Vegan chocolate chip oatmeal peanut butter cookies

1. Preheat oven to 425 F.

2. Ingredients to go in one medium bowl:
1 cup whole wheat flour
1 cup oatmeal (slow cooking or quick)
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 bag chocolate chips (if you're making the cookies vegan, make sure you check the ingredients of the chocolate chips, even the dark chocolate ones)
--Mix together with a fork.

3. Ingredients for one larger bowl
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup natural peanut butter
1/3 cup milk (soy, rice, hemp, etc)
2 Tbsp canola oil
1 tsp vanilla extract
--Mix well with a fork.

4. Add dry ingredients to wet ingredients and mix well. Drop forkfuls onto cookie sheet and bake about 10 minutes. Remove from oven and let cool for 2 minutes before transferring cookies to wire racks to finish cooling.

Makes 20-24 cookies. Enjoy!

Now that I've stopped comparing Budapest to Munich, it's lovely! It reminds me, somewhat oddly, of Buenos Aires in that it feels really European (duh) in structure and architecture, but most of the buildings are in need of care and repair as are public spaces like parks and squares. However, the buildings that have been maintained are breathtaking--Budapest has some of the most creative, harmonious, but still adventurous architecture we've seen and the colored roof tiles are icing on their glorious cakes.

We've had an odd time finding food: if there is a Hungarian restaurant culture we have yet to figure out what it is. However, we ran into a festival yesterday, where we had some really good food and the best lemonade I've ever had in my life: lemons, limes, oranges and mint! Which was especially helpful since we were both boarderline dehydrated due to the heat and our inability to find the entrance to the National Gallery. (Turns out it's at the top of the hill opposite of where we were. Ooops.) Anyway, since then we've had nothing but great food, including a picnic lunch today from the enormous indoor market where you can get literally almost everything.

At the moment we're actually hiding out from the heat in a, gasp, mall. It's shocking, I know, but the heat really is punishing. We even thought of going to a movie tonight, but there's nothing in English that we want to see since we refuse to endorse the Twilight nonsense and I have no desire to see the new take on the Nightmare on Elm Street series. Even with the heat, though, we're better off than an American we overheard at the thermal bath who's paying something like 350 euros for a fancy room in a fancy hotel without airconditioning. It made me feel quite smug, actually, to know we have the tent and therefore are awash in the coolness of the night.

The thermal bath itself was bliss. There's a long, long tradition of such baths in Hungary, possibly a legacy from the Ottomans, and the tradition is one I hope lives forever. We were at the Gallert, one of the fancy baths, with an indoor pool, an indoor thermal pool (36 degrees C), an outdoor thermal pool that bubbled twice an hour for ten minutes each time, a large outdoor pool with a wave machine and then, separated by sex, sets of thermal pools, a cool pool, a steam room and a large room with cabins where you can get massages and other fancy treatments. We spent six hours there and are looking forward to going to another one soon.

But the next bath will have to wait until tomorrow, at least, when we're in Pecs (prounounced "pay-ch"), which is further south. I just hope they have at least half a dozen baths, because I think we'll try them all.

So, Munich. Wow, I loved it! It is just fantastic! I don't know if it's because it's German, or Bavarian, or just because it's Munich, but really, I totally fell in love. If there were a way for us to move there tomorrow, I would do it. The beer is amazing, the food is fantastic, the museums are impressive, but not overwhelming and the people are all really nice. And the public transport is thorough, far reaching, easy to use and has basically no off hours. We should all move there!

Anyway, all good things must come to an end, so we've moved on. We're in Eichstatt, in Altmuhl nature park, theoretically to get some of our missed hiking in, except we're subverting our own plans by leaving tomorrow on a multi-day, self-guided canoe trip. I'm so excited! Assuming we don't fall in too often, there may even be hiking afterwards. Although biking seems extremely popular, too, so we may do some long-distance (but fortunately for our biking skills, flat) trails, camping along the way. Either way, it may be another week before we find internet to post, again. We hope you all have as much fun as we will in the meantime!

Originally, we wanted this to be a big hiking trip. We both got so tired on the round the world trip of lugging the gear for both hiking and city-going, without really getting a chance to fully experience either. So okay, we thought this trip, we'll just do one thing.

