jinian | holiday treats

Today, I made the entire fifth floor of the South Science Building smell of pumpkin pie. It was awesome.

I had to explain the technique of proper pastry, and make it with the "two knives as scissors" method since I couldn't find a pastry cutter at all. People understood the kabocha squash and cinnamon and were excited about them, but the nutmeg and particularly allspice were mystifying. The Hokkaido butter gets unusually hard, so we had to fold the crust in four after the initial rolling, but it worked out very well indeed. Everyone seemed to like it very much.

Despite my calculations beforehand, there was too much pie filling, so we wound up making four pumpkin custards in ramekins. I love that I am working in a lab that has common-use ramekins. Noted for future lab of my own.

(People also asked me the difference between shrimp and prawns. I explained the size difference and also the prevalent confusion of terms.)

So we had an awesome party including the pie, pasta puttanesca, salad, and various pizzas including a teriyaki chicken pizza that, with cheese, was really just too salty. The celebration was because someone's paper was finally getting published after almost a year; I am not entirely clear on how this happened. There was champagne, which fountained onto a bench very festively, and kinpaku, which is sake with gold leaf in.

My own recent paper was rejected tonight, though with largely quite positive comments, so that I think we can easily revise and resubmit. I am not bothered in the slightest, because (1) I was almost hoping for a rejection since they rejected the cosubmitted paper already, which would be hella awkward if they accepted mine -- I rather think that's what the editor was thinking too -- and (2) I got home to find two packages from my ground crew! Thanks,