Balsamic BBQ Chicken

Sometimes you need a quick dinner and this week it was extremely important. Several thirteen hour workdays this week have lead to dinners of lettuce, a bagel and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (three different nights). I partially blame daylight savings time for my longer work days and I also blame my project deadline of April 7th.

Maybe you’ve been having the same issue as I have. I’ve gotten so used to the sun going down at 4 o’clock that I think it’s so much earlier than it actually is. It was six thirty before I realized how late it was, and then it was quarter to nine before I headed out the door. It’s been going on like this all week, I get distracted by the loads of work I have to do and all of the sudden it’s dark out. By the time I get home I’m all glassy-eyed and hungry, with no energy left.

Last night I decided, no more! I need some real food! Then twenty minutes later I had this sitting on my plate. I’m in love with these new Steamfresh pasta meals. In four minutes I had a side dish that worked well with my balsamic BBQ chicken, which was pretty delicious on it’s own. Try it out the next time you’ve got no time!

Poppy Seed Bagels

Some things you just wouldn’t think of making yourself. Take these bagels for instance. Why make your own bagels? You can buy prepackaged bagels from the grocery store in an unbelievable number of flavors. You can buy them fresh, frozen or even recently baked from the store bakery. They come in white, wheat, high fiber, low fat, mega-size, mini-size and even skinny-size!

Maybe you’re not a fan of the grocery store bagels. There are local options on every corner for getting yourself a bagel. You can go chain and head to Panera, Brueggers or Einsteins. Or you can go local and support the small business owner in your town. The options for bagel purchasing are endless, which begs the question again, why make your own?

The answer is simple, because they are delicious. I was very suspect of this recipe when I first read it over. It seemed so long and complicated, like a lot of work for something that I could buy for three dollars. Even up until the morning that I began making these bagels I was dreading it. I set my alarm for 6am to get the sponge together, then I promptly went back to sleep for two hours. It was Saturday after all!

At 8am I rolled out of bed and into my kitchen (literally, I live in a studio apartment) and began getting the dough together. As I continued through the recipe I realized that it wasn’t going to take that long at all to make these bagels. Plus, they required an overnight sit in the fridge, meaning I wouldn’t have bagels until Sunday morning. I was done with the bagel prep by 9am and headed off to the lab for another rousing day of chemistry.


Fill me with more delicious!

After only twenty minutes of work on Sunday morning, I was the proud mama of six golden, chewy, crunchy bagels.  Fresh out of the oven, quickly toasted and slathered in butter, these bagels were perfect.  I stored the extras in a zip-top bag and tossed them in the fridge.  I've been enjoying my homemade bagels all week.  Will I give up storebought bagels?  Probably not.  Will I be making another batch of these?  Definitely.

Buffalo Sponge Candy

Sometimes, being a chemist comes in very handy in the kitchen. In my previous candy experiments you might have noticed the massive amount of molten sugar I’ve been working with. From the marshmallows to the taffy and the butterfinger bars, I’ve been going through pounds and pounds of sugar and my kitchen is getting pretty sticky. (I found some rogue purple sugar this morning while toasting a bagel!) This danger of the sugar is not what makes my PhD an asset, it is my familiarity with failure.

Failure Number 1

As a synthetic organic chemist, one gets pretty used to failure. You begin with a plan on paper and you set upon this path. A new project is exciting, you order your reagents and get everything in order.  At first things go well and your chemistry works!  Then you hit a wall. Perhaps a reaction that you expected to work one way does nothing at all, or worse, something unexpected. The reaction could even destroy all of the forward progress that you have already made, sending you months back.


Failure Number 2

Your original plan gets torn apart after a series of failures and you re-write your scheme. No matter how many failures you have there is still that end goal in sight, the completed molecule. You’ve got to finish the project! So, no matter how many failures you have and how many walls you hit you eventually find a way. Success comes to the persistent and persistence pays off (with candy).


At Last!  Sweet Success

This candy was a little tricky to make, only because I didn’t have the right recipe. Many people have sponge candy recipes, but they weren’t coming out like my sponge candy. So many recipes called for vinegar and baking soda, which turns out to be totally unnecessary for the desired reaction. This recipe was the first failure. The second failure involved a recipe that called for heating honey to 300, this causes honey to burn.

After a little research into how Buffalo sponge candy is made, I had worked out a recipe and right the method of how to put it together.  This final batch came out exactly like I remember it from Watsons and I’m sharing my recipe with you. Don’t worry, I’ve worked out all the kinks for you. These failures lead to candy gold.


Eat me