Thank you so much!

I haven't planned in posting something today. But I got such a nice good-by brunch and so great good-by presents that I had to share that!

On the Snoopy card: "I wish you LUCK, I wish you PROSPERITY, I wish you HAPPINESS... I wish you WERE STAYING." 

I've already received e-mail from people from the lab freaking out and asking me how to dilute a specific solution or why a buffer wasn't dissolving properly... I just laughed and I'm sure they'll be fine without me: yes, you don't need me to graduate! You can do it! And to all of them, I also wish LUCK, PROSPERITY and along their PhD, still a lot of HAPPINESS!

In case you cannot tell what my present were, here is a better idea: photography lenses to stick on the iPhone camera, to make wide-angle, fish-eye or even macro shots! Yeah, I am now ready to go to France, light but with a camera! Will also be handy for the Kilimanjaro trip!

And the big bag-like stuff is a travel pillow, with the design of a mitochondria! On it, the enzyme or pathway that every McQuibban person works on, and this cute logo ;)

It is a good opportunity to test my skills in explaining with simple words bioenergetics to my lucky neighbours in long flights!

A big Thank you to all the McQuibban's lab members (past and present) with their beloved ones, and to the ones that unfortunately couldn't make it.

Spice up your life!

I'm done for now on food photography. I have to admit that was pleasant but also easy: I like arranging things so they appear on the perfect angle that please my sight, and that was also easy not to go out to find good photography subjects.

I will soon go out on a sunny weather hunt interesting photogenic subjects and places!

But before, just one last on spices and condiments. In order: Ground Espelette pepper, Cardamom, Anis seeds, Peppers, Lime, Lemon, Ginger, Cinnamon, Cumin seeds, Paprika, Fenugrec, Nutmeg, Curry, Thyme, Safran.

Too bad you can't smell.

This post title brings me to the second part of my non-working time. Yes, you've all recognize that so famous Spice Girl song. That was 1997... I was 14 and that's were my travel back to France is gonna send me. Tidying, cleaning, trowing away my old stuffs from elementary to high school. My parents almost kept everything... in case I want it one day :s

I now have to pack my bag for a month in France. Except for my yoga mat, I don't really know what to pack. What am I gonna do for an entire month at my parents' place? Since the plan is to clean my former bedroom, I'm pretty sure sweat pants are ok, but I would probably also want to go out. Good thing that sweat pants are also perfect for running... 

Waiting for an other post, please have a look at this one!

http://dna-protein.blogspot.com/2011/05/youre-so-hot-you-denature-my-proteins.html

Carbs.

So, before I go back to France, the idea is to take pictures of all the food that I could find in my kitchen. I'm almost done, don't worry.

"Carbs" is a term I learnt when I came to Canada. In common language it imprecisely describes complex polysaccharides, and especially starch-containing ingredients. But biochemistry speaking, carbohydrates are saccharides in general, from mono-saccharides to poly-saccharides: i.e. sugars! Simple and complex sugars. 

And sugars are everywhere, for example the glucose (monosaccharide) in our blood is the convertible energy that makes mammals live: this is the first regulated element in our body: our liver regulates the glucose concentration in our blood to make it uniform so that the brain is constantly supplied with the same amount of glucose (the almost sole nutrient that the brain can use), all day long, whatever your diet, whatever your activity. For that purpose, the liver makes stocks (glycogen) and induces a release of glucose when needed. Glucose is a nearly universal and accessible source of calories. 

Lactose is a disaccharide (Glucose + Galactose), for those of you who wonder what this is, you've certainly heard about lactose intolerance (I'm a sorry victim of that adult syndrome). The use of lactose by our organism to get energy requires the split of lactose into separated glucose and galactose, which is done under the action of an enzyme called lactase. This is the enzyme that mammals tend to produce less when they become adult and stop being exposed to milk. What makes lactose-intolerant people sick is the fact that the unbroken lactose goes to their intestines, which contain nice, friendly bacteria and those bacteria are now able to ferment that lactose, which produces gas, responsible for the abdominal pain. Lactose free milk have been added external lactase that has already pre-processed the lactose into glucose and galactose: it makes the milk sweeter (a complex story about adding the sweetness level or each individual sugar) and drinkable by lactose intolerant people.

The more complex the sugars are, the more tricky they are to break down to monosaccharides and to use as nutrients. They are more resistant to degradation and that's why other organisms use polysaccharides to form their shell (insects for example use a polymer of glucose called chitin or plants make cellulose out of a different arrangement of the same glucose) or to make storage. This is where the food carbs come into play. Starch is the most common storage association that plants use. Starch is also a polymer of multiple glucose molecules arranged in again an other organization than chitin or cellulose. 

