Passover and cookies

Apologies for the slight delay in posting, but I’ve been… on vacation! More about that later. For now, cookies!!! A friend hosted a number of us for the first seder of Passover (last Monday). It was lovely, as always, and her matzo ball soup was incredible. Apparently matzo ball lovers fall into two camps: dense or fluffy. I have never met a matzo ball I didn’t like, but our host’s (of the dense variety) are amazing. I volunteered to make dessert. This is can be a rather risky undertaking, as Passover requires that you not use flour – or rather that if your recipe calls for flour that you use matzo (cake) meal. I was initially inspired by another Smitten Kitchen recipe, this one for hazelnut chocolate thumbprint cookies. After I had decided to make them, I saw that my page-a-day calendar featured chocolate macaroons as their recipe for the weekend (likely recognizing the need for flourless desserts…). I realized that with only a few more ingredients, I could make both! The results were delicious, though the group was split on which were better.

The chocolate centers on the thumbprint cookies didn't come out as beautifully as those that inspired me (perhaps because I didn't have quite enough chocolate chips so they look a bit more like nipples than I'd really intended), and they didn't melt quite the same way, but they were delicious. Sort of crumbly like shortbread and very hazelnutty...

I think I overcooked the macaroons a bit, but anything with that much chocolate is delicious, and the bulk food store provides an excellent source of quite good chocolate chips for this sort of thing. They were a little tougher than I would have liked, but were so chocolate-y and coconutty that it didn't matter.

Boston!

I’m posting from Boston, having just attended the Point Foundation Regional Leadership Forum. Last fall I attended the RLF in Chicago, as I’m a solidly Midwestern scholar, and it was great to hang out with the other Michigan scholars, Chicago kids, and the other folks from nearby. After that event, however, I was assigned my awesome Point mentor: Fintan! He is based on Boston, so I flew here this weekend to get the chance to meet him in person. It was really a wonderful experience, as was meeting other Point scholars from New England.

It was, however, an exhausting day… Fingers crossed I’ll post some pictures of the beautiful harbor view from my hotel tomorrow!*

*Success - pictures have been added!

Back in the saddle… gradually…

I met up with another MSTP today to practice physical exam skills. This is something I haven’t done in a while, and it was a good refresher. I wish I’d done it earlier, but that’s life… In any case, I’m doing it now, and I’m doing as part of !!!MSTP 201!!!

What is MSTP 201 you might ask… The MSTP doesn’t actually offer any courses, but they have created options for clinical preceptorships for those of us who are in the PhD phase of our training. These are varying levels of intensity but all with the goal of easing yourself back into the clinical skills you learned as an M2 and forgot during your research years. Knowing what I do about myself, I realized that it would be better to freak out briefly about having to do a standardized patient earlier this month and then get over the anxiety than to wait until I actually had to see real patients and freak out then. The gradual approach has worked well.

I’m paired with an internal medicine doctor who is incredibly kind and patient with me, and we met up to do a history and physical exam on a standardized patient (read: an actor) for my first experience. I only go through it without tears because I knew that it didn’t really matter and than I could stop and ask for help at various points. After writing up my findings (and recognizing the gaps in my history-taking skills), we agreed to meet again in May to see a real patient together. It doesn’t seem nearly as scary now. It seems even less scary now that I’ve reviewed the cranial nerves and found a triceps reflex on a friend. The first lesson here: know yourself, and always give yourself plenty of time. The second: find someone(s) patient when you have forgotten to do the first.

Match Day!

Congratulations to all those graduating medical students who found out today where you’ll be spending the next few years of your lives!

For me, match day was much easier this year. Last year I struggled with the fact that my medical school class was moving on without me. They’d moved on before (like when I left for PhD-land), but not in such a concrete and substantial way. This year, I’m just happy to see friends who took a year off moving on and matching! It’s also exciting to see MSTP students (other MD/PhD kids, for those you not in the know) that I actually know matching and moving on, living proof that it can happen, really, in just 8 short years.

I’m still a little jealous of the exciting places everyone is going, though I know that my time will come. I can’t wait!

Batch #3: Granola… bars?

