The Blueberry Patch

A few friends and I went to "The Blueberry Bucket" this morning.  It's a blueberry farm about 90 minutes southeast of Dallas where the owners let you pick your own blueberries for $10 / 5qt bucket.  My boss has visited this same patch for the past 25 years and highly recommended it, so I just had to check it out.

What I learned:  there are reasons for leaving @ 6am for 'the patch'... these includes cooler temperatures, fewer pickers, and more picking time before the sun scorches you (that being said, we did not get sunburned). Picking blueberries is a tougher job that you'd think... let's just say I don't want to become a professional fruit picker.  Blueberries grow on tree/bush type plants.  They don't have prickers but sure do attract lots of (big) spiders, wasps, and other generally icky creatures (no we didn't get bitten or stung, thank goodness).  Sonics sell peanut butter bacon shakes (no we didn't try one).

 

Max and Oliver

Max is my roommate's parents' dog and Oliver is my roommate's cat.  I think they're pretty adorable.  Max isn't too good about staying put when I get out the camera, so I only got one acceptable picture of him.  Oliver's used to it by now haha!

Kitty paws are almost as cute as puppy dog paws :-)

Home in the SoDak

I came home this past Friday for the Memorial Day weekend and am having a fabulous time with my family and friends here in Yankton.  It's been exactly three years since I was home and Briana was not... she was in St. Louis in the summer of 2010 with her FSAP buddies while I spend a lot of time at home after going to Denmark for a few weeks at the beginning of the summer.

Mom picked me up at the Sioux Falls on Friday, we went to the casino in Larchwood, IA (no we weren't big winners, sadly), and finally had a quick but super yummy dinner at Chae's in Vermillion.  They were nice enough to serve us even at 8:50pm (ten minutes before they were set to close).

Yesterday (Saturday), Mom and I went to the Judi's Dance Studio recital.  I hadn't been to a recital since my senior year in 2008!  We had a great time just sitting in the balcony and watching :-) The dancers and tumblers did an absolutely wonderful job.  Congrats to Rob and Timera on an awesome first recital!  Mom and I then picked up Dad and headed to the Pancreatic Cancer (Pan Can) Pub Crawl that benefitted the Lori Groetken Foundation.  It was great to see so many people coming together to share stories (and a few tears too) for such a great cause very close to my family's hearts.  

lettuce

Mom was nice enough to save (and share) some of her Mother's Day present! Very yummy :-)

It is a tough job being the world's cutest dog 24/7

I promise-- they do love each other.

My First Solo Bundt

Too bad it wasn't a squeeze play (please look up 'squeeze play' for your own sports edification if you do not know what I'm talking about).

I think this is the first cake I've made in a bundt pan by myself.  I have no idea if it counts as a 'bundt cake' but I'll go with it.  I was in need of using up some baking supplies and greek yogurt before we move out in a month (!) so I googled banana recipes and found this one.  Side note: who knew you could buy ripe bananas at Kroger and for a reduced price, no less?!?  Ok, now I know and may take advantage of this in the future.

http://bakingbites.com/2013/04/ultra-moist-banana-bundt-cake-with-greek-yogurt/

Here's the link to the recipe.  Other than using 4 bananas instead of 3 and adding mini semi sweet baking chips, I followed the recipe to a 't,' which is an usual occurrence for me. Oh yeah, and it's the moistest banana cake I've ever eaten.  Must be that Greek yogurt!!

My First Scientific Conference

This past Thursday and Friday, I visited Houston for the first time!  Although I did not have a chance to do much site-seeing, I had a wonderful time :-)  My PI (the primary investigator of the lab I'm working in... aka my boss), a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, and I attended the 19th annual Texas Forum for Reproductive Sciences at Texas Children's Pavilion for Women at the huge medical center complex in Houston.  In the week leading up to the conference, I made my first every poster, which displayed a bit of background on my project, a few current hypotheses in the lab, and the first bit of my own data from work in the lab.

We drove down to Houston in some pretty heavy rain on Thursday morning and arrived around noon, just in time to grab some lunch (italian sub and diet coke... brought me back to my Blimpie days!) and check in.  We listened to a great keynote lecture by Dr. Doug Stocco from Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center about his lab's discovery and characterization of StAR protein, which is necessary for the transfer of cholesterol in the mitochondria in cells and subsequent steroid production.  Next, 6 platform presenters spoke about their work for about 15 minutes each and we had the chance to speak with grad students and post docs one-on-one during the the poster session.

Mala and I outside The Armadillo Palace! thanks to Alina for sharing this picture with me :-)

At 7pm, we headed to The Armadillo Palace.  We ate wonderful BBQ and pecan pie and did a bit of mingling with others at the conference. It was a very nice, Texan evening.  

Friday morning's festivities kept us busy... breakfast, poster session, platform presentations.  The best part about Friday was that the Mahendroo lab finally had the opportunity to present our work! 

I participated in the poster session, speaking with conference attendees about my research and preliminary findings on elastin in the mouse cervix throughout pregnancy and in our preterm birth model  {[ Cervical elastin structure changes throughout pregnancy but not between term and preterm ripening]}.  A picture of me in front of my poster is coming soon.

The postdoc from our lab presented his work regarding hyaluronin (HA) synthetases and the role of HA in the cervix. 

All things considered, it was a GREAT first conference and first opportunity to present my work.  The people who attend TFRS are wonderfully friendly and interested in trainee progress in the reproductive sciences.  I am looking forward to attending for 3+ more years  :-)

Oh, and next year, for only the second time in the conference's history, TFRS will not be held in Houston.  Instead, we will head to San Antonio, TX, in April 2014!  

http://www.utmb.edu/tfrs/

Welcome, Spring!

and carbonara for dinner :-)

Quiche-y

We are going through a quiche-obsession phase here at our apartment.  Between Kathryn and I, we've made four quiches in the past week.

The current quiche from the bottom up:

 basic deep-dish pie crust
 baby spinach
 1/8c grated parmesan cheese
 5 slices of bacon
 1/8c grated parmesan cheese
 4 eggs + 1/2c(ish) half and half blended together briefly

375 degree oven for ~35 minutes