The Ritual of Breakfast

For my entire life, I have pretty much eaten the same basic variation of breakfast every morning. It goes something like this:

Orange Juice and Milk
Cold Cereal (Cheerios before Celiac, Rice Chex after - no exceptions) without Milk or Oatmeal
Vanilla Yogurt or Eggs
Apples with Cheese or Grapes
Single Shot of Espresso

Sometimes, I get creative and fancy with the eggs, but that's honestly it. Other meals don't follow such a ritualistic pattern, but breakfast always does. Does anyone else have such a strict breakfast ritual?

A Short Tribute

"Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line."

— Benoît Mandelbrot, in his introduction to The Fractal Geometry of Nature


Once again, I have gotten behind in my blogging. I wish I could say it was solely due to a lack of time, but honestly, allergies have gotten in the way. I find it to be quite difficult to write when the world around you is spinning and your head is pounding.

Moving on, I just wanted to do a short tribute to Benoît Mandelbrot, a famous mathematician who passed away this last week. Mandelbrot was responsible for a slew of results in a wide range of fields from mathematical physics to mathematical finance, but he was most famous for his work on fractal geometry. Indeed, Mandelbrot was the one to first coin the term "fractal", and the Mandelbrot set was named after him.


The dominant property of fractals is recursive self-similarity. For example, if you have an image of a fractal shape and you then zoom in on a portion of that image, the original and zoomed-in images will have very similar properties (at least statistically). If you keep zooming-in, you will keep experiencing similar phenomena - in this sense, fractals have a fine structure at arbitrarily small scales. Many objects in nature exhibit fractal characteristics, such as clouds, mountain ranges, tree branches, and snowflakes, but of course these objects only exhibit such characteristics to a certain measurable, not arbitrary, level.


Fractal geometry was one of the objects that originally drew me into the field of mathematics. As a freshman in college studying Aerospace Engineering, I remember frequently going to the office of my instructor for Differential Equations and seeing a fractal image on his door. This image was generated using strange attractors, and it inspired me to start researching chaos theory and dynamical systems.


My voyage through the mathematics world would eventually wind itself into the realms of partial differential equations, numerical analysis, and fluid dynamics, and my current research is dedicated to the numerical study of the incompressible Navier-Stokes equations. And with regards to that, Mandelbrot conjectures in his treatise The Fractal Geometry of Nature: "Furthermore, I contend that the singularities of the solutions of the Navier-Stokes equations can only be fractals." When studying the fractal characteristics of turbulence and energy spectra, the above statement makes increasingly more sense. And so it seems I may be back again to the land of fractals, a land that Mandelbrot brought to our attention and wonderfully explored for us. So thank you, Professor Mandelbrot.

A couple of other comments regarding the world of mathematics:

• In a post on his blog last night, Terry Tao remarked: "And if the proof of (say) a lemma is analogous to a short story, then the statement of that lemma can be viewed as analogous to the moral of that story." I doubt Tao intended it, but I found the statement to be a fun analogy illustrating the literary merits of mathematical proof.
  
  
• The blog Intersections - Poetry with Mathematics had an entry last week detailing three poems about the three classes of triangle. I found the poems, originally written in French, to be fun and clever.
  

I guess it's time for new racing spikes.

Back in Austin

After a long day of flights and layovers, I have finally made it back to Austin. I already miss Williamsburg and Sarah quite a bit, but I do appreciate being back. I do, after all, have a dissertation to finish.

As I mentioned in my last blog post, Sarah and I spent the day yesterday in Richmond. While Sarah was hitting up the archives at the Library of Virginia for her Master's research, I got to see a bit of downtown. In particular, I was able to explore Shockoe Slip for a coffee shop (and I eventually stumbled on Shockoe Espresso). I found the area to be quite nice (and a bit overrun by tattooed hipsters). I even found a Segway store right in the heart of Shockoe Slip. Fun times.

Anyways, when Sarah was done at the archives, we decided to hit up a local eatery for some good eats. Inspired by a local magazine article, we settled on checking out Garnett's Cafe in the Fan District. Kendra Feather, the owner of Garnett's, follows a gluten-free diet and offers a large number of gluten-free options at the eatery. For the sandwiches, Garnett's offers Sami's Bakery gluten-free bread from Tampa Bay. I ordered the BLT with the gluten-free bread, and it was absolutely delicious. The flax and millet bread the sandwich was served on was fantastic and perfectly toasted. The mayonnaise was delicious, the bacon crisp, and the tomatoes optimally juicy. The sandwich even came with home-cooked French potato salad and pickles. Overall, I was very happy with our lunch choice. Bonus points: Elliott Smith played on the sound system during our meal. Perfection achieved.

