Med School Diet

Three different friends, three different ways to love (through food). I'm a lucky girl. But seriously. Rice Krispies are the best.

Care Packages

 

Without fail, my parents have mailed me a large care package every single week that I've lived in Iowa (that's 8 if you were counting, but I think I was the only one). Each box weighs as much as my mom dares to fit into the biggest fixed rate Priority Mail box, which she packs meticulously with no gaps. When I get the magic key for accessing the USPS package locker, I always run-walk excitedly up to my 4th floor apartment, arms aching from lugging a 20-lb treasure chest.

My mom has mailed me everything from shacha sauce, canned lychees, grass jelly drinks, canned roasted eel, bamboo shoots, Pocky (lovingly bubble wrapped), to rubber bands, vitamins, and velcro strips. It's funny what mothers can think of!

I am so grateful for my parents, sending their love in the form of food as only Chinese parents can.

Whew! Med school.

We had our first exam of the semester on Thursday. We take 6 classes (7, if you count anatomy and anatomy lab separately) and if there are 3 exams per class, 6 x 3 = 18 exams...meaning at least one per week. In a couple of weeks, we have five hours of testing in ONE DAY! That will occur a few times this semester, and you can be sure that I'll have a date with some pie afterward.


I am trying really hard to remind myself why I'm here. Reading my past blogs has definitely helped. I'm starting to enjoy it more and do get excited about material that we are learning. That being said, I was paired with a sports medicine orthopedics doctor for our mentorship aspect, and I tried to keep an open mind during my first visit. All the guys are jealous that I get sports med, but it's on the absolute bottom of my totem pole of interests. You will probably never find someone more apathetic towards collegiate and/or professional sports than me. Even urology sounds more appealing.


I woke up this morning to sounds of thunder and rain. How strange that a week ago, it was 100 degrees, and now it feels like the Bay Area. I'm excited for crisp fall weather, which will make my jogs much more enjoyable.


Minor Differences Part 3:

• My apartment requires that we run the dishwasher at least once a week to prevent the waterlines from building up (or something? who knows). So I can't actually use it as a dish rack
• Churches here integrate football references on a weekly basis 
• My classmate forgot her iPad in a classroom and someone guarded it until they found out who it belonged to 
• Many large streets don't have marked medians, which confuses the heck of me (is it a one-way? what?) 
•  Apparently happy hour doesn't exist because every hour is happy hour

And a new bonus list,
Things I will do when I get home:

• Go to T-pumps, Purple Kow, TeaWay, or even Quickly for crying out loud....I'm desperate 
• Eat good Chinese food 
• Take the BART downtown just to be in the city bustle 
• Shop at Macys. There are none in this state. 

A tale of a pitiful weekend

On Saturday night, I was feeling unsteady on my feet and decided to go downstairs to get a mug of hot tea. Without real awareness of the placement of my feet, I ended up tripping down the stairs and twisting my right ankle, along with scraping up my left hand. Carpet burns are strange things. How does something so fluffy create such monstrous gashes? That night concluded with an Advil for my body aches, Neosporin for my scrapes, and reassurance that tomorrow will bring more coordination.


On Sunday, the headache and chills began. I am the type of person who sleeps with an electric blanket (thanks YDY!) most nights, because I can't seem to maintain enough body heat. But it was still pretty ridiculous to have four layers of clothing, two comforters, and electric blanket on some of the warmest days the Bay Area has seen. I had hot soup for dinner. I finished re-reading A Thousand Splendid Suns in bed and cried a bucket. My parents thought I was the most miserable creature, ever.


On Monday, I called into work, sick. Fever and body aches generally don't translate into good productivity at the. busiest. medical. office. ever. I knew that I was leaving my coworkers in a lurch, but in the January-February months when everyone was taking vacations and changing their school schedules, I took on a 4-person staff load by myself. I'm not really sure how I did it. So I figured that having 3 of 4 medical assistants on staff would be just fine. I was right. The sun rose and the sun set, and I didn't hear of any casualty reports on the news. I took Nyquil before bed, hoping to have a restful night's sleep.


