Linguistics and Lobsters

It's been two weeks since I last posted, and let me tell you, they have been an extremely eventful 2 weeks! Things really kicked off on Nov. 1 with the first day of the 10th High Desert Linguistics Society Conference, here at UNM. We had presentations by people from all over the US and Canada, as well as some international people from Mexico and Brazil, to name a few countries. As a grad student, and by default a member of the HDLS, I had to help out at the conference. However, what made the conference especially important for me was that I got to make a poster presentation on a new machine translation conceptualization that I had come up with. My presentation went well, and I got some good comments and feedback. While I don't think the academic life is for me, it was still interesting to check out the conference and see what academia is like!

Then, after the conference ended on Saturday, I had just a few days off until the next big thing came along: Election Day! I had never covered presidential, congressional and state legislature elections before, so despite spending nearly 11 hours at the Daily Lobo from Tuesday evening into Wednesday morning, it was still very fun and exciting to have the chance to report on everything as it happened via live blog and twitter, as well as write some articles for the next day's newspaper.

Finally, the latest thing to happen around here over the past few weeks was last night's authentic New England seafood dinner along with (of course) more pasta! We returned once again to Talin Market to pick up Maine lobsters and cherrystones (for chowder, Rhode Island clear) for dinner. In addition, we couldn't resist picking up more pasta as well as a pesto sauce (unfortunately jarred but there was no time to make it) and more capers as well. We also picked up some vanilla ice cream to go along with the maple syrup I had gotten from home the week before. We got back to the apartment soon after 3, assembled everything and got to work.

...and played with the lobsters a little bit as well.

     

Soon we ran into our first problem: no one had a steam basket, so how were we going to steam the clams? We ended up creating our own by poking holes in a disposable metal food container, reinforcing the sides with twist ties so the weight of 3 pounds of clams wouldn't be too much for it (we steamed our clams in two batches), and then used a coat hanger to secure the whole thing to the pot in a way that we could still close the lid and steam them.

 

 
It worked extremely well, and, as understandably proud as we all were, we left our creation hanging above the sink for the rest of the evening, holding the cleaned-out clam shells after we had shucked them for the chowder.

 
Soon after the chowder was all set and cooked (which went pretty uneventfully despite the chowder being somewhat less than perfect due to me forgetting that 6 pounds of unshucked clams does not equal 6 pounds of shucked clams), it was time to drop in the lobsters. I let my landlocked New Mexico and Nevada friends take care of that, and I showed them how to calm the lobsters beforehand by stroking their undersides. After half an hour, we took them out and everyone marveled at them before we shelled them.

 

 

 
...but once again, we couldn't resist playing with the lobsters.

    

  
After over 3 hours of preparation, everything was finally together and ready to go. Everyone grabbed a plate of pesto pasta and lobster meat, and a bowl of chowder.

Despite the fact that we had 8 people over for dinner, and despite the fact that everyone loved all of the food, we made so much that there was still plenty of leftovers for the next day or two (if they last that long).  

I promise that, between last post and this post, this blog isn't taking a permanent detour into the food world, but so far meal times have been pretty entertaining!

Things are going to get even busier around here very soon, with term paper season kicking off tomorrow, but hopefully it won't be another 2 weeks before I post again.