You may have heard that there was a lunar eclipse last night, where the earth moved between the sun and the full moon. Around 9 pm yesterday, myself, Rory, and two reluctant Bostons gathered outside on a very chilly night to view nature's spectacle.My first impression of the event was this: I must watch entirely too much sci-fi and/or campy horror space movies. I say this because I honestly expected the whole eclipse to last about 5 minutes, like it would be this dramatic blotting out of the moon and don't blink lest you miss it. Not so! It's like 3 hours long from start to finish. You can take a bathroom break and not miss anything.
Secondly, the moon further shattered my overblown expectations by not blacking out completely. Instead it turned reddish (I'm sure for some very important scientific reason that I am way to lazy to look up right now).
Finally, the whole event just left me contemplating how amazing it all is really. It's remarkable that humans have the capacity to test, and learn, and theorize, and prove how the world around and beyond them works. That's awesome.
Garde Manger's theme this week was gourmet appetizers, so I got to make (among other things) a sauteed foie gras appetizer. Foie gras is fattened duck liver that is now illegal to serve in Chicago due to the inhumane treatment of the duck (and please don't email me about animal rights because it is delicious!). Mine looked sort of like this, but I made a blueberry sauce to go with mine (and here you see the compromises made by a nutritionist/chef: pair an animal product that is approximately 98% fat with a fruit that is high in antioxidants):
I also memorized about 30 different polyatomic ions for Chemistry this week, but I don't have any fun pictures to accompany that (ammonium ions, RULE, YEAH, WOO-HOO!!!).