Vegetarian Recipe #14!

Hi guys, I just made vegetarian recipe #14 2 nights ago for dinner!  I'm so close!  While in Santa Fe, I promised I would learn to love avocados.  Prior to my trip, I'm ashamed to admit that I'd never tried avocado (or guac) - the color just freaked me out.  I wanted to love them, though...full of good fats...come on!  So, I tried them, loved them, and the rest is history.

I made this for Sarah and she also loved it - said it was one of the tastiest things she'd ever had.   

Vegetarian Recipe #14 - Avocado and Macadamia nut tartines:
1 avocado - halved and sliced
3/4 cup macadamias - toasted and chopped in the food processor
1 small carrot - peeled and chopped into coarse little bites
salt
coriander
cumin
1 small garlic clove - also chopped in the food processor
basil - for topping
olive oil
Couple of slices good hearty bread - we used focaccia

Toast your macadamias for about 10-15 minutes at 300-350 degrees. Then let them cool while you toast up your bread in the oven.

Grind your macadamias + salt  + cumin + coriander (I don't have good estimates of how much of the spices I used - just to taste) and add the garlic.  Pulse it but don't completely pulverize it - it's tasty chunky.  Mix with the coarsely chopped carrot.  Drizzle olive oil on your bread then top with the sliced avocado.  Top the avocado with the macadamia nut mixture.  Top with basil.

I adapted the recipe from this blog:
http://www.101cookbooks.com/archives/avocado-coconut-oil-tartine-recipe.html

Have a great day!

Peace,

J

Scenes from the trip....

 

Hi everybody, I'm back!  It's a bit bittersweet - I had the greatest time you could imagine.  I learned an incredible amount, made great friends, and enjoyed every second of my Santa Fe time.  

Sorry I've been out of touch lately - while I was there I felt like I needed to disconnect a little bit.  

Some big changes have been happening in life since I got back.  Santa Fe was life-altering and made me reconsider what I want out of life, my career, and my relationships.  For the time-being, I need to focus on myself and something that I've always had trouble doing - being with just myself.  

I'll leave it at that for now.  The little dogs were SO HAPPY TO SEE ME.  It was the cutest thing :-)  I am so happy to be reunited with my little loves!  I am also so happy & excited to be back to the lab!  Nothing like some time away from crappy data & results to rejuvenate you to try again!!  

Have a wonderful day!

Peace,

J

You can't even belive how much of a good time I'm having...

Good morning, folks!  I told you I'd have a new update for you soon.  Seriously, you can't even believe how great of a time I'm having.  My days go a little bit like this: Wake up around 6:30, exercise (NOT hard), eat breakfast at the cafeteria with my new friends, go to interesting and amazing seminars all morning, eat lunch with my new friends (really good lunch, too), hang out on the balcony in the sunshine until the afternoon sessions get going again, go to interesting workshops, journal reviews, and more seminars in the afternoon.  Work a little bit with my group on our project, and then eat dinner and drink beer for the rest of the night.

The speakers have been amazing thus far.  They are thinking about biology questions in such new and creative and clever ways.  They also come sit with you at lunch an chat.  Yesterday I had lunch with 2 great researchers from Los Alamos national labs and the day before I had lunch with a guy from UCSD.  We talk science and it is SO fun. 

The food here is amazing!!  It is so awesome to just show up, have some great meal, and then have none of the prep, thinking about it, getting stuff at the store, cleanup etc... 

The scenery is unbelievable.  School is ringed by mountains, wildflowers everywhere, cool and refreshing in the mornings and evenings, warm and sunny during the day. 

The people are SO nice!!  I LOVE the people that are at the school.  They make everything so much fun.  I want to take them all back to NYC with me.  Everybody is so friendly and knows different things.

Lastly, I've learned how to do things here that I never thought little old me would be able to do.  It's opened up this whole world of biology I was really only on the fringe of and made me change what I think I want out of science as a career.  It's excited me to have new big challenges and also given me confidence that I can be one of the people who actually does the stuff I thought only other, really smart people could do. 

It's freaking awesome. 

This evening we are going in to town to eat enchiladas at this place called Maria's.  Tomorrow we're going to go hike Baldy as a big group.  It will be a 14 mile hike round trip.  Starts at 10,000 feet and ends at something like 13,000.  After that, there is a beer crawl in downtown Santa Fe that some of us will go on.  Then on Sunday, we are all headed up in the direction of Taos to go to the hot springs. 

Please nobody wake me up!  :-)

Peace,

J

 

My evening yesterday :-)

Have a great day, y'all!  I just got done with my workout and am running off to have breakfast.  Have a new update for you soon!

Carpe diem,

J

Good morning from Santa Fe! 

Hi guys, sorry for not posting this morning.  I didn't have time because I was leisuring over my breakfast for so long.  :-)  Usually when I leisure over breakfast I'm also leisuring over the blog, so it's taking some getting used to. 

