formaldehyde, taco trucks, and liz's 'spray'

We were staring at a sheep brain cut in half.  Class was almost done but we had a few minutes to look back over our dissection and really evaluate what we were looking at.  It's a late afternoon/evening class which meant we were close to dinner.  My mind was vacillating between compartmentalizing the smell of formaldehyde, retaining the different parts of the brain that we were able to visually see, and trying to decide if I was going to walk across the street from the school and get a burrito from the taco truck before the lecture part of the class started (the lab portion is where you do dissection).

I picked up the half of brain I was looking at and started sorting through the parts.  It has the look of  white meat (almost like a chicken thigh that has been pounded out and marinated- if you live in my area, imagine No-Ho's chicken) that is very tender and maybe a bit over marinated (this could be the formaldehyde).  I then started thinking about whether people eat animal brains (I know they eat intestines and tongue).  Then, true to my personality, I personalized my thoughts....

'Liz, if you were stranded on an island and had to choose between eating this sheep brain (minus the formaldehyde) or bugs, what would you choose?'
She didn't even hesitate.....'THE BUGS! I couldn't eat brain'
'I would choose the brain' is what I told her.  The bugs seem like way less protein and a whole lot more work to consume....I would have to remove the Dura Mater on the outside though and peel off the blood vessels surrounding the outside portion of the brain.  I also think I would have to take small enough bites that I could swallow them whole, without chewing or tasting.  But other than that, I would be good to go :)

We finished up the dissection and headed across the street to the taco truck where we both got burritos.  The whole time I was eating dinner I kept smelling formaldehyde.  During lecture, I kept smelling whiffs of what I thought was formaldehyde.  I finally smelled my hands to see if I had remnants that had not washed off my hands from the dissection.  It was then I realized I was not smelling formaldehyde but 'taco' smell from my burrito (salsa, onion, garlic, etc.)....I got up and went to the bathroom where I washed my hands really good with lots of soap and then went back to class, telling Liz about my whiffs of pseudo formaldehyde.  True to her personality, which is all about cleanliness, cozy comfort, and organization, She reached into her bag and pulled out her 'spray' (I don't know exactly what her spray is except that it smells so good- like a mixture of fall and Christmas and I guarantee, even without asking her, that it has some sort of potent anti-bacterial added in too).  We proceeded to spray our hands (and my shirt) with Christmas in a bottle and finished listening to lecture....She filling in her notes with color coded pens so she could distinguish between important info while I was just trying to find where on our notes our professor was talking from and then chicken scratching in my important notes.

The sheep brain

It's so intricate....Isn't God amazing :)

You are required to wear goggles and gloves while dissecting.