baked figs

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Baked figs on creme fraiche

Bought some figs. Realised I don’t particularly like figs raw. So I baked them in some honey. Decided it needed something extra, so sat them on some creme fraiche. Looks kinda disgusting, but tastes pretty good. Would have been better on plain ol’ cream or with a dollop of ice cream.

P. M. S.

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The acronym that many men fear…

A sudden slew of papers in the last week on the subject of the female hormonal cycle, which all try to explain why some women behave differently prior to their menstrual periods. This is a phenomenon with which hetero men use to explain away what they think of as irrational behaviour in women. And how many have witnessed foolhardy men asking a woman: “You on your period, or what?”?

Silly human behaviour aside, some people take the issue of PMS and its associated behaviour quite seriously:

  • Hormonal Cycle Modulates Arousal Circuitry in Women Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, by Goldstein et al. in the Journal of Neuroscience this week. Their findings? That MRI scans showed an increase in acvitity in the parts of the brain involved in the stress response in the early follicular phase (i.e. start of the menstrual period) when the women were shown unpleasant images. (This was, honestly, quite a yucky paper to read, stuffed to the gills with jargon and completely free of clear statements of facts… In fact, it reminded me of those crappy business-speak articles, and of the Dilbert comic strip. Someone really needs to send up scientists the way Scott Adams has with the cubicle-world…)
  • PMS brain, an article about the work of I. Mody at UCLA (I know… add an “o”… You’d be surprised how many scientists have very fitting names for their subject matter… Mine is one too…). This isn’t a paper, which makes it SO much easier to read, and more understandable too. OK, I’m a little biased because they do some REAL science here, looking at the different ways neurons fire electrical signals at different parts of the ovarian cycle, and not that hand-waving guesstimation of brain imaging (I’ll eat my words soon, no doubt). They found that a receptor in the brain actually changes its subunits (the components of the receptor), which causes changes in intensity of electrical firing in the neurons. While it’s not very accurate to compare a rodent’s oestrus cycle to a human, this could provide a mechanism for the above finding. The paper’s here if anyone’s interested.

So, essentially, the cycling hormones can cause changes in brain activity, and as such, lead to behavioural changes. The mechanism proposed by the second paper suggests a reason why different women have different responses to their fluctuating hormones, with some suffering from depression while others become more aggressive. All still pie-in-the-sky though…

Equal rights for men now!

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From BBC news: Equal rights take a back seat.

I find myself in agreement with the premise of the initial objection… The woman was unreasonable (but is that because she’s a woman or that she’s just an unreasonable person?). (And let’s not forget this was on a First-to-breakdown-Scotrail overcrowded commuter train, where tensions tend to be higher than the norm.)

I want equal rights for women, and with that comes equal responsibility. I don’t see why men *have* to be sole breadwinners anymore (in a heterosexual relationship…); every couple should come to an agreement that does not depend on the old gender roles.

I don’t expect a man to open doors for me (and am still very unsettled by the way some men *refuse* to let me open doors for them, to the extent that they reach past me to hold the damn door even though I’ve already opened it… trying not being churlish here, but there comes a point where it feels ridiculous). I’d give my seat up on a bus/train for anyone, man/woman/indeterminate of whatever age if they looked uncomfortable standing.

But at the same time, I find myself vaguely unsettled by the bloke’s reasoning:

“You’re joking, aren’t you? What? You want my seat and the right to vote? Forget it.”

What the hell has the right to vote have to do with it? Now he’s just being a bit of a dinosaur…

But we should consider his reaction: a little more vehement than I would expect. Are we (modern females, that is) ostracising men? Are they frustrated? The writer of the BBC piece considers himself a minority:

But, I suppose, being a member of THE most discriminated against minority (white, middle-aged, heterosexual males) that my opinion will be dismissed as male chauvinist claptrap.

Is that his perception? Or is it real? Are men discriminated against? By who? Other men? Women? As a female, I know that discrimination against women in the workplace is very much alive and kicking. It gets worse the higher up the hierarchy you go. Is this the same for men? Or is it that they see policy makers publically favouring women with tax breaks or maternity leave for having children? While it may look one-sided, my very biased opinion is that these measures are only slowly narrowing the gap. The Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaws they may imagine when they think of modern women don’t really exist in RealLifeTM.

What next? Will men take to the streets in protest?

Souffle omelette

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Souffle omelette
Originally uploaded by framboise.

It seems too me that I’ve been eating chicken for most of my lunches and dinners (probably because I freeze the excess dinners for lunch…). And although I found a decent source of beef at Whole Foods, I can’t bring my stingy self to pay for it regularly. And I’ve yet to try the lamb. So, tonight, it’s the old standby meat-less, tofu-less, pulse-less recipe: souffle omelette.

It’s nothing special; the only difference is you beat the egg whites separately from everything else. Which isn’t hard if you’re only whisking the whites from two or three eggs. (Bulking up to the 6 eggs normally required for cakes takes a bit more time, and lazy git here tends to use an electric whisk for that.)

Ingredients required to feed two (or one greedy guts):

  • 3 eggs, yolks and whites separated
  • a handful of cheese, grated (I’d recommend parmesan, and whatever else you have in. In this instance, I was trying to use up some cheese left by friends, which consisted of fake mozarrella and plastic cheddar – not perfect, but adequate.)
  • seasoning (salt/pepper; when I’m feeling chefy, I add chillies or Moroccan-stylee spices)

See here for a composite of ingredients.

Method:

  1. (Turn the grill on… Whack it as high as it’ll go)
  2. Beat the egg whites with a super-clean whisk in a super-clean bowl. Needless to say, both bowl and whisk must be desert-dry too.
    When you get to the soft peak stage (you’ll know, cos your triceps will start to complain), fold in the egg yolks, grated cheese and seasoning. (Again, this whole folding malarky must be done carefully so you don’t collapse the air-inflated egg whites. The figure of eight action is my preferred method.) It’s not necessary to mix it well.
  3. Melt a knob of butter in a pan (non-stick if you believe in such things), and flop the mixture in.
  4. Allow to cook until the base is firm enough to move about when you shuggle the pan, but not so long that the whole damn thing solidifies.
  5. Stick the wobbly mixture under the grill and allow a minute (or two) for the mixture to JUST brown (more golden than brown, ok?).
  6. Fold over and serve.

I committed the cardinal sin of letting my omelette cook for 30 seconds too long, and it was a bit more firm than I like… It should be a wee bit sloppy when it comes out of the whole process. (I also beat my egg whites a bit too much cos I was having so much fun…) But if you’re worried about salmonella poisoning, I guess you’d be better off cooking it till it’s rubbery and killed all the joy of eating a proper omelette.

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