Here are some photos from Quito and Nono Ecuador. I have yet to finish editing our photos from the Galapagos – soon!

Fair Trade Shop

Where we bought some chocolate and coffee.

More Quito graffiti

Nectarine Dessert

in Nono

Square in Quito

in front of the San Francisco church

Pre-Lunch Soup

Nono

Cool Trees

in the courtyard of the library, Quito

Hummingbirds

Alcohol for Canelazo

Lorena shows us sugarcane alcohol that has been steeped with raisins, orange peel, and oak bark (?). This was to put in Canelazo, a traditional hot drink. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canelazo

Shrine with moving flowers

Nono, Ecuador

Shrine

Nono, Ecuador

Peeking into a Garden

Nono, Ecuador

Trumpet Flowers

"Brugmansia have also traditionally been used in many South American indigenous cultures in medical preparations and as a ritualistic hallucinogen for divination, to communicate with ancestors, as a poison in sorcery and black magic, and for prophecy."

When we were in the village of Nono, north of Quito, we saw these flowers and our guide told us they were often used to drug people and steal from them - it basically puts you in a conscious but nonresistant state, like date rape drugs.

Turns out it was used to synthesize the same drug I was wearing on a patch behind my ear for sea-sickness (Scopolamine).

This might explain why I hallucinated several times when I woke up in the middle of the night. Hilariously, I hallucinated Galapagos animals. A penguin by the doorknob, sea lion climbing the door, iguana on the lamp. Otherwise, no side effects and kept me from getting seasick which is basically miraculous.

Hummingbird

at Lorena and Carlos' house

Quito Graffiti

Glass Fence

In Nono, Ecuador

Green Landscape

in Nono, Ecuador

After a couple of years in graduate school, I wish I could go back in time and retake my undergrad classes. How did I ace all my statistics exams in grad school when I almost failed the class as an undergrad? Why did I pull so many all-nighters in college when I had few time commitments outside of class? Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned by going back to school as an adult:

1. Stay organized from day one.
I’ve been taking 2-3 classes a semester while working full time, so it would be easy to miss a deadline. As soon as I get my syllabi, I put class dates and important deadlines on a “school” Google Calendar. It shows up in bright red and sends me reminders – just the kind of subtlety I need.

2. Read smarter.
As an undergrad I’d do my reading, then later return to study it. Now, with less time, I immediately identify the important concepts and either outline them or, if I will be tested, create flash cards (I use studydroid.com to enter cards on the web and study on my Android phone). This boosts my comprehension while reading and saves hours of preparation during final exams.

3. Keep it all in one place (preferably online).
My notes, assignments, papers, and readings (if possible) are all in Google Drive. If I have an insight when I’m away from the computer, I can access and edit from anywhere. I’ve eschewed heavy textbooks for e-books and Kindle editions so I can sneak in a chapter of my reading in a waiting room or on the bus.

4. Put away the stopwatch and think outside the paper.
As an undergrad, I’d sit in front of a blinking cursor for hours to satisfy some masochistic requirement of “hours spent writing a paper.” As an adult, I realize that offline planning can skim hours off that paper, and it’ll be a much better one too. This week I planned papers in the shower, during a run, as I was cooking dinner…

5. Create weekly study sheets for non-humanities classes.
For classes like statistics and accounting, I got a feel for the scope of the material each week and then broke it down into smaller parts. Each week, I made myself a study sheet with formulas and the various types of problems along with the steps necessary to solve them. This helped me identify the concepts that needed more practice and was so valuable for review at the end of the semester.

6. Make room for school, but don’t put your life on hold.
I ended up practicing statistics in the passenger seat of our anniversary weekend road trip…on a Dunkin Donuts bag. I read e-books on planes and took online quizzes over hotel wifi. The past two years have been filled with school but also fun and adventure. Keep enjoying your life or you’ll get burnt out. If I had been stuck at home, I probably would have been listlessly staring at that blinking cursor.

Sudden memory – it is 1992 and I’m on the phone with a t-shirt company whose ad I saw in Circus Magazine, trying to order an iron-on back patch for my black bomber jacket. I’m leaning towards Led Zeppelin but I can’t remember what the Houses of the Holy album cover looks like, even though I’m pretty sure it was on my parents’ record shelf all along.

I ask the woman on the line and she starts describing it to me: “It’s, like, this big pile of rocks and there are a bunch of naked kids climbing up it. I’m not really sure if they’re boys or girls.”

These things we did before the internet sound like a dim, ancient fantasy, right?

We went on an amazing trip to the Galapagos last month. We saw and did so much, I knew I had to keep a journal to remember everything. Some of my fellow travelers asked me to scan it, so I figured why not share with the internet too? (Click for an interactive version).

I love to keep a paper journal but it’s been difficult to find the time in the last few years, so I relished the chance to spend a computer-less vacation with pens and paper. The notebook is made by Michael Roger and the markers are Staedtler Triplus Fineliners (both found at the Brown Bookstore during a quick lunchtime shopping spree). I have very little drawing experience and sometimes I feel held back by a perfectionism which I have little chance of achieving, so I ONLY brought pens, no pencils. If I made a mistake, I made a mistake – it was freeing and fun.

