Chocolate Cheesecake with Caramel Swirls

Bow down to my culinary skillz!



No but really.



Are you bowing down?




Groveling?

How about now?

I (with Rachael as a most valuable sous chef) managed to pull off chocolate cheesecake when cooking in a kitchen obviously stocked by a man (as much as I love Fritz, our caregiver). We didn't have enough cream cheese for one, so I subbed some milk. Then we didn't have enough heavy cream (because I'm dumbh and can't read) so I subbed some milk there too. Ended up using an egg less and putting in an extra 40g of chocolate :) (original recipe here) The taste is definitely more brownie than cheesecake, but the texture was amazing. And for an extra topping of awesomeness I made homemade caramel sauce (and burned myself in the process) to top it off. Honestly, it was almost the best part (especially with strawberries dipped in it).

It was Francillia's birthday and my last night here, so I figured we needed a sweet treat to commemorate the summer and all. And I'll probably never be able to replicate this awesomeness again- it was a wonderful fluke.

AstroLunch Presentation

Just gave my final presentation over my summer work! It went very well, thank you very much. Plus, there were three very intelligent questions asked of me and I could answer them all (with limited prompting from my adviser). Success!

So for all of you who are just DYING to see my presentation here it is in miniature. Please notice its awesome badassery. Oh, and my version of animations are two of the same slides one after the other.




P.s. James: I know you could have designed this MUCH better and in the future I will employ you to do so. Until then, appreciate my improved power point skills.

Mud Muscles

Who was the first sick-minded, masochistic bastard who thought of wadlopen?!

Here's the before photo:

The during (early stage before the novelty had worn off):


And there is no after because 1.) It was raining too hard to take out my camera 2.) My hands were covered in dried mud 3.) My bag was equally covered in mud and 4.) I was soaked.

But let me back up. We all met up at coast and found our guide. We set off around noon, noon-thirty ish. The first few steps were in extremely soft mud. I promptly got stuck and fell over. I learned how to walk- with your weight on the balls of your feet and quickly or you get suctioned in- which was great and all, until we hit the first gully. Got stuck again. Fell over. THE MUD WENT ON FOREVER AND EVER AND EVER AND EVER. We were in the very back of the group so everything was super churned up and impossible to move through. Rachael started having an asthma attack (not that I was doing much better) and so she, her adviser Ztolt and I turned back with another guide.

Supposedly 'easier,' the alternative route was still killer. We were finally out of the squeltching mud and on hard packed sand which made thing much easier, but our guide was a mud-Nazi and set a ridiculous pace. It was pretty though- when I wasn't cursing the weather or the guide or my poor aching hips. There were little mini rivers that we had to cross- one was up to my waist. That was pretty awesome. We didn't actually move back toward the coast initially, instead making our way parallel to land. As we went on the weather got worse and worse. I don't have a wind breaker here, so there was nothing I could do about the rain and my shawl didn't prevent much either. Siiigh.

Finally we started heading back toward the coast, having to travel through some mud again. Step by step we started walking over ground that was more land than sand and water. We climbed up on one of the huge dikes and walked along it. Another guide joined us and was as merry and chipper as if it was sunny and he wasn't drenched with cold rain. He showed me a plant that can be eaten along the dike. It was sweet! And green/dirt tasting- thus I loved it.

And then suddenly we were on land. It was so strange- on one side was mud and ocean and on the other green (GREEN) rolling hills and sheep. We climbed over several fences, herding the sheep before us, and made it down to the road. Right before our descent to the road I looked back at the ocean and realized that once I was at the bottom I'd actually be lower than the water. We all climbed in the station wagon the extra guide had brought to rescue us and headed back to the ferry.

Towards the end I was actually enjoying myself. And the very end bit on the land was breathtaking. Getting out of the car I realized I hurt in places I didn't know existed- who knew we had so many mud muscles? Rachael, Ztolt and I changed into dry clothes and then had some soup and coffee in the restaurant. A lovely ending to an ...interesting day. But to go wadlopen again? I'd have to do a lot of forgetting to volunteer for such torture.

