OliviaFranklin

Mr. Nick Miller, a chemistry teacher at Marian, often enjoys cooking with his wife, Holly. The couple has enjoyed baking together since around the beginning of COVID. They began with a sourdough starter, which they really enjoyed. Since 2020, they have often baked bread together as well as cookies and cakes. 

They usually just take the time together to talk to each other and enjoy each other’s company, but sometimes they do listen to music. Miller’s wife often chooses the music, so it tends to be Taylor Swift, Charlie Puth, Spencer Sutherland or Lawrence.  

While baking, the couple doesn’t usually talk about chemistry, but they understand how to “effectively use acids and salts to bring out more flavor in certain dishes,” Miller said.  

Miller said the couple bakes the most during the fall and winter because “there are more apple orchards open, and the weather is cooler, so having the oven on doesn’t make the AC run constantly.” Their favorite orchard to visit has been the Super Bee Orchard, near Fort Calhoun. 

In the winter, he and his wife celebrate the holiday season by doing a baking marathon, which they call “bake-a-strava-pallooza,” he said. They usually bake seven to eight recipes, so “the oven is on all day.” It’s a lot, but then we have a  bunch of cookies that last for quite awhile,” Miller explained. 

Their most sentimental recipe is a recipe from his wife’s grandmother: an applesauce cake. Instead of using apples, they use applesauce with apple slices. The applesauce keeps the cake “really moist, so even if it’s been out for a couple days it’s still soft and tastes really good,” Miller said. 

Aside from Miller’s mother-in-law, most of their recipes come from the internet; the one they use most often is called “Sally’s Baking Addiction.” The couple especially likes this website because the author, Sally McNally, “makes the recipes a couple times, then tweaks the ingredients,” Miller said. Along with the recipe, she adds an explanation of the ingredients and why she used them. 

Chemistry is not just something that happens in a classroom, or a lab. Author Bonnie Garmus reminds readers of this in the senior summer read “Lessons in Chemistry.” 

The novel published in 2022 follows Elizabeth Zott, a chemist and TV show host in the 1950’s. Through the TV show, called “Supper at 6,” she is able to communicate with women all across the nation. She teaches them to follow their dreams regardless of what’s expected of them. 

Zott is a female chemist turned cooking show host. While she faces the adversity of a male dominated field and world, she sneaks chemistry lessons into her cooking segments. 

This novel is also being turned into an Apple TV miniseries, starring Brie Larson and Lewis Pullman. It is set to be rleased Oct. 13. 

 Miller explained that “chemistry is always happening, and haing a better understanding of it allows you to see a bit deeper into the neat things happening all around us and appreciate those things a little more. The world  and universe is so marvelously complex, and we get to be a part of that and start to recognize some of that complexity even in seemingly small activities like baking cookies.”