I made another variation on the granola bar recipe last week, without quite as much success. They were delicious (and I would definitely include coconut in the mix as often as possible, as well as pepitas), but they did not hold together (as evidenced in the above photo). The recipe calls for:

1/4 c corn syrup, honey, or maple syrup

and then later calls for another 2 Tbs corn syrup. I’ve been keeping the 2 Tbs of corn syrup constant as I work with this recipe (apparently this is part of making “sticky bun sugar”), and varying the other parts. In the first batch I used all corn syrup. As I’ve mentioned to many of you, this was a mistake. Not because they weren’t the most delicious bars you’ve ever eaten, no, no, because nothing, I’m convinced, makes granola bars as delicious and chewy as corn syrup. This is why our country is obese – it’s like a drug. In order to avoid obesity myself, the second batch used honey instead of corn syrup. This was not nearly as amazing texturally, but was tasty and is probably a good compromise. This time, I decided to use maple syrup (still keeping the 2 Tbs of corn syrup). Enter the granola… bars?

These tasted delicious, but only the edges of the pan maintained their shape long enough to be considered bars, and even those fell apart as soon as they were moved. Maybe I need a different grade of maple syrup? My next plan: mixture of honey and molasses to see if I can achieve something chewier…

An aside: In the first batch I used the lower end of the recommended added sugar (above and beyond the corn syrup… I know…) and they were really, really sweet. In the second batch I cut out most of the sugar, and they were still really sweet. Apparently honey is pretty sweet… In this last batch I cut out the sugar completely and they were still delicious. I know I shouldn’t have varied several things at once, as I’ll never be sure that it wasn’t the added sugar that made them so chewy and amazing, but I don’t think so.

AMSA Convention!

This will be a short post, because I’m about to go present the collective opinion of the Executive Committee of the Action Committees and Teams about the various House of Delegates resolutions to the Reference Committee… Suffice it to say I’m at the AMSA National Convention, and it’s pretty great. We’re at Disneyland (mixed feelings there), but overall the speakers have been good, and I’m really enjoying seeing my AMSA buddies.

Also, if you’re interested, I hear they’re “tweeting” the convention at #amsa60. (It’s our 60th annual convention.) I’m not even sure I know what that means, but there you have it.

Life in the passed lane

Another round of med school friends are getting ready to match and graduate. Another round of M2s (second years, for those of you not in the know) just got their M3 schedules. Happily topping it off, another pair of friends got married last weekend! Between graduating from medical school and starting residency, getting married, and having babies, I would say that some incalculably huge fraction of my friends have experienced a life-changing event over the past year and a half. When I hold these up against my life, it’s hard not to feel a bit like I’m falling behind somehow. I don’t have a job, at least not really, and no, I’m not a doctor yet. I’m not married in the legal sense (though I don’t really want to be, the subject of a hypothetical future post), and it just seems imprudent to have babies when my health insurance depends on my ability to write grant and fellowship applications. When I hold up my biggest achievements (passing prelims and defending my prospectus), they seem awfully removed from the things that most people understand.

Despite this, and I apologize for the down-turn of this post into morose and whiny, which is not where I intended it to go when I sat down to write, I still don’t regret choosing to do the combined degree program. As I’ve been meeting prospective students for my doctoral program I’ve been explaining (for the 1,000,000th time) what my program entails, and lately, I’ve been feeling pretty good. It’s exciting (even as it’s terrifying) to state aloud that I’m planning to defend my thesis in about a year. It’s terrifying (even as it’s exciting) to talk about going back to medical school for the best of times and the worst of times: third year and clinical rotations. The best part of feeling like the end is near: I can really enjoy other people moving on, knowing that really, truly, someday… I will too.

Which is what this post was initially supposed to be about: Dorothy and Justin’s wedding! It was so exciting!!! I’ve known Dorothy and Justin since M1 year, though they weren’t dating then (!), and it was wonderful to see them get married on Sunday. The ceremony was beautiful, and the reception was at a stunning venue, the Grosse Pointe War Memorial. I must say that my favorite part of the whole thing, apart from seeing the two of them blissfully happy throughout, was the photo booth. That’s right, you read correctly, the photo booth. Each set of photos was printed twice so that one copy could go into the guest book. It was brilliant, and in addition to photos Alicia and I took together, we joined several large group photos, fitting at least 14 people into the booth at once for an amazing group photo experience.

To Dorothy and Justin: Congratulations, and thanks for a wonderful day!

Knitting into springtime…

This year has been a productive knitting year so far. I have only one class, but it’s a 4 hour/week seminar in which I can knit throughout! (In all fairness, I do take periodic notes, sometimes more furiously than others, but the knitting is fabulous.) I was able to finally finish the thrummed mittens (pictured above) that had been languishing for nearly a year in my knitting bag, and even craft a hooded scarf to go with them.

