Be back soon

They say that April is the cruelest month breeding lilacs etc etc etc etc shantih shantih shantih.  It's not that the past month of my life hasn't been filled with culinary wonderment.  I started the month off by slinging a dozen pizzas in under an hour for my friend's birthday party.  The next day I made scrambled eggs on a boat.  Later that same weekend for a different birthday party, I baked cupcakes inside egg shells.  I don't know if you quite understand.  There were eggs, and then when you cracked them open cupcakes popped out of them.  I was of course saving the yolks for ice cream and as I sat there at my kitchen counter in the middle of the afternoon, cracking little holes in eggshells with a screwdriver and blorping out all the whites into one bowl and then flurping out all the yolks into another one, I thought to myself--this is it, I have actually gone mad.

It's ever-returning spring, trinity sure to me you bring etc etc etc etc there in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim, and I have been more-than-enjoying the fava beans, the fresh peas, the new potatoes, the strawberries and, yes, even the asparagus.  I've been buying it all, I've been eating it all, I've been cooking it all and I've even been dutifully taking pictures of everything, adding little garnishes of cracked pepper and rosemary oil on top of my hummus, turning up the light in my living room to cast the perfect shadows around a leek souffle.

But I haven't been writing about it.  I read somewhere long ago that all grad students should start blogs, not science blogs but just blogs about anything, because the most important part of graduate school is learning how to express and evaluate your thoughts and use them to teach new principles, and constantly writing about something that you already know a lot about is the first step to establishing that expertise.

Constantly writing about something--that's what I've been doing for the past month.  Unfortunately, it's been about surface kinetic mechanisms of enzymatic cellulose deconstruction instead of surface kinetic mechanisms of frying an egg (olive oil, slowly).  But I'm almost ready to say au revoir to all that.  And, who knows, maybe I'll even make it out of Berkeley with a PhD in my hand.  I'm not counting any chickens until they're hatched.  And then raised, killed, disarticulated, and braised.

So I'll be back soon, okay?  I'll be back soon to chant to you of apricots and green garlic, quail eggs and lamb shank.  Until then, enjoy this picture of cabbage fried rice I made last week.  I got home at 11 PM and had finished the whole bowl less than 20 minutes after I walked in the door.  It is the single best thing I have eaten in the past year.