When I got back to my apartment in Austin, I noticed that my pantry wasn't quite empty. I still had about one cup left of Arborio rice. Of course, that meant risotto again. This time around, I went for a much simpler recipe, being exhausted from the long trip home. I call this one Onion and Basil Risotto. If you wish, you can get creative with this recipe by adding cheese, extra spices, etc. However, the base dish is still delicious and fairly healthy as well. I recommend serving it as a first course, a la Italian style.

Onion and Basil Risotto


Ingredients:

1 cup of arborio rice
4 1/2 cups of chicken broth
10 fresh basil leaves
1 tablespoon of extra virgin olive oil
1/2 cup of chopped red onions
Black pepper to taste

Steps:

1. Combine the broth and basil leaves in a large saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat. Lower the heat to low and cook the basil broth for 10 minutes. Remove the basil leaves and continue to simmer the broth.
2. Heat a saucepan over medium heat for 2 minutes. Add the olive oil and onions and stir-fry for 2 minutes until the onions are golden. Add the rice and stir-fry for 2 minutes or until the rice is starting to toast.
3. Add a ladleful of the broth to the rice and stir. Continue stirring gently until the water of the broth has evaporated, which should take 1-2 minutes. Repeat adding a ladleful of broth, allowing the broth to be absorbed before adding the next ladleful. Make sure to continuously stir the risotto. When the last of the broth has been added (this should be around 17-18 minutes or so from the time the cooking started), the risotto should have an al dente texture. Season the risotto to taste with the black pepper and serve immediately.

The recipe makes 4-6 servings.

Espresso in a Paper Cup

Okay, time for a mini rant. My vacation in Virginia has been fantastic in just about every way except one minor detail - I still have not found a coffee shop that can pull off that near perfect shot. In Williamsburg, Sarah and I have been visiting Aroma's, a busy little coffee shop right in the heart of the colonial district. It's a fun, local sort of place. During my first visit, the owner went out of her way to make me comfortable, mentioning the gluten-free cookies her daughter had made for the shop. Awesome in every way. However, I have had mixed experiences with the espresso shots I have been served there. My first one was fantastic. Perfectly extracted (crema and all) into a properly sized demitasse cup. However, my second shot was served in a paper cup, even though I had specifically said "For here." Is this just an artifact of Starbucks culture? The entire flavor of an espresso shot is ruined once it is transferred to such a vessel. Anyways, the rest of my espresso drinks at Aroma's have been, for the most part, quite passable, but they have always been served in gigantic mugs instead of a demitasse. As a side note, never never never mix orange juice and espresso, no matter how sick you might be getting. It is just a bad idea. That was my mistake.

Anyways, I figured the whole espresso in a mug thing might have been a consequence of how busy Aroma's can get. However, today, I experienced the same thing at Shockoe Espresso in Richmond. A shot of liquid into a giant mug. I should mention that the espresso was quite nice (although just a tad bit over-extracted), but why the mug? Why encourage a "crema vanishing act"? I think I have become too much of a snob for my own good. And if you know of a fantastic coffee shop in Virginia (and in particular in the Williamsburg area), please let me know.

Third Update: Williamsburg!

So, for my final blog post of my recent series of three, I get to tell you all, the collective blogosphere, that I have made it to Williamsburg, the town of my fiancee. This is honestly the first time I have visited Sarah since she left Austin. It has been almost two months, but after a couple of days together, it honestly felt like we were apart only a few days. Crazy how that works. Anyways, I figure I would tell you about a few of the things we have been up to here, with a focus on food. Exciting, eh?

One of the things Sarah and I have always enjoyed doing together is exploring trails. Walk 'em, run 'em, bike 'em, climb 'em. Well, we did not get too adventurous while here, but we did travel down the highway to York River State Park to get in a short hike this past Saturday. The park contains over 25 miles of trails for the casual hiker or mountain biker. Unfortunately, many of these trails also allow for horses and the waste that comes with it. Nonetheless, the trails really were nice and pretty and allowed a nice view of the York River. They seemed ideal for a morning jog (note for next time!).


