Of Doctor Who, Harry Potter, and a Happy Halloween

Here, at last, is the much belated post about the many, many Halloween festivities Matt and I participated in this year.  We're just now recovering in time for the E-Entry Thanksgiving this weekend!!

So, Halloween weekend Matt and I managed to attend 2 Halloween parties, one Friday night with a grad student and peer crowd, and then the big E-Entry Halloween bash with our students on Saturday.  Both were awesome.  The first awesome thing: our costumes.

 

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You know the Doctor would have picked up a Ravenclaw companion at Hogwarts!

For anyone out of the loop on these characters, I'm a Ravenclaw student and Matt is the 11th Doctor from Doctor Who.   Turns out the Doctor was a pretty popular costume.  At our first party, our host and birthday guest of honor, George, appeared as the 10th Doctor:

How are they both there at the same time?  It's wibbly wobbly, timey wimey stuff.

The 4th Doctor made an appearance as well, but sadly I do not have a picture of the four of them together.  Maybe that's for the best...3 Doctors at once might lead to some sort of time implosion.  Or something.  Anyway, you know you're at an MIT party when Doctor Who is the most popular costume choice.

There were some pretty impressive costumes at the E Entry party as well, including another 10th Doctor!

At E Entry we had tons of fun games, including bobbing for apples, squash bowling with water bottle pins, eating donuts from strings above your head without using your hands, m&m chopstick and spoon races, and then, of course, board games late into the night.  We took a lot of pictures, way too many to put up on this blog, but the best ones are up in my MIT Adventures Facebook album!

So after many games and much candy, we spent Sunday recovering from the rest of the weekend.  Monday was actually Halloween, though, and we couldn't let the day just pass without some festivities.  So I decided to continue the tradition of my lovely Purdue roommates, Robin and Kai, and decorate Halloween cookies!!

The hilarious thing, though, was that the only cookie cutters we could get were mostly Christmas themed, except with one Halloween cat and a turkey.  We went with it anyway.  One of our students, Michelle, helped me do the cut outs, and after a while we embraced the bizarre abstract shapes we got from the dough between the cookie cutters, so we wound up with all sorts of crazy things.  Michelle also made a whole farmful of turkeys.  Then I made up some frosting in different flavors and sent out the word to the Entry that we were decorating downstairs.  A LOT of people were home and we had a fabulous time doing a mass cookie decorating extravaganza!!

I'm not even sure how we got some of those colors

Matt is very proud of his radioactive bat

Decorating in progress!

Cookie monsters! ^.^

Basically our entry is awesome.

Ooo, and did I mention the cookies were completely vegan?!  Turns out apple sauce can go a long way in replacing eggs.  Who knew, right?  They were still super sugary, though--that frosting is just powdered sugar, water, and food coloring.  Delicious.

The cookie craziness concluded our Halloween festivities.  Next project: making the turkey for Entry Thanksgiving on Saturday!!!  Stay tuned.

Happy Hallo-Brewery?

Well like a Clueless Newlywed, my schedule has been so crazy as to prevent me from posting.  Honest!

A few weeks ago Emily and I had a visit from another Purdue alumni couple: Andrew and Melissa.  Go Boilers! So all day was spent wandering Boston and doing cool things.

As both Andrew and I are chemists we decided that the first item on the agenda would be learning about the local labs.

Notice the beautiful flowing fields of barly.. or hops... whatever.

At the Samuel Adam's Brewery the brewing experts take anyone who shows up (and is over 21) on a tour of the brewery.  The tour starts with an overview of the ingredients, hops, barley and the like.  You can even eat the samples! They don't taste that great, but some smells strongly of pine.  The "chocolate" ones are unfortunately too bitter to eat.  (I tried.)

Next up, big metal containers are everywhere! Chemical Engineers rejoice! Apparently the beer is stored for days in these things while they feed the yeast lots and lots of sugar.








