Weird foods: Baker's Treat Apple Pie

America has many weird foods. I think some of them should not even be classified as food (e.g. spray cheese). However, Amy and I plan to sample as many of these as we can during our time here.

For the first installment, we tried Baker's Treat Apple Pie (Single Serving).

It looked kind of nice on the packet. A bit like McDonald's apple pies. But this product is weird in several ways. First of all, there is the fact it is sold in a cardboard box and can be kept unrefrigerated for almost a month. Then, there are the ingredients: Enriched flour, high fructose corn syrup, water, palm oil & fractionated palm oil, sugar, evaporated apples, contains less than 2% of each of the following: food starch modified, salt, preservatives, corn starch, xanthan gum, wheat flour, malted barley flour, cinnamon, dextrose, propylene glycol, calcium carbonate, agar, natural flavors, mono- & diglycerides, sorbitan monostearate and soy lecithin. Flour and HFCS; mmm...sounds delicious.

We put the box in the microwave, as per the instructions.

It was kind of soggy and did not look appetizing when we removed it.

I managed one bite, which is more than Amy managed. It just tasted like extremely sweet, slimy shortcrust pastry, with a slight cinnamon aftertaste.

I think High Fructose Corn Syrup Pie might be a more accurate description. I only found about five pieces of apple in the whole thing.

Facilities Mismanagement

The University of Minnesota has a lot of turf grass. Actually, they don't just have a lot, they have an awful lot. I don't know numerically how much it is, but just look at this map. Most of what you see in light green is grass. Grass that is perfectly manicured. Grass that I see being tended every day I go to work. Grass that is resown every spring, regularly fertilized, watered and aerated, and mowed at least once a week. This is a very costly waste of time. Especially when there are so many other nice ground covers that don't need so much primping and preening. I can only imagine what else could be done with the money that is used to maintain lawns.

And the worst part is, most students don't arrive until autumn, so all this effort is really only appreciated for a couple of months, before it's covered in snow.

A Funny Thing Happened to Me on the Way to Work Today

Well, it wasn't funny at the time.

I walked out the front door to our apartment complex into the overcast and humid morning. Rain seemed possible, but I was already about 20 metres from the door so I decided not to go back for my umbrella. I caught the bus as I normally do. About 15 minutes into the bus trip more clouds began to appear and in a few minutes it was as dark as night. A few seconds later, it began to rain. Heavily. This was not just a shower. This was movie rain. Complete with thunder. This was The Matrix Revolutions rain. It was so heavy the bus roof began to leak just minutes after it started.

The rain was still pouring down when the bus arrived at my stop. I stepped off the bus onto the footpath, but I may as well have stepped into a swimming pool. I was drenched within 10 seconds. Then the pedestrian crossing light took forever to change. Fortunately there was a nice Minnesotan who let me share his umbrella until the light changed; after which, I tried, unsuccessfully, to leap the small pond that had formed in front of the curb, and ran for it. It was about a 200 metre sprint, with a laptop backpack. It was pretty pointless though; everything was soaked. Dripping, I walked up to my office, praying my computer hadn't got wet. Thankfully it had stayed dry in my backpack.

I, on the other hand, was completely soaked. How was I going to get any work done like this? I was tempted to just leave my computer there, walk out in the pouring rain and wait for then next bus to take me home. But then I had an idea.

I borrowed a co-worker's umbrella and walked down to the gym. I used their swim suit drying machine (read: large mechanical salad spinner) to get rid of the water out of most of my clothes. But my socks were still damp. And so were my shorts. So I took these items back to the lab, and dried them in the lab drying oven.

A Flawed System.

On Wednesday we drove to the supermarket to pick up some milk, flour and coffee. This would not be a blogworthy happening, except we haven't been able to drive for the past four months!

Let me tell you the epic tale of the elusive Minnesota driver's license. I had to take two tests. The written and the road tests. I passed the written test the first time I took it. I somehow got an appointment for the road test two weeks later. I failed. Driving on the right side of the road was just too weird. I still hadn't adjusted in the 3 weeks since we had arrived. We were really wanted to get a car, so we could actually get around; we thought maybe we could just drive using our Australian licenses. Were we in for a shock. While Australian licenses are valid over here (so long as your visa is valid) getting insurance is a pain. There is no MAIB premium included in vehicle registration, and auto insurance is big business. You must have a minimum level of liability cover, which can make the premiums pretty high, but insurance agents offer discounts on your premium for all manner of things: being married, having a PhD, having a less-expensive car; but a foreign license has the opposite effect. We found a car and we were seriously considering buying, so we went to see an insurance agent. He gave us a quote of $200 per month. Not something we could really afford on a postdoc salary. So in mid-April I booked another road test. For May 31st. That was the earliest I could book it. It was such a long way off and life without a car in the Twin Cities is pretty is so annoying that I thought I should just try going without an appointment; people sometimes don't show up or cancel their appointments and I had heard that you can sometimes get in, if you get there early enough. Our friend Chet took me around 10 AM. But upon arrival Chet discovered he didn't have his proof of insurance in his car, so I couldn't take the test that day. The next week My boss's wife, Sue, kindly offered to take me around 9 AM. That wasn't early enough; the 'no-appointment' lane at the DVS was completely full. The next week Chet took me at 6:40 AM (the DVS doesn't open until 8 AM) and we were still 8th in line. We waited. And waited. By 11:30 AM only two of the no-appointment drivers had been tested. We gave up.

