Soup and other goodness

I made the stock for the soup earlier this week and A___ finished the soup today, just in time for the damp, chilly end of January. I used to make the broth with a whole chicken but realized that this results in far more meat and hassle than I need (cjblue will attest to having called me once while I was "boning a chicken"). I recently switched to using chicken breast, 2 split breasts, bone in. This makes enough stock for a large pot of soup, and a little extra meat that can be used for chicken salad. Making soup is great because you get to clean out your old veggies and create something that is exceptionally yummy and good for you with enough left over to freeze. This is all very exciting for a low income grad student with some nutrition problems.

Some of the other grads and I have been joking for a while now about how we should make a grad cookbook. "How to Cook and Eat Healthy on an Apprentice Model Budget" or something like that. Chapters would include things like "Avoiding scurvy", "101 things to do with peanut butter", and "Pasta is a TA's best friend" We could sell it (at a large mark up) and put the proceeds into a graduate conference travel fund, a fund which has consistently been cut by my university over the past few years.

While the soup simmers, I am reading two papers on auditory cues for induced self motion and writing up an outline for an experiment I am about to record stimuli for over the weekend. Yes, I am kind of blowing off my dissertation research, although that is somewhat justified by soundbooth noise related delays. And I am most certainly and unjustifiably neglecting the evil manuscript from hell I've been working on for (gulp) way too long and should just finish no matter how much thinking about the horribly designed experiments makes me want to puke. But who can do that when there's a brand spankin' new research project with an extremely efficient faculty member whose enthusiasm for it is infectious. And there is kick ass soup and a movie with my loving neighbor A___ to look forward to when I'm done reading and writing tonight. Who could ask for anything more? Ok, maybe a loaf of fresh baked bread from Kate.