2 year-old donut

My 2 year old donut. All is well.  May 31, 2016

Hi! Meet my two-year-old donut. This lives in my office drawer on a paper towel exactly like you can see in the pictures. I do not know when this donut was born. However, I do remember the moment I met it. I got it on April 30th, 2014, Thursday at 9 am in my lab- meeting. The fact that I barely keep donuts to eat later unless I have couple of them, makes it possible that I had one during the meeting and I got this one as my second and I stored it in my drawer for my afternoon snack. The purpose of keeping it inside the drawer was to hide it from myself until I really want it. I was successful! Surprisingly! I forgot about it for 4 days.

On the following Monday, I suddenly remembered and looked at it all around, up and down to have a good look at it before I trash it. Amazingly, nothing had happened to it besides that it was little harder. Then it was the moment when I decided to pursue this experiment to keep it until it gets mold or until it crumbles into pieces after it desiccates and to record how many days will it take to happen so. Since then, I give it a good look every week. It’s been quite steady; no molds and no cracks. It has gotten stronger though. I can knock on it and it sounds like I am knocking on a hard surface like on a desk or on a door.

I have shown it to people in my office, lab-members and even to some visitors. Different people have different opinion about the idea to keep it for so long. Most people get detest for donuts when they see a real edible donut turning into a toy-donut. They become skeptical if it is a real food. I am sure that detest is only for few days. This old, veteran, survivor donut gets forgotten when they see fresh and soft new donut. Some people think it is creepy to keep donut as if it is your pet. Hmm.. not a bad idea. I started calling it my pet donut. Now people around me know what I am talking about when I say my 'pet donut'. I have not found a good name for it though. Mold or any organism apparently cannot survive on this donut. It is pretty much desiccated by now. My pet donut has to go long way until it starts to break into pieces. This is the most likely way it may die.

This was totally serendipity but people have done real and intentional project on how long do fast food last. You have probably heard about McDonald's fries or Taco-bell meal not getting rotten for couple years (http://www.businessinsider.com/fast-food-doesnt-rot-after-2-years-2015-1). Visually they are pretty bad but for my donut, you cannot tell from the picture if it is just bought from the donut shop or been in my drawer for 2 years. Well, it is different category of food. I am not saying I am proud of it or I have worked hard on it. I have no contribution for this amusement besides giving it a space. Whatever has happened, it is all due to the ingredients of the food and the way it is made. Donut is fried bread and sugar coated on the top. Frying food is done at 350-375 degree F. During this process, food absorbs fat in which it is fried and gets dehydrated. Water is essential for any life to survive. All pores are filled with fat, which leaves no space for re-absorbtion of water. The icing is made up of confectionary sugar and some fats. It is also just shrinking, loosing moisture and is not absorbing any moisture. So I have not observed any mold on it as well. It is a desert not a dessert right now for life. However, I may be able to grow some fungi and bacteria if you take swab from this donut and grow them in Yeast media-plates or LB agar plates.

I will keep updating on this in the future. 

Central Market

Dashi and Bison burger lunch while the whole central market was celebrating the Citrus Fest

Austin, Texas (January 2016)

If you are in Austin or just moved in Austin or visiting Austin even for few days, the best place to stop by to get the feel of Austin food culture, you have to go to the Central Market. There are two locations in Austin; South Lamar and North Lamar. This is not just a grocery store, but also a food store that you can spend time for some quality eat-hour with your friends and family with good live music. 

The most attractive characteristic of Central market is the FESTIVALS. Every month they have a unique festival designated for a particular food group or food from a certain country. Here is the list;

January: Fresh start

February: Chocolate

March: Bacon

May: Passport

June: Beer

July: Wine

August: Hatch Chile

September: Garlic 

October: Cheese 

November: Holiday

December: Holiday

My husband and I love to have lunch or dinner date in the Central Market. We love all different surprises we get every time we go there. Most of the time we get to enjoy the live musical band. We don't even check the events going on because there will be something going on anyways. The best part is the varieties of food you get to choose either from the cafe or from the soup or salad section or desert/ bakery or cold or hot drinks. Cafe is full of interesting continental meals for nominal price. You get choice from Thai, Italian, Chinese, Indian, Mediterranean, and Texan only to mention some, all in one menu. Where else will you get this special menu!  I like to get the meal (main course) in the cafe and get desert from the bakery. Last Saturday, we went to the central market just to have lunch while we were out for a regular errand. I got myself Dashi; a Japanese broth/soup dish with rice noodles in miso flavor, salmon belly, vegetables like radish, carrot, cabbage and greens. On top of that I added quail egg for a dollar. It was perfect for my hungry tummy. My husband had grilled bison burger with fries. Of course I got few bites. It was juicy, well grilled with well-toasted bun and perfectly melted cheese. It was perfect.

Well we could not stay for the evening for the live musical band, but we just roamed around for a good loaf of bread. My favorite is seed sensation. It is heavenly with butter. As it was Central Market Citrus Festival  going on, our eyes and nose felt good with all the colorful citric views and citric smell all over the place. However, we were good enough not to get overwhelmed to spend money on groceries. However, it was time for me to get a bar of dark organic chocolate. We got couple of those for me before we exit out.

Preserved duck egg

Black dish is the preserved duck eggs chopped and mixed with ginger-soy sauce  

Few weeks ago, we thought of doing wives-cooking and husbands-working day at one of our Chinese friend's house. Our husbands have same job and they work together. They had to do some home-works. And both of the wives love to cook. So she made some delicious Chinese dishes and I made our very popular Mo:Mo; Nepalese all time favorite Snack/ comfort-food/ lunch/dinner whatever you want to call is super fine, while our husbands worked hard on their projects. The piece of food- fun I will never forget from this get-together is the preserved duck egg,that I tried for the first time.

Preserved Duck Eggs               

I never dared to go and buy preserved eggs by myself. Although, I have heard from my Chinese friends that it tastes amazing, the look of the preserved eggs never made me determined enough to try it. I am thankful my friend who gave me just a little push to try it. Thus, I had a surprise tasting of preserved duck eggs with ginger and soy-sauce. She asked me if I want to try it. My answer would never be 'No' for a new food. On the contrary, the look was not that appealing. Still I said 'Yes'. It was bought in a vacuum-sealed package. She pealed the shell and let me smell. Opps, it smelled exactly like hydrogen-sulfite gas in a chemistry lab. I thought; well they liked it so much so it must taste like something 'not-horrible'. She chopped the eggs and put them in ginger and soy sauce mix. After sometime, it didn't smell hydrogen-sulfite gas at all. So the gas was gone. I picked a piece of albumin and yolk together and tasted. YUM.. it was smooth and creamy. I liked it. The albumin part was gelatinous greenish-black and yolk was darker in color. It had roasted flavor and ginger-soy made it even better. Now I had to let my husband try it. It was not that hard. I just spent few minutes persuading him to try a tiny, tiny bit of it. Finally he did and he said he liked it but he refused to get another piece.

How is it made?
 Preserved eggs are also known as 'century eggs' or 'thousand year old eggs'. The words given to them make it sound really precious piece of food. Traditionally in China, preserved eggs are made by caking them in rice hull, lime salt mud/ash for several months. The alkaline condition and the salt precipitate the protein and turn it into solid form. It is the same result as when we cook eggs. When they are cooked the liquid form turns to solid. The package of the preserved eggs we had, had only written 'vinegar and egg' on it. So, we could not know how exactly it was made. Acid also coagulates protein. Apparently it was just preserved in vinegar. This may be how commercial preserved eggs are made in the market. Hope I didn't eat anything toxic… probably not because I am here writing about it.