Friday, March 22, 2013

Month 2 day 11: Spicy tortilla soup with shrimp and avocado

Today *G* cooked:
Spicy tortilla soup with shrimp and avocado, Cooking Light March 2011

(not pictured)

Today I got stuck in lab in the middle of an experiment. Basically, I sit in a dark room for hours staring in a microscope watching a worm grow up. I'm watching the cells divide and then, hopefully, watching to see if they die or not. Today I watched the dividing portion, but realized that the dying part wouldn't happen before I would've needed to go home and cook. I decided to stay and keep watching so the day's work wouldn't be wasted. But alas, the cells did not die before it was time for my shift at the tutoring room. I put the worm in the refrigerator and hoped it might be "paused" until tomorrow. In theory, this happens, but in practice, it's not really paused until a bit later, which is probably too late :-P Anyway, it was still a bit of a victory because it was my first time watching the cell divisions until completion, so I feel more confident for next time. There's a bit of a crazy period where 18 cells divide at the same time, AND this is the exact time that the worm wakes up from its "nap" and starts moving around instead of laying still.

Anyway, I was at the tutorial room (and there weren't even any students there), and who comes but G, who has cooked today's recipe and brought it to me!! He even went out and got a missing ingredient for it. And delivered it to me with a Kindle to stave off boredom at the empty tutorial room. And did all the dishes too! So this was a treat :)

The soup was good-- a bit spicy from the chipotle pepper in adobo sauce, but not overly so-- it added more smokey flavor than spice. I'm theoretically trying to avoid spicy because I think I have an ulcer, but this was good, and hand-delivered, so I ate it anyway. I think this recipe is a keeper. (And so is G!)

As soon as I finished eating, in walked a gaggle of undergrads, fresh from a physics test. It's hell week for them, so no one had started their homework (due tomorrow morning). So I ended up being quite busy, and staying an extra hour. They offered to pay me to stay after the tutorial room closed :-P Then we had a conversation about graduate students and the reputation that we're always miserable, which I explained was not necessarily due to lack of sleep (as they presumed) but more like lack of control over the success of our experiments. At which point one of them was like "I want to go to graduate school!" Haha. How did what I say make him think that....

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