black beans and fuzz

I had an unfortunate “black bean” accident the other day in the kitchen. I was making some of my celebrated black bean dip. It’s ridiculously easy – one can of drained black beans plus about 1/2 cup of salsa in the blender, add a little of the reserved juice if it needs it – but I was told by a student that it was the best bean dip he’s ever had. But somehow while draining the beans, and just ask Husband how these things happen, I ended up with black beans all over the floor. Before I could turn around and grab a paper towel, Caymus was cleaning up for me.

Just another example of the weird things that cats eat.

Thanks everyone for sharing all of the funny things that your cats eat. I think the apple pie is the funniest so far though!

You can tell the semester has finally begun when:

There are M&Ms in the candy dish in my office.

I finally got around to filling the M&M dish today. It was either that or figure out how to use Spartan or write ANOTHER recommendation letter.

As I was filling the dish, I was wondering if there were people in the hallway thinking: “What is the noise? Did someone drop something? A whole bunch of somethings? Maybe rocks?” And then the aroma of chocolate hit their nose and they would think: “M&Ms!! She’s finally filling her M&M bowl!!”

I was kind of disappointed that people didn’t come running as soon as I finished. But I didn’t have to wait that long after all. About an hour later, a student stopped by the office and said: “I heard that you had M&Ms!!” About 30 minutes after that, someone else stopped by and said the same thing.

I am known in the department for the never empty M&M bowl. I started keeping M&Ms in the office about two years ago in memory of a chemistry prof who died unexpectedly. He always had a bowl of M&Ms at the final exam with a sign that M&Ms were proven to increase test scores. After he died, I started keeping a bowl filled in the office to remember him and his great example.

This year, I got fancy with the M&M bowls:

Not the cool bowls, but the fact that there are TWO of them. With different flavors of M&Ms! The large bowl is dark chocolate and the small is regular.

One of the students took great joy in pointing out that I had a veritable smorgasbord of chocolate options on the table. I don’t eat a lot of chocolate and whenever I get some, I always bring it to the office to share. Now I just have to convince the newbie students to come by the office, ask a question and eat chocolate!

But my favorite is the NMR tube sitting in the vase. My advisee makes the most amazing pottery with crystalline glazes. Sometime soon, I’ll show off his work and talk about the chemistry of those glazes. It’s so beautiful!

My bucket of photos runneth over.

Nothing exciting is happening in my life right now. I have been working. A lot. Last week, I was home ONCE before 9PM. *Sigh*

Well, part of it is my fault. I didn’t prepare very well for my non-majors class during the summer. I’m having to spend a lot of time in the evening preparing. And it doesn’t help of course that one of my drugs I’m on right now cause fatigue. I need at least 7 hours of shut eye a night in the best times. Now, I could probably use 8+.

But I took some time tonight to cook my lunch for the next week. I made a chicken and white bean chili with cornbread. It’s been a long time since I’ve done this. During grad school, I used to cook a big mess of something for lunch every Sunday. During my postdoc, I still did it but not as often. Once I started at Albion, it was only about once a month.

Since getting back from Italy, I don’t think I’ve cooked much of anything. It’s been warm enough to cook outside and Husband is the master of the grill. I don’t think that cutting veggies and bread for sides really counts as cooking…

Wow, I am really far behind on the whole Project 365 thing. Not taking the pictures but taking the time to post them! So here’s a catch up. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll have some more.

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Project 365 – No. 24 (September 14, 2008)

Caymus. With his feet hanging out of the top of the tower. For some reason that drives me nuts.

Project 365 – No. 25 (September 15, 2008)

One of the organic students doing a reaction in lab. They were very confused because the liquid was supposed to dissolve and then a solid form slowly. But the solid formation is pretty much instantaneous.

Project 365 – No. 26 (September 16, 2008)

Campus at night. This was one night that I was late at Albion, educating the masses.

Project 365 – No. 27 (September 17, 2008)

There was a deer in our neighbors’ yard. I tried to take picture, but I forgot the flash wasn’t on and then a truck drove by and scared the varmint.

Project 365 – No. 28 (September 18, 2008)

The poor miata after the encounter with the deer. It could have been worse, but it still caused about $700 worth of damage. Apparently fixing dents in the hood is very difficult. Plus the stupid thing messed up the headlight. I love venison and order it every chance I get.

Finally, Florence redeems herself.

We finally had a meal in Florence worth raving about! Yesterday was a special day for Jim and I and we decided to treat ourselves to a nice dinner. Tony at Enoteca Pontevecchio recommended that we check out La Bottega del Buon Caffe. It’s a little off the beaten tourist track, but if we have anything to do with it, won’t be for long!

Finally, we have found a place in Florence that stacks up to our dinners in Ferrara. La Bottega is small: only one room with seating for about 20 people. We had reservations for 8:30PM, but there was only one other party there when we arrived. The last party arrived at 10:30PM for dinner! Just doesn’t happen that way in the US.

We decided to go for the full Italian experience: Antipasta, Pasta, Meat, Cheese and Coffee/Grappa. We had to skip dessert because we wouldn’t have been able to walk! Everything was delicious, but our meat course was the highlight of the evening. It was a slow cooked duck breast with vanilla and balsamic vinegar. It had been finished by a quick pass under a broiler, giving it a nice crispy texture. Heavenly!! The chef recommended a bottle of nerello mascalese from the winery of Passopisciaro in Sicily to go with it. It tasted like a hybrid between pinot noir and syrah and was a perfect match for the duck.

