On Conferencing

This is Little One's favourite toy, Love. Love has never had much in the way of stuffing, and as such, is easily shoved into a corner or under a pillow or into the pocket of Hub's vest, to be lost for a day or a few weeks, and then found again. Little One takes Love on many adventures, sleeps with him, watches TV with him...in short, Love is a close companion. Little One is sweet by nature, despite having Cranky and Crabby as parents, and Nasty as a sister, and thus, Love is his favourite toy.

Before I left for my current conferencing adventure, I took a quick phone camera shot of Love. Conferencing is sort of fun, sort of slimy, sort of interesting, mostly just a stress-inducing trip to another part of the country (or world) to discuss arcane ideas and research results that most of the world doesn't particuarly care about. It's hard to get fired up about the work when you know full well that it's not really going to change the world. It's not going to make a shred of difference when you make your coffee in the morning, it's not going to matter when you go to work, unless you're working for NSERC or the feds or someone who dictates whether or not we get research money. Most of the time the results are tiny tiny cogs in a massive machine, and much of the work we do today isn't going to contribute to anything right away.

I'm mostly talking about the synthetic chemists, because from what I can tell, in other chemical disciplines it seems that many small contributions make a huge difference. Synthetic chemistry is turning into a combinatorial process, where hundreds of reactions are performed by robotics, analyzed via automated systems, and then examined by a human. If you can afford the several million to set up this process, then you will get ahead quickly. If you cannot, and you do things the old-fashioned way, with people and glassware and the like, then your results will be much slower and you will come by them much more labouriously.

And yet still, we applaud those who've made a modicum of "progress" with their work, those who are recognized outside of this country, therefore warranting recognition within our own ranks. How Canadian of us to believe that once we are noted by others, we can be feted by our own.

Yes, I'm cynical and I always have been, even though I'm well-known within my circle and enjoy a fair bit of success on my own, I have a hard time believing that it's warranted. The conference starts this evening with the plenary lecture (which T and I are blowing off for a good dinner) and then the conference mixer, always an amusing event. I will try to document it as accurately as possible, because as I said in a previous post, I am attending in my new-found role as pariah and I am very interested to see how things go tonight and through the rest of the week.
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Some Comments About Making Pizza

Pizza is a many-splendored thing, something to be savoured and experienced, with a bottle of good cab sauvignon. It is not to be folded over and gobbled up whilst quaffing warm beer. One of the most appalling sights I have ever been witness to was a group of graduate students from Wayne State University, who would each take two pieces of pizza, put them face to face on top of each other, and eat the thing like a sandwich. Horrifying, as though by shoving the maximum amount of pizza into their faces they were enjoying it more.

Pizza, as far as I can tell, has evolved from bruschetta (it's not "brushetta", the "ch" in Italian is pronounce "sk", so it's "brrrruskettta" if you roll the r and elongate the t sound a little bit) which is bread with tomatoes and garlic and other stuff on it. So your pizza crust should be light, not chewy, not leathery, and it should support the filling. In order to do that you need a dough recipe that gives you a wet dough, something with a lot of elasticity. If you make the dough then great, but I would suggest finding a source. A local pizza place may sell their dough, an Italian grocery store is a good bet, and sometimes bakeries sell pizza dough also. I can include a dough recipe later, not today. For my own use, I have found an excellent dough that's quite wet, so when I roll it out I have to add some flour....add as little as possible when you roll the dough out.

Your oven needs to be at a high temperature, at least 425F, and you'll bake the pizza on the lowest rack. Baking fast gives you a good crust that won't fall apart while you're eating. This also means though, that you have to pre-cook things like onions, peppers and mushrooms. Mushrooms can be done in the microwave, heated enough to drive off as much water as possible (drain them afterwards, through a strainer to get rid of the water). Onions and peppers and whole cloves of garlic can be fried together until they're carmelized.

There is a rule that says that any given pizza should only have three toppings. I regularly break this rule in order to meld flavours for a specific end result. You have to experiment to do this, but once you figure out what you like and how flavours work together, you can go ahead and make the pizza you love. I generally make at least two, sometimes three small pizzas for supper. One is "Joe's Pizza" which has tomato sauce, meat (prosciutto or cappocollo) mushrooms and red peppers...this is the pizza you eat when you're starving. And cheese.

Okay, hold on. Don't skimp on the tomato sauce, and don't ever skimp on the cheese. You want good food, don't use NoName Pizza Sauce, and don't use cheap low-fat mozzarella. Firstly, mozzarella isn't cheese. Use fruilano, it's nice and mild and it melts well. Provolone is okay but can be a bit stronger than most people like.

Potato (pre-cook them in the microwave) and garlic and pesto is excellent, as is chicken (yeah, no shit, precook that too) and pesto. Of course I'm assuming you will put cheese on the thing, so I'm not mentioning the melty cheese, it's a given. Another good combo is red pepprs, sweet onion and black olives with goat cheese and a bit of fruilano. Wild mushrooms, garlic (cooked first, unless you like it raw, which I don't) goat cheese with either pesto or a mild tomato sauce, also good. I don't care about the meat on a pizza, but if you like meat then make an all-meat combo. I do often add hot pepper flakes to Joe's Pizza to give it some whang.

Pizza is often mostly a matter of personal taste, but it should be good taste and you should put some consideration into the food you're about to eat. Turn the lights down, open a good bottle of a robust red. Crunch away with a loved one and savour the moment.