Muffin

Just know that I made the most orgasmically amazing apple muffins yesterday.  Later, I will post pictures and a recipe, but I have things to do before I go to work, because I'm one of those people now (people who work and prioritize real life over the internet).  But anyway, these muffins totally redeem my Saturday night dinner shame.  Although, judging by all your comments, I'm not alone in my propensity for combining incompatible food items, heating it, and calling it a meal.  And some of you are probably going to have fajita lasagna the next time you cook for one!  So everyone wins.

Also, I've been reading The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot.  It's terribly interesting, and vaguely horrifying.  I've been wanting to read it since I heard NPR's Fresh Air interview with the author earlier this year.  If you haven't heard about the book yet, it's a nonfiction book about an African American woman from Baltimore who died of cervical cancer in 1951.  While she was being treated at Johns Hopkins, researchers took tissue from one of her tumors and put it in culture, only to find that the cancer cells grew like crazy.  Her tumor cells resulted in the first immortal human cell line, and were used in countless experiments and advances, like sending the cells into space to examine the effects of zero gravity, and developing the polio vaccine. 

Problematically, however, her cells were so hardy and prolific that they contaminated countless other cell cultures and totally effed up a lot of other people's research.  Also, her family was poor and undereducated, so not only could they seldom afford their own medical care despite the mother's contributions to the field of medicine, they didn't even understand the implications of the use of her cells, and thought she was alive in a lab somewhere.  And it was over 20 years before they even knew that anything was going on with Henrietta's cells.  That is some bullshit right there!  But this book is so good!  Can't recommend it enough!