Food Talk

Wow, its certianly been a long time since I've written anything for this. Suffice to say, I've been very busy with my thesis work. I'm going to take just a few minutes here to let everyone who reads this know that I'm doing pretty good. Also, I've been having a lot more fun with cooking lately. My wife and I have put a lot of work into trying some new recipes lately, and in a few cases I have documented these with pictures which I have uploaded to my Photobucket account. Eventually I'll get around to actually posting some of them including Thai Green Curry, Spicy Lentil Soup, and a few others. I'm rather proud of my cooking ability now. I know I'm not a chef by any means, but I can make some good tasting food.

For example, I tried something rather new last night: roasted squash. I've always been a bit shy about trying new vegetables through most of my life. Afterall, veggies are not ussually as tasty as sweets. I cut a butternut squash in half, added some butter and a tiny bit of brown sugar, and roasted it in a pan for about 45 minutes. It was nutty and delicious. I have another squash waiting for me at home, and even though I'm going to have curry with some veggies in it, I'm thinking about roasting the second one to eat with dinner as well.

Also, just checked scores the Basketball scores, and Denver pulled off a win. Woo!

Writing - Day 1

I spent all of today writing the introduction of my thesis. It's taking a long time because I keep having to go back and check my facts, and citations. I'm trying to make sure that everything comes together right the first time through the writing process. This meant that in reality, most of the day was spent looking through all of the papers that I've read previously, and finding the important points in them, and condensing them down into the summary that I need. I think I have all of the papers together again. Tomorrow will hopefully look more productive in terms of things like word count.

Tonight was another taco night. I've got a recipe that I really like down pretty well now. Take about 1 lb of ground beef, brown, and drain grease. Add 1 chopped onion and 1-2 cloves of garlic, diced. Cook for a few minutes until the onion is soft. Add a half can of diced tomatoes, plus enough water to just cover. Season with cumin, chilli powder, and cayenne pepper. Simmer until nearly all the liquid has evaporated. Serve with lettuce, cheese, sour cream, and salsa or hot sauce. Ours tonight was accompanied by sweetcorn and refried beans. Yummy!

Drawing some more

I'll probably end up filling quite a large number of blog posts with this, but I want to continue with daily updates, so that means discussing my daily work.

I spent two hours today working as a TA. I teach for a civil engineering class, helping them to learn about rocks and minerals. It's a bit of a crash course for them, but I really enjoy it. Today was sedimentary rocks, which is probably the easiest week. The difference between a mudstone and a sandstone is readily apparent, even if you don't have eyes.

When I wasn't involved with that, I continued my work with the drawings, and finished up the sketch that I started to work on Friday. I had to learn a new tool in Illustrator, so I'll use that as the excuse for why my work took so long. I won't be showing a picture today. Out of a sense of (probably) unreasonible paranoia, I don't want to show off any of my finished drawings until I've got them in my thesis. But I think it looks pretty good.

Tomorrow, I have a meeting with my supervisors, which should be interesting. I get to show them these drawing that I've been working on, and discuss what more needs to be done.

Tonight, I'm planning to make some fairly tasty food. Pan-fried fish might be one of my favorite simple meals. It'll be accompanied by some veggies and pasta. Bon appetite.

Tasty Food

Not a lot of news to report really. Went to a wedding for some church members this weekend. They'd asked me to play my guitar a bit with some others for the ceremony. It was pretty good. Nice ceremony and a really pretty setting.

Finally made some tuna noodle casserole last night. For those who don't know me too well, this is one of my favorite home style meals. My favorite comfort food so to speak. My mom had given me the recipe a while back, but it took a long time of me needling Crystal about it before she was willing to give it a try. She has some sort of prejudice against casseroles. Anyways it turned out great. I adapted my mom's recipe, I think I made it really tasty. I added some fresh mushrooms and some frozen veggies (carrots, peas, and corn). It turned out really good. I'm looking forward to the leftovers tonight. I'll need to cook it a little hotter next time though. I didn't brown on the top that well. But the veggies and mushrooms made it really tasty. Normally the dish just has some cream of mushroom soup added. But Crystal and I are both crazy about mushrooms, so more it always better for us.

Research is going alright. I've been stuck in the lab doing that contract work most of the time, though I should be finished with it relatively soon. And I might have some news about a grant in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully. Things are sounding promising, but I don't want to say anything more.

Cards are out

The first round of Christmas cards went in the mail today. As soon as I get some addresses looked up, more cards will be sent out.

The new gmail thing, allowing you to talk to AIM people is pretty cool, though having not signed into AIM for about a year, I'm not sure about talking to people, since I'm not sure they will remember me. We'll have to see. Maybe I'll just put a thing up on the forums that I'm willing to talk to people.

I was having some trouble with GIS today. I talked with the tech guy and after about 5 minutes, he showed me how to turn the tools that I was trying to use on. I felt a bit foolish at that point. But now I've got it working again, and will be doing some analysis with it.

Not much else to tell. For the first time ever, Crystal and I have been able to find real corn on the cob at the grocery store. We'll see how it turns out. There are a lot of things that neither of us have ever actually cooked before, even though we've eaten them a lot. This is another one of those things. We are in fact having the most American thing we can manage in NZ. Frankfurters (ie hot dogs, or near enough) and corn on the cob. Horray!

Post-meeting

I feel much better after my meeting with Warwick and Colin. Better, though it has more or less just changed the panicky feeling. I've gone from lost with little idea of what I should be doing to worried about the huge amount of things that I ought to be doing. Having a direction to take my research is a lot better though.

I'm going out to the field again on Monday to do some testing, and probably some sampling as well. I also just found out that there is meant to be a geotechnical symposium at the university for all the researchers who have done work in the geotech lab during the previous year. They've asked me to present my work there. I'm not terribly keen on it, because I haven't really done a whole lot. Especially, I haven't even begun to answer the questions that I'm looking to answer from the tests that I'm doing. All that I really have is some raw data. I should probably try to find some way to relate things.

Enough about that though. Crystal and I are having steak tonight for the first time in months I'm sure. We found some sirloins on clearance at the grocery (I assume because they were old). We've had them sitting in the freezer. Tonight, I plan to grill them up with some portabello mushrooms. It should be tasty. I have no guarantees of the tastiness, but everything promises to be good.

I just thought of another little story that I haven't related yet. Crystal and I went to Blockbuster last Saturday and got ourselves signed up. They've got a pretty good special there as long as you can wait for things to be 7 day rentals. 4 for $10. Anyways, we got Blackadder 2, The Dark Crystal, Dogma, and V for Vendetta. V had to be watched since the Nov. 5 is Guy Fawkes night. I hadn't seen Dogma and Crystal hadn't seen Blackadder 2 since I watched it without her. And it has been a long time since either of us watched The Dark Crystal. The movie still looks good by today's standards.

I think I'll end this post there, since I've run out of things to say. I keep meaning to add Crystal as a person who can post to this blog, but I don't think she is the type that ever would, so it's probably a moot point.