I lab my kitchen

I love doing experiments.

I need to do experiments.

I enjoy working in the lab.

This, I know, is what I am born to do.

As much as I love experimenting in the lab, I too, love experimenting in the kitchen.  I somehow associate experimenting with cooking.  And these words are interchangeable in my dictionary. 🙂

AT WORK:  The lab is my kitchen and my samples are my recipe.  My results are the products of my hard work- they are the food I have created.  But I also understand that doing science is not just about the fun part- cooking.  It is actually about serving your meals to the people a.k.a. your costumers.  It is about the purpose- the costumer´s satisfaction and their nourishment.  It´s purpose is to nourish- to promote growth, to better knowledge and deepen understanding, to foster the development of research and technology for the betterment of humanity.  Science involves writing and making it known to the public.  It is about publishing.  “Publish or perish” right?  And so, the pressure is up, but the projects are most often than not frustrating.  This cooking career requires skills, patience, lots of troubleshooting, and tons of faith and prayer. But I enjoy it anyhow…

AT THE KITCHEN:  I experiment on new recipes. I search for ingredients and I get a bit creative and flexible with it.  I look for alternatives, and this is the fun part of it. It takes courage and experience to create new things, and this is what it takes to create new recipes.  And resourcefulness wouldn´t hurt either.  And this is what I just did.  I used my resourcefulness 🙂

I picked some fresh sour cherries at my institute´s garden, washed them thoroughly and patiently pitted them one by one. I then transferred the pitted cherries in a cooking vessel on a low heat. I added a handful of white sugar and I brought it into a boil.  I set aside some of the juice extracts from the marmalade and then I poured a half bottle of red wine into the pot.  I continuously heat it up until the alcohol from the wine was reduced.  This is to concentrate all the rich flavors from the sour cherry, the sugar, and the wine.  I came to a product I call cherry wine marmalade.

Oh my, I love the taste!  It is perfect for my early morning (plain) yoghurt (I also tried it with freshly cut banana, and it´s wonderful!), or top it on a vanilla ice cream.

I also turned the juice extract from the marmalade into a wonderful cherry cocktail.  I filtered the extract it into a bottle, added some sugar for added sweetness, or vodka, for a kick.  I gathered some ice cubes and put it in, gave a hard shake  and  wahhhlahhhh!!!! My refreshing cherry drink.

I served these to my friends when I hosted a dinner one Saturday night in my apartment and they loved it.  It just complemented the pineapple chicken and buttered veggies I served for the main course. We did enjoy the ice cream topped with cherry marmalade and the cherry cocktail while we sang our hearts out in youtube karaoke and laugh our night through it.

That´s the thing with experimenting in the kitchen over cooking in the lab – I always get good results, a smile on my face and a happy stomach.

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In different flavours

The plant chemetics laboratory had an international dinner party on a Thursday night in one of the member’s home.  It is a potluck party where everyone brings his or her own national dish to the table and everybody gets a taste of different cultural cuisine. This is particularly special as our team is very international- no two people are from the same country! We are composed of a Dutch, German/Iranian, Colombian, Indian, Pakistan, Chinese, Japanese and a Filipino!

And for me, this is just one of the best part of being in a multicultural world.  Science, fortunately, offers this unique setting where people of different backgrounds come together to do science, for the sake of science. The Max Planck Society especially recruits the best from around the world. (And exceptionally encourage women scientists!).  Now that’s a great bonus to be here!

I used to organizing similar “international” dinner back in Taiwan too.  I love meeting people of different nationalities and learning the differences, as well as similarities across different cultural grounds. I specially love sampling different cuisines, tickling my taste buds with different flavors, and learning different ways of preparing food.

Aside from the fantastic food served on the table, we also had a good long funny conversations and smart talks over dinner.  We ate, and laughed, and drunk, and talked, and ate, and giggled, and photographed, and teased each other, and ate, and drunk, and ate for over 5 hours!

The dinner was a blast!  It was a dinner to remember, indeed!

Typical German apple pie

Dutch (cheese) finger food

German meat patty

Colombian coconut rice

Chinese shrimp dish cooked in wine

Indian butter masala

Colombian guayabana drink

Japanese cookies

Bread. I think this is common to many cultures...

Since I was consumed by the fabulous dishes (or I consumed these fabulous foods? :P), I forgot to take photos of the others, including my pineapple chicken 😀

So, till next  gluttonous dinner!

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i LAB humor

 

Stop complaining and shut your mouth up!

It was a long full day in the lab packed with experiments, lab meeting, and junkfood from the Rosenmontag celebration yesterday. By early afternoon I was already tired, and feeling hungry even just an hour past lunch time. While setting up my western blot, I complained as I always do.

 

“I´m hungry.”

“I´m tired.”

“I´m sleepy.”

 

T. heard me and said “Those are the words of a woman in her late pregnancy period with her big protruding belly.”

 

I kept my mouth shut the rest of the day.

 

 

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