Upon close inspection of one of the metal containers a discovery was made:

That's right: THINK ACID.  I'm not sure what it means, but perhaps I need to think about titrations or web standards in order to understand.  All this thinking though is getting me a headache - Let's continue onward... Chemists HO! To the wet lab!

The Purdue Chemists prepare for the experiments.

English majors can do science too!

In the Samuel Adams's wet lab, brave experimenters are allowed to test out the chemical compositions of a number of solutions and mixtures that are manufactured at the plant using their taste palate.  Three double shots of beer is none too shaby for a free tour!  (We all got to keep the glasses too!)

Inside this magical barrel is some Samuel Adams secret recipe known only as Utopias. Apparently its the strongest beer known to man: 27% alcohol or so.  It's also only released once every few years as the batch takes a couple years to mature as the yeasts feed on pure maple sugar.  Sounds and Smells delcious.  Unfortunately no free samples. 

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The day continued on after Samuel Adams.  The next attraction was the Boston Book Fair. After a quick stop at Faneuil Hall for food and Starbucks for coffee we were good to go.

At the fair there were publishers, book stores, writers, speakers, musicians, and more!  Many places offered free shwag like Google Books t-shirts.  After wandering for a bit we decided to explore the Boston Public Library itself.

While there certainly are books in the library most of our time was spent analyzing the meanings of the large and beautiful murals that line much of the building's interior and viewing interesting dioramas.

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As we were leaving the library, our day was suddenly interrupted by a storm of crazed

ZOMBIES! RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Oh never mind just crazed protesters, carry on with your normal lives.  Apparently these people just like being angry about things because many of the signs contradicted each other with followers of Ron Paul supporting the socialist movement.

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Earlier in the afternoon we also made a quick stop into one of the older churches near the Boston common.  The building is very old and quite an interesting site to see.  My favorite part however, was probably the seating arrangements.  Apparently each family would get a pod of very comfortable looking benches for themselves.  I think this is an idea that needs to have a resurgence!

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The day ended with an amazing Italian dinner at Maggiano's, and then it was time to say farewell to our Midwestern friends.  Nearing their car in the parking lot however we realized they may not have parked in the safest of places...

Until next time,

Matt

Mark attack!

Last Friday we were hit with an incoming storm of MARK FAY descending into Boston.  Four days of fun festivities followed, mostly involving dinosaurs, Dominion, and a terrible monster called a "Shell."

Mark's general feelings about the Shell

Okay, so the Shell monster is actually just a monstrous homework project.  Mark had some pretty intense CS project going on, but fortunately he was here at MIT with Matt, and so the two of them were able to argue to their hearts' content about piping issues and loops and code and Lord knows what.  I smiled and nodded a lot.  Seriously, it was hilarious to see the brothers back together arguing about computer-y things.  Felt like home, except without Jenna splayed across the hallway or a small soccer ball for mark to kick all over the place. 


When the boys weren't attempting to slay the Shell, we wandered around Boston and played fun games.  The first place we went was Chinatown for Dim Sum on for lunch on Saturday.  We went with a big group of our students from the dorm and it was super fun. 

Taking Chinatown by storm.

The big trip we took was to the Boston Museum of Science.  They were hosting an amazing Pompeii exhibit, which was beautiful, interesting, at times heart-wrenching and at others just plain hilarious.  The exhibit included pottery, statues, jewelry, and frescoes recovered at Pompeii.  Hands down our favorite moment was this guy's expression:

WHAT THE?!

This guy is Silenus, the satyr who mentored the Roman god of wine and revelry, Bacchus.  His expression here is a reaction to a young, comely Bacchus totally feeling up some hot maenad.  Silenus was basically watching behind some bushes.  The Romans were so crazy, they just had this sort of stuff on their walls throughout the house, totally casual about it. 