On Sunday, Sarah and I went to the CIAO (Colonial Italian American Organization) Italian Festival to do some fun crafts browsing, music listening, and wine tasting. Sarah also went for the delicious but unfortunately gluten-filled food =P. Overall, the festival was a great deal at only twelve dollars a ticket. The festival version of wine tasting was quite fun (and a bit intoxicating) - instead of sampling just one winery, we ended up sampling eight. There were wines of all kinds for all kinds of people, from the super sweet to the super dry to the super fruity. Our favorite wine of the day was probably the Barboursville 2007 Carbernet Franc Reserve. It was bolder than many of the other dry wines at the festival without being overbearing which is, in my opinion, a great combination of properties to have. I should make a final note that the best part of the festival was the free wine glasses, as displayed below with a bottle of 2009 Placido Chianti (also a great deal at under $7!) and a Halloween-style tablecloth.


After returning from the Italian festival, we went to a little restaurant called Food for Thought for dinner. If you are Celiac and find yourself in Williamsburg in the future, make sure you go here. It has an absolutely wonderful gluten-free menu. And you must try the Down South, a combination of grits, sauteed shrimp, bell peppers, mushrooms, and pan gravy. Make sure to get the "extra spicy" version - it is not as spicy as it sounds, and the spice does not come in the way of taste.

To conclude this post, let me make a trip around the world from the American south to northern Italy. That's right, last night, Sarah and I made risotto, that creamy and rich Italian rice dish. Sarah and I first tried to make risotto this past summer with mixed success. The dish we created was delicious but a bit too crunchy - not quite the ideal al dente one would like. This time, the dish turned out perfect. The base recipe for the risotto dish comes from Gluten-Free Girl's blog, but we made a couple of changes. I detail the recipe below.

Rich and Creamy Bacon Spinach Risotto

Ingredients:

5 cups of chicken stock
1/4 cup of butter
1 large red onion, diced
3 cloves of garlic, minced
6 pieces of bacon, shredded
2 cups of arborio rice
large pinch of nutmeg
3 tomatoes off the vine, chopped
6 ounce of spinach
1/2 cup of freshly grated Parmesan cheese

Steps:

1. Pour the stock into a large saucepan and slowly bring it to a boil. Reduce the heat until the stock is gently simmering.
2. Meanwhile, melt the butter in large skillet under medium heat and gently fry the onion, garlic, and bacon for 2-3 minutes until the onion has softened but not browned and the bacon is sealed. Stir in the rice and cook, stirring all the while, for 2 minutes until the rice is well cooked and starting to toast. This "toasting" stage is key to a classically made risotto.
3. Add a ladleful of the stock to the pan and cook gently until the stock is absorbed and stir continuously. Continue to add the stock in small quantities. I found I added stock every two minutes or so. When half of the stock has been used and the rice is creamy, season well and add the nutmeg and tomatoes.
4. Continue to add the stock until the risotto becomes thick but not sticky. This should be about 25-26 minutes from the time you started cooking.
5. Stir the spinach into the risotto for 2 minutes, then add the cheese at the last moment. Serve and eat immediately.

That's it. Make sure to use a large pan as to not make a mess, and do not overcook the risotto. The goal is al dente not mushy. I have included a few fun pictures of the cooking process below. Enjoy!

The Toasting of the Grains:



The Addition of Tomatoes:



The Addition of Spinach:



Dinner is Served:

Second Update: Shoes!

Last week was a wonderful week for a multitude of reasons. In this post, I go into reason #254: my new running shoes. This past spring, I began to try to abandon my ways of the past (heavy clonkers) for a brand new vision (training in flats). A crucial part of this transformation was a conversion to the Brooks Launch. From the moment I tried the shoes on, I was in love. They were lightweight at 9.9oz yet super springy. They forced me to run on my midfoot, making me feel light and fast. There was only one downside: the obnoxious and ugly color scheme.


Simply put, I was not a fan. But alas, things have changed! With a new school year came a new color scheme and with that a wrong was corrected, especially as I now have landed a pair of these beautiful shoes.


Black/Nightlife, you are alright with me. Especially when you are coupled with a sweet pair of Asics Hyperspeeds.