The marmalade-glazed poundcake turned out really well - so well, in fact, that I'm sending half of it to my husband's lab so I'm not alone with it here in the house all day. I've learned that students on grad stipends will eat just about anything and my husband's lab mates have proven very effective for the purposes of disposing of excess or unwanted food from our house, especially sweets and baked goods.


I'll have another opportunity to cook for them next week. Every Wednesday there's a lab meeting and the lab members take turns furnishing lunch for the group of 15 of them (the cost is reimbursed by the department). Some of the meals procured have been truly amazing - it's a very international group of people and some of them have used their turn for supplying lunch to showcase the best of their countries' cuisines. Others, however, have bought a dozen bags of chips and called it a day. My husband is charged with next Wednesday's lunch and I asked if he'd like me to make something rather than doing deli or what have you. Together we decided on a menu of vegetarian chili, sourdough bread and sugar cookies for dessert. My chili usually contains meat so I'll be reviewing recipes this weekend to determine how I'll approach the dish. I've had some excellent veggie chilis in the past, but damn if I can remember what was in them.


I'm feeling particularly proud of myself tonight because I produced an excellent braised steak for dinner and even managed to thicken the cooking liquid for a nice sauce/gravy. I had never braised before so I was a little unsure how to approach the process but some quick research in the Betty Crocker cookbook gave me the confidence to go ahead with this particularly non-tender cut and it turned out really well. I started by warming some oil in a large lidded skillet and then browned the meat on both sides. I then seasoned with black pepper and poured in a cup of beef broth (which I figured was salty enough, which I why I only seasoned with the pepper). After cooking the steak covered on a low burner for about 45 minutes, I added a drained can of diced tomatoes and a little less than a cup of red wine from a previously opened bottle that I spied sitting on the counter. After the steak was cooked through and tender, I stirred a flour and water slurry into the cooking liquid and allowed it to thicken slightly. Know what? It was great. I hope I can do it again, even though it was a kind of made up recipe.


Finally, is anyone else as bored as me with all this Mars stuff? I mean, yahoo and all that they got these things to land and take pictures and whatnot, but I can't help but think we've got a few things down here that could use the same kind of focused attention. And now our, ahem, President is talking about sending people to Mars, for what purpose I cannot imagine. Then again, I thought Apollo 13 was a supremely boring movie about which we all already knew the ending (I felt this was about Titanic, too, and refused to see it) so maybe it's just my disinclination to be interested in space that's the problem. Or maybe it's the, like, milliontrillionbillion dollar cost that this little adventure would present. Either way, man is it all boring.