I've been on a tremendous cooking spree recently. I think that this was ignited by the gift of a KitchenAid mixer (from my mom) for Christmas, but it was also catalyzed by countless trips to Williams-Sonoma, where I thought, "I should do that." "Should" is apparantly remarkably distinct from "have to," which is relegated to the realms of my research lab, where I "should" be characterizing tumor samples from my mouse model.

So, after my inspirations, I brought back several things from my parents house - things that actually were mine, but I never had any desire to own (my mother likes to purchase items for a life in which I do not live*). These include a full set of Le Creuset cookware in Williams-Sonoma Blue (several dutch ovens, a stock pot, and a grill pan), and other kitchen toys. Then, I proceeded to go on a bender that sent me home with springform pans, truffle oil, approximately 48 spices, and a new whisk.

This may or may not become an expensive hobby. One might think that once you own everything you need, cooking anything you desire should be a breeze. But the problem is, it's always something. It's always something you don't have - dutch process cocoa that apparently you can only purchase from Amazon, or meringue powder that is not sold in normal stores, or the goddamn truffle oil that is $30 a bottle but makes for amazing mac and cheese. I think that applies to life in general - it's always something.

* My mother really does not understand the life of a PhD student in the biomedical sciences. She seems to think that cooking a pan of lasagne, large enough to feed 27, is how I should spend my evenings, and not optimizing a quantitative real-time PCR reaction to amplify a gene that is expressed in my tissue at an excrutiatingly small level. She also thinks that I dress nicely every day, including heels, and get a decent amount of sleep. What she doesn't know is that wearing my Fryes instead of my Rainbows warrants celebration, and that I am hesitant to wear the entirely too expensive J. Crew wardrobe all the time instead of Joe's and a UCLA sweatshirt because odds are, I will spill bleach on it.