Minnesota Golden Hour

Hi Everyone! Here is my lovely face in my new lovely house in the lovely Minnesota golden hour. Today was my first day of work. It was filled with a lot of sitting and one of my least favorite things EVER!....Phone calls.

Wins for the day:  I didn't get lost at the Arden Hills Campus. I got a free lunch. I got to meet Beth Ford (aka the boss lady of supply chain and operations at LOL..her handshake was something else). I got to read a book. I got some sweet polo shirts.

Losses for the day: I got lost getting out of my neighborhood. I got lost getting back into my neighborhood.

Thats it for now. I have to go figure out where St. Cloud, Minnesota is. (Is that where Charlie St. Cloud was filmed? Zac Efron is that you!?) Anyways...

Stay tuned! Stay hungry!
-Taryn Julia

MinnesoTa'ryn: I'm Here!

Welp! I'm here in Minnesota, Eagan to be exact. I have met my lovely Minnesota family already, unpacked a few of my boxes, did my pilot grocery shopping (in a Trader Joes!) and have experienced my first Juicy Lucy! Let me recap a little....

Heres a little cheap screen shot of our trek to Minnesota

I started in my home for the past 5 years, San Luis Obispo, made a quick day stop in Alameda to pack all of my things and get a final Bay Area meal and then Tuesday Dad and I began our trip to the Midwest! On our first day we made it through Nevada until we reached Tooele, Utah. (Shout out to the Comfort Inn and Suites in Tooele for being one of the nicest hotels I've ever stayed in!)  Tooele is about 15-20 minutes away from Salt Lake City where apparently it still snows. The first time I've seen snow in a long time! 

Day 1 total driving time: ~10 hours. Hotel rating: 4.5/5 stars. Weather: Cold. Cold. Cold. Scenery: Beautiful! Max Speed Limit: 80 MPH! 

Somewhere in Colorado. Somehow the only place we stopped.

Touristing Tourist Dad. 

After Tooele we made our way through Colorado and stopped at the boarder in Cheyenne, Wyoming. (Digression: we were suppose to power our way to South Dakota but due to weather, and by weather I mean thunder storms and tornados, we made a last minute decision to take a different route. And....) On the way to Cheyenne, we stopped in this tiny tiny town called Rawlins. On a whim, I decided that we would go take a tour of the old Rawlins Penitentiary. Abandoned in the '80s, the penitentiary was the home to hundreds and hundreds of prisoners. We were shown the cell blocks, the showering stalls, the death chambers, death row, and the original hanging location. We also got to see the baseball field, the library and the dining area (which had some really wonderful, original murals done by an inmate named Art, who had one arm). It wasn't until after we left Rawlins that I started to do my research only to find that the prison is rated one of the top ten haunted places in the United States! AHHHH! Good choice self. 

Our lovely tour guide in Cell Block B, I believe.

Dad finding his long lost cousin, Something-Something Yee, who happened to also be a cook.

Probably a wrong place, wrong time sort of thing. Or not, he does look like a Scary. 

Causing trouble in Wyoming

The view from the jails' baseball field. 

Anywhose, onward to Cheyenne.  Cheyenne is a cute little town, with a massive railroad running through it. We had dinner in town at The Albany. Delish. Around town they have these human sized cowboy boots, each painted with a different design by different local artists. For breakfast we went to the Luxury Diner, where part of the restaurant is in an old caboose! 90% of the diners were old dudes that obviously go to the diner at least once every week.  (I found out that Carl was 84 and had cataract surgery last year. George had a pancake that morning because he hasn't had one in a while. And Steve didn't want anything with sugar in it for his oatmeal...he also skipped out on the coffee and diet coke. Way to be healthy Steve!) From breakfast we headed to.....Lincoln, Nebraska! 

Day 2 total driving time:~ 7 hours. Hotel rating: 2.5/5 stars (cause it smelled funny) Weather: Rainy! and Cold! Not the business. Scenery: I don't really know, it was raining too hard. Theres cool rock things...I think. Max Speed Limit: Probably 75MPH but it was raining. 

From Cheyenne we headed to Lincoln, Nebraska. I was aiming for Omaha but that pesky College World Series was happening! Of course, being in Nebraska and 50 miles from Omaha, we had to have some Omaha Steak! So off to Misty's Steakhouse we went! Delish! And of course I wanted ice cream and guess what!? The University of Nebraska, Lincoln was a convenient 10 minutes from us. UNL's "Dairy Store" is plopped right in their dairy pilot plant, in their food science building. (I had french toast and Dad had peach!) UNL is a beautiful campus, almost beautiful enough to make me think about getting a second masters (ha! not). It was pretty nifty seeing their pilot plant, comparing it to the one at Poly and being able to identify all of the machines and whatnot. (My extra year of school did pay off!)

Day 3 total driving time:~7 hours. Hotel rating: 3.5/5 stars. Weather: Hot! Scenery: Flat Flat Flat. Max Speed Limit: Probably 75MPH again.

