Changing tastes

On my bus ride to and from school, I usually do some kind of light reading. Lately, I have been catching up on my backlog of Runner's World magazines. In several of the issues, there is this one page for a hotel ad, and it features a picture of someone cooking an omelet. This omelet picture always catches my eye and I find myself staring at it and salivating, either because I'm really hungry at the time or because all the ingredients look so fresh and tasty. So today I decided to do something about it: I made a large omelet for dinner. It had tomatoes, red onions, cheese, bell pepper, broccoli, and sausage. It was darn good. Ben and I ate it up, and Ally seemed to enjoy the bits and pieces we gave to her.

Okay, so this sounds pretty normal; nothing too weird and crazy about an omelet. However, it was only a couple years ago that I would have turned my nose up at an omelet. Now I am not a picky eater, but throughout most of my life, there were 4 foods that I absolutely would not touch. They were:

1. Eggs in any form
2. Mushrooms
3. Avacados
4. Canned beets

I didn't like eggs or mushrooms because they tended to smell funny when cooked and they had sort of a rubbery texture, and I didn't like the taste of beets or avacados. But over the last few years, I have had several of these foods prepared in different ways and I am now accepting of them.

1. Eggs: if you put a lot of stuff on them, they don't taste, smell, or feel so "eggy." I particularly like cheese on my eggs. Also, we only buy the free range eggs, and I think they taste a lot better and don't have that rubbery texture or weird sulfur smell when cooked.

2. Mushrooms: I have to credit my friend Jim Hynes for turning me back towards liking mushrooms. We were at his house about 6 years ago for dinner and he made Boeuf Bourguignon, which of course had mushrooms in it. I remember thinking when I was eating it, "Oh boy, there sure are a lot of mushrooms in this sauce, but I don't want to seem rude by picking them out, so I'll just suck it up and eat them." What do you know, the sauce actually made them taste okay. After that, I was like, "Hmm, maybe if I cook the mushrooms with a lot of other stuff, they won't be so mushroomy." This theory worked. We now use mushrooms in a lot of our stir-frys. We like portabellos and the exotic mushroom blends (shittake, oyster) the best. I will be honest though, I am not a fan of canned mushrooms, as they are a bit too rubbery, and sometimes those button mushrooms still smell weird when cooked.

3. Avacaodoes: Guacamole. It's my new favorite condiment.

I still can't stomach those canned bright red beets though. I tried them again about 2 years ago, and I still think they taste really gross. Ah well, 3 out of 4 isn't bad.

Frozen solid

In our physiology lab, we store blood and saliva samples in a large freezer, set to -80 degrees C. Have you ever stuck your hand or arm inside a -80 degrees C freezer? I am learning that it is best to 1) know what you're looking for and 2) have a general idea of where it is located in the freezer before you go rooting around because it is FREAKING COLD in there!!!

Winter Olympics Fun

Ben and I spent a good portion of our evenings over the last couple weeks watching the Winter Olympics while doing schoolwork. I have to say that I love the Olympics, both summer and winter. Watching all of the different sports prompted our discussion of which sports would we want to participate in if we could be Winter Olympians? They sort of fell into 2 categories: sports we'd like to do if we devoted the time to train for them and sports we could do if the USOC called us up on a moment's notice and said, "Hey, you're on the Olympic team." Here are our picks:

Sports we would do on a moment's notice:
-Curling (is it really that hard? I don't even think you have to be in shape to do this either.)
-Person 2 or 3 of a 4-man bobsled team (what exactly are they doing in the sled?)

Sports we would do if we devoted several years to training:
-Ben's picks: snowboard cross and snowboard half-pipe (pretty flashy and high-flying)
-Beth's picks: cross-country skiing, either short-track or long-track speed skating, ice dancing, or figure skating (xc skiing and speed skating because the training would probably be similar to distance running or track running, and the ice skating because I have always liked skating. Of course, I'd choose Ben as my ice-dancing or pairs partner!)

Sports that neither of us are really crazy about doing:
-skeleton
-luge
-downhill skiing (they all involve hurling yourself down a steep incline at a lot of miles per hour and risk major injury)

What Winter Olympics sports would you choose?

A side note: I found out that there is a group that does curling in our area. One of the former PhD students from my program (a Canadian) who is a visiting faculty in my department suggested that someone organize a curling outing sometime. If it happens, I will definitely have to check it out and report back.

Nine months old!

Today, Ally turns 9 months old. It is hard to believe that only now has she been out in the world for the same amount of time that she was in my belly, as the latter definitely feels longer than the former! She had her 9 month well-baby checkup at the pediatrician's office this morning. Ally is 27.5 inches in height and 16 lbs 6 oz in weight, which puts her in the 50th percentile in height and 10-25th percentile in weight. This would explain why she always outgrows her clothes lengthwise. Her development is right on track, and right now her specialty seems to be her gross motor skills and saying lots of "Da Da."

Here are some recent pics, and yep, we got snow last weekend!

Emerging from the pile of boxes

A week ago, we moved into our new house! I am LOVING it! We have so much more room, it is amazing. Here are some of my favorite things about our new place:

1. The open floor plan (kitchen is open to the family room).
2. Built-in bookshelves in the family room.
3. Lots of counter space in the kitchen.
4. New front-loading washer and dryer that play a song when the laundry is finished.
5. Fenced back yard.
6. The bus passes in front of our house, so I can still take the bus to school.
7. Just around the corner from a bike/walking/running trail that leads into town.

We also bought a jogging stroller off Craigslist, so now all 3 of us can go for a run together (looks like I have no excuse not to go for a run now!). The past week has been spent unpacking boxes and moving the last of our things out of the condo. Once we give the condo a thorough cleaning, we will list it for sale.

They're everywhere!

I am taking a cancer pathobiology class this semester, and we've started the class talking about things that can cause cancer. I am now feeling like the carcinogens are everywhere! My first thought was, well I'll just go move up to a mountain top that's above all the pollutants in the atmosphere and I'll eat all natural and organic foods with no processing, pesticides, or preservatives, and I'll be all calm and stress-free and all. That would take care of it right? Wrong! I forgot about the sunlight! And with less atmosphere up on the mountain, those UV rays would be coming in pretty strong! Well, I guess the lesson to be learned is that you just avoid what you can and don't worry about the rest.

Pictures from Christmas

We spent Christmas in New Orleans this year with my family. We had a great time seeing everyone that we hadn't seen in 2 years. Additionally, it was Ally's first Christmas. Although she doesn't "get" Christmas yet, I think she still had fun seeing all the new sights and meeting all the new people. She was quite the ham, flashing her smile and giggling a lot. And one of her presents Christmas morning was the emergence of her first tooth!

Ally in front of the nativity scene at church.

Ben and Ally after Mass on Christmas morning.

The four great-grandchildren: Ally, Madeleine, Anthony, and Dominick.