I ended up taking my test on May 31st and I passed! I got my temporary license and some of our friends from Church gave us their car (we changed the title over using my temporary license and a few other bits of paperwork). Then I tried to get insurance. After many hours on the internet, many emails and many phone calls, I discovered that it's not possible to get insurance using a temporary license. The insurance companies are very particular about having an actual license number, which was nowhere to be seen on my temporary license. So we waited a further three weeks and my license finally arrived on Tuesday and I bought auto insurance on Wednesday. Then we drove the the supermarket to celebrate.

ASMS 2013: A review

For the past week I have been at the American Society of Mass Spectrometry Annual Conference in Minneapolis. It was held at the Minneapolis Convention Center, which is a very nice location. Minneapolis is actually kind of impressive.

It's not very big though, which I found surprising considering the population.
The conference itself was pretty good. I learned a lot from my weekend short course, entitled 'Mass Analyzers: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know But Didn't Know Who to Ask'.

However, I found the Oral Sessions somewhat frustrating/boring. Most of the presenters at this conference seemed to see mass spectrometers as an end in themselves. Many of the talks followed this format:

1. We got some samples from somewhere. It doesn't really matter where.
2. We analyzed them using a clever mass spec technique or new instrumentation.
3. We got awesome separation and identified lots of metabolites/proteins. We don't care what their functions are.

I only care about mass spectrometry inasmuch as it can answer interesting biological questions. Instrumentation is interesting to a point, but it's just a tool to me.

Nevertheless I learned a lot. And there were quite a few talks that actually applied mass spectrometry to some interesting questions. And many of the posters were actually interesting.

But one of the great things about this conference was all the free stuff. Each evening the mass spectrometry corporations put on 'hospitality suites', which are kind of hard to explain. They were held in the Hilton Hotel and the best way to describe it I think is 'night clubs, with free alcohol and food and mass spectrometers as part of the decor'.

Here are some guys making blueberry martinis through an ice-sculpture.

And Waters Corporation had a game show.

Freebies abounded at all of these events.

All of these corporations also put on free breakfast seminars to tell you about their new technology and why it was the best. And to make you have positive mental associations with their company.

This is what I ended up with.

So now I have a lot of free corporate-branded stuff and a head exploding with mass spectrometry. Awesome.

A Grand Old Weekend

This has been a good weekend. For a start, on Friday I got my Minnesota license! It was actually pretty easy in the end. Plus, some of our friends from church have offered to give us their old car. It's a '91 Toyota and it's pretty rusty, but it will do for the summer, and it's free! We are very grateful for their generosity. It means that we can take a bit more time finding a newer, less rusty, car for the winter months.

On Saturday we visited downtown St. Paul. A few weeks ago we visited downtown Minneapolis. Maybe we just don't get downtown in the US, or maybe we weren't downtown proper, but we were pretty underwhelmed. There wasn't really much to do. Heaps and heaps of pubs, cafes and restaurants, but nothing like cities in Australia, like Melbourne or Sydney, where you can just wander the streets and you're sure to find something interesting. Anyway St. Paul provided a much better experience.

We caught the 9:30 AM bus and started exploring, hoping to find something interesting. Initially it seemed just like Minneapolis: condos, office buildings and not a whole lot going on. Then, when we were waiting at a set of traffic lights, a nice Minnesotan wound down his car window and asked 'Are you looking for the Farmer's Market?' We responded 'Yes! Yes we are. That's exactly what we're looking for.' He gave us directions, which we followed and found the Farmer's market full of fresh produce (a lot of rhubarb), jams, sauces, dips, cheese, eggs, bread and fudge. Most of which we sampled. It was really good, but also priced as such.

Then we went to this Cafe and got a plate of chippies. It was one of the most hipster places I've ever been in. In a good way. And the chips were great.

We were very impressed with the chalk art on the menu.

Then on Sunday, some friends from Church, Jim and Kelly, invited us to the Grand Old Day celebration. On the first Sunday of summer, most of Grand Ave, St. Paul, is closed off and taken over by a market/fair type thing. It was very enjoyable. We ate roasted sweet corn, deep fried cream cheese wontons, an egg roll and a corndog. Cheese curds will have to wait until the State Fair.

 

Authentic New Zealand pies. Made and served by Americans.

One Special Day After Another

A big difference I've noticed between Aussie and American churches, is the emphasis on special days. The church we are currently part of in the States, seems to pay much more attention to special days. And I don't mean just special 'Christian days' I mean any special day. Every week the sermon, the music, the decorations have a particular theme. I'm not saying this is a bad thing necessarily, but I think we've only had one 'normal' service since we got here. Today it was Memorial Day. You can see the American flag to left on the stage. The first song was the American National Anthem.

 Last week it was Pentecost. The week before it was Mother's day. I'm very much used to going through a book of the Bible, Sunday by Sunday, preaching exegetical sermons, without paying much attention to special days. Especially not secular holidays. It would be like Aussie churches having a special ANZAC day service on the Sunday of ANZAC day week. That would be strange. Perhaps its a reflection of the lack of separation of Church and State in America.