Earlier in the week, I stood in front of my fridge staring at the contents wondering what I could do with the food I had. I wanted to use as much of it as possible. I amongst other things I had chicken breast, rice, onions, green peppers, and cream of mushroom soup. My next criteria for cooking that night was that whatever I made needed to be as simple as possible because I needed to dedicate myself to my seminar PowerPoint presentation. After looking at several sites online, I came across one entitled "One Dish Chicken and Rice Bake" Skimming the recipe, it sounded easy enough, basically throw it all in a pan and bake it for an hour. Excellent!
It turned out great! The rice was creamy with the mushroom soup, and I loved the amount of vegetables I stuffed in there with the chicken. However, the success of this meal was bittersweet because it was my last big cooking adventure of the summer. Being at SERC and being forced to cook for myself for almost every meal has been a great experience! It truly has! I wouldn't trade it for the world! 
So I rolled out my dough into along wide rectangle. I filled it with ham, mozzarella, green peppers, and onions. Then I rolled it all up log style. And sprinkled some more mozzarella on top. Then baked it for just over 20 minutes, until it was golden brown and the kitchen smelled really good. It turned out just how I wanted it to this time. Its not a calzone, even though that's how its called in the recipe. What I made is an actual loaf, so that when you slice it, you get pieces of every ingredient that I put in there. It was scrumptious, and big enough to last me several lunches and diners, which is convenient for those days when I'm too exhausted from work to cook.
I learned a valuable life skill while making this cake. I learned how to grease, flour, and paper a cake pan. It's true I had to look it up on YouTube, but I know how to do it. And it's actually not hard. I was surprised. In fact this whole baking thing is so much easier than I thought at the beginning of the summer. It's amazing how much I have learnt in the kitchen this summer, in addition to everything I have learnt in the field and in the lab.
As a side note, I didn't have any sour cream, so after looking online I put in 1 and 1/2 cups of plain yogurt and an extra teaspoon of baking powder in instead.
Earlier this week, I had a sudden desire to bake something. I'd been thinking about this recipe for blueberry yogurt cookies with lemon cream cheese icing, for a while. However, when the day came to bake them, I decided to put the lemon in them instead of making the cream cheese based icing. So they turned into lemon-blueberry muffin tops. They are technically cookies, but are made with yogurt instead of oil or butter, thus the consistency is more like that of the top of a muffin top, light and spongy. Plus they are healthier than most other cookies because of the lack of butter or oil.
Ingredients:
4. Drop tablespoonfuls of cookie dough onto the prepared baking sheets, leaving about 2 inches of space between each cookie. bake for about 10 minutes, until the cookies start to barely brown at the edges. Remove from the oven and let the cookies cool on the baking sheet (do not try to remove) for 2 minutes, then move the cookies to a cooling rack to cool completely. Some of the blueberries will burst during baking-this is to be expected and will not affect the taste. 
If you want to make them with the lemon cream cheese icing, here's how.
On Tuesday, I got stuck in the mud looking for Phragmites roots. I was up to my knees in the smelly marsh mud, and my boots were stuck. Luckily I was out at the GCrew site and Gary was close by to pull me out. But I had to leave my boots, at least for the moment. I returned to the field house to find some equipment to pull my boots out. I found a piece of fiber glass boardwalk, which would spread my weight out. It was low tide and the wooden boardwalk out where I got stuck was more than 4 feet above the soil level. So when I tried to hop onto the piece of fiber glass, I missed, slipping into the mud for the second time in less than half an hour. This time, I got even more muddy, past my hips, as seen in this picture to the right. My legs are muddy, my pants are muddy, my arms are muddy, parts of my shirt are muddy. I was a muddy mess! But as you can see I did not mind getting covered in mud, its part of the job description when working in the marsh. Even though I washed most of it off with water from the rainwater barrel, I still felt bad getting into my government truck after the incident because of the mess and the accompanying rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulfide.
