the meeting via zoom), finished painting the ceiling in the living room, and baked some yummy purple bread rolls. One of our friends once gave us a big jar of purple flour that is really tasty in bread, but the bread has unpleasant crunchy bits, so I hadn’t used it in quite a while. I noticed it again when I did the great pantry cleaning on Sunday evening, and considered tossing it, but I opened it, and smelled the flour, and it smelled really yummy and not the least bit stale, so I just transferred it to the next size down jar, as the jar wasn’t full. I asked Keldor what kind of flour it is, but he couldn’t remember, so I had him ask the friend who had given it to us, and the answer turns out to be häggbär, which I had never heard of. The Swedish web pages I found mentioning it said that they are small, black stone fruits with a bittersweet taste and an astringent effect on the mucous membranes of the oral cavity. However, they are not poisonous and can be used for juice and liqueur if they are harvested when frostbitten. In the past, they were used to give wine and liqueur a beautiful red color or as a brandy spice. However, our friend gave them to us for baking, so I clicked through the Wikipeda entry to find out that they are Prunus padus, known as bird cherry, hackberry, hagberry, or Mayday tree, and that it is a flowering plant in the rose family. It is a species of cherry. So I asked google for bird cherry recipes, and found someone who makes a cake out of a 50-50 blend of wheat and flour made from dried bird cherry. That blog post said that people are always surprised that there is no almond extract in the cake, and that the almond flavour comes from the pits, which are dried and ground with the fruit. It said that one needs to sift it to seperate the large bits of the pit, and this made so much sense to me. Both why I thought the flour smells so wonderful, as almond is by far my favourite nut, but also why the texture of the unsifted flour in bread wasn’t pleasant.
So I tried sifting it, and the bread rolls turned out amazing! That evening my friend Joakim planned to drop by on his way north, so I timed the baking to be done a little before he arrived, and wrapped the basket in towels so that they rolls would still be warm for him, and he liked them too. The only down side to this flour is that you don’t see the visual change in colour when the rolls are done, as they are already so purple, so you have to trust the nose alarm, and thump the bottom of the rolls or you risk burning them.
Today I also worked from home, and after work I replied to messages from people thanking me for the link to the thesis. One of the email exchanges triggered a connection in my brain, and I suddenly realised a direction I could try looking for funding to do an archaeology PhD building on my master’s research. I had seen earlier this week a notice in the university news about a funding agency that helps researcher and an industry partner hire a PhD student. At the time I thought of my interest in working as an archaeologist with the Lofotr Viking museum, so I sent an email to them, and to J. at the Umeå archaeology department, asking if there might be interest in pursuing that funding, with me as the potential PhD student, and offering to help with the application. Today J. replied saying that I should never give up my quest, but saying that the funding situation isn’t bright, and that he has failed to receive that particular funding on other occasions, so it isn’t easy, and requires an external partner with a good enough budget to cover half the student’s salary. I haven’t yet heard back from the museum, but I think they are more interested in collaboration that doesn’t cost salary. However, when writing the email to the co-author of the paper I wrote last year I suddenly remembered the nice people who work for the manufacturer of the Laser Ablation machine, and the ICP-MS that I used when working in the laser lab at LTU.
They were both very helpful teaching me to use the equipment. The ICP-MS guy had done his PhD at LTU developing ICP-MS techniques, so when he finished the degree he landed a job with the ICP-MS manufacturer and has happily worked there ever since.
Today I have sent them both an email, letting them know that I had finished the degree, and where they can download the thesis and data files if they are interested, and sent them a newly updated CV. I described the funding opportunity, explained that it needs an industry partner, and asked if one or both of their companies might be interested in putting together an application with the Umeå University Archaeology department, with me as the potential PhD student. I mentioned that in exchange for funding half my salary at University rates (which are much cheaper than industry pays, but I didn’t feel the need to point that out—they know) they would get my focused attention for the three months of internship, acknowledgments for their company in all of the publications arising from the research (a typical PhD by publication dissertation would need at least four journal publications, plus assorted conference publications), and additional exposure for the LA-ICP-MS methodology in the Archaeology community.
I have no idea if this will go anywhere, but if one doesn’t ask it really won’t, so it is worth a shot.
The other good news of the day is the message from the city that the Lövånger water tested good and we can drink it and everything again. So Keldor celebrated by taking a long bath as I typed this.