As an engineer, I work with a lot of smart people who are logically- and scientifically-minded. I share this perspective, so it makes for a comfortable and enjoyable environment for me. However, many at my workplace and in the larger scientific community hold to a naturalistic worldview akin to that espoused by its more vocal proselyte, Richard Dawkins. While I do not intend in this post to present a complete rebuttal to this perspective, I do want to explain how I, a self-considered “reasonable” man, can be both a devout Christian and an honest lover of science. I’ve already presented much of this in a video series that I’m almost done uploading (ran into a snag with Blip.tv and I’m migrating to Vimeo), so feel free to check it out. But I thought it’d be valuable to give a more succinct summary in writing. I considered writing an original post, but then read through an exchange I had with an atheist friend of mine a while back, and thought I’d just post it. I’ve paraphrased his comments so as not to reprint them without permission.
AtWi80D.09: Pizza Margherita
(Following my foray into international cuisine via Epicurious’ Around the World in 80 Dishes series.)
Although I had already cooked something twice in the past week, I was still in a culinary mood and decided to try pizza with homemade dough! Pepperoni and mushrooms is my old standby when it comes to ordering pizza, but nooo…the Epicurious series had to go with a true Italian classic: Pizza Margherita.
Pizza Margherita
I wound up not eating until after 11pm with this recipe, because I started after work and had to get the ingredients first. My first time making a “real” dough that has to rise and everything. It actually wasn’t bad! Turned out nice and fluffy and spread out pretty easily into a nice pizza pie.
Around the World in 80 Dishes: #8
Time to try a dessert! In honor of the just-finished Winter Olympics hosted in Vancouver, I decided to go with Canada’s culinary contribution to the series: Maple Sugar Pie. I’m pretty inexperienced at both desserts and baking, so this was definitely a new thing for me.
Maple Sugar Pie
I’m honestly not a huge fan of pecan pie, so I wasn’t sure I’d like this that much. I do like maple syrup, though, so that was promising. Turns out this is a quite easy and tasty dessert and was a hit among my coworkers who I shared it with. Smells and tastes like breakfast!
Around the World in 80 Dishes: #7
For this week’s dinner, it was a Red Snapper dish from Veracruz, Mexico.
Red Snapper, Veracruz Style
Not like any other Mexican dish I’ve had, with a very Spanish/Mediterranean blend of ingredients and flavors. I was a bit concerned about the olives and capers since I don’t really like either, but the dish was amazing. The raisins balanced out the dryness of the olives and capers, and the jalepeños made it all the better. Scrumptious.
Apartment Aquaponics Project
As you may have seen from other recent blog postings, I’ve recently been checking out epicurious.com. I happened to check their blog a couple weeks ago when they had a brief posting about aquaponics. Aquaponics refers to the growing of plants in water (hydroponics), together with fish (aquaculture) in a closed system, where the fishes’ waste feeds the plants, which in turn clean the water for the fish. It struck me as a pretty nifty idea, not to mention a fun project and practical justification for having a fish tank and fountain (both of which I like).
So I began shopping around for kits and such, but eventually realized that it shouldn’t be too difficult just to make my own. After reading up quite a bit, I finally came up with a design idea, bought the parts, and in a week’s time went from buying the first parts to adding the fish and plants. The system has been running for a few days now and both plants and fish look healthy, so no disasters yet. Time will tell if this turns out to be a productive herb garden (moreso than my traditional attempt which was rather unimpressive).
