Just A Quick One Today (Kind Of)

     Again, apologies for the delay.  However, if you didn't buy my "being busy with finals" excuse, I have an even better one for this.  I had a powerpoint due on a Tuesday, so I assured my partner I would bring my laptop to class and transfer it to my teacher.  But, sometime in the hour I was transporting my computer to school, my hard-drive completely and utterly crapped out on me.  The week before finals.  I lost all my work.  So I had to order a new hard drive, have it installed, and get everything back on there.  And now here we are.
     That being said, I'm done with school now and ready to enjoy the summer.  We've had an odd spring, and the rain has stuck around longer than it should have, but it's finally getting nice out.  It's a shame really, because Spring is my favorite season and I feel like it was largely ignored this year.  We went straight from a wet winter to a sunny summer.
     Now, when I said I was going to have time to do nothing but bake this summer, it was a tiny bit of a lie.  Like a fib by omission.  While I do obviously have more time, I am actually working this summer.  In Big Sur tracking otters.  Which means that three days a week, I get to live in one of the most gorgeous places on Earth.  However, such seclusion means that I have no internet or cell phone reception, so blog-writing becomes a task.  I don't mind though.  I can already tell I'm going to get a lot of reading done on my downtime this summer.

 The area I work out of is right off that bridge. (Photo from Google)

     So, I'll try my best to bang out some tasty stuff.  I made some cinnamon rolls with my new mixer (I love it!) but sadly they were all eaten by my over-eager boyfriend before I could photograph them.  However, I'm making some Korean meatballs today with some pickled cucumbers and some Tom Ka Gai (chicken and coconut milk soup) with potstickers.  So, assuming I can fend O off long enough to photograph, I'll try to post these three recipes because they're all things I've made before and they're all delicious.

     And while I'm here, can I just say I am so glad to have a decent network of farmer's markets here.  You would think in health-conscious San Diego (where I lived before) we would have had some good ones, but we had almost nothing.  Santa Cruz is phenomenal though.  The antithesis of sad, boring Safeway produce.  Finals were all-consuming, so I made it down to ours for the first time in awhile today.  As much as I love the comfort of fall/winter produce, nothing beats the warm months.  I'm going to try to snap some pictures one of these days.

     Here's hoping you have something nice to look forward to this summer.

  

     OH!  And because I haven't thrown any science knowledge at you lately...here's a picture of the cookies I made for my Marine Botany class!

 Here's what Volvox looks like (Photo from Google)

And here are my cookies!

     Volvox is the most developed in a series of algal genera that form spherical colonies.  I thought they were so cool to look at in class.  I'm not going to post the recipe, because somehow I doubt there is a high demand for cookies in the shape of algae.