Skip the blowing snow - time for Afternoon Tea!

13 February 2016

When life gives you blowing snow, sleet, and rain, it's time for afternoon tea!

Bon apetit!

My friend, Dawn, was visiting Edinburgh and we had planned a trip to Arthur's Seat. When we woke up to blowing precipitation in many forms (and no hopes of it stopping anytime soon), we changed plans and headed out for afternoon tea and all the pretty, delicious delights that included! My idea of 'scrummy' afternoon tea treats was based almost entirely on watching a challenge in the Great British Bake Off, so I had high expectations!

An imposing front at The Dome, complete with columns.
A beautiful building with a reputation for fantastic afternoon tea.

The brightly coloured dome that gives this place its name. 

The inside is all decorated for Valentine's Day!
We were a day early, but there were plenty of cute couples out for tea ;)

The neverending pot of delicious loose-leaf tea warmed us after lots of touristing outside in the elements. The food finally arrived - starting at the bottom, we had several sandwiches (salmon, egg salad, and ham), fresh-baked scones with clotted cream with jam, and baked cakes and other treats (macarons, éclairs, mango tart, and a small chocolate mousse cake). The only disappointment was the miniature sized scones - my favourite food was only in bite-sized form! But it was still delicious, so it's hard to complain too much :) Perhaps one of my British friends can tell me if the tiny size is a traditional part of afternoon tea?

We had Earl Grey and English Breakfast Tea. Just what we needed after a cold day outside!

A beautiful sight when you're starving!

All the delicious baked treats on the top tier!

This was the perfect activity for a blustery day and one I hope to repeat in the future - no need to wait for poor weather!

Cooking in Morocco 3: Fun in the kitchen

The Moroccan cooking class felt like a professional cooking show, with all the beautiful vegetables and spices already displayed in dishes in a beautiful, enormous kitchen. 

Dressed like the locals.

We jumped in to help as much as we could. Apparently, not all people who have taken their cooking class were willing to get their hands dirty! What's the point of a cooking class if you aren't willing to learn by doing? This earned us brownie points with everyone there and they taught us a few extra dishes in return. 

The kitchen was also a flurry of languages. Comments and instructions went from one end of the chain to the other and back again, going through Moroccan Arabic - French - English and then back again with the response or jokes. As the person in our group with the most French speaking experience, I got to do the bulk of the French to English translation. I love cooking, but I also had a lot of fun practicing my translation - it's been a REALLY long time and I was surprised at how much I remembered. All this translating might seem like it could bog things down, but it was a fun flurry of languages and passion for cooking and it certainly kept us all laughing all the way through! 

Beauty in nature.

Plating our food so it looks as beautiful as it tastes. 

We all took turns frantically scribbling everything down in the notebook. This was the only way to remember everything since we were cooking 10 dishes approximately simultaneously. 

We took the class very seriously...really.

I assure you, we were working very hard...

One piece!

Master Chef Bram finishing the sugared apples with fleur d'orangier yogurt. 

Making meatballs for the kefta. 

The best part of a cooking class is the end - tasting all the wonderful things you've created! There is a special prize for anyone who reads through to the bottom (spoiler: it might be recipes!).

Our first course - Moroccan salads. Includes aubergine, green beans, and the salad that essentially means 'salad of whatever you happen to have lying around'

The suspense! This was also our only meal with wine on the whole trip - we decided to try a local vintage with our fancy meal.

An easy dessert, but hard to beat. Moroccan oranges are the best! This is simply sliced oranges with strawberries, cinnamon, and powdered/icing sugar on top. Simple, beautiful, and delicious!!

Salade Aubergine

Ingredients: 

• Aubergine - cut up, remove some skin, rinse in H2O 
• Paprika - 2 heaping teaspoons 
• Cumin - 2 heaping teaspoons 
• garlic - 2 heaping teaspoons 
• olive oil - 2 tablespoons 
• salt - 1 teaspoon + some later 
• coriander 1.5 teaspoon 
• 1 cup water 

Directions: 5 minutes in pressure cooker. Squish them. Taste and season and let them boil down until it's a thick consistency.