We started looking at the UK, because they have some great long-distance trails, but then David pointed out that he wanted to do some backcountry camping and the UK is so evenly packed with people, backcountry doesn't really exist. And then we remembered the E4, one of Europe's long-distance trails that we'd first heard about in Greece, when we met some French hikers. But the E4 is huge, so narrowing down which portion we were going to hike became a priority. There happens to be a very good site for the Hungarian portion of the E4, locally called the Blue Tour, so we decided: Hungary, it is.

But then, doing further research, a lot of the Blue Tour turns out to be through farm land, which is not super for hiking: you have to ask permission to camp, and Hungarians apparently all have big guard dogs, etc. But right next door is Austria, which we knew had great hiking, in part because my friend Monika's family is from there and she goes back quite often. So we bought tickets into Vienna. And then two weeks before we were to leave we had dinner with several friends, including three who are from Bosnia. And Bosnia is so close to Hungary, we could just pop down, especially since Edvin was going to be there with his parents, anyway. So the trip expanded in scope to include Bosnia.

And then we got here. And it started to rain. It turns out there's a big system that's come up from Italy, which has turned the beginning of summer into something more closely resembling early spring: wet and cold. And I don't know if you know this, but hiking in the rain is frowned on for good trail preservation.

All of which is a big leadup to say: we leave for Munich tomorrow. Since the trip has already been forced away from hiking, we thought we should embrace it as it is, and enjoy some more cities. I don't know what we'll do after that--the weather may be clearing, which means we might get some hiking in, still, but who knows. We'll have a good time either way, I'm sure.

The clap of thunder as we stepped off the train in Graz sent people ducking for cover. The rain which followed was more or less continuous. But it didn't stop us from loving the city. Tourist information was helpful and sent us on some self-guided walks which we enjoyed. We wandered through narrow streets, into courtyards and up to a hillside castle, Schlossberg, and around the vast Eggerschloss Castle and grounds. Leah started a serious attempt to try all the local flavors of ice cream. Her plan became mired by a bowl of ice cream on a pedestal, named the Arnold Schwarzenegger, which obscured her from my view. (I have the picture to prove it!) I just watched while enjoying a blur of wurst and schnitzel.

A straight forward bus trip dropped us very near a comfortable campsite. Included in our camping fee was the use of a giant pool, which looked more like a small lake, especially with the six or seven ducks who clearly considered it to be home. (Seriously, the pool was 120 x 90 meters, which I calculated to be about 6 or 7 Olympic-sized swimming pools!) We managed a nice swim during one of the breaks between rain showers. We slept well, with the notable exception of being woken by an asthmatic hedgehog (as near as we could determine). As much as we liked Graz, drenched, we decided to push on.

The train was slow and comfortable through green pastures, woods, and distant, blue mountains with snow capped crags. Dotted through the countryside were idyllic villages, carefully managed as though ready to film an alpine movie. It was only a few hours before we gently slid into Salzburg.

Salzburg is one of the most beautifully situated towns, and we are not the only ones to know it. It is so heavily touristed (rivaling even Venice) that walking along the streets random conversation are mostly in English. Our campsite manager, who greeted us in English, said it best; he asked from where we'd arrived, and responded, "Ah Graz is very different from here. Here it's all about the tourists."

...and so now you know. Stay tuned!

We've moved on to Graz, which is about 2 hours south of Vienna. It's a lovely town, with a UNESCO world-heritage site city center. A justly earned designation since it's all baroque architecture and moss-covered inner courtyards.

The moss-covering is proving slightly problematic at the moment because it means rain. And currently lots of it. But other than a slight flooding scare this morning in our tent, we're pretty well covered.

The connection isn't great, so stay tuned for more...

January was supposed to be about the art of letter writing, the experiment coming in because we couldn't use electronic media to communicate: no cell phones, no email, no social software, etc. I'm referring to this in the past tense because the experiment was such a complete failure we called it off on the 10th. We may try again, at some point, but for now, we're preparing for tomorrow. And we need a lot of prep work.

