Cannibalism, Cancer and Chemotherapy (Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute)

I went to a talk last night in the Trinity Biomedical Sciences Institute. The title was "Cannibalism, Cancer and Chemotherapy". This was quite a misleading title- And the speaker admitted to this first thing, it was a catchy  headline in an attempt to get a larger audience to attend. 

It was quite in-depth and some of it went over my head. It was hard, for example, to keep track of all the oncogenes he was mention (I have a degree in Biology but the only cancers I ever studied was breast cancer so I wasn't familiar with most of the genes he was working on). It was so  nice for once to sit in a lecture where I was actually interested and learning something.

It really made me miss doing science in college. I'm currently not really enjoying my Msc in software technology. It's above my ability level and the I don't find the lectures consuming whatsoever. I'm also slightly clashing with one of my lecturers so I'm admittedly not enjoying myself.

I'm crossing off the days until I finish my course. After today I have two weeks of lectures for mid-term and once I'm back I have four academic weeks left. That's 16 days of lectures. The sooner its over the better.  

On y more positive note: It's Thursday which can mean only one thing- Three hours of 2 for 1 cocktails in Capitol Bar!

Life Hack: How to cut a pepper

I loooove peppers! Green, red, yellow I love them all (But red is my favorite!!). They are bursting full of vitamin c also contain the antioxidant lycopene which can reduce your risk of cancer. I love adding them to any dish that I cook really, however I find that they are hard to prepare in that they are awkward to chop and taking out the core is always tedious.

I once heard that Jamie Oliver makes incisions at the top and then forcefully pushes the stalk downwards into the pepper to break the ties to the fruit. Then you can pull the entire core out the top. I've tried this: The seeds get EVERYWHERE.

Here's my advice on how to properly cut a pepper so that it looks pretty and there is minimal mess and waste:

1) Take you pepper. The one I used in the picture examples is small but this works for all sizes and colours. 

2) Turn it on it's side and chop off the top and then the bottom. You're left with a tunnel of fruit with the core attached inside.

3) To remove the core turn the pepper upright again and insert your knife in a vertical direction to slice the four (maybe 3) pillars keeping the core inside the fruit.

You're tunnel is now hollow!

4) Cut the tunnel cleanly in half.

5) You can now take one of the halves and place it flat onto the cutting board! This makes it perfect for cutting into nice symmetrical shapes which you wouldn't otherwise get with a pepper :)

I like triangles/darts!

And also matchsticks.

If I was artistic enough I'd cut them into cute shapes like stars! I suppose I could try diamonds.. Even someone as graphically challenged should be able to manage that, right?

The best thing about this chopping method is the minimal amount of waste produced. I swear, what's in the picture below is all I threw out! And actually, I probably could have gotten a bit more fruit off those two pieces if I really tried!

And that's it! You can now serve up triangle stir-fries (They taste so much better than generic stir-fries, I swear!)