Reading Week

This past week has been our winter break, also known as reading week. Lots of people go away to warm places during this time, but we stayed home and worked, caught up on things, and got some things done around the house. However, I did spend more of the past week than not in my pajamas or sweatpants, so it was definitely like a vacation. I am not looking forward to going back to teaching tomorrow morning – I already have more emails in my inbox that need to be dealt with first thing tomorrow than I had for most of the past week combined. After this week this semester will be half over, and I can start the countdown to spring :-)

Some highlights from the past week:

I ate the last of the ice cream that I made. I will definitely be making it again.

We made fondue using the fondue set that Jeff got me for my birthday. Vegetables and a homemade dark rye bread:

More than one person had gotten stuck on a bank of ice left by a snow plow in our street. People trying to park across the street from us were finding that once they drove on to that section of clumped icy snow, they would require assistance to move either forward or backward. Jeff went out to help one guy, but it turned out that he needed more than a push, and had called a tow truck to lift him off the ice. That particular case ended in a bit of a disaster when the boom from the tow truck went through the poor guy's back window. Apparently he had his car in reverse instead of neutral when the tow truck hooked up. Anyway, after all this our across-the-street neighbor decided to try to remove the offending blockage of ice. Jeff saw her out there with just a snow shovel, and decided he really should head out and help with his favorite ice-busting tool, the mattock. The two of them ended up making short work of it, and now people can park on our street without fear.

I have been extremely jealous hearing about all of the spring flowers blooming other places, particularly on the West Coast, and this ridiculous ice and snow and cold has made me a bit homesick. We still have a good solid month and a half or two of winter left, and after almost 4 months already, I'm ready for it to be over! Yesterday I went downtown to go shopping, and parked less than a block from my destination. The sidewalks were cleared but the streets were not (the streets here are pretty much uniformly covered in hardpacked snow and ice), and I slipped and fell headed across a crosswalk. There is enough for anyone to complain about with these long cold winters, but it is especially difficult for anyone with a mobility disability. I forget sometimes that I have to be careful about where I go alone, because I might encounter something like this – a crosswalk in a busy and supposedly pedestrian friendly part of downtown – that I cannot safely navigate without help. It makes me want to stay home and stay inside!

I am trying to make the most of it though. By becoming a member of the Regina Ski Club and Saskatchewan Wheelchair Sports Association, I have been allowed to borrow a kneeling sit ski for the rest of the winter. On Friday we were able to get out and enjoy the snow a bit, and I think that as I am able to get out more it will be easier to tolerate and/or embrace the winter weather :-)

The best ice cream in the world

We are finally done interviewing job candidates and initial offers have been made. We are hiring multiple positions, and the two that are permanent and have the potential to be permanent were offered to my two favorite job candidates, neither of whom I went to dinner with. Now I have my fingers crossed that the offers are accepted, and we won't have to do any more interviewing!

On Thursday morning we woke up to a cold house. Jeff got out of bed about an hour before me, as he often does, and noticed that it felt very cold, so he went to the basement and huddled up in blankets to play video games. It wasn't until he came to get me out of bed that he thought to check the thermostat – it was 12°C/54°F, which is more than just a little bit colder than we normally keep the house. It became clear that our furnace was not working at all, and it was about -20°C/-4°F outside so something had to be done immediately. We brought our only space heater from the basement into the bedroom, and called the phone number on a note that was taped to the furnace. Fortunately, within half an hour someone was at our house. He said that fixing the furnace would probably be a five or six hour job, and they had a full schedule that day, so he wasn't sure they'd get to it. We left the back door unlocked for him, went to work, and tried not to think about it for the rest of the day.

It was a long and busy day at work, and we didn't get home until after 6 PM. We had gotten no phone call from the furnace guy, so were fully expecting to walk into a cold house. We were thinking about the possible need to either buy more space heaters and close off rooms or spend the night in a hotel. We were suddenly worried about our pipes freezing. However, I opened the door and felt a wave of heat. They had come and fixed the furnace, just figuring everything out by themselves (including where the space heater was, as they needed it in order to work) without bothering us. We called the furnace guy immediately, and he said that he was able to move other service jobs until after the weekend, knowing that our situation was urgent. Amazingly, a large portion of what they had to do fell under warranty, so the hours of work and complicated parts hardly cost us anything (comparatively speaking). It is a very good feeling when something goes wrong and then instead of being a huge difficult problem it winds up being smooth and easy, and people are competent and nice.

