In elementary school they used to warn us not to buy street drugs. They never said anything about the dangers of planting potatoes. The DEA busted my neighbor for trafficking narcotics and in their effort to search the property they dug up my potato patch. So today I harvested the remainder of my potatoes. It looks like drug free potatoes are for dinner.

Santa Cruz, CA
9/15/11

In the Outer Sea Exhibit, at the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we have a visiting baby white shark. He's sooo cute!!! He's pretty shy though, he mostly stayed in the upper corner of the tank and would only occasionally swim past the exhibit window. The real show stoppers, at least according to Ronny where the schools of tuna and sardines which glittered in the light streaming through the clear blue water.
To read more about the baby shark…. http://www.montereybayaquarium.org/cr/cr_whiteshark/whiteshark_ours.aspx

Upper left: Great White Shark, Carcharodon carcharias
Middle right: Yellowfin Tuna, Thunnus albacares
Lower left: Pacific Sardines, Sardinops sagax

Monterey Bay Aquarium, Monterey CA 9/13/11

I love being home. One of my favorite parts of being home is my kitchen. I get to cook and eat anything I'd like, whenever I'd like to. There's an old addage that's something like, "Listen to your body, It'll tell you what to eat." Often I just crave colors. Like Red. Sometimes I need to eat red foods. I'm assuming my body is asking for Anthocyanidin or something. Today my body told me that I needed to eat chocolate cookies. I've been wanting to make these for weeks, today I skipped my afternoon swim and baked these instead.

Cookies
– 2c flour (I used whole wheat)
– 1tsp baking powder
– 2/3c sugar
– 3/4c butter
– 1 egg
– 2 tsp  almond flavor

Chocolate Ganache
– 1 bag of chocolate chips
– anywhere from a few Tbs to about 1/4 pint of Heavy Whipping Cream

Roll into walnut sized balls, flatten and bake at 350 for 15-20min until light golden brown. Let them cool.  To make the ganache, whisk the cream into the chocolate a Tbs at a time over low heat or a double boiler, you want the texture to be thick and spreadable. Spoon on Tbs of ganache on top of each cookie. Let sit until solidified.

It's a cool foggy afternoon, and is starting to feel like autumn. I watched a seal swim along after a man paddle boarding while drawing this boat.

Back at Jen's house we read and baked chocolate raspberry cupcakes.  🙂

The orientation of the liquid crystal modifies the index of refraction and therefore varies the speed of light through that medium. You can slow down parts of that wave front so that the lagging edge can catch-up with the leading edge.