I thought the journal might be interesting to anyone considering a trip to the Galapagos who wants to get an idea of what it’s like. You have to visit the islands with a guide, so an organized trip is the best way to go. Our trip was organized by Beyond Your Backyard Adventures, a small trip geared towards people who really want to get out and see everything (no whiners!) We had an amazing experience and are still working through thousands of photos.

Restaurant portions can be huge, so I’ll often end up with leftovers. Some people have a serious aversion to leftovers (I don’t get it), and others eat cold pizza or Chinese food for breakfast the next day (I don’t get that either).

My favorite thing to do with leftovers? Freeze them in small portions for work lunches. I’ve talked about my dedicated work lunch freezer drawer, and while most of it is home cooked, it’s great to bring along a memory from a favorite restaurant. Yesterday was the first afternoon warm enough to eat my lunch outside, and I enjoyed Eggplant and Shrimp with Garlic Sauce over rice, from Gold Stone. We’d been over a month ago and it was great to revisit the tender eggplant and flavorful sauce.

Another way to enjoy leftovers is by transforming them into another dish. We came home from Gold Stone with a lot of rice, so I made the extra into rice pudding – just simmer with milk, sugar, raisins, and spices for a half hour or so. Sometimes I’ll bring home a choice piece of meat or fish to eat on a salad the next day. If  you’re not fond of leftovers, why not make a completely new meal out of them?

It’s always a pleasure to unpack a delicious, healthy lunch on a Monday. Today’s was leftovers from a dinner I cooked on Saturday – I enjoyed it and thought I’d share the recipe.

There’s a drawer of my freezer just dedicated to lunches (and these days, dinners eaten in the student lounge before my night classes). Sometimes I make a big batch of something especially for weekday lunches, other times I just pack up dinner leftovers. I just took a peek at the selection and I have to say, I’m pretty excited to reach for a lunch this month:

• Hungarian ragout and dumplings
• Rabbit in mustard sauce w/ polenta
• Chicken with tomatillo sauce
• Chinese beef w/ rice
• Chinese chicken w/ rice
• Chinese eggplant shrimp w/ rice
• Pigeon Peas and rice
• Chicken / rice / beans
• Senate bean soup
• Chorizo and bean stew
• Stir fry (w/ chicken)
• Celery root / potato soup
• Jambalaya
• Beef stew and polenta
• Moroccan chicken
• Black bean burger
• Pork fried rice
• Empanadas (w/ turkey, raisin, olive filling)

An older photo – but this is how my lunches are usually stored – I love the Ziploc twist & lock containers and have yet to have one leak.

Ten pounds of organic oats? When I picked up my order from the Urban Greens Buying Club, the bag was bigger than I thought. But to my surprise, I went through all ten pounds in a couple of months, and oats eclipsed flour on my list of pantry staples.

Here are some of the recipes that had me loving oats this winter. What about you?

• Basic Granola – my recipe
• Chocolate Peanut Butter Granola – my recipe
• Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal – my recipe
• Cherry Almond Cocoa Nib Granola Bars – from Love & Olive Oil. I upped the chocolate factor even more by using cocoa dusted almonds
• Oatmeal Raisin Cookies - from the Bouchon cookbook, adapted by blogger Annie’s Eats

As a frequent bus rider, I don’t know how I ever lived without the transit directions in Google Maps.

I’ve discovered an even easier way to access bus schedules from my Android phone. I simply created shortcuts to transit directions for my favorite destinations (like work, home). This means that if I’m running late at work and miss my usual bus, I can just click the shortcut to see the next 3 buses. It doesn’t matter where I am, clicking the shortcut gets me home!

How to create a shortcut to transit directions:

1. Go to your Apps (on my phone, I click the round icon on the bottom middle of my home screen)
   
2. Along the top, click Widgets
   
3. Flip through your widgets until you find the one called Directions & Navigation. Press and hold to drop it onto your home screen.
   
4. Add your home or work address (or anywhere else you like to go a lot). Don’t forget to choose transit (click on the bus image).
   
5. Remember to put a screen lock on your phone. It’s good for many reasons, but especially important if someone could steal your bag with keys and easy directions to your home

I’ve baked quite a few cookies this winter as usual, but my go-to potluck recipe has been cookie dough dip. I saw the recipe posted somewhere and dismissed it as a healthy concoction that probably wouldn’t taste good. A couple of weeks later, I was still thinking “can that really be good?” and decided to give it a try.

And it was good! I tested it on family first and then brought it to four parties. I can just about make it in my sleep. So far it’s gotten quite a positive reaction, though people are probably put off when I stand over their shoulder the whole time asking “Do you like it? Do you like it? What do you think is in it?”

(By the way, it’s made of chickpeas.)

Recipe: Cookie Dough Dip at Chocolate Covered Katie