Early morning muffin fun

Hello my sweeties! how are you all doing? Gosh, I feel like I haven't written in a long while. But I've been working hard at somethings- finding me a job, learning new things, working out, meeting new people. I don't know what's happening to me from the past two days, but I get very tired and go to bed at 11 pm and wake up at 3-4am the next morning. Its slightly uncomfortable, I try to read something but the focus is never complete. So this time, I decided to have some kitchen fun. I made oat bran muffins! Boy they turned out to be good. I had this mix from Kroger where you just mix it with water and bake it. These were too plain for my tastes, I decided to jazz it up by adding grated carrots sunflower seeds, roasted almond pieces and raisins. You can really see the beta carotene on the muffin cups..feels good that you have some nutrition going in..They don't rise much though, but very yummy! I guess toasted coconut would also go well with these.



Crossection....



I found a picture that I'd lost and wanted to post...

Here's Inky sniffing flowers..is that cute or what? I must say I adore the cat. His actions are so utterly innocent and charming! He's outside and doesn't want to come in. Have to figure out a way to get him in..



I made fresh tomato soup with our garden tomatoes. Its sooooo good and soothing and comforting! I dice tomatoes in big chunks, cover it with water and boil it till its soft and the skin comes off easily and tomatoes are cooked well. Peel the skin and make a smooth tomato puree in a blender. I also added a roasted fine chopped onion while blending. Adjust the consistency according to preference and then boil it again. Since I have fresh basil, I added a couple of fresh fine chopped basil too. Season with salt, pepper and a dash of sugar and its done! For variation, you can also add some roasted garlic. You have to be careful while cooking the tomatoes because Jamie liked it so much and wanted to make it again. She took it off heat as soon as the peel started to come off and the resultant puree was very raw. So have to make sure that the its cooked through- otherwise, needless extra time cooking.

I've been reading this book called 'The Biology of Belief' by Bruce Lipton. Its quite interesting. He says we've been led to believe that genes control a large part of our lives, you know, the Central Dogma- DNA---> RNA----> protein. But according to him, its the environment which influences genes. Genes express according to the stimulus they recieve from the environment. I can understand that- just by studying the Krebs cycle how various enzymes are expressed according to the amount of substrate. So his case is we are influencing our own biology physiologically and biochemically by the way we think, eat and live. You know I always felt that intuitively. Apparently when he introduced his idea that environment influences genes, he met with a lot of opposition from the scientific community. I was kinda surprised.

Other than this, I've been volunteering in Ouliana Zizouzenkova's lab. I'm doing it because I want to learn some additional techniques like Western blots, cell differentiation, I don't like to be at home during the day and I think I like retinoids. Their metabolism is really interesting. BUT it can be very complex and I didn't understand everything that was discussed during lab meeting. But it was heartening to know that it is hard even for folks who are already in the lab like Rumana, Julie etc. Everybody has a folder on the computer and they have to show what they did over the week. Its intense! I don't know why I'm drawn to difficult things!
Speaking of Rumana, she made such a DELICIOUS caramel custard aka flan for the lab meeting. At the first bite, it was eye popping good!! She put some condensed milk and regular milk in the custard. I will get the recipe from her and let you guys know.
I got the movie 'Bridge on River Kwai' and never ended up seeing it coz the DVD is not that great. I really wanna watch 'Julie and Julia'. I love Julia Child- very interesting character. Today on PBS she was making desserts and a french chef- he's a regular on her show. I've always been curious about those stacks of thin pancakes with some gooey stuff in the middle. She made that. But boy! the amount of butter that went into the pancakes was atrocious! 2 sticks of butter!!!! The gooey stuff in the middle was strawberry jam and roasted almond powder. The whole stack was covered with chocolate sauce. Other than these there were a lot of flambe kinda desserts, you know where they flame the dish with some alcohol. Gosh I was drooling while watching the show and I can feel my mouth water as I'm typing this!!!

I'll end here. Gotta read a retinoid paper.

Ciao folks!