Seeing the recent ASBMB blog “Science and spices”, posted by Abhinav Dey in the Career Support Group (CSG) for STEM PhDs made me chuckle, reminding me of a funny exchange I had with my mother-in law (MIL). An extremely caring lady that she is, my MIL never allows me to cook whenever she is around. Although I loved the pampering, the cook and the daughter-in-law in me wanted to cook and impress her. One day, I decided to cook for my in laws and took over the kitchen from her. I cooked four different dishes simultaneously using the four burners on the stove and she was amazed by my skills. I chuckled and said, “It comes naturally to me, that’s how your scientist daughter-in-law multitasks”.
Not just then, I always likened cooking to doing an experiment. Certain dishes, you do without much thinking, just like doing mini-preps. While for some dishes, you pay much more attention and follow step by step, like doing ChIP. Most often you try new recipes and they don’t give the expected results. You know the reason why-YOU just didn’t follow the protocol (online recipe) to the T. Again that’s when I feel the scientific creativity comes in, you always want to improvise the protocol/ recipe according to your instincts. They may not always work, but when they work, you have your much-awaited EUREKA moment. Moreover, who wouldn’t want to experiment, when you have faithful guinea pigs at home?
Fun apart, cooking is a great stress buster and making a good meal for my family gives me a huge sense of accomplishment. Enjoy cooking folks!!!
Chef. Dr. Manoja Eswara.
About the author:
Manoja is a postdoc, working on Cancer Molecular biology and Epigenetics, in LTRI, Canada. She did her PhD from University of Guelph, where she worked on unraveling nuclear cytoplasmic transport pathways for transfer RNAs (tRNAs). Personally, she is in a happy space with a very understanding husband, Ravikiran Ravulapalli and a beautiful daughter, Sahasra. When not doing experiments, Manoja loves watching movies, singing and spending time with family.
This work by ClubSciWri is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