February's experiment is to only speak Spanish to each other between the hours of 8am and 8pm. It's an experiment not just because talking in another language can be difficult, but because neither of us speaks Spanish. At all. We got by in Argentina with our half-forgotten, simplified Italian and the occasional Spanish greeting, but neither of us has ever studied the language (and we couldn't "cheat" by studying in January). So, in addition to trying to navigate conversations with family, friends, grocery clerks and what-not in English while remembering to speak Spanish to each other, we also have to learn Spanish. Eeee! I'm so excited!

I have invented a variation called the Portimotxo:

1/2 glass of port wine (here the Kalimotxo uses red wine)
1/2 glass of cola
1 lime wedge

Mix these ingredients (in a glass of ice, if you like) and enjoy this very sweet, simple drink...oh, and happy holidays!

When friends get together a few days after Thanksgiving to enjoy a pot-luck dinner, we call it Friendsgiving. It happened again this year. Towards the end of the evening, some friends, Leah and I sat comfortably behind our bellies and talked. The chaotic path of group conversation led me to recall a book I read in Pittsburgh a few years ago.

I shared a section of the book with the group about a particular parasite, which is widespread, but generally unknown. The parasite's life cycle is in house cats, but a large portion of house cat owners worldwide have it. Few know about it because, until recently, the parasite was considered to have little effect on humans. But, it turns out to have a subtle and strange impact on our lives. People with the parasite shop more.

As I talked, I realised that I didn't remember the author's name, or the title. I didn't remember the name of the parasite, where or when the study was done. In fact, I didn't remember enough to sound reasonable. I'd put a kink into thread of polite conversation. Several friends looked at me blankly. Leah glanced at my drink to see if I'd had to much. I briefly started to repeat myself and then trailed off. Pause. The conversation launched in a new direction.

Not surprisingly, I've been wanting to remember the book title since Saturday. Today, after an arduous Google search, I found it:

It's Survival of the Sickest by Dr. Sharon Moalem, and the parasite is called Taxoplasma Gondii. I was wrong about some of the details. The parasite actually infects about half the world; 20% of the US population and 90% of the people in France are infected, for example. Humans acquire it "by eating undercooked meat or poorly washed vegetables or after handling cat litter." Then the parasite establishes itself in muscle and brain cells. In mice and rats, the parasite alters their brain to make them lose their natural fear of cats. Cats eat the rodents and the parasite (which only breeds in cats) completes its life cycle.

In humans, the parasite is largely benign, but may complicate some illnesses--especially in pregnant women. Professor Jaroslav Flegr of Charles University in Prague found the correlation that women with the parasite spend more money on clothes, care more about how they look, and are "more easy-going, more warm-hearted, had more friends." Men with the infection are more likely to be "less well groomed...suspicious and jealous and less willing to follow rules." Wow!

I have to admit: I partly wanted to write this post because this is not the first time I haven't been able to think of this title. Now I just have to remember to search my own posts. Nice. I also picked up a copy from the library to re-read it. If you're interested you might want to check it out from your local library, too. Or, I guess if you own a cat, who knows: maybe you'll buy it.

It's not quite as intimidating as it might sound for a first lab, partly because it wasn't a true dissection, in the sense that no one critiqued how well we cut into the heart. Mostly it's not intimidating because for everyone else in the class this wasn't actually their first lab. This is the second semester of a two semester course, so yesterday's lab was more a continuation for most students than an introduction. But since I had the first semester about twelve years ago and I don't remember doing any dissections at all for it, getting to poke at a sheep's heart on the first day seemed really exciting and slightly nerve wracking.

I'm disappointed, though, that I missed out on dissecting a brain last semester. That must have been really interesting.

School makes me not quite giddy, unless you count the butterflies in my tummy. Is it weird to say I'm more nervous now than when I started grad school? Because I think I am. Other than the three science classes I had to take to satisfy core requirements as an undergrad the first time, I haven't had a science class since high school. And now I have two, and they're hard ones! And they have labs! But they should be a lot of fun, too, and the professors seem both nice and engaging, which is an enormous plus.

The only down side to starting a completely different program, is probably the down side Obama is facing: it's going to be a lot of work. And here I am, finally comfortable with having "nothing" to do, too.