Another one bites the dust....er, gets a PhD.

Yes, this is a research lab. But an important part of what we do is educate future scientists so they can all go out and earn very little money if they decide to stay in academia especially. Today we celebrated the latest graduate of the Brown university PhD program who had worked in our lab towards her thesis since 2007. It only took four years!!  Nevertheless we were happy for her but sad to see her move on. She had been a loyal follower of cake hour. She had also introduced us to Grandma Miller's zucchini bread, banana bread, shoo fly cake, chocolate chip cookies etc. In that respect our PhD lucked out in that all she had to do was pay a visit back home and haul back enough stuff to keep us satisfied for awhile.  I guess those days are gone!

To send her off we had two and a half creations of the Eastside Marketplace in Providence. It is a very nice market on the fabled east side. Did you guess that location? They have a fairly comprehensive bakery section and today we went with the Irish Cream Cake and a Pecan tart.  We especially liked the baker's description of the cream cake..."It's kind of boozy!"  There was liquor in it is what he was saying but what else would you expect of an Irish Cream Cake?  Since we were not serving to underage people we were fine with it.  It wasn't bad. It had two layer's of chocolate cake and a thick layer of "Irish" cream.  In truth it didn't taste that "boozy" but we will take his word for it that it had that little extra.  I think it was ersatz cream so in our mind it would have been better if it had been real cream.

The pecan tart was a flat version of a pecan pie.  It was also good but a little sweet as most pecan creations tend to be. We'll leave it at that! There was whipped cream to go with it though!

As usual we had to come up with some departing gifts.  These, as is the custom, had a Brown University theme. They included a Brown coffee cup for her future cake hour like gatherings or AM caffeine break and also a Brown label shot glass for the things she likes to do that might require such.  We also gave her  a Brown logowear makeover featuring a brown Brown hoodie and a complimentary baseball cap. Since our graduate did not have any logo wear per se this was a nice non-repetitive complement to her wardrobe.  Lastly since we must have them put something on the wall we opted for a gilt framed mirror with a painted Brown scene on the top.  How lucky can you get!

Since our graduate will be in the area we expect we will still see her on occasion. She also promised she would be crashing our holiday parties for as long as she can. So I guess this is farewell and not goodbye!