They have been keeping me warm since I finished them, but now I’m looking for something less bulky, perhaps with a little less wool content. Enter socks! I am in love with this yarn, brilliantly named "Tofooties," which is made of soy silk, wool, cotton, and chitin, a unique fiber made from the shells of shrimps and other crustaceans. Apparently it’s antibacterial, and I’ve noticed it has a really unique smell (not bad, just unique). Socks also allow me to indulge myself in terms of my love of technical knitting. Having realized long ago that I’m not a designer of beautiful knitwear, but rather a modifier of really excellent patterns, I’ve also discovered that I love learning new techniques, puzzling out better ways to do things, and watching something a little crazy develop into something cool. Lace knitting comes to mind (pictured below) – it looks like something out of Spiderman meets Sheepman, and then when you block it it’s beautiful.

Socks allow for an incredible amount of flexibility, so these have provided me with a new way to fake a 1x1 crossed cable (in the cuffs) and to recombine several patters to try a new heel that matches the toe. Welcome springtime!

Batch #2

The quest for the perfect granola bar(s) continues. This batch used honey rather than corn syrup (except for the 2 tablespoons called for separately), 1/4 cup brown sugar instead of 1/2 cup white sugar, more cinnamon, and a new mixture of fruits and nuts:

1/4 cup pepitas
1/3 cup cashews 1/3 cup almonds
2/3 cup dried apples
1/2 cup golden raisins

Even as I spread them in the pan I was already thinking about dried mangos, cardamom, cinnamon, and chunky chaat masala…

The results: The honey isn’t as chewy and sticky as the corn syrup, but they are still delicious and really sweet. The cinnamon is wonderful, though I think experimenting with other nut butters would be exciting. I’ve put some away in the freezer, anticipating a side-by-side comparison in the future.

Amazing granola bars

You may have noticed the blog taking a bit of a turn toward food. I’ve been getting more and more into exciting and local foods over the past few years, and have clearly been influenced by some of the other blogs I read, many of which beautifully document the beautiful food they prepare. While I would never call myself a foodie, and don’t pretend to really know what I’m doing in the kitchen, I hope you enjoy this occasional foray into deliciousness… Now back to your regularly scheduled programming:

I can’t figure out how I got to this blog, but it’s amazing. One of the first few posts I read was one about making delicious granola bars. I was wooed not only by the photography, but by the promise of chewy crunchy deliciousness. I’ve been a bit put off recently by most of the store bought bars, and really should be paying $3-5 for the nice one. (I’ve bought a complete lunch for less!) The simplicity and flexibility of the recipe inspired me to give it a shot, and I think these gems will be regulars in the oven and the freezer around here. I used a store bought trail mix for my “dry fruit and nuts” mixture, but am looking forward to a trip to the bulk food store to mix up my own.

Dreaming of springtime

It’s gotten really cold here again. I knew it would happen, as it happens every year, but I do think with global warming (brilliantly re-termed “global weirding” in the NYTimes) is making it worse. Here’s what generally happens:

1. It becomes horribly, bitterly cold at the end of January/beginning of February. I become horribly bitter because it is my birthday.

2. Toward the end of February we have a week of weather in the high 30’s, even hitting 40F once or twice. I begin to think that Michigan winters really aren’t that bad and that soon enough, there will be flowers blooming and all will be well.

3. As fast as the warm weather came, it leaves, and we don’t see another above-freezing temperature for weeks. I return to my bitterness, but also feel somewhat pleased that I can wear my new super warm mittens for another few weeks.

This year though, I’ve taken spring into my own hands. After having a lovely time sprouting and planting little herb seedlings during my prelim last year, and after killing a good number of plants during the weeks leading up to my prospectus defense, I decided that I should try my hand at more container gardening. It’s a relatively cheap investment (approximately $3.50 for seeds) and holds the potential for delicious spinach and cilantro (that’s what’s growing now at least). Based on my current progress, it is sufficient to say that I may not be harvesting huge volumes of crops, but that I am likely to have at least a few little plants. I present to you my attempt at tricking my brain into thinking it’s really spring:

Delicious Olives

Alicia brought me a great page-a-day calendar with recipes on each day. I’m pretty sure it’s from Bon Appetit magazine, based on the copyright to Condé Nast and the green and white color scheme, but this calendar does not have the name of the magazine printed on it anywhere. (Presumably it was on the box and the first page, but I’ve long since recycled those.) In any case, I made marinated olives last week to take to the HBHEDoc Wine and Cheese Potluck on Saturday. They were a great success!