Two young women

The real centerpiece of the exhibit, though, were the body casts.  We came upon them abruptly--it was all fun and games and Silenus, and then, suddenly, full body casts of people and animals in the moment of death by volcano. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures.  Flash photography was not allowed and that part of the exhibit was in particularly dark lighting to preserve the plaster and whatnot.  This is a picture I pulled off the web of one of the casts we actually saw at the museum.  Here's the deal with the body casts: archaeologists have been excavating Pompeii for over a hundred years.  They noticed there were sometimes hollowed out parts of the plaster.  Some brilliant man had the idea to pour plaster into these crevices, and then excavate them out.  What they discovered was that the hollows were actually places where bodies (human and animal) had decomposed after being covered in hardened ash.  The plaster casts, then, depicted the shape the bodies left behind, often down to the details of facial expression and, in some cases, folds of clothing.  It was a powerful experience to walk among these figures.

Buuuuut you know that serious mood didn't last long.  Pretty much as soon as we were out of the Pompeii exhibit, Matt and Mark were whining at me: "Emilyyyyyyyyy.  We wanna see the Dinosaaaaaaaaaurs."  And so we finally found our way down to the dino section, complete with full scale T-Rex model and a fossilized triceratops skeleton.

I think Mark is trying to imitate the triceratops's expression

Being super manly, chillin with a T-Rex

Most of the rest of the weekend we were just hanging out around Cambridge and in the dorm.  We played several rounds of board games with the students, mostly Dominion, which as it turns out we all LOVE.  It's a deck building card game that *feels* very much like a board game, and the combination of cards you play with changes every time, so the game is always changing.  Matt and I learned how to play with some new friends of ours on Thursday night, we introduced it to Mark and our students on Friday, and by Saturday everyone was hooked.  Awesome.

So it turned out to be a great weekend and fun was had by all.  Mark got to experience all the awesome things about our life at MIT (except he got stuck with our not-so-awesome couch...).  We even caught a glimpse of some typical MIT hacking culture.  At MIT, hacking is harmless practical jokes, often involving some hilarious alteration to campus landmarks.  Here, a modern art sculpture of a man made out of numbers turned into none other than HARRY POTTER!!!

Potter by numbers

...or is it that MIT is really Hogwarts and we just haven't been telling you??!  (Shhh, Mark, we're counting on you not to tell the Muggles about us!)

Magically yours,
-Emily

Apple Picking Adventures!

On Saturday, Matt and I went with a bus load full of students from 3 of the dorms and headed out to the Honey Hill Orchard to pick some apples!!  It was a super fun trip, and included a 15 lb bag to fill with apples, free donuts, cider, and caramel apple, and a hayride AND a hedge maze.  We did everything except the hayride--it was a bit wet out and sitting on wet hay and getting dragged behind a tractor just did not sound like as much fun as it could be.

Delphine!

A handful of students from E-Entry (that's the group of students we live with) went on the trip.  We spent most of the trip with 2 of them in particular--a lovely French fresman named Delphine...





 ...and a self-proclaimed apple-aholic vegan sophomore named Seva.  Seva actually BOUGHT extra bags for more apples and got 2 unclaimed bags from our collective stash, and managed to pick and bring home 170 apples!!!

Seva sorting his 170 apples

That doesn't include the 14 (I think) that he ate while we were in the orchard.  He's the type who eats the entire apple including the core and seeds.  Craziness.  He's also a monkey when it comes to climbing the trees.

This picture is typical of the entire trip

Matt climbed a lot of trees himself, and brought down dozens of delicious apples!!

Complete with farmer-approved plaid style!

 Eventually Matt convinced me to actually climb a tree myself, and Delphine turned it into a photo opportunity.  What newlywed couple could resist the urge to be literally sittin' in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G?

Exchanging cooties.

 In the end, the four of us collected a LOT of apples--Seva had to check in with the Official Orchard Apple Checker to make sure all his apples fit into the bags, but once that was done he piled them into a duffel and a backpack so he could actually carry them all.  We weighed them when we got back--100 pounds of apples!!  The Orchard Official walky-talky-ed the personnel in the parking lots to warn them there was a young man carrying apples in non-official bags to tell them that he's not an apple thief, just a very honest apple-lover. 

