Welcome!

Here goes my first shot at an actual blog.  I've always felt super self-conscious about the idea of blogging, because I have a hard time believing people actually want to read what I'm writing.  But when someone suggested to me that I start a food blog, I had to stop and think about it for a minute.  For years, people have asked me to send them recipes; instead, I send them essays.  And between my own food restrictions, and those of my friends, I've certainly learned how to get creative. Therefore, my hope is that I might have something to offer people, even though I am nowhere near as expert as any of the other food blogs I gratefully search for recipes and inspirations.  Thus after spending months and months sharing my food exploits via facebook status updates, I thought I'd move them to a slightly more permanent, coherent form.

My training is in biology, and when I first started working in the lab, I lost all desire to cook for two months.  This is because lab biology is, really, very very similar to baking or cooking: I mix ingredients in a certain order, following a recipe, and then heat and cool my mixtures for varying periods of time (sometimes in water baths) to get a certain product.  The title of my blog comes from one of my favourite images from that first lab: one of our technicians had a blue box of index cards, so reminiscent of my mom's recipe box at home.  When I looked through it, I found lab protocols (how to make a proper Western transfer buffer from scratch, for instance), mixed in with recipes for casseroles and biscuits.  That's what really drove home to me the idea that cooking and lab work are pretty much the same thing with a different context.  (We use Carnation brand milk powder in the lab, the yeast cultures I grow smell like fresh-baked bread, and agar is a nice vegetarian substitute for jello).  And, in addition to all that, there were some AMAZING bakers in that lab, so I had to up my game just for birthdays and journal clubs.

So, welcome to my blog.  Posts will be sporadic, as I embark on new baking adventures, and share some of my past successes.  And, hopefully, at some point I'll be able to indulge my inner biologist by sharing some of the research I've done into food allergies, and the science behind why certain food substitutions work better in certain recipes. Enjoy!  And please let me know if there any kind of recipes you're interested in seeing!