I have come to the conclusion and with increasing confidence that many biologists love to cook. Perhaps you are picturing them throwing some burgers on the grill or making killer chili.... no I mean that numerous biologists I know make on a semi-regular basis and with avid enthusiasm, fancy 4 course gourmet meals and exotic fare.
For example, BOTH of my collaborators in Mexico are involved in a 'gourmet club' that includes a group of several additional Mexican bat biologists who all alternate making and hosting gourmet fancy dinners. My adviser makes pies for fun and attempts to emulate her favorite dishes (generally carne asada comes into play). She may have learned this from an old committee member and bat-biologist of legend 'Mike' who attempts to dis-entangle the exact recipes from his favorite restaurants through rigours and I assume enjoyable experiments. My lab mate is addicted to the food network and is a good cook. Down the hall an undergraduate researcher brings in homemade meringue pies to lab meetings and makes special cheesecakes for birthdays. The field biologist Mike O'Farrell has published a cookbook on how to cook in the field. A favorite evolutionary biologist of mine- Hanna Kokko has a link on her lab page to her 'good food society' which seem very fun. (by the way...I remained strong and did not have a David Letterman trying to get Oprah on his show moment... but really Hanna if I am ever in town....). Even my friend Natalie, the coolest PhD holding biologist I know-who rock climbs and does field work in Alaska after being dropped off by a helicopter field-gear and all by a helicopter. But even cooler: she can fit her material world (mostly books, clothes and ski-gear) into the back of her truck (shes kind of like if Joni Mitchell and McGyver (to return to a recent post) had a daughter). Even she with her bohemian ways stunned me after years of freindship by making me dinner one night and wiping up an amazing and exotic salad (shes vegetarian but I love her anyway...) and admitted she loves to cook. (Mind you as the 'McGyver-esque soul' who's mother may have been a hippie, I imagine she only has one pot and uses it to make tofu stroganoff).
In sum is perhaps no surprise that biology departmental functions are a culinary joy as well as interestingly competitive when it comes to the 'best' stuffing or mashed potatoes.
Why do many biologists love to cook? I have come up with several possible reasons but I think it has to do with two main things.
1. Cooking is a scientific process: meat turns brown etc. when you cook it in part because proteins are being denatured, bread rises because yeast produce gases, jelly 'sets' i.e. solidifies because a new chemical structure is forming a'la pectin. So there is the main and most obvious 'its because biologists are scientists and cooking is (if you want it to be) scientific.
2. However, I think there is another reason (this is at least how I explain to myself at my sudden affection for cooking). Much of biology is comprised of incomplete days and tasks. Many days you go to the office and read articles to gain knowledge or attend meetings to question it. Some days you write proposals. After several days of proposal tweaks you send it off and wait to see if you get funding. Meanwhile, on another day, you work on getting permits for your research. Days pass and you wait for the permits and if you are lucky you've heard back from granting agency. If you are even more lucky you were funded. More days and you wait on your permits and meanwhile you order your lab supplies and continue to wait. You secure your permits and supplies and start your work. Probably something about your research does not work the first time... you wait. Days and days you may work to perfect an assay to make sure it works before you use your valuable samples that took days and days to collect. Then for days and days you run samples. Days and days you run your statistics (only after days of entering data). You start to make some conclusions and spend a few days talking to others about your results. You spend days or months writing up your results. You send them to co-authors and wait to hear back. You make changes and send the written results to a journal and wait for their decision. So on and so on. This is obviously the less-glamorous version of biology and truly I am happy to be in academia however... with time answering the 'what did you get done today' question wears on a person.
So indeed, most days you do not come home and think 'gee I am so glad I cured cancer and saved the polar bears today.' In fact more likely you don't even think 'Gee I am so glad I finished that side project on why pika prefer grasses over shrubs today'. Nope. So what do you do? 
While members of M*A*S*H told jokes and made bootlegged gin in their tents and Zorba the Greek would say 'now... we dance' -my advice?
Now you cook.
Why? When you start you have nothing but.... But then you finish and when you finish you have (hopefully) something delicious to share with your loved ones or at least to eat while you read or watch TV. Suddenly when someone asks "what did you get done today?" you can reply- "I checked e-mail, made a graph, ordered some pipette tips and made stuffed mushrooms and cheese souffle with rhubarb cobbler for desert."
And who can argue with that? 
No comments:
Post a Comment