frites & fries

_ _ _ _ _ _ _
3.10.2010

I found this amazing cocktail on Liqurious: a solid Bloody Mary from Grant Achatz, the executive chef at Alinea. I’ve written about Alinea in a previous post and I’m dying to go there. I think molecular gastronomy is amazing. I’m wondering, what other cocktails would be great in a solid form? a fizzy Bellini? a classic Manhattan?

_ _ _ _ _ _ _
3.10.2010

Want: Place Setting Placemat

Now I won’t have to argue with my sister about water glass placement for fancy family dinners. Buy it here.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _
3.10.2010

Archi-meaty Pie [Hey, It’s Almost Pi Day!]

When I was doing research, I remember being cooped up in rooms with no windows and fluorescent lights. I spent most of my day programming, sitting in meetings, analyzing stats and collecting data. This was a little better during the actual experimental phase of the various research projects when I made people wear gigantic headphones, walk around blindfolded or made people run into the wall [accidently]. It was interesting, fun, and you learn a lot about human nature and problem solving. I learned that there are four perks in doing research even though you don’t make a whole lot of money doing it:

You’re constantly learning new things
You can say that you’re doing research: it makes you sound fancy and smart
You can tell math jokes in the comfort of the research lab
You can celebrate geeky holidays because research people are supposed to be kind of geeky like that: a number related holiday (like 1/23 or 3/14), an anniversary of a theory, or the day that you’re finally given the green light by the IRB.

Once such nerdy holiday is coming up…that would be Pi Day (3/14). I made a sweet and savory meat pie because I wanted to take advantage of Archimedes’ name and be able to say Archi-meaty. Word play!

Archimedes tried to approximate the value of pi by drawing a bunch of polygons with a bunch of different sides via method of exhaustion, to make it as close to a perfect circle as possible. Here’s my recipe for the Archi-Meaty Pie, a Greek inspired lamb pie with apples and raisins.