So if you are in Florence, make sure check out “La Bottega del Buon Caffe”, Franscesco Gasbarro is the Chef. (Via Pacinotti, 40r, 42r, 44r, 50131 Firenze, tel 055 5525677) We loved it!!

More posts to come!

Clearing out the back log of photos:

Wow – this trip was awhile ago! Back in March (OH SO LONG!!), Jim’s friend invited him (and by extension, me!) over to Ferrara to talk about him visiting Ferrara and to pin down dates. Ferrara is east of Florence, outside of Tuscany. Jim has always raved about how great the town is, and after visiting a few of the smaller towns outside of Florence I was wondering how different it could really be?

Well, there’s just something different about Ferrara. We were there in late March, still the low time for tourism. I think the first thing that we noticed was that there was NO english being spoken anywhere. Americans (and English speakers in general) are just LOUD. They (we?) don’t know how to keep our voices down in public places. Maybe it’s like hearing your name in a crowded room: we’re hardwired to pick out something that we understand from the babble of voices all around us. Maybe it’s easy to ignore Italian spoken on the train because we don’t understand most of what is being said and we can tune it out… I take that back. There have been a few girls on the bus to Sesto that I had to listen to. My mind couldn’t tune them out for whatever reason. I wanted to kill myself. Or them.

Anyway, we heard English on the street once and I had to turn and stare. It was a shock to my ears.

Ferrara is small and mostly ignored by American tourists. My Rick Steves’ book doesn’t even mention it, either in the Tuscany book (duh – it’s not in Tuscany) or the regular Italy book. The DK Eyewitness Travel book only has one page about it.

Ferrara was the seat of power of the Estes family. Come on, you know the Estes! OK, I only knew of them for two reasons. First – crosswords. Estes is a good crossword word. Second – one of the Dukes was pressured into marrying Lucrezia Borgia. You know Lucrezia Borgia, right? OK, so you don’t watch enough of the history channel. Poor girl was a pawn in the political games her father (THE POPE) was playing. A short article on her is here. Ack! Enough of the history. On with the photos.

Like most of Italy’s cities, the center is very old. I am standing on the oldest street in the city. (Still wearing that teal jacket too! Expect to see it in a few more photos…) The town of Ferrara is first mentioned in a letter in 754 (nope, not missing a one in front of that!). You could see which were the old roads; they were very uncomfortable cobblestone.

These road amaze me. There must have been generations that grew up without ever seeing a sunset!

We had three of the best meals that we have had in Italy (and two of them rank up with meals everywhere) in Ferrara. The second was Mezza Luna (the first was at this place Fantastic Thursday. Carlo took us there for lunch. But it was fancy and everyone expected it to be amazing. Jim and I got the menus without prices…). Carlo and his … friend, Manuela treated us to dinner. It was quite amazing. This is the three of us:

Jim ordered Insalate Capresi – basically tomato, basil and mozzarella cheese salad. This is what he got:

It was SO yummy. Amazing food, modern arrangements and a completely unassuming atmosphere. I’d go back.

The city center of Ferrara is almost completely enclosed by the original city walls. It is all dominated by the castle of the Estes family:

(I forgot the tripod, so you’ll have to deal with dual pictures.)

It is one of the few castles in Italy that is surrounded by a moat. Originally built for defense, the Estes family took is over for their home, blah blah blah. You can tour the castle. The downstairs is pretty boring. There is a ton of history (in both Italian and English) and you could spend a couple of hours just reading about the history of the castle and the town. However, the action is downstairs: the dungeon!!

It’s kind of a cramped place! I would hate to have been down there before electric lights. This is actually the dungeon where they kept one of the king’s relations (nephew? That’s the problem with taking so long to post stuff!). He had an affair with the young wife of the king. TO THE DUNGEON WITH YOU!! She at least had a room with a window that got some fresh air.

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You can see writing on the ceilings. I think it is modern, but Jim says no…

Me in the walkway. They must have all been pretty short back then because I was close bonking my head!

Think back to the picture of the castle. Remember that great big tall tower? You can climb it. What do you think of when you think of climbing the tower in a castle? Big stone steps? Rickety wooden stairs winding around the inside of the tower? Well, they had metal steps. That you could see though.

Let’s get this straight. I don’t like heights. No siree. Not at all. I can’t even look up at tall things without my stomach flipping over. If I’d had known about this, not a chance on God’s green earth. But we bought the ticket for the tower (an extra charge) WAYYYYYY down on the ground floor. I lead out through the door to start climbing some stone steps…. And almost knocked Jim over backing into him. Not a good thing.

The view was … high. Jim liked it. He likes hauling me up to the tops of building (coming soon, me in Lucca on the top of a great big freaking tall tower).

Yeah, forgot the tripod so you get to see the ledge where I propped the camera. Notice that I am NOT standing on the outside of the railing. This next picture is one of Jim’s favorites:

My stomach was doing flip-flops just seeing him lean over the edge to get the picture.

Oh, it’s not that bad you say! This the view (so Jim and the camera says, I didn’t look down. In fact, my eyes were closed the whole time except for this picture) when you look down:

Man, that just sucks. I don’t even like looking at it now.

That’s it for now. More pictures coming soon… Or not. Heading to Venice today to pick up my friend Lisa. She’s coming to visit for a few days!! I promise, I’ll post the rest of the Ferrara pictures on Monday and then some from Venice!