 

So. Many. Apples.

There are many more pictures of the apple picking.  Go check out my MIT adventures Fall 2011 album on facebook!

But the festivities did not end with the actual apple picking!  Once we returned to Cambridge, we had to prepare for the most important part--the BAKE OFF!! E-Entry is REALLY into baking, so we took the contest quite seriously.  Even though GRTs aren't technically allowed to compete against the undergrad residents, we decided to make a pie in the spirit of the thing.  First, I had to turn the card table that usually serves as my desk into kitchen counter space.



In the meantime, Matt was responsible for chopping apples with our pathetic knife (no, we still have not managed to buy a knife set).  He had to use his desk too!

The final result was delicious American apple pie!!  The crust was a little unevenly cooked because we were almost late for the bake off so we had to take the pie out a few minutes early, but it was still quite tasty.

"E" for Emily, "E" for E-Entry, "E" for EXTRAORDINARY!

So as it turns out, Delphine, Seva, and we were the ONLY people to actually show up with desserts for the bake off.  So we got to eat delicious desserts and only share with the F-Entry GRTs (the wonderful couple who organized the apple picking trip) and our RLA (an official adult staff member who helps with dorm stuff), who served as the judges.  Delphine and Seva tied, and we were disqualified by that pesky technicality of being GRTs.  Everybody's desserts were super delicious!! Delphine made an apple crumble (very French, FULL of butter) and Seva made a tasty vegan cake/pie thing with lots and lots of fruits including the new apples.

E-Entry sweeps the baking contest!!

 Matt and I STILL have like 40 apples though so I'm pretty sure there will be more pie in our future.  I will have to make one for this weekend's adventures with MARK!!!!!!  That's right, it's already October break at Purdue and MIT this coming weekend, so we will be spending our long weekend hanging out with Mark, who flies in Friday evening. 

If you're craving some apples after reading this post, come swing by Boston real fast and Matt and I will hook you up.  We miss all of you Indiana folk!!!  (and not because we just got back from a farm :-P )  I have to say I felt like an old-fashioned American wife rolling out dough for an Apple pie.  Oh the domesticity!

Patriotically yours,
Emily

Today I was officially rescued by firemen, I guess

You've heard about the fire alarms.  You've heard about my cooking going awry.  Prepare yourselves: today's post will COMBINE these awesome themes in the Emily+Matt narrative.

So, tonight was supposed to be dinner with the freshmen night.  Most of the freshmen in our entry (9 total) were even rsvped to show up.  I decided to hazard some homestyle macaroni and cheese (mom's famous and beloved recipe) from the Kitchen Master's Guide--maybe third time's a charm?  Um, turns out, no.


Matt came home early while I was still making the roux.  I don't know how many of you have made roux, but the roux for the mac and cheese takes FOREVER and requires constant stirring, heat, and patience.  So I've been stirring and stirring and slooooooooowly adding milk for like half an hour, I'm *so close* to the end of making this sauce, when suddenly...

BEEP. BEEP. BEEP. Attention please.  The sound you have just heard indicates and emergency in this complex.

Well, rats.  If I leave for this stupid fire alarm my sauce will be ruined and I'll have to start ALL OVER and get more butter from somewhere and God knows what else.  We've had SO MANY fire alarms.  Argh.  So Matt and I decide screw it, I'll just stay here and finish this sauce.  He closes all our curtains so no one will bust me skipping out on the alarm (which a lot of people do, fyi--we had 3 students admit to not getting out of bed during the alarms between 2 and 5 am).

So there I am, stirring and stirring and stirring and stirring and the alarm is blaring for a while.  The sauce finally has all the milk and is starting to thicken up again when I hear pounding on my door.  I freeze, hoping no one will sense my presence, figuring the firemen must knock on all the doors to make sure everybody's out.  A few moments later, they pound again.  Well, shoot, they must know I'm in here.  But hey, my sauce is done now!  So I turn off the oven and the stove and sheepishly open the door.