Now for something completely different: ice cream. I have mentioned before that I believe the best ice cream in the world comes from Prince Puckler's in Eugene. My favorite flavor is called Muddy River, and consists of malted milk chocolate ice cream with a ribbon of caramel running through it. Since there is nothing like it anywhere near here, I have been working at trying to replicate it on my own. I am pleased to say that this weekend I think I succeeded. At the very least I made something that I like a lot, and even if it is not quite the same as Muddy River from Prince Puckler's, it shares enough of the major qualities to satisfy me. I have borrowed heavily from other recipes, but the specifics of the ingredients and the process are important and reflect my own testing. So, here is the recipe:

Possibly the best ice cream I have ever made

3 cups half and half (10% milk fat)
1/4 cup sugar
4 egg yolks
1 cup malt powder (Horlick's, which is available at British grocery stores, online, and I am told at Mexican grocery stores though we don't have those here)
6 ounces milk chocolate (I used Ghirardelli 30%)
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
1/2 can dulce de leche caramel (I made my own using this method)

1. In a medium bowl, stir the malt powder into 1 1/2 cups of cold half-and-half. It is important that it is cold, because the malt powder does not mix in properly if it is hot despite what it says on the package. Set aside.
2. In a large bowl, break up the milk chocolate. Set a fine wire mesh strainer over the bowl, and set aside.
3. In a heavy bottomed medium saucepan, whisk together the remaining 1 1/2 cup half-and-half, the sugar, and the egg yolks. Set over medium-high heat, whisking constantly, until the mixture reaches a temperature of 160°F (the temperature at which salmonella is killed). Remove from the heat immediately, being careful not to over cook.
4. Pour the cooked egg mixture through the strainer into the bowl with the chocolate, and let the chocolate melt for about a minute, then whisk together the chocolate and egg mixture. Add the malt mixture by pouring it through the strainer (to catch any lumps of malt powder that did not dissolve), and whisk together. Stir in the vanilla.
5. Refrigerate this mixture overnight (less time is probably fine, but I don't know how long it takes to get fully chilled). Freeze in an ice cream maker according to directions (I use this one, or at least the version of it that they made eight years ago).
6. Transfer this newly frozen ice cream into an airtight freezer-safe container, in the following manner: layer about one fourth of the ice cream into the container, and then drizzle about one third of the caramel on top. Repeat two more times, then finish with a layer of ice cream. Cover tightly, and freeze in the freezer for at least four hours before serving.

Let me know if you decide to try it, and whether you run into any problems. Meanwhile, there is still some left (though not much) and I will be having some tonight!

I should be better at saying no

I went to another job candidate dinner despite saying I wouldn't. I ended up being sick afterwards again, and missing the job talk because of it. I should follow the rules I make for myself because I usually know what I'm talking about! Still not feeling great today, so I will have to post more next time :)

Reviewing Applications

It is application season in our department – we're hiring  for three new positions (one tenure-track and two term positions), and graduate students and honours students have submitted their applications as well. So at every level, we have the extra job of evaluating people to decide whether we want to work with them. It is an exhausting process.

I am on the graduate application committee for our clinical program, and this weekend reviewed forty-five applications, rating them as excellent, good, acceptable, or unacceptable. Tomorrow I meet with the committee and we compare our ratings and decide which students are high priority for an offer, taking into consideration which faculty members are high priority to get students. I am happy to have taken graduate students each of the last two years, and have decided that it's best not to take a student this year. After reviewing all of the graduate applications, there was no one who applied to work with me who stood out as excellent, so I think this is a good decision. It also makes being on the selection committee a bit easier, because I don't have to worry about the politics of advocating for myself.

I am only minimally involved with the faculty search, attending meet and greet sessions and job talks. I went to one awkward dinner (awkward not because of the job candidate but because of a particular faculty member in attendance) at a steakhouse (looking back, I don't know why I agreed to this at all, since there was obviously nothing on the menu that a vegetarian could eat), but after that decided not to say yes to any further requests of this nature. We have had three of four job candidates come through, and the last one is next week. If we are unable to hire for all of the positions from this pool, there will be more interviews, and more awkward dinners to say no to.

The applications for the honours program are technically not due until tomorrow, though we have already been given a spreadsheet with information about the applications that have been handed in so far.

Once again, I am happy to be on the other side of all of these applications, but evaluating people based on limited information to decide whether you want to work with them for a period lasting from one year to potentially thirty years (in the case of the faculty hires) is not so easy. It seems easy to make a mistake, and although the anxiety is much lower being on the side of things, there is a sense that these decisions are something of a heavy weight. I will be glad when this is all over!