my salads

I'm in Palmdale California resting up before my all-night flight on SOFIA.  Take-off will be 7:40 pm, landing 5:45 am.   Here's what I ate yesterday:

I try to get only organic produce so my choices are limited at Trader Joe's but it makes it kind of fun to get things I don't always get at home.  Bottom layer is watermelon and blackberries; then romaine lettuce, herb salad mix, mushrooms (cooked in microwave), cherry tomatoes, and broccoli.  Topped with balsamic vinegar.  Yummy.  Note:  when the fruit is on bottom and the veggies on top, I like to wait to put on the vinegar so it doesn't all go down to the bottom.  I like the vinegar best on the veggies.  I would put the fruit on top but I like to eat it last.  I ate 3 of those babies, a banana, cucumber, and lots of carrots and sugar snap peas.  And I mean lots.   Here's a side viewing showing the treasures that await me for dessert, at bottom.  There's the Dr. fuhrman forums in the background, heh heh.

Today's salad has strawberries, blackberries and banana on bottom, topped with romaine lettuce, herb salad mix, mushrooms, broccoli, and for breakfast I included a generous serving of edamame.  

I decided to lay off the edamame for lunch and dinner since I'll be on an airplane all night and don't want to have to expell gas in close quarters, heh heh.   I'm bringing carrots, sugar snap peas, and an apple on the plane ride tonight.   Expert nutritarians may have noticed I didn't mention nuts and seeds.  I forgot them!   I could have bought some but the bags were way bigger than the amount I wanted.  That's okay, I'll have an extra treat when I get home.

Oh, what the heck, here's an airplane picture, NOT the one we'll be flying tonight.   At left is an SR-71.  At right is an A-12.  My dad was flight engineer for A-12s from 1965-1968.  He had a fun job!

After tonight's flight I'll rush off to LAX and hope to get there in time to catch my flight to Wisconsin.  Funnily enough, we will fly over Wisconsin tonight on Sofia.  So hopefully I'll go there twice in one day.  I'll be pointing the telescope to a massive star forming region and collecting infrared photons and turning them into images that will hopefully tell us about the nature of the source--how the outflows are shaping the envelope cavity for one thing.  And by combining these data with those at other wavelengths, we'll understand better the evolutionary stage of this source and add to our knowledge of the processes that form very massive stars.

For tomorrow I have carrots, sugar snap peas, and an apple to get me home.  Then I'll probably buy some luscious berries and local spinach for dinner, oh yeah, and maybe some brazil nuts!  I'm hoping that eating carrots on the way to LAX will keep me awake.  I will try to drive very carefully!

How do you like that mixture of food and astronomy?  ha.