the second day and my little armpit muscles are already aching and I still have 10 more pushups to do today. Yes, it's true. I have to space out my sets of 10 because I can't do 31 in one set. My arms get tired and I end up hovering, trying to push back up but instead I stall out and end up on the floor. So, I've been doing three set of 10 or 11 throughout the day. I'm hoping, though, that by the end of May I'll be able to do all 31 in one set. I'm not sure if that's overly ambitious; I guess we'll see.

Also, interesting fact: some lizards do push-ups. Apparently it's a show of force or strength. There's a bit more here in this video about an experiment that used a robo-lizard to study territorial behaviors among lizards.  

Recent projects

We've made a few things recently:

1) A patterned cake for our Valentine's Day dinner, based on the recipe found here. In all honesty, the recipe itself was a little too sweet for me (I'm a dark chocolate kind of girl, so I should have known white chocolate ganache would be a bit much for me) but her directions for making the patterned cake are easy to follow and I think could be adapted for any jelly roll type of cake. It was fun to see the final pattern. I'm hoping to try the technique on a spiced cake roll or maybe an ice cream cake.

Clearly I am not a food photographer/blogger so if you'd like to see pretty pictures and a video of the whole process, please click on the link above.

Make the patterned sheet cake by following her instructions. If you are like me, beware that in the process of flipping it out of the pan, you may nearly drop it onto the floor. No one ever wants to eat cake from the floor on Valentine's Day so work hard to avoid that disaster.

Add filling of your choice. As I mentioned above, I think custard, dark chocolate ganache, sour cream filling for a carrot or spice cake or softened ice cream could all be delicious. The strawberries were delicious so add those whenever possible.

Roll it and chill it.

Serve it to those you love.

2) We are starting to make some plans for the future. At this point, it's looking like we might become Texans for a few years! We had to go shopping to get Will some clothes for his interviews. Prior to the shopping trip, his wardrobe consisted of two types of clothes: T-shirts and jeans or suits. His professor was like, "Do not wear a suit. You will look like you're trying to sell something."

Looking good in the academic uniform: blazer, shirt without tie, slacks.

3) Making blankets for babies. Quite a few of our friends are having babies and I've enjoyed getting back into sewing.

Baby blankets are easy when you can find cute fabric and soft flannel.

I knitted a square! This was part of a group gift for one of Will's classmates. It was the first thing I ever knitted by a pattern and really enjoyed the process. I've since started another knitting project which is going well.

This was a favorite. I saw the design on a friend's blog and decided to replicate it when I realized it was just a bunch of triangles arranged in a herringbone pattern. It was also the first quilt I've ever done machine quilting on which was fairly frustrating at first, but I'm sure will be much faster once I get the hang of it.

Milk and tea pots: An experiment in fixing a hairline crack

I drink herbal tea nearly every day. I love it. Typically, I keep the process simple: 90 seconds in the microwave, tea bag in the hot water, let it seep for 5 minutes, sip cautiously until it no longer burns your tongue, then drink with abandon.  But one day I decided to be a little fancier. I decided I would heat the water in the tea pot I received as a gift from a friend.

Gifted tea pot. So cute, no?

I like to blame my next decision on the fact that I have two ceramic pots that do just fine over direct heat. These pots do not, in fact, make alarmingly loud popping sounds approximately 8 seconds after you place the pot on the stove causing you to panic and grab the pot off the burner and groan aloud because you see that, yes, yes you did just crack your little pot by placing it over direct heat.

Clearly this little tea pot is not like those two ceramic pots. Rather, direct heat causes this cute little thing to develop a hairline crack. This is, according to Will, the norm for ceramic things; my two non-cracking pots are apparently quite special and have other materials to help them manage the heat. (Late edit per Will's request: the "other materials" include cast iron.)

Anyway–sorry, little tea pot. My bad.

Hairline crack #1, right along the bottom of the pot.

Hairline crack #2, continuing to the other side of the pot.

I was sad for a few weeks about the ruined pot. It could still hold some water, in a sense, but the water would begin to bubble and trickle through the crack, searching for any sort of escape route. The tea pot was useless, but I didn't want to throw it away. Then, by chance or by a stroke of inspiration, I googled how to repair a tea pot and ran across some claims that heating a tea pot in milk can seal off small hairline cracks. Supposedly, as the ceramic material expands in the heat the warm milk can slip into the crack and then, as both the pot and the milk cool, the protein or some other part of the milk acts as a bond. I ran the idea by Will and he agreed it was worth a try.

The process is quite simple. Place tea pot in slow cooker (or in a pot on the stove, but I was a little gun shy about that option at this point). Add enough milk to cover tea pot. Heat for a few hours. Let it cool over night. Rinse old, gummy milk from tea pot and test the crack. Realize it actually worked! Feel very self satisfied.

The milk developed a strange film over the pot, making it look somewhat otherworldly. Loch Ness Tea Pot.

And it's still working, weeks after the repair. I tested it again today. I added some water and let it sit  for an hour or two, to see if the bond had weakened. So far, so good! Not even one little bubble or trickle has escaped through the crack (which is still visible, but is sealed off).

Lesson #1: Do not heat ceramic tea pot on the stove! (But I'm sure you all already know this since apparently that's common knowledge, unless you are like me and have a skewed sense of what's normal for ceramic kitchenware...)

