Chubby Bunny

CSHL Feeds Me; I Can Feed Myself

CSHL.

So, lucky me, I got to wake up at 6:07 (it’s a prime number) on Thursday and stroll on over to the LIRR station. It was a quiet walk, but the icy dew on the grass soaked through my Nikes and eventually stained my socks. Time to bring them home for bleaching.

After a few talks on genetics– I only care for the plant ones– we had a coffee break. Since I only had half a PB sandwich on WW bread and there was coffee to be had, I needed carbohydrates to offset any craziness that may occur due to the caffeine.

Yes, the sexy CSH cocktail napkin was intentionally put there in the background.

It was rather arbitrary what I chose to eat– a muffin was too small (though perhaps an appropriate-sized serving for a novice carb-eater) and a Danish was potentially not dense enough. I also had no idea what was in the Danish that I chose. It turned out to be blueberry, which paired nicely with the blueberry muffin.

The coffee was pretty weak compared to what I normally get at Space Market (even after adulterating it with soy milk, hot cocoa and whatever comes out of the cappucino machine.) But you know, weaker coffee just means you can have more.

Lunch was also very good. I’m not sure why Eugene was telling me that the food isn’t good. Let’s look at things this way– good, very tasty food may mean that it’s unhealthy. Though that pesto we had at lunch was mostly EVOO than say…basil. =\ But anyway, all in all the experience was very positive and sadly I don’t have photos of the later meals. There was definitely wine and cheese; more coffee and dessert foods. And fruit and fruit juices. And some sodas. All in all, it was a pretty balanced meal, though I noticed that they had less veggies than say…everything else.

No worries.

After the symposium, I was happy with the path that I’ve chosen for my own graduate studies. And happy to meet some real biologists-to-be. :o) And I also learned a few things about genetics and their findings. Still, it was a little disappointing to see so many mice with cancer, but it’s okay if I don’t think about how the experiments must have been carried out, right?

Eugene and I went for a walk at Oyster Bay. It’s quite beautiful there and you can see Billy Joel’s house across the Bay, apparently. While strolling on the gravel, which kinda acts as a beach, Eugene found an oyster shell and gave it to me.

This is very exciting, even though there are no obvious Fibonacci sequences on the shell. The layers are quite obvious and rather brittle. Oyster shells are used in many calcium supplements– I’m pretty sure Viactiv is one of them. The only problem with calcium supplements is that lead competes with calcium for the carbonate ion, so there’s some risk of lead accumulation; also there’s the question of absorbency, since non-food sources of nutrients are poorly absorbed compared to food. The exception is folic acid, possibly– it’s more readily absorbed than folate. But I digress.

Trail Mix.

Yesterday, in my calorie-loading session, I decided to snack on a bag of Mr. Nature’s trail mix that my co-workers made sure I took plenty of for school. This was after the  half-ounce bag of Rold Gold salted pretzels that I got from the CSHL symposium.

So I munched away while watching some Chinese drama on crunchyroll. And as satisfying as it was to munch away at almonds, sunflower seeds, raisins and peanuts, I decided I should just do as I do at home and make trail mix of my own.

After a Pathmark and Walmart run today, my mini ingredient list was complete: almonds, dark chocolate M&Ms, unsalted pretzels, unsalted roasted sunflower seeds, honey roasted peanuts and raisins.

In terms of cost, I think making trail mix is very efficient. in terms of nutrition, there’s better control of what to put in and what not to put in. For instance, there’s emphasis for me to use unsalted ingredients. The reasoning is two fold– I could make it a sweet snack or something salty/savory. It’s room for flexibility. For health reasons, it’s just better to have a reduced salt diet in my opinion. Also, as with any seasoning, you can always just add more, but you can’t take it out.

I really should figure out the volume of the smallest IKEA containers that I’ve bought. I’d estinate about 1/4 C, possibly a little more. I can’t tell off hand. Another benefit of making trail mix is that you can control the abundance of each ingredient. Generally, I used a 1:1:1:…:1 ratio, though I leaned towards using a little less for the smaller ingredients, since they tend to fall to the bottom anyway.

The best reason to do this for yourself is the sense of accomplishment. That’s right– I did more than go on a food shopping adventure and watch movies on crunchyroll all day. I made trail mix.