We commonly find starch in potato, wheat (pasta, bread) and rice.

Beans, lentils and peas are also starch storage from plants.

Carbs are a big source of energy for athletes and it is usually recommended to eat carbs the night before an intense sport. In the contrary to monosaccharides which assimilation is very quick and can almost immediately load your organism with usable glucose (or if you don't need it, you liver will make you stock it under glycogen or fat), carbs are slow assimilable sugars, that first need to be broken into monosaccharide to be used as energy. If you eat carbs the evening before, on the next morning, your body is filled with usable sugar.

Best thing: they are easy to cook (water, pepper, salt and olive oil would be enough) and you can eat them with any side! They will last forever in your cupboard and they are so light that you can bring them on a long hike!

Bon appetit!

Nutoholism.

If I had to get a word that defines best my food habits, I'll make it "nutoholic". I was encouraged to make a Seed and Tuber blog for a reason. I love nuts! Of course, they're so greasy, but also so tasty, and they are so different from one an other!

Nuts are fatty, we all agree on that, but nuts are also very powerful ingredients. Proof: the national peanut board has made a series of advertisements that describe peanuts as the best, healthy thing in the world: I was delighted to read that "Peanuts have more antioxidants than broccoli, carrots or green tea". I was shocked the first time I saw these in the subway, but I realize after that with all the bad advertisement that peanut get from the 1% of the population that is allergic to peanuts (they even can't certify that the chicken I buy is peanut-free....) they probably have a dramatic decrease in their sales. And it is critical in North America, where peanuts are almost first ingredient produced and eaten (after corn...). It is decriminalization of peanut!

Here are a few examples of nuts you can find in my cupboard. Soy, sunseed, pumpkin seeds, almonds, Brazil nuts, hazelnut, pistachio, peanuts, pecans, walnut, chestnuts, Sasha inchi seeds, Fenugrec, flax and poppyseeds.

But from what I just described, these are not all nuts from the biological point of view. A nut is a dry fruit with one seed where the female ovary wall became hard (yes, plants have male and female counterparts, sometimes on one plant, sometimes on two separate) and the seed (result from fertilization) stayed trapped in that hard shell. The seed itself is actually a little dot at one end of the fatty part. The seed will grow a plant using the nutrients that are stored in the fatty yummy part.
Almonds, pecans, walnuts, brazil nuts, macadamia, peanuts, pine nuts and pistachios are not botanical nuts because the edible part is the actual seed itself. Hazelnut and Chestnuts are true nuts.

Now what do you know about peanut? Do you have to dig in the soil to find the peanut shell? Do they grow high in trees? 

What do you know about flax? What does the flower look like? It's full of fibers and Omega3, and its oil was used to polish paintings and furnitures.

What do you know about fenugrec? Did you know it was used as anti-cholesterolemia alternative medicine? (That's actually how I discovered it, 13 years ago. Thanks Andréine!)

Did you know that eating raw non processed cashew nuts could kill you? The shell contains a highly toxic compound; that's why all the cashews that we eat have been thoroughly, delicately extracted from their shell and roasted. That makes them twice as more expensive than any other nut.

I could do the same for the others, but you can do it without my help.

But how do I eat nuts? Well, almost at every meal and in every circumstances: from raw in my hand to a curry, in salads, in cakes, on pies... they are perfects for snacks, as appetizers, mixed in a smoothie... But I tend to keep myself away from nut butter: a/ because it's processed food; b/ because it reminds me of watching Meet Joe Black with a friend (that overall is more a good than a bad memory); and c/ because even if I only eat a teaspoon of it, it magically immediately makes me fat.

Bon appetit!

Make pasta with sauce in a coffee machine...

Cleaning the dishes with shampoo in a hotel or while doing camping, everyone has done it before. Whatever the reason was: you forgot the dish washing detergent, you on purpose didn't take it for lack of space, baggage weight... anything, or you did it many times for all of the reasons above.

You've also attempted to make coffee with toilet paper as filter, but have you ever tried to make pasta in a coffee machine? 

This was not just a stupid reason to make a post, no. We usually have a kettle or a microwave in most of the hotels we go to, and if not we think of taking the camping gaz... This time, we just forgot to check. So we ended up trying to make a bit of cooking on a very cold morning before going cross-country skiing for the entire day!

Almost 45minutes after, our pasta were just cooked!

It actually turned out to be very good, even cold... well... we were quite hungry! We ate the rest at home when we came back to Toronto, and it was very less tasty.