Tajine Viande Agée Kefta

Ingredients: 

• 7 tomatoes 
• 1.5 tablespoons parsley 
• 2-3 teaspoon garlic 
• 1 heaping teaspoon cumin 
• 2 heaping teaspoon paprika 
• 1 heaping teaspoon salt 
• olive oil 2+ tablespoons 
• Ground meat - ground with onion, parsley, cumin and salt 
• egg 

Directions: Slice bottom of the tomato and then grate tomatoes into skillet. Mix in parsley, garlic, cumin, paprika, salt, and olive oil. Put tajine on fire and cover (or use a regular large sauce pan with lid). After 5 minutes, stir well. Make meatballs from ground meat (mix in onion, parsley, cumin, and salt if not pre-ground in). Add meat balls to tajine and cover. Wait until meatballs start to cook. Add egg on top and recover. Cook ∼20 minutes.

Bon apetit!

Cooking in Morocco 2: Teaching the Teachers

As anyone who's ever stood in front of a classroom can tell you, you learn a lot as a teacher. Our cooking class was no exception.

We started out with some general prep. Three of us washed chicken pieces by using lots of salt under the skin to remove the connective tissue and mucous.

Nico managed to get out of this job (there was only so much space at the small sinks), so they jokingly decided to "punish" him by assigning him a tedious job next: peeling all the garlic cloves. Instead of being dismayed, he started grinning and asked for a metal bowl with a metal lid. After a few questioning looks, they dug in the cupboards, dubiously handed him what he asked for, and then gathered around.

Nico put all the garlic in the dish, covered it with the metal lid, and shook like mad! He took the lid off to a pile of peeled garlic and a round of applause. For people who peel a ton of garlic cloves on a daily basis, this was a wonderful discovery! They delightedly proceeded to try it out for themselves. Nico certainly earned his honorary title they used for the rest of the day: 'Chef'.

Round of applause for 'The Chef'

They found more garlic cloves so everyone could join in on the garlic-peeling fun

Normally, fun things have disclaimers like "Don't try this at home" but we're willing to make an exception in this case. Here's the YouTube video where Nico first saw this trick so you can absolutely try this at home!

Cooking in Morocco 1: The Market

While we were in Morocco, we took a cooking class from the woman who ran our riad. She let us pick our favorite meals and then guided us from buying ingredients to final presentation of the dish. It's way too much for a single post, so I'll break it into a couple of pieces (with a recipe or two at the end!).

Our cooking class started out with a trip to the market to buy all the ingredients for our meal. I couldn't read our shopping list, but luckily our guide had no problems!

First stop: chicken!

We expected to pick up a butchered chicken. We were very wrong...

They reached down and grabbed a live chicken. He looks so peaceful on the scale... 

Then they broke the chicken's neck and butchered him while we waited. A few minutes later, he handed us a package of chicken that looked like it could have come from any supermarket. It doesn't get any fresher than that!

Lots of stray cats. No stray dogs. Muhammad said something like "a love of cats is an aspect of faith" with a particular story about him cutting off the sleeve of his prayer robe rather than disturb his favorite sleeping cat. Needless to say, we saw lots of stray cats fighting over the entrails of the chickens. 

Another stray cat in a different market area. He saw me taking a picture and came over to say hello :)

Only dog that we saw at the market...

 Back to the ingredients for the recipes...

Fresh olives - good for recipes, if they last beyond snacking :)

We bought some beef for kefta (little meatball tagine). The guy grinds it up for you and even adds the onions, herbs, and spices!

 Speaking of spices: Look at all the saffron! Everything was incredibly cheap, too.

Lots of fresh vegetables in every dish. One of my favorites is the aubergine (eggplant) salad!

Who needs standardized weights and measures? Let's just use a ball of rubber bands, some metal weights, and some scraps of veggies... Although it's hard to complain when food was so cheap.

With all the ingredients for our meal purchased, it was time to head back to the riad and get our hands dirty!

Stay tuned for Cooking in Morocco Part 2: Teaching the teachers!

Touristing at home: Ryan & Ronda

28 July 2014

Our first shot at being tour guides in Scotland. Our friends, Ryan & Ronda, came over to visit for a week. As luck would have it, they had coincidentally booked the same flight as us back to the UK!

Ryan and Ronda joined us for our Philadelphia to Edinburgh flight on our way home from the States. Ryan was great at capturing Nico being himself as we boarded.

Although I've been here more than a year, we haven't spent as much time seeing the rest of Scotland as we have working and seeing Edinburgh.

Welcome to my historic building workplace!