Lesson #2: Warm milk is glorious! It can correct all kinds of harebrained ideas.

• Decide to go running when the temperature is in the single digits, leading to a sense of being frozen and depleted of energy? No problem. Heat some milk, add some cocoa and be back to normal. (For real, I've heard chocolate milk is one of the best things for women to drink after intense exercise to replenish the calcium in the bones and energy in the body) 
• Decide to make saag paneer but don't want to spend loads of money on a small block of paneer? No problem. Heat some milk, add some lemon, and make some paneer. 
• Crack your own tea pot?! No problem. Warm milk has you covered.

A Review of 2013

We didn't create a Christmas card for 2013 but if we had, we may have highlighted some of the experiences and decisions we made in 2013.

 Trips of 2013
After years and years of living in the Boston area, we finally saw Cape Cod. We went camping there with friends, drove to the tip to admire the view, and drove back to Cambridge. We don't do weekend trips as often as some, but we're hoping to repeat this again next year. I also took a trip to England for work, to a small village with one hotel that was surrounded by sheep and horses, small gray stone cottages with beautiful English gardens, and fields of beautiful flowers and weeds. Yes, even the weeds were beautiful there. I loved it.


We also went to Kuna and Logan over the summer and during Christmas, which was wonderful. Being near family in the West always makes us hopeful that someday we might be able to move to a place near family and wide-open space.

Enjoying being the tour guide of the summertime mountains.

Our final leg of our trip home from Christmas: a 15 minute walk from the T in the snow with our luggage.

Experiments of 2013
In terms of long-term consequence, our professional experiments are likely to be the most important. I experimented by taking an industry position and learned a ton along the way, before deciding to leave in November to try some independent work. Will made steady progress on his research all year long, culminating in a fantastic way with a Cell publication and an agreement by his committee that he will graduate at the end of the summer(!). The hunt for a postdoctoral position is on... 

Additionally, in the realm of domestic experiments, we attempted to grow another outdoor potted garden and again met minimal success with this experiment (I believe the total yield was enough for one salad), in part because the pots were small and in part because I forget to water them everyday. Sorry, plants.  We learned how to make excellent saag paneer in the kitchen and molten lava cakes in the outdoors. I believe my favorite experiment in recent memory was fixing a hairline crack in my teapot by boiling it in milk for a few hours! Who knew such a thing was possible?

We also attempted a few artistic activities including pottery and glass blowing, which was definitely a highlight of the year.

Our sole cucumber, which saved itself from being consumed by being weird looking.

Dutch oven molten lava cakes, idea courtesy of Russell. That's right--we come to friends' dinners to impress.

Will at the wheel.

Molten glass on a stick.

Hand blown ornaments.

Merry Christmas.

Sights and experiences of 2013
Seeing Will on a daily basis, seeing him work and laugh and read and just be with me is perhaps my favorite sight and experience every day.

Beyond that, a contest of intricate sand castles at Revere Beach inspired us, as did seeing a field of flags in the Boston Commons on Memorial Day. Each flag represented one soldier, one soldier who sacrificed life for our freedom. We loved having family come visit us in Boston and hearing how they also loved the beauty of this city and area.

The sirens and the chaos of the Boston Marathon bombing, shooting and manhunt were nerve racking for me. But I remember also feeling deeply grateful this was a rare event, feeling grateful for the safety we are afforded by living in a land of relative peace and security.

The sand castle you wish you could build.

2013 was good to us. Here's hoping the same for 2014.

Uprooted

Today was already a good day. Work was fairly good, my walk home was pretty, the rain went away and was replaced by some early evening sunshine, and we're grilling tonight. Sidenote: Grilling is my favorite. Delicious food with minimal prep and cleanup (because Will takes care of nearly everything). The gas grill was a fantastic invention.

Anyway, as I was saying, today was a good day and then it became even better because as I arrived home, my neighbor (a sweet older woman who only speaks Portuguese) said something to me. Since it was in Portuguese, I didn't know what she was saying but then her daughter interpreted for me: "Would I like some flowers?" I was a little confused, but of course happy too (who doesn't want flowers?). "Sure!" So my neighbor just reached down and ripped some plants out of the pots they were growing in, roots intact, and put them in a plastic bag so I could replant them. I am actually quite tickled about this, but I have no idea what kind of plants they are. Can anyone reading this identify these plants?

I think my neighbor said the top one would get blossoms. The lower one almost reminds me of some sort of cabbage because the leaves are quite firm; my sister said it might be sedum. Regardless of what they actually are, I am excited to add them to our garden. Yes, we have a garden. Climbing up our steps

and onto our balcony.

 Soon (as in tonight, hopefully) we will hang more plants from the balcony. Mystery ones, as well as another tomato plant and some flowers. I am so excited!! We had a garden last year too but it was a failure because our pots were all too small. I bought bigger pots/planters this year and hope it works out. Also, I hope our garden doesn't attract rats because if it does, I think our landlady might kick us out. She likes us but sure does hate rats with all the passion in her 5'2 soul. Fingers crossed that there are no rats, the pots are big enough, the squash is an itty-bitty squash, the sweet peppers grow and that our uprooted mystery plants take root and are beautiful/edible. If nothing else, they'll be a reminder of the generosity of our neighbor and I think that knowledge alone will  provide its own kind of beauty and nourishment.

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