This is not such a challenge, it just requires time and a bit of imagination. But don't even think of trying that with a fancy expresso machine or worse a machine working with pressurized coffee in capsules. Maybe one day they'll invent a sauce capsule and air hydrating instant pasta... In decades...

We were wondering how that would have been if we had kids. Do you think making them eat that could be called child abuse? Good thing we don't have kids!

But one thing I have to try before I'm 30 is actual mountain dry food: I've heard it's expensive and not good. I would probably have no other choice if I want to properly train for the Kilimanjaro anyway.

On the same post, I'll notify I can now cross-check on my list that before 30, I have successfully skied across more than 15 Km of forest in Arrowhead Provincial Park, and that I have actually enjoyed it! Do I become old? or do I become Canadian?

To make sure you'll still read my blog again despite of that junk food, here is how I try to make up to you. I just candied some tiny lime! The limes are still a bit bitter, but the caramel that came out of it deliciously tastes lime! 

My last attempt with kumquats gave very good candied kumquats but very bad caramel. Next time will be perfect!

Bonbons.

I should have made a "Colour your world" blog, that would have been a better representation of my pictures. Instead I just sprinkle this blog with pictures of food and colourful arrangements. Shall I call it chromotherapy? Are you feeling more relaxed, happier after reading my blog?

I swear I only ate the non-photogenic ones!

And I was just thinking about that industrial machine which cuts those millimetre size sugar-candy stars. How fast? how precise? It makes my head spin from that perspective. Do you think of the guy at the end of the production circuit, that poor guy that has to separate the misshaped ones? I'm sure chromotherapy is not even enough for him. When are we gonna be able to make that step automatic? (that was always my boyfriend's question when it came to going in the lab 3 to 5 times in a row on the week-end for tiny little things). 

Popularization.

In the process of figuring out what is that I want to do for a living, I had in mind for a little while now, some scientific popularization. I don't really know who does that for journals, if the scientists do it themselves and then journals copies on one an other and the same message is transmitted and modified over and over again, or if every media has its own person half scientist/half freelance writer. Who prepares science TV show? I've seen a lot of them for kids, they are simple, sometimes to approximate but never uninteresting. What if I become that person?

I've met yesterday an inspiring guy at a networking reception that does exactly what I just described above. His job in one of the biggest company in the world (no name said) is to simplify the work of clinical researchers in a common language that anyone could understand and the accounting team can judge of the risk they take in supporting that project. The only difference with my dream job is that it requires him to sit on a chair all day long. I'm not sure I can stand that.

Anyway, I think it requires some writing skills that I probably should learn somewhere, even so I've got a lot of essay writing to do in my entire scholarship (in french, in english, about biology or about philosophy). I've always liked that but I may not have the proper style to write and be published in something else than a scientific journal. That said, it doesn't hurt to try.

I know I have in my group of blog-readers people that are scientists and people that definitively are not (if you wonder which category you belong to, just try to imagine what a mitochondria is). This diversity in the audience allows me to judge of how good I do translate a scientific article to a everyone-can-read-it abstract. Let's call it a blog journal club (I think I miss that the most from working in the lab). It's the moment where you can have a cup of coffee (or a beer, depending on the timing), enjoying the baking of that poor person that also did the job of putting together a simple slideshow explaining you that damn article from that damn group full of workaholic post-docs about to scoop you. Anyway, go get a cup of something you like, lay back and read my scientific popularization.

To that purpose, I would be using papers mostly from the journals Nature, Science and Cell, first of all because it's mostly biology and because they don't only do biology. The advantage of using these journals is that they are generalist enough that the articles do not focus on one damn unknown protein without interest, but rather on a whole mechanism (this is good in my case but a little more annoying when you try to submit a work to them and they just emphasize in the rejection letter how great you work is but how little you can figure out the big picture of what's going on). 

I'm not sure I have the right to use their article to publish a different version of their work on my blog or judge their paper. I then won't be using their names, I won't be using protein/gene mane either, I would just explain to you the idea and their results, maybe I'll judge sometimes and I'll certainly try to be creative and picture the whole thing instead of loosing you with complicated terms.

About judging, I found that table on a Facebook wall of one of my friend. It's neat, and it's so true. Left side is what's written in most papers, right side is what you should translate from it. I'll do that translation for you.

(taken from Facebook, original source unknown).

To scientific friends, please submit papers that you think could be worth popularizing (it can also be your paper if you think it's worth it) and to non scientific readers, please ask me process you wish to know about and I'll try my best to explain in a few memorable words.

And last, please tell me how you liked the job done. 

I'm not posting one today because I'm a bit short on time, but I'll do that for next week.

Have a good week-end everyone!