Ham-Mozzarella Calzone 
I didn't use parsley on top. I'm not a big fan of parsley, I see it more as a garnish than an actual part of the meal. And a problem arose when I tried to close my calzone. I realized when adding my sliced green pepper and onion, I had not taken into account the fact that my calzone might not close with that added volume. And that's when my calzone became a loaf! After struggling with it for 10 minutes, I formed it into a loaf. It was going to taste the same no matter what shape it was in. After coming out of the oven and cooling. I dove right in! I was famished, it was a late diner. It was delicious! It really was! Pizza dough, ham, mozzarella, green peppers, and onions can be translated to scrumptious! And it was big enough to last me two diners and two lunches. Yippie for efficient cooking! 
Ingredients
I followed the recipe, and they turned out great. Although I must say adding the white chocolate chips as well as the dark chocolate ones were my little touch, a small adjustment to make them even more delicious! I made them late Friday night, and by Sunday morning they were all gone, the whole pan full! 
Every year in the month of August, the Discovery Chanel has a whole week filled with shark related shows, called Shark Week! This year is their 26th year. And being at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center we made sure to catch the first night of Shark Week. We even celebrated with an ocean related cake. It's a green fish in the ocean. And the cake was dyed red on the inside, too! Making it even more exciting!
Shark Week began with a two hour documentary about Megalodon, an investigation into whether or not a giant shark thought to be extinct still inhabits our waters. Even a few minutes in, the show was questionable. Beginning with a video of a boat being too perfectly attacked by a 67-foot shark, no survivors, yet the camera with all the dramatic footage survived. Quite questionable to me! Surrounded by future scientists, we began to express our criticisms at their poor science. The documentary continued with weak evidence and scientists who were not reputable. Then at the end of the show, two long hours later, a quick block of text appeared on the screen revealing that the whole documentary was dramatized. This fake documentary was simply an attention grabber for the network, which is very disappointing. That information put a damper on the rest of Shark Week. I, along with many others, am disenchanted with the poor choices of the Discovery Chanel. The Discovery Chanel used to pride itself as a network for science and education, it has now shown its true colors and is not a network I trust any more for reliable information. Although this mock-umentary was successful in attracting viewers, the network's plans backfired when many people boycotted the rest of Shark Week, myself included. The Discovery Chanel is trying to rebrand itself as another drama and character driven network, a move that will and has pushed away many viewers who watched the network for reliable information about the fascinating aspects of our world. I sincerely hope the Discovery Chanel realizes and amends (sooner rather than later) the grave mistake it has made.
After going to Great Falls Park, Virginia, we made a slight detour on
our way back to SERC to stop in Bethesda, Maryland to have diner. In
Bethesda is Bethesda Row, which is a few blocks of restaurants and
shops. The cutest part was this little side street with lights and plants in bright pots. We decided to get diner at an Indian restaurant. We all love
Indian food! That is one of our go-to foods on the rare occasion we go out to eat. I got chicken tikka masala, which you can see on the right. It was good, and there was lots, so I had enough to take some back to SERC with me to have for lunch the next day. 
Then we went to Max Brenner, a new and very popular restaurant in town. Although it's not technically a restaurant despite the seating and tables; its a chocolate bar. One of the first of its kind. And it only opened on July 31st, so we were there on its first weekend, and it was packed. There was a line out the door before we arrived. But when chocolate is involved, its worth the wait! While we waited, we perused the menu, which teased our taste buds. 
They really do have everything you can imagine involving chocolate. Byanjana got a white chocolate chai tea. I got chocolate pizza with milk chocolate, white chocolate, and toasted marshmallows. Stephanie got a Mexican spiced hot chocolate. In fact, within our whole group, we all got something different because there was so much to choose from! Chocolate covered strawberries, milkshakes, liquid chocolate beverages, muffins, cookies, chocolate covered caramels, etc. The list is endless! And there's a little shop inside too, just to tempt you even more! 