Last day of driving! From Lincoln, we passed through Omaha and Des Moines. Then Minnesota! FYI Minnesota has a really cool welcome sign when you enter the state...that of course I missed. The sign says "Minnesota welcomes you!" What it should say is "Minnesota welcomes you...to bumpy pot hole roads and the most confusing highways ever!"

So I'm here now after 4 longs days of traveling. As sad as it sounds Dad and I haven't really done much because of 'car-lag,' the equivalent to jet-lag. (Common symptoms include: sleepiness, tiredness, snooze all the time'ness). Thats it for now. I'll talk about a Juicy Lucy next time because it's that important. Till then...

Stay tuned! Stay hungry!

-Taryn Julia

Where I've Been. Where I'll Be.

Updates...updates...
Well I'll start with this, happy mothers's day! Moving on...

Speaking of moving... I'm moving to Minnesota in about a month! I'm about 40% excited, 50% terrified and the other 10% is just filled with a proportionate mixture of stress, joy and some panicked moments. I think at this point I am most stressed about finding a stinken place to live! ( which makes me even more excited to see the tail end of summer so I can find a place to stay-stay for more than just a year.)  Let me elaborate more about my internship, which is not much of an elaboration.
This summer I'll be working with Land O' Lakes in the Continuous Improvement department. For the duration of summer I'll have three (maybe two depending on how fast I work) projects to work on. L.O.L.'s ( as it's casually called) headquarters are in Arden Hills, MN. As far as I know, I'll be commuting between Arden Hills, Spencer (in Wisconsin) and Pine Island (which is in Minnesota and is also not an island as far as I'm concerned). The Spencer facility produces powdered cheese (I think...) like the stuff that makes your fingers orange, post Cheetos massacre and the Pine Island facility makes processed cheese ( I.e. The stuff that turns your insides orange, post nacho massacre).

That's basically all I know for now. Next I have to plan my trip for getting out there. Yay for road trips! As I project that I'll be having some quality me time in Minnesota (I promise I won't be too much of a turtle) I'm going to try to keep this more updated, if anything so yawl can see more Minnesota! Maybe I'll call those entries 'Life at L.O.L' or  'Mini-Sodas' or 'Wait, this isn't California'. Whooooooo knows. Until next time....

Stay tuned! Stay hungry!
-Taryn Julia

Churn Baby, Churn!

If you are any where around my age you know how to finish "In West Philadelphia born and raised...." And that means you probably remember this scene:

And while this post has nothing to do with corndogs (which I love) or lemonade, the whole "Churn baby churn" does!

Today, at school, we made....butter! Surprisingly ( or not) this isn't the first time we've made butter. The first go around looked like this: 4 grad students, 10 mason jars and 1 gallon of whole milk followed by at least three days of sore arms. If you are of the ambitious type you can make butter at home; just fill a mason jar with some whole milk, tighten the lid REALLY tight and shake shake shake shake (all bar tender like!). You'll start to notice that it'll change from a liquid sound to a sloshy sound to a definite ball of something sound. You could probably stand to drain it then shake it around some more. During this process the milk fat globules are being broken down and sort of huddling together. While this is happening all of the water in milk (which is about 80%) is being squished out so at the end of the butter making process you'll have the butter and the buttermilk! (Just a small nugget of info: the cultured buttermilk you find at the grocery store is just skim milk with some bacteria or acid). Its' that easy!
That brings us to today, our second round of butter making was WAY less labor intensive but still as interesting! Today we used a commercial (pilot scale) continuous butter churn which basically looks like a missile launching submarine. These churns usually consist of three main parts: the balance tank which feeds the milk, the sieving/raking tube which does all the work of separating and huddling the butter grains and finally the texturizer which is a line up of plates with different sized holes that makes the butter smooth and pack-able (like what you see at the stores). Our texturizer section of our machine was maybe a foot long however some texturizers in big butter making plants can be upwards of 35 feet! The principle of the continuous machine is basically the same as the hand churning.

Those are butter grains. They're usually about the size of golf balls before they fall into the texturizer. 

This little window looks into the texturizer after they've been passed through the sieves. Those squigglys fall into another section that has counter rotating screw-looking things. After the butter's passed through the screw-looking things they come out of a nozzle! 

Nifty huh!? Well this post has another butter related purpose too. If all goes according to plan I will be working for Land O' Lakes this summer as a manufacturing intern! YAY! 

Go make some butter!

Stay tuned! Stay hungry!

-Taryn Julia

HI!....

.....atus!
IT'S ALREADY FEBRUARY! That's three months of me being really neglectful and lazy. I don't really have a direction for this/my next post, so think of this as filler or a postcard of sorts until I have a pocket of time until I can share more yum-yums with you! Here's a quick peek at what has happened within the last three months (food wise, that is)

And in the words of the great OutKast.... "So fresh and so clean"...milk! 

Gigantic red bell peppers! 