My first day was great!  We had a lot of seminars - lasting from 8:30am until almost 6pm.  We had a 2 hour break for lunch, though.  Many of the seminars were quite challenging to comprehend and there is so much that is new to me!!!  It's really fun, though, and I just want to learn everything immediately.  It's instilling me with such an exciting new desire to become good at a new skill - that skill being the mathematical modelling side of what I do now.  Yesterday evening the founder and chief mathematician of MathWorks came and gave a history of how he founded the company back in the 70's.  He's and old guy now, so hearing his story is truly incredible.  He got his degree in computer science back in the 60's.  He wrote the software Matlab as a tool for a class he needed to teach to undergraduate computer science majors at Stanford in the late 70's.  In the mid-80's, he and a friend bought a Compaq "portable" computer with their own pocket money and wrote the first iteration of Matlab (now their signature software off which everything else is based), in an A-frame near Palo Alto in California.  There was no venture capital, no investors, no employees.  Now MathWorks has thousands of employees and brings in almost a billion annually.  His pictures were hilarious - the computers were ridiculously cumbersome and the guys were so nerdly-looking!  (Hopefully my future children will not look back on my pictures like that).  MathWorks also programs things like anti-lock brakes for Chevrolet, to weapons, to energy applications, to aviation - it's pretty cool.  When he was done with his history, he gave us a tutorial on Matlab (which many of us use already - including myself).  The cool part was, that he gave the tutorial on this ANCIENT version of Matlab - the original version he wrote for his Stanford undergrads in the 60's.  It's not very user-friendly but it has some funny quirks that he included for laughs.  For instance, something I never knew was that if you type the prompt "WHY," the terminal gives you arbitrary, random, and hilarious answers to un-asked questions.   

The food here is great - yesterday for lunch I had corn tamales with green chiles, salsa, and rice.  For dinner I had a gianormous salad with all the veggie fixings.  We stayed up out on the balcony drinking beer from approximately 7:30-midnight.  It was awesome getting to know everybody and make connections.  Everyone is nice & fun & brings a little something different to the table.  For instance, we have chemists, biologists, mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists here so every conversation is new and fresh. 

This morning I got up again at 6, went on a 4 mile walk (I really did not have it in my to run after 5 hours of beer the night prior).  I stretched for awhile in the field above and watched the sunrise.  Then I went and had my coffee & peanut butter toast at the cafeteria.  This afternoon I had jasmine rice with curried vegetables and a rice krispy treat.  No dishes + No prep + No cleanup + No planning + healthy + vegetarian = GLORIOUS.  Well, time for me to head back for my afternoon session. 

Have a great day!!!!

peace,

J

Million dollar view from our dorm balcony.

 Adobe sunset in the background from my window.

 Little change of scenery for my morning run. 

 Running trail

Another photo of the doggie dash - random!

Hi guys!  Well I'm here in Santa Fe at St. John's College.  After leaving Saturday night, I stayed the night in Albuquerque, got up really early and hit the road to Santa Fe.  It's crazy how these towns - even relatively big towns for the state - are just completely shut down at 7am on a Sunday.  NOBODY is out - they're like ghost towns.  When I got to Santa Fe, I hiked the 3.5 miles from the train station to SJC with my pack.  It was a nice hike that took me winding up a giant hill into the mountains. 

When I got here, I checked in, explored a little, got my very nice dorm room, and waited for the mixer at 5.  I did some working out down on their little field and managed to get sunburned within 1 hour.  At 5 we had a mixer with local New Mexico brews and dinner.  I met a lot of new people and we went hiking around a bit also.  I went to bed around 9 (there's nothing really to do in the evening here - ESPECIALLY on a Sunday). 

I didn't have the best night of sleep because the few college kids that are staying for the summer were playing Pink Floyd until 4 in the morning.  SERIOUSLY!?!? Go to bed!!!!!  I had the burning desire to go knock on all their doors this morning at 6.  "GOOD MORNING!!!"

I know I was just as obnoxious, but at least close your damn windows!

I woke this morning at 6 and went for a short run up a giant hill.  I didn't run for more than a half mile stretch at a time.  The altitude!  It's no joke!  It was lovely, though, and COOL & refreshing - like 60 degrees.  I watched the sunrise over the Sangre Cristo mountains and stretched.  I didn't even break a sweat.  I then attempted to find coffee and realized there is NOWHERE to get coffee prior to 7:30am on this campus.  WHAT KIND of place is this!?  7:30am!?  :-)  People here are just more chill I think - don't get up as early. 

I'm just soaking in the natural beauty of this place.  Loving every second (but missing my pups & Brian).  Today is my first morning of seminars so I'm off for breakfast & coffee in a few minutes. 

As a side note, there are now a lot more pictures of Bear and me from the Doggy Dash posted online.  You get to see when Bear puts on the brakes at the sight of the finish line chute :-)  Just click the link below and click on "enlarge" below each of the pictures you view.  They say "Proof" because they want you to buy them - but don't buy them - they're a rip-off!  When you're finished viewing a photo, just click on the "X" at the top right hand corner of the photograph. 

http://www.marathonfoto.com/Other/New-York-City-Triathlon-2013/LastName/OYLER/BibNumber/102/offering/myMarathonfotos/RaceOID/26932013S1/Language/en?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=6%20More%20Photos%20ID%20ENG-SPA%20%285%29

Have a great day!!

Peace,

J

 Before......

AFTER!!!

Doesn't she just look like the Belle of the Ball??!! 

She had her teeth cleaned, ears cleaned, nails clipped, and she was bathed, conditioned, de-matted, clipped, and blow-dried.  She smells like oatmeal and roses.  And her coat is so glossy and shiny and soft - I haven't seen it like this since she had her puppy coat.  Her legs have been clipped back quite a bit, along with her belly, tail, paws, and mane.  She looks so adorable :-) 

Wish I were going to enjoy her being so clean for more than a day!!  Oh well...I'm sure it won't be wasted on Brian.