Happy 10 years to this thing, this sporadic collection of my thoughts and musings from the last decade of my life. Save one year in there, it was a pretty damn good decade.

I'm still over here at The Foodie Scientist with occasional bloggings about my cooking adventures, if you'd like to keep up with me.

Not your grandmother's Chex Mix - my family recipe for Chex Mix, it is the best!

...I am Dr. Sarah as of ~2:45 p.m. this afternoon. It was a pretty tense morning/afternoon and a whirlwind evening filled with many good times and great friends. A really, really great evening. Feeling extremely satisfied and happy. Thank you all for many kind words of encouragement along the way. :)

It is short notice, but I'm heading to Nevada for strawberry picking tomorrow morning sometime between 8-8:30 a.m. Comment here or give me a call/text if you're interested. Right now I'm just going with one or two other people, not a whole cavalcade of women from my organization.

Blueberry picking starts July 1st, and I'm also extremely interested in going back out for that.

Just checked the Berry Patch Farm website, and they are estimating strawberry season will start near June 4th. I plan on gettin' my pickin' on this summer in a major way, and possibly making some jam/preserves/whatevs. Oh, and definitely another one of these:



If you want to be informed of a trek out to the Berry Patch Farm, leave a comment here and I will be sure to contact everyone before heading out to Nevada. We were also talking about having an ISP social event (the women in chemistry society) so it may be combined with that. I am hoping to get out there at least a couple of times this summer, and if you'd like to be involved in any sort of crazy jam making scheme, that could also be arranged -- BYOBall Jars I guess. Last year I went on a Saturday morning, and that is probably the likely scenario for future trips.

So I love to bake, and I love the outdoors, and this weekend I finally managed to combine the two by baking whilst camping. It is pretty easy and fun - all you need is a little time, a little cast iron, and a little bit of fire.

( Deliciousness this way... )
If you live in Ames and need to borrow some giant cast iron pots, let me know. I have a 4 qt. and a 6 or 7 qt. for your outdoor baking pleasure!

Just got two copies of the April 2009 issue of Lakeland Boating, and guess what's in it?! Two of my pictures!


Original here.



Original here.

No I didn't get paid, and yes maybe I should have asked for money. But I'm a grad student and used to getting published without getting paid, right? RIGHT? But I was pretty happy just to get a photo in a magazine, and possibly in the future someone will want to pay me for one of my photos. In the meantime, I've got two free issues of Lakeland Boating to show for my efforts. :P