Salami, oven roasted tom toms, Prooosciuuutto, toasty bread topped with Camembert. We may need to monitor my charcuterie obsession. 

Beautiful friend Jess T. with my "You Can Stand Under My Chanterella" at our fave spot- Sally Loo's. AKA the place where 1/3rd of my paycheck goes...

Shoefly Pie. One day I'll lament about how much I hate making pie. 

Kimmy Giblets, the turkey from this years lack of a full house Thanksgiving. 

My littles Sous Chef, A. Yee! Look at those recipe notes! 

Some delish sandwich, again at Sally Loos

Sister, at Umami Burger in Oakland. Can you say Truffle Overload. I hope not cause that's not possible! 

Mocha-choco-latte-ya-ya. At Wes Cafe in Alameda.

Scoop of T. J's vanilla ice cream with a sprinkle of homemade Sriracha Lime Salt (that everyone got for Christmas). *Recipe coming soon! 

Again, a lil charcuterie!

My entry for Sakura of America's favorite quote competition! 

Aebleskivers-a loverly dutch pancake! 

Oh look. All caught up. So with this coming year I really hope to not only share more recipes (cause there's so many in my head) but also some more personal musings of what it's like to be a youngish food scientist; my hopes, my dreams, my fears, but most importantly my favorite dessert. For now you can look forward to recipes for....

• 'Oh Mah Goodness' Carrot Everything Soup!
• Sriracha Lime Salt and other yum yum seasonings 
• How to Grow and Re-grow and Re-grow again Green Onions
• Not-so-rustic-but-down-right-tasty 'Cowboy Quiche'

And hopefully in the near-to-far future experiments on....

• Cheese-you can cut it like the pros.....
• TOFU!- its the new frontier! 
• Bread-cause, ya know, carbs!
• Meal Planning?-too grown up?
• Smoothies?-how much whey protein is too much whey protein!?

So I hope your new year has brought you plenty of joy, good health but most importantly delicious food!

Stay tuned! Stay hungry!

-Taryn Julia

Falling Into Fall...

Here in California, especially the Central Coast, we are fortunate enough to have pretty mild and consistent weather throughout the year. Unfortunately for us that means not witnessing leaves really, really, really changing colors like they do on the East Coast. That's okay though, I'll make-do with our sunny skies and snow-less winters.

So to get into the Fall spirit a gaggle of my friends and I decided to visit Slo Creek Farms for a little apple picking! 

On 40 acres, there were aisle and aisle of apple trees chalked full of apples. With the exception of other apple pickers, it was pretty quiet in between the apples trees; really serine and placid. The tall, bushy trees really separated us from the rest of the farm, the cars, the road; making it a really nice escape from the bustle of life. 

I could probably stick my hands out, close my eyes and pick a dozen apples without even trying.

For the dozen or so apples that I actually picked there had to be at least two dozen apples that were too heavy or old and would just fall down. This made me sad to know they won't reach their full apple potential (or as I like to call it "apple-tential") but then I thought about it and at some point they'll turn into dirt and eventually turn into an apple tree again! The circle of life! 

At the end of our excursion I came home with a few bug bites (this was a last minute adventure and I was wearing a skirt) two apples in my tummy and a dozen in a brown bag.

Apple Picking. How much more Fall can you get!?

Till next time!

Stay tuned! Stay hungry!

-Taryn Julia

*I would like to dedicate this post to the amazing Food Science legend, Dr. Hany Khalil, whose absence will be felt around the world and beyond. I am so fortunate to have met this man on the very first day of my food science career, a career that will truly be forever shaped by his guidance. I have learned that the world is a big place, so you have to learn as much as you can in order to help as much as you can. So Dr. Khalil, next time we meet, lunch is on me.* 

How Gourd-geous!

Fall is here! Yay! That means sweaters and red leaves and lots of tea! It also means gourds!!  
My love for winter squashes and melons has been a bumpy one. Our first affair was one of hatred because of the laborious hours put into roasting them and risking chopping off my fingers. Now our love has turned into a relationship of adoration and amazement.
I love squash! Plain and simple. This past week I have roasted two different gourds. One being butternut squash the other being an....I don't know. It was just at my house so I had to make it. Maybe you can help me identify it!

Here it is all naked and de-seeded.  I have no idea what it is! Its sweet and has a really soft inside, not to nutty, not too stringy. Help!

For my butternut squash.... I cut the top and bottom off. Scored it in a criss-cross fashion and smothered it in olive oil, salt, pepper and garlic for about 45 minutes  to an hour at 425°F in the oven.  And then I demolished about half of it in 15 minutes. 

S'marvelous crackling pepper and salt in oil.  *drooooool*

Poor lil guy didn't even stand a chance. The scoring helped the squash roast a little faster and made it easy to pick, pull and eat right off the plate. 

What's your favorite fall dish?

Coming soon-Fall Time Carrot Soup! 

Stay tuned! Stay hungry!

-Taryn Julia