Some more creations

 

 

 

Poulet en Cocotte Bonne Femme (Casserole-roasted Chicken with Bacon, Onions, and Potatoes). Brendan and I made this a few weeks ago when Brendan and Brandon visited me.

Same as above.

When I used live in Calcutta, there was a restaurant we used to go to called Mocambo. They used to have a Chicken Kiev which was delicious. My mom recently reminded me of this fabulous dish and so I proceeded to make some for myself. It was gorgeous - the way the butter and chicken melted in my mouth! I had it for dinner on the day of and for lunch the day after. Thanks mom for reminding me about it!

For Dad: What is it that I Eat

This post is specifically for my Dad. He wanted to know what I've been eating over summer so here they are. Note that everything is organic. The bread is home-made and the green lettuce is from the garden.

Cream of mushroom soup, lettuce, smoked ham, creamy Havarti cheese in multigrain bread, paired with Chardonay from Château Montelena (2008)

The fish is a Cod marinated in garlic, rosemary, peppers and pan fried in a Madeira reduction. It was delicious! Paired with the same as above.

Green lettuce and pimpernickle bread side. The yellow peppers, broccoli and Bangladeshi Tiger prawns have been grilled. The prawns for marinated in yoghurt, hot pepper mix, a pinch of turmeric, peppers and tandoori masala. Paired with Louisiana amber ale (Abita)

Green lettuce and sweet chardonay as sides with pimpernickel bread. The main dish is Coquilles St. Jacques A La Parisienne (i.e. Scallops and Mushroom in White Wine Sauce). Paired with Pouilly-Fumé (2006).

Grilled shrimps, peppers, broccoli and shiitake mushrooms. Paired with Les Hauts de la Brune (70% Syrah, 20% Grenache and 10% Carignan) Coteaux du Languedoc (2008). (btw: VERY reasonably priced and is spectacular. Just make sure to aerate for a good 1-2 hrs before drinking)

Fruits of Labor

Butternut Squash and Zucchini.

So far I've harvested golden peas, slobolt lettuce, leafy lettuce, butternut squash and golden zucchini. The tomatoes are still growing. No sign of Broccoli yet. The carrots are also growing.

Let there be Vegetables

Before I left for NY (and then UK) I was worried about my plants so I ended up installing an automatic watering system. I didn't really expect the plants to survive but...

What is this!?? Not only do they survive, but they are thriving!!

I was sure that these green lettuce were going to die because I didn't add any water outlet to them.

Carrots are doing well.

By far I was the most surprised by the yellow zucchini plants. Look at the first picture the plant is HUGE!

The golden pea plants look healthy and about to bear fruit.

I was most excited by the beautiful Slobolt lettuce. Time to chop chop.

A look at the first row with golden peas and slobolt lettuce. I was confused about the weed growth in the middle thinking that they were some exotic spinach that I had planted. But they are weed. So they come out.

Look at 3rd column on the left hand side of the garden. Look at how nicely the broccoli are coming along.

Tomatoes ahoy!!! I do need to prune them.

Looks like my garden is doing brilliantly! So hopefully they'll survive my "presence" and bear fruits that I can chomp on. Still have work cut out for me. You'll notice that I didn't show pictures of the butternut squash, they are doing great but I need to prune them and provide supports. The one egg plant that did survive seems to be okay but time will tell I guess. Also need to get next batch of plantings ready to go!

A series of highly influential quotes from books by Terry Pratchett

"If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunderstorm wearing wet copper armour and shouting 'All gods are bastards!"
— Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic)

"She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you."
— Terry Pratchett (Equal Rites) 

 

 

"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it."
— Terry Pratchett (Reaper Man) 

 

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."
— Terry Pratchett (Good Omens) 

 

"It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it."
— Terry Pratchett 

 

"Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it saying 'End-of-the-World Switch. PLEASE DO NOT TOUCH', the paint wouldn't even have time to dry."
— Terry Pratchett (Thief of Time)

 

"Albert grunted. "Do you know what happens to lads who ask too many questions?"
Mort thought for a moment.
"No," he said eventually, "what?"
There was silence.
Then Albert straightened up and said, "Damned if I know. Probably they get answers, and serve 'em right."
— Terry Pratchett (Mort) 

 

"If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life."
— Terry Pratchett (Guards! Guards!) 

 

 

Vegetation

You can the closest row are tomatoes. Above them are the Golden Zucchini. Row 2 has carrots but hard to see. Row 1 you can see the peas and lettuce.

Column 1 has the egg plants. Column 2 are Butternut squash. Column 3 has broccoli and lettuce.

Another view.

Some Doggy Photos New and Old

Little puppy in our living room.

Little puppy in the small area that connects all the rooms

Not so little puppy in the small area that connects all the rooms

A view from within the garden

Another view. At this point he was playing with a stick.

Transplanting Outdoors

Today I finally started transplanting plants outside in the garden. Below is the layout (projected and planted):

Green = Already planted.
Orange = Intended planting.
Blue = Open space



If you guys have suggestions please let me know. My mom recommended planting flowers, which I might do in one or two of the open spaces. Below are some pictures of what I did today:

 Here you can see the transformed and ready to plant garden! The white plastic there is to warm up the soil for tomatoes. I added the wooden frames today by taking apart a bed I had from some time ago. The red cups mark the transplanted seedlings. They protect them from the wind and too much sun. Not to mention birds etc. I can also cover them with another cup to protect them at night from too much cold or excessive rain. The closest 3 cups marks the location where I planted golden zucchini.

 Sideways view corresponding to the layout cartoon shown in the first picture.

