While most people in my lab work on a bacterial pathogen called Xanthomonas (with a few exceptions) we all work on how this pathhogen causes disease in different crops. I work on two diseases caused by Xanthomonas. Black rot of cabbage and bacterial wilt of bananas.

About once a year I have a meeting where all my advisors (my committee) come together to discuss my progress. Its not a requirement to bring refreshments to the meeting, but I can never pass up a chance to make something fun. Besides it helps me keep my mind off things going into the meeting. This year I decided to combine my two projects by making chocolate chip banana bread (made with cauliflower flour) decorated with a “diseased” chocolate cabbage. I think it came out both tasty and pretty accurate. I made the soil with toasted ground hazelnuts and the cabbage was colored white chocolate painted onto individual cabbage leaves and then cooled, peeled off and glued together with more chocolate to form a cabbage head. The symptoms of the disease I work on our yellow and brown V shaped lesions, so I made these with some milk chocolate.