Tool Box

IT'S EVERYWHERE! I don't know how it's happened, but EVERY astronomer EVERYWHERE at some point will reference their 'astronomy tool box.' And yes, I believe I now have the credentials to make this statement, being a world traveling astronomer myself now.(And so modest too)

"I'll talk about the tools in our molecular line spectroscopy tool box." says my German adviser today in a talk. It was like a sucker punch to the stomach. I was helpless as I flashed back to Spectroscopy class and 'back of the envelope calculations', to 'chocolate' in Observations I, to memorizing all the important astronomy constants (h=6.626068x10^-34 m^2 kg s^-1, k=1.3806503x10^-23 m^2 kg s^-2 K^-1, sigma=5.67x10^-8 W m^-2 K^-4, G=6.67x10^-11 m^3 kg^-1 s^-2, etc etc) in Astrophysics 1 that every self respecting astronomer has in their freaking tool box.

It's a world-wide phenomena. And a conspiracy.

Groningen

Went to Groningen yesterday (pronounced ggggrow-nen-gen), the biggest city nearby. Total inhabitants: 185,000 with 20,000 of those students at the University of Groningen. We puposely went on a Saturday to take advantage of the weekly market that is held in the city center, Grote Markt. We picked up some soft swiss cheese from one of the bazillion venders and also some mangoes (both of which shall play a larger role in later paragraphs). It was misting on and off as we walked among the stalls, but finally it started raining too hard so we went and had coffee under the awning of a cafe. Francillia had made fried chicken before we left, and Rachael and I put together some veggie sandwiches, so we enjoyed some lattes and packed lunch on the streets of Groningen watching the rain come down. Eventually even the awning wasn't enough to protect us from the rain so we went inside and sat on some couches. I think we just sat there and chatted and chatted for a good while even past the worst of the rain storm.

We eventually decided to search out the tattoo & piercing parlors in the city that I had marked down on my map before we left. I wanted to get another piercing and Francillia was interested in getting a tattoo. So in our quest to not only FIND the shops (of which I was in charge- I did admirbly, thank you) and estimate costs and tatoo artists ability we got to see a fair portion of Groningen city center. It's a tightly packed metropolis- it only takes about 15min to walk from end to end of the ringed city center. Anyway, of the shops we found one was nice but expensive, one was rude and who cares how much the cost, one was just piercings and expensive, and the other couldn't fit Francillia in that day. So, Mom, you can stop thinking about nagging me, I don't have another piercing...yet.

Thankfully the rain had stopped completely, leaving only overcast skies and a big of humidity (read: a lot of humidity. My hair was crazy!) At a loss for what to do, piercing and tattooing having failed, Rachael and I convinced Francillia to go on a canal tour with us in canoes! BEST DECISION EVER. We found the canoe rental place, opperated by this tiny Indian man who seemed a bit sketch and headed out. The only thing the guy said to us was 'always turn left.' IT WAS AWESOME. (My shoulder are killing me this morning though! 2.3mi of canoeing!)

The photos from the day are HERE. But I'm gonna choose several of them to display for this post too :)






So after the canoe tour, which we finished around 7pm, we headed back to the train station. On the train ride back we ate the rest of the fried chicken, had some cheese, and exclaimed over the wonders of the day. We got to Beilen (a nearby town with a train station. It's something like 9km away from ASTRON) and started the bike ride home. It's such beautiful country here. As we started to get back into the forest we stopped at a picnic bench and devoured the mangoes. Oh. My. God. There were so good. I was covered in mango juice, but it was so worth it.

We finished the ride home, through some rain, and then went to bed. And now today Rachael, John and myself are going to Hoogeveen to see Inception. I'm living up the last two weeks here- what a ride.