dissections.

Where've I been, since I've barely been writing on the blog? Taking classes full-time and working full-time. Oh, and taking a couple vacations. Amidst it all, I've been cooking but barely posting. I drafted this post a while back, and I've left it in draft mode until now. Here goes.

This post is about a hot black pepper and my favorite organ: the heart.

Last Saturday, my morning started in Anatomy lab slicing through a brown, formaldehyde-scented sheep’s heart. With misplaced bravado, my lab partner and I sliced down what we were sure was the right (the right, and also correct) edge of the anterior side of the heart. When we opened the heart, instead of two neat halves, two pairs of atrioventricular valves, two atria, two ventricles, we just had a bit of a mess, including an improperly bisected tricuspid valve. We were on the wrong side of the heart. It was a mess-- quite different from the first heart dissection I ever completed, which was fascinating and satisfying enough to inspire this painting.

Later that night, I found myself preparing a meal at home, up a culinary creek without a much-needed hot pepper. The only one in the house was especially treasured, the only fruit growing and ripening on the pepper plants by the window in my kitchen. The black pepper, pictured below, at left of the frame:

I reluctantly cut the pepper down, all 2" long of it, and sliced it open to check out the color and the flavor of the pepper. I was pleasantly surprised to find a subtle heat and a lovely deep red color inside of the pepper. I realized, after I made the first incision, that the pepper and the heart were some strange bookends to my day. Both were fragile and spectacular gifts to explore-- a heart from some unknown animal in a distant place, and a pepper that I very nearly left outside to fall victim to the cycles of snow and frost.


AMH