Here is a closeup of the first block. The first row of 5 cups correspond to the Broccoli. The two beneath it are the butternut squash.

Stay tuned! Next post will be more about work. I've been working on this paper for months now but I've made some nice headway in the analysis. The first few posts are of-course going to be general discussing the problem and how to think about it.

Indoor Planting

I started planting indoor as suggested by the books. But I wanted to get a feel of direct planting so I planted some hard plants outdoor first. These plants were Golden peas, Bloomsdale spinach and Pablo lettuce. That was some time ago and they are taking their sweet time coming out (fingers crossed). I planted Broccoli, Butternut squash, Tequilla Sunrise peppers, Golden Zucchini, Egg plant, Matchbox Hot Peppers, Tomatoes, Dragon Carrots, St. Valery Carrots, Slobolt Lettuce, Parsley and Basil indoors. Below is a photograph of the first germination of Broccoli indoors!

Doggy Problem and Fencing the Garden

The biggest challenge was to create an environment that was doggy safe while I was digging. Since I'd have to protect the garden from rabbits anyway I decided to fence it. This is what it looked like:

Hopefully it gives an idea of the area. Following this I covered it up with mulch which comprised of leaves from fall and pine needles from the Christmas tree we had in winter. The latter helps in lowering the pH too! After all that these are some pics:

The arrangement of the beds isn't clear due to the leaves, but the garden is separated into two blocks. The block in the top picture corresponds to a series of 4 rows. Where as the block further away - a zoom of which is shown in the picture below - corresponds to 3 columns.

Garden Activity

Kelly and I had been talking about having a vegetable garden for a while. I was holding off cos of the work load, but now that things have settled down, I was able to start and make rapid progress.

There's a patch behind our garage that someone had used in the past for a garden. So I decided to continue with it, since it looked like a nice spot. I checked the sun levels and it's really good getting full sun throughout the day. The first row has some partial sun regions too which would be nice for shade plants.

Started with reading 2 book: Vegetable Gardener's Bible by Edward Smith and The Complete Vegetable and Herb Gardener by Karan Davis Cuttler. Both are good but the first one is more like a manual where the latter is more like a reference. I found myself looking at both, but more of Smith. So the first step was to figure out the pH and N,K,P levels. This I did using a soil testing kit. As it turned out the soil is very nice with medium to high N levels, K and P levels. The only problem is with the pH being a bit too alkaline, but that I read was fixable.


I first decided to go with French Double-Digging style.  The basic idea is shown below in the figure, but I decided to add a caveat based on Cuttler's book. I started by digging up the sod which is the first/top layer of grass growing in the garden area. I save this for between step A and step B shown below. Step A is just digging up a bed or a row (or column) of soil.The soil is kept aside. Following this I put the sod face down into the hole. Next, as shown in step B we dig up another bed and use that soil to cover up the first row. This is continued for all beds, with the soil from the first row being used to cover up the last row.

Paper 2

I've been pretty busy the last 3 months or so working on my second paper. This paper had been shelved for almost a year owing to the fact the my fellow collaborator had hit a snag with they data he was seeing. Anyway we were finally able to resolve the problem and are well on our way.

I had to present the paper today to my group members, and I think it went quite well.

Before I can write about the contents of the paper, I need to really explain what I'm working on. That's going to be interesting since I need to make it accessible. So it's a work in progress. Stay tuned.

NO MORE FACEBOOK

OK I felt this needed to be added. I am no longer on facebook. Why? Well I'm a big "I" person. Consequently, I didn't want to support an organization that does not respect the privacy of individuals. Yes I know you have complete control of what's available to the world, but you have NO control of what's available to - drum roll - Facebook! Not only can they do whatever the hell the want with the data you upload, they also give you no control over it. Until they tell me what they do with the data, and allow me to choose what I want them to have, I'm afraid I cannot participate. Now you might say, what'so important about my data? What difference does it make to me? The very fact that it IS my data is WHAT makes it important. It's the principle ladies and gentlemen. Also, most of you think facebook is secure right? Guess again... that's all I will say here.

For the moment I'm using the blogger to stay in touch with friends. Over summer, I plan to design my own website which will be less linear and more organized.

Diappearing Act

Hi guys, sorry for the LONG delay. I'm sure most of you are not surprised by the invisibility cloak I had put on myself last year. Old habits die hard I guess.

Anyway a lot of things have happened since the last update. So expect a series of blogs.

I'll start with work. Two years ago in December, I left my last research group. It was fun working with lasers and UHVs, but I felt it appropriate to move on into doing research in a field that was more in tune with my personality. Unfortunately I had to take a semester off of research. I spent spring 2010 taking classes and working as a TA. It was fun in it's own way, but I prefer research.

I joined Professor David Ceperley' group in Summer 2010, and I have been working there since. I love the research that I am doing now. It's hardcore condensed matter theory employing massively powerful supercomputers (notice that I intentionally exaggerate to instill the sense of awesomeness of the computers :))

My first project, which I have been working on since, involves the computer simulations of the Bose-Hubbard model. Please note that now that I'm doing pretty intense theoretical work, there aren't going to be very many pretty "real" pictures. Don't get me wrong I'll still post nice 3D pictures of things and loads of pictures the computers that I get to use (or are available for us to use), but it won't be shiny UHV chambers and the ambient glow of lasers. Also, sometimes I'll blather mathematics and it might be unfamiliar, but I'm not apologizing because it's MY BLOG. So if you don't want to read it then don't (hehe). On the other hand, feel free to ask questions so that I might explain/elaborate. Trust me when I say that the stuff I'm doing now is AWESOME and EXTREMELY interesting.