Edinburgh Castle
I've seen it every day for a year and I finally got a chance to see it for myself from the inside! Beautiful views and lots of history. The hilltop has been occupied or had fortifications since at least the 1300s. I think that much history warrants its own post at a later date :)  Here are some highlights:

View of the castle from the entrance area. 

Looking out at the city along one of the canons.

Looking along the row of flags with the Firth of Forth in the background.

Dog cemetery at the castle for regimental mascots and officers' dogs. The names we could read: Winkle, Yum Yum, and Sheena. 

One of the advantages of having friends in town is the excuse to try new restaurants. We went to Tuk Tuk (Indian street food) and had a good meal. The idea is essentially small dishes of food to share (like tapas). At the end, we were getting ready to pay and they said they had a special deal for everyone on Mondays: if you roll a die and get a 6, your food is free. We passed it to Ronda and she 'paid' for our meal by rolling a 6! Good food AND it was free!

Ronda's good luck got us a free dinner for four! Yay for Matka Monday!

Eating at semi-famous places: One of the locations where JK Rowling wrote part of Harry Potter.
There's another one right near my building.

Enjoying a nice dinner out after a long day of touristing (or working, in Nico's case).

Tune in next time for the trip to the highlands!

Back on Base (Rothera)

28 January 2014
We didn't end up getting out on Jan 26 after all. We spent all morning packing up as much of camp as possible without packing up our personal things that we use each night and then the weather turned and the first plane didn't end up coming at all. We had just over 10,000 pounds of gear and people, which works out to 5 Twin Otter plane loads that needed to come out of the field. The logistics for all of this are amazingly complex, but well managed.

Black and white photo of some of the clouds forming over Marble Hills

When we woke up on Jan 27, we were told that the first plane would be there in a little under 2 hours - birthday present for me! It's very cool to see the plane land on skis on the snow runway. These pilots are some of the best in the world and it is so amazing to see them practice their trade. We also get to be copilots for some of the legs of the trip, which means we get to sit up front and help the pilot. How many people get to fly an airplane in Antarctica?

Leaving the field was more emotional than I expected and I was sad to leave, but there are some advantages to being back in civilization so I tried to focus on the positive things (like water that comes out of a faucet instead of having to melt it myself!). All the scientists (sometimes affectionately referred to as 'Beakers' by the other people on base) were uplifted in the first plane and we flew back to Sky-Blu (~3 hours). We helped unload the plane and then were given a wonderful lunch of bacon sandwiches and tea. Another two planes came in with more gear later, but other than that we had a bit of free time to chat with the people who were working at Sky-Blu or enjoy the warm, sunny day. I took the opportunity to take some fun photos with my new camera in weather so warm (comparatively speaking) that I was almost too hot in my field clothes! It was still -8 degrees Celsius, but with sun and no wind it felt very warm.

We spent the night at Sky-Blu in a tent (they are used to visiting guests and have room for 8 people extra to spend the night). We got up in the morning and got on a Twin Otter headed back to Rothera via Fossil Bluff around midday. We got back on base early enough to have a quick shower before tea (the big meal at the end of the day, also referred to as dinner or supper in the States). We were told that we wouldn't be allowed in the dining room until after the shower, so it's a good thing we arrived at a reasonable hour!

View out one of the windows on the Twin Otter as we headed home from Fossil Bluff - very lucky to fly on a mostly sunny day!

The shower was amazing and eating non-dehydrated food was good, but the field season was relatively short compared to others and we hadn't started having cravings yet. It's nice to have a bit of luxury - going into the bedroom using a door instead of a small tent hole, heated towel racks, flush toilet instead of a toilet tent, clean clothes, not re-hydrated vegetables, electricity at all hours of the day, and warm water that comes out of the tap. However, I also miss the field. Everyday life sometimes feels more difficult in the field because I had to think about so many new things every day - just staying warm was hard, let alone drinking and eating enough, not being sunburned, wearing the right clothing, and trying to stay focused and organized enough to also get the science completed.  But life in the field is also simpler in some ways: get up, stay alive, do science, prepare for tomorrow, sleep. Life in the real world takes a back seat to these everyday tasks. Other things seem distant, both physically and figuratively, and you are able to achieve complete focus on the immediate scientific tasks on hand.

It will take some time to get acclimatized to being back on base, but I hope to keep some of the focus that I found in the field and use it to keep working on my projects as I slowly return to 'real life'. A part of me will miss being in the field, but I'm looking forward to other aspects of the project and seeing where the journey takes us.