October 25, 2009
Korean-style vegetable pancake (pa jun)
First, watch my slideshow!
I found this recipe for a Korean vegetable pancake on the New York Times. This item is one of my favorite things to order when I eat at a Korean restaurant. Usually, it’s called a seafood pancake or kimchee pancake because it often contains shrimp, squid or kimchee. However, I didn’t want to pay for or prepare seafood items and I didn’t have any kimchee on hand so I will stick with my vegetarian version. A few comments about this recipe: Don’t make your pancake too big. I didn’t have a grater so my zucchini and carrots were too large and hence my pancake was too big. In the future, I will use a grater. Well, actually, I should have used my food processor, DUH! Also, the recipe was too bland. I would add kimchee or salt next time.
Pancake ingredients:
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tbsp peanut oil
5 scallions, cut into 3 inch lengths and sliced lengthwise
5 chopped scallions
1 medium carrot, grated
1 green squash, grated
dipping sauce ingredients:
1 tbsp rice vinegar
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp sugar
(I also added sesame oil, but that’s not necessary)
Instructions:
In a medium bowl, mix flour, eggs and oil with 1.5 cups water until smooth batter is formed. Stir in scallion greens, carrots, and squash into batter. Use a nonstick skillet over medium-high heat and coat bottom of pan with oil. Ladle in a quarter (or less) of the batter and spread it evenly into a circle. I used too much batter and my pancake took 20 minutes to cook. If you use smaller pan and less batter, the recipe says it should only take 3 minutes on each side. After pancakes are finished (nice golden brown on each side, if possible), drain on paper towels. To make dipping sauce, mix vinegar, soy sauce, sugar (and sesame oil, if desired) in a small bowl. Cut pancakes into triangles and serve with dipping sauce.
Wegmans
I drove to Wegmans this afternoon. It was my first experience at this grocery store chain. It was a mega-store with lots of stuff. I was impressed with the selection and the produce seemed decent. I walked through the pre-prepared foods section but didn’t buy anything. The store was an interesting hybrid of Meijer, Costco and Whole Foods. The prices were not very good, in comparison to Costco and I was not tempted by their bulk items, such as meat. They seemed to try to carry lots of organic items, but their organic stuff wasn’t too appealing. I liked their ethnic food aisles and even on a Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t overwhelmed by the crowds. I spent over 30 minutes walking around and bought $54 worth of groceries. Here is a slideshow containing a few of my purchases. As for distance, the highway is very direct so it didn’t feel like it was 15 miles away. It was a pleasant drive with lots of pretty fall leaves along the side of the highway to enjoy.
October 24, 2009
October 23, 2009
Humbling experience
I broke a sample inside the EPR tonight. Everything was going so smoothly and I got some beautiful spectra. Then, when I went to take out my EPR sample, I found that it was broken in half. I was very alarmed. I didn’t know what to do. I knew that part of the instrument was still under vacuum and I wasn’t certain what to do about it. Thankfully, an experienced EPR-user was answering her cell phone on a Friday night and told me which pumps to turn off and in what order.
My postdoc has definitely been a humbling experience. In my post yesterday, I set up my computer to print to a printer. You’d think I grew up in the pre-computer era, but I started using them in 3rd grade. Yesterday, I was ready to ask for help after working at it for 1 hour and generating lots of junk printouts. However, I didn’t ask for help initially because one of the Stone lab members had written a detailed email about how to set it up and I tried to follow them to a tee, but after doing it multiple times, eventually I found the correct settings.
I’ve had to ask for help on many other elementary issues in the last five months–how and where can I print a poster? How and when can I get reimbursed for attending a scientific conference? I also had to re-learn things I thought I already knew, like how to measure pH or make a buffer or calculate ionic strength or calculate the reaction rate constant (ironic because a large portion of my Ph.D. thesis was focused on reactions kinetics).
One day at a time, but some days are downright difficult, not matter how positive an attitude I had going into it.
October 22, 2009
Baby steps
I need to learn to live one day at a time and be content with the little victories of each day. Today, I finally learned to print to the new Stone lab printer. This is something I thought I should have learned in June when I first moved to Johns Hopkins, but in fact, it has been a 5-month battle to get a reliable, convenient work printer. Each day, I am going to learn to be grateful for the little things I learn or accomplish. For today, it’s the ability to print to the Stone lab printer.
Two new vocabulary words
halcyon (pronounced HAL-SEE-YON): tranquil, peaceful, calm
resection (medical term): removal of organ, or part of organ, or tissue
October 21, 2009
Best split pea soup I’ve ever made!
I didn’t think it was possible, but this almost-vegetarian split pea soup doesn’t require any ham hock or cooked ham to flavor the peas and it tastes amazing!!! You have to try it and the cost of all the ingredients is under $10 and it can certainly feed me for 4 meals without any need for side dishes or bread or crackers.
Here’s the recipe which is based on the allrecipes version, but with only salt and pepper for seasoning. Only drawback is that it takes about 90 minutes to cook, so you can’t make it when you’re in a hurry.
Ingredients:
1 tbsp olive oil
2 cups of chopped onion
2 cups of finely chopped carrots
2 cups of chopped celery
1 lb split peas
2 cans chicken broth (or vegetable broth)
salt and pepper to taste
Instructions:
1. Heat olive oil over medium heat. Add onions, carrots, celery and stir until onions are translucent.
2. Add split peas and chicken broth and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil then reduce heat and simmer for 90 minutes stirring occasionally.