Marinated olives with tangerine and rosemary
Adapted from Bon Appetit Page-A-Day Calendar

1 pound assorted olives
1 small tangerine, cut into 4 wedges and thinly sliced crosswise (I used a clementine and it worked just fine – Whole Foods shockingly did not have tangerines when I went…)
1 tablespoon coarsely chopped fresh rosemary (Dried worked fine…)
1 teaspoon fennel seeds, lightly crushed
1 teaspoon coriander seeds, lightly crushed
1/8 teaspoon dried crushed red pepper

After draining the olives, I put everything into a large glass jar and shook it around until it looked mixed. I left it in the fridge for 4-5 days, shaking it each day to mix.

The spices and the orange juice permeated the olives, but weren’t too strong. So tasty!

Snow Day!

It’s really coming down this morning and has been since last night. I’ve opted to stay home and work rather than braving the weather (and the inevitably delayed bus). Walter is not pleased that the plows cannot keep up with the snow and he has to walk on covered sidewalks. He is, however, quite pleased that I’m staying home today.

What do you get…

when you sauté garlic and ginger with teriyaki sauce, lime juice in a little sesame oil and then mix in purple cauliflower?

I present crazy magenta cauliflower. This picture is an accurate representation of the color of our dinner:

Sunshine and Puppy Dogs

This is actually from last week when it snowed a bunch, but you get the idea...

Some days it’s harder to be inside that others. It’s chilly today, but is actually a bit above freezing (computer says 36F) and the sun is shining. I felt awake this morning when the alarm went off at 6:00am and so did the dog. We went out and walked a little bit before breakfast (no sun then, but it was already warmer than I’d anticipated). Before my class at 9:00am we went on another walk, appreciating the already sunny morning and the unforeseen side effect of melting snow: revealing more things that Walt has not peed on. Walt appreciated the second part more than I did, but we had a nice walk. Looking at the slice of sky I can see through two layers of window from my cube, I’d like to be back outside walking with the dog, basking in the rare winter sunshine.

Title almost as long as article itself

NYT World Briefing

This is a link to a NYT “World Briefing,” which apparently truly means brief – it is only a single paragraph informing the reader that France has removed “gender identity disorders” from an article of the social security code related to “long-term psychiatric diseases.”  I’m actually not sure what to make of this.  Does it mean that their healthcare system will no longer treat people who need hormones or surgery in order to feel right in their bodies?  Or does it mean that in addition to treating it they’re trying not to stigmatize? 

Here’s a little more information, through these seem to suggest that this change happened last year in May, which is a bit puzzling.  I’m not sure why this made my NYT Health Alert this morning…

ILGA

France Today

Le Provence

Being unreasonable…

Ever have one of those days where you realize that you’ve been being unreasonable all week about a variety of things?  Like getting upset that people take longer than 30 minutes to return your e-mails?  Or that your apartment complex doesn’t recognize the little secret path you use to get out to the bus stop and as a result there is a five foot (seriously) wall of snow between you and your bus?  Or that the dog can’t use the toilet yet? 

Okay, I admit, I’ve never really been angry with the dog about that and when I do you’ll know I’ve truly hit the bottom (or the top) of the unreasonableness scale.  Suffice it to say I’ve had a strange day today peppered with realizations of my own crabbiness.  I think I need to sleep, so tonight I’ve planned to go over to a friend’s house to watch movies.  (What???  Clearly the unreasonableness realizations have not sunk in fully…)  Hopefully I’ll catch up this weekend and can have a more measured week next week.  Fingers crossed!

Still snowing…

You can see the hazy snowfall under the parking lot lights behind our apartment building.

While we’re clearly not receiving the full force of the storm that hit the mid-Atlantic region earlier in the week, it’s been snowing steadily all day today. The parking lot in our complex looks so much prettier like this!

Birthday Calendar

I like to have lots of celebrations for my birthday, often extending it to a week or a month of festivities. This year is no exception… Last night Alicia and I went to the DSO and had a wonderful time. It was a beautiful concert and I really enjoyed it. Tonight we are going for sushi and will be relaxing at home (my activity of choice these days) and I’ll be celebrating with each mom and dad later in the weekend. Yay!

Here's Alicia's first shot with my camera - me inside the lovely Detroit Symphony Orchestra Hall.


And a lovely picture of the program...


The hall itself (I was told I could take photos as long as I didn't use a flash, didn't take a picture of any of the musicians, or take any photos during the performance...).


Here we are, having set the camera on the ledge in front of us for a variation on the held-at-arms-length shot.


And finally, Orchestra Hall from down the street on our way home.

There once was a bit of blue sky…

I haven’t really taken the camera outside much due to the weather, but I captured some of the fleeting blue sky last week through our window.