This Monday morning made it absolutely clear that the glorious weekend was over.  It opened with rain, and a recurrence of nip in the air.  The dogs were so dirty after our walk in the Park that it was seriously just ridiculous.  I had to really do a lot of rinsing and pulling out of sticks, burrs, branches, and leaves from the hair.  The tub was COATED with grime and dirt.

Next, because I was so busy having fun this weekend, I had done ZERO laundry.  I knew getting dressed this morning would be an adventure, but I was not prepared for the inability to find ONE clean pair of underwear.  Now, usually my go-to in this type of emergency are bathing suit bottoms.  But even my bottoms were missing!!!  So...I had to go commando to work.  For those of you who don't know what "commando" means...it means that I didn't wear any underpants to work.  Oh DON'T TELL ME you've never done it.  You KNOW YOU HAVE.  I was very concerned about making sure my fly was up upon leaving the bathroom.  It felt very scandalous.

I did the laundry this evening in lieu of running.  I ran enough this weekend...I now need underpants.

I had squished in an experiment for the afternoon and had to start straight away after lab meeting - no time for lunch.  I won't go into the details, but the experiment ended with me losing a good deal of data, and "breaking" a very large and expensive piece of machinery that belongs to another lab.  The break involved a clog in a thin tube...I attempted to dislodge said clog with a thin wire, that decided to break off inside the thin tube after insertion.  I'm done...nothing more to be said about it.  I can now look at it with some humor - but the moment I had to tell the physician-scientist of the lab who owns it, I had my best, most pathetic sheepish face on.  He laughed.  He couldn't believe what a stupid thing I did.  But he assured me that he had also made stupid mistakes (when he was young and stupid...which is obviously no longer since he is now big & important).

Thank you big & smart guy! KARMA!  I will someday remember this moment when some idiot of a grad student comes and tells me he/she broke some fancy lab equipment because he/she stuck a random wire in it and broke it off.  

Machinery technician will come and fix it...no big deal I suppose.

While waiting for said big & smart guy to get back to lab from his lunch break (which I did not get)...I found this recipe on the NYTimes Recipes for health.  Whatever...parsley is weird to use as a main addition, but I wanted an excuse to eat a big mound of orzo and peas and cheese so I made it.

It was DELICIOUS....I HIGHLY recommend it.  Martha Rose Schulman hasn't done me wrong yet.  One of the best pestos I've ever made....and I've MADE pesto.  I adapted hers a bit to make it more my style - my changes are annotated with a *.  You can visit the website here if you're curious to see her version:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/22/health/orzo-with-peas-and-parsley-pesto-recipes-for-health.html?ref=health&_r=0

Vegetarian Recipe # 11 - Orzo with Parsley Pesto and Peas:

For the pesto:
2 cups of tightly packed flat leaf parsley (I tried to get rid of the thicker stems)
1/3 cup of olive oil
2 cloves of fresh garlic - minced
salt & black pepper 
*juice of 1 small lemon or half a large one
*1/4 cup of grated asiago cheese
*1/2 tablespoon of chia seeds (GOOD FATS & protein!)

Process everything in a food processor until it's creamy.  Add your salt to taste - it doesn't need much.  The lemon adds a lot of flavor on it's own.

For the orzo & peas:
Salt some water and bring to a boil
Add about a cup and a half of orzo and cook for roughly 5 minutes
After 5 minutes, add about half a bag of frozen peas (if you can find fresh peas, use those, but for an easier version, just use frozen).
Boil together for about 4 more minutes or until the orzo is tender.
Drain

Combine the peas, orzo, pesto back into the warm pot you used to boil the orzo & peas.  Stir everything together and let sit for 10 minutes.  (The orzo will absorb a lot of the juices & flavor).

Top with some grated asiago cheese.

Enjoy!

This dish was very "non-parsley-ish."  I find parsley to be a very overwhelming flavor and not pleasant if it's too over-powering.  This, on the other hand, was very fresh, not over-powering at all and just delicious.  The perfect spring-time pasta dish.

Carpe diem,

J