Lecture 1: Summary

This blog presents the journey of two University of Chicago neurobiology grad students who are learning to cook and who sometimes like tomatoes, but usually don't.  Join us as we branch out from pasta!

Not only are we synthesizing satiable cuisine, but we even stop by the lab once in a while...or a lot.   Therefore, be warned: Science is imminent.

We will approach the cooking process as a series of experiments.  We will hold to our standards as scientists and provide you with the entire procedure, from flour to fork, and all the honesty in the world if we screw up.

The National Fire Protection Association has provided the world with this handy-dandy Hazard Rating System (a.k.a. 704, a.k.a. "fire diamond"), which we have decided to borrow and adapt for our uses (Figure 1).  Normally, blue = health risk, red = flammability, and yellow = instability/reactivity, but we do not expect our dishes to catch fire, blow a gasket, or send you to the hospital.  That said, if you would like to recreate these results, we recommend making sure you have a smoke alarm and fire extinguisher on hand.

Here's how we'll rate our results:

Figure 1.  NFPA Fire Diamond (modified)

Prep time: Units in minutes.  That's assuming 6000 jiffies per minute.  (1 jiffy = .01 s)

Difficulty: Scale from 1 (easy as pie...although, is pie that easy?) to 10. (Gordon Ramsay on a bad day)

Course: "A horse is a horse, of course, of course, And no one can talk to a horse of course. That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mr. Ed."  (lunch, dessert, dinner, midnight snack, etc.)

Generally speaking, when you want to learn something, a good place to start is with a pile of textbooks.  Figuring that becoming neurochefs was no exception, we chose a selection to get us started (Figure 2).  We're going to be two smart cookies after reading these!

Figure 2: We'll be two smart cookies after reading these!