There are four firemen standing in our lounge.  I look right past them at the HUGE billowing white cloud in the front of the building I can see through the lounge windows.  Oh, crap.

The firemen were super nice about me not evacuating when I was supposed to (God knows THEY know about our dozens of false alarms these last few weeks) and reminded me not to forget my shoes on my way out.

So it turns out that the afternoon's flash storm had let a lot of cold rain into a large construction hole right outside our building, which had somehow caused a pipe full of hot water to burst in the basement.  So there was an actual legit emergency, nothing immediately dire but definitely evacuation-worthy.  When I got outside I made sure to berate my husband for not calling me, but to be fair he was caught in a conversation with one of our housemasters (our bosses) and so didn't want to get us both in trouble--plus there was no immediate danger (as evidenced by the firemen calmly knocking on my door and remembering my shoes).

This is what it looked like outside:

 

A Steamy Situation

We wound up being exiled from the building for over 2 hours.  The Dean of Students decreed that all MacGregor residents could get a free dinner at one of the nearby dining courts, so we got to experience MIT dining (okay, but not nearly as good as Earhart).  We went with a random group of our students, so that was fun.

But I know you're in breathless suspense--Emily, what happened to your roux and the mac and cheese??!  Well, the roux turned out just fine (thank goodness I stayed those extra 10 minutes during the alarm!).  I mixed up the mac and cheese and put it in the fridge.  It is awaiting the inevitable baking.  I went ahead and fried up the chicken I was going to make for dinner tonight and refrigerated that too.  We rescheduled the dinner for tomorrow evening, which seems to work for most of our freshmen--we're doing it early enough that they will still have plenty of time to get to whatever fun things they had planned for their friday nights.

But is the mac and cheese really saved?  I guess we won't know until we try to eat it tomorrow....

Moral of the story: the ONE TIME you don't leave during a fire alarm, there's definitely actually going to be an emergency.  At least if you're me.

Stay cool,
Emily

Study Breaks are Kool

One of the cool, fun things we get to do as GRTs in the dorm is host study breaks. Basically we pester our students to quit doing their freaking homework (it's not like it's hard or there's lots of it, this is only MIT, sheesh) and take a break with friends and food. Tonight we're hosting just such an event, featuring....


This is what college is all about.

We're basically going to mix up a couple of pitchers of different flavors and then let the students mix them. We figure it's a positive outlet for the mad scientists within.

In other news, true to the title of this blog sometimes I am totally clueless. I have so far failed twice (TWICE!) at making recipes from our Kitchen Master's Guide cookbook. The first time I was making potato soup and put powdered sugar in instead of flour (it's a white powder in an unmarked container!!). I didn't even notice until I tried the soup and it was super sweet. The bread I bought to go with it was good though >.< Last night I attempted wild rice casserole, but even after letting the rice cook for almost an hour it wasn't really done, so I just moved on and made the casserole anyway. Thaaaaaat was a mistake. Fortunately for me, Matt is clueless about how things are supposed to taste, so he ate BOTH these disasters. Or maybe he's just being sweet.

Tonight Matt's making spaghetti while I prepare vegan cake and bean dip for tonight's kool-aid enhanced festivities. So theoretically everything will be edible and delicious.

BONUS BLOG RECIPE -- vegan cake edition:



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None of this eggs, oil, and water business. Just the mix and the entire can of diet coke and then bake according to the regular directions. You just have to make sure your cake mix and your can of frosting are vegan (and most of them actually are--they use soy waaaaaay more often than milk). For variation, try yellow cake mix with diet ginger ale! Totally delicious! And since it's vegan, it must be healthy, right??!

Now I'm hungry, and you probably are too. We should both go get a snack.

Bon appetit!
-Emily