Three hours later, at 2:00 am, the vomiting began. I was jolted awake in a cold sweat with an urgency to empty my stomach. I could hear my stomach saying, "Haha! Joke's on you, I've been empty all day." Cue the bile. Or maybe it was leftover Nyquil, I don't know (green is green?). I sat at my computer bleary-eyed for hours, and got confirmation that we are no longer in college--no one is online at that hour. Good thing I saved my episode of Revenge. When that ended, I decided to drink some water. Bad idea. By the time my stomach stopped rebelling, it was 5:30am and I was reading Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking (thanks, O!). I got through Chapter Two: Jellied Stocks and I decided that I was calm enough to sleep. Funny enough, I was able to read about food and not get nauseous. Even gross French delicacies like jellied stocks.


This morning, I decided to go to the grocery to buy some Gatorade and chicken noodle soup. It was bright and sunny out, and I hadn't left the house in days. I felt like a vampire. A dehydrated, still slightly nauseous, weak-kneed vampire. I decided to walk the half mile to Safeway instead of drive, since I felt uneasy operating a motor vehicle in my current state. Going downhill to the store was easy. Coming home wasn't. I had forgotten to factor in the weight of my groceries...darned liquids! Those 1-quart bottles of Gatorade weighed like, ten pounds each. So I only bought two. And had to start drinking one on the way home (along with a short sit-down break in front of someone's house...sigh). Feeling better, I trudged home and proceeded to watch five hours of daytime television. I'd say it was a productive way to spend the last day of April. 

Strawberry Scones and Grilled Cheese

This morning I woke up and craved strawberry scones. It's an odd feeling, really--like you can't move on with your life until you're wrist deep in frozen grated butter. Most normal people grab a granola bar or glass of OJ for breakfast and go on their merry way, but not me. In my flour-covered pajamas, I was determined to transform those not-yet-at-their-peak strawberries that my mom keeps impulsively buying, into breakfast. An hour later, magic in the form of crunchy sugary edges, tender buttery centers, with juicy strawberries throughout. If you think you hate scones because they are usually dense, crumbly, and tasteless, please give the recipe a try (or come over!). It'll change your mind about scones forever like it did for me.  


In other news, the other day I made a grilled cheese sandwich so delicious that I could not even pause to take a photo. Grilled cheese is another food that I didn't develop a taste for until college. All of my childhood memories involving it are of forgetting that the school cafeteria was having grilled cheese day and lamenting that I would now have to spend $1.25 on a soggy sandwich with a centimeter of thick, rubbery, orange goo. It was that bad. Anyways, with college came some of my new favorite tastes--Korean food, grilled cheese, and peanut butter sandwiches. I followed the method by Chef John from foodwishes (my fave!) and below is the video. Make a sandwich, serve with tomato bisque, and thank me later.

Let's focus on the good

Some perks to my job: decent pay, grateful smiles, learning clinical and imaging skills, fancy lunches catered by drug companies every so often, and patients regularly bring in flowers and boxes of See's Candies.


Last week, the night before I flew off to Columbus, the Glaucoma Research Foundation (chaired by Boss Doctor) hosted the Journal Club. Basically, doctors, residents, and fellows in the ophthalmology field are invited by Boss Doctor to dine at the Boulevard Restaurant. The only suggestion is that you look over three chosen PubMed articles pertaining to glaucoma research, and be ready to discuss it over dinner.  The articles were on 1. Decrease in vision increases fear of falling (uhm...I would imagine so) 2. Goldmann Applanation Tonometry (used for measuring eye pressure. I clean these like 100 times a day!) 3. Something imaging tool. 


My coworkers Russian Lady Technician, Amy, and Christina came too. Everyone's name tags had titles like "MD" or "Fellow" after their names....expect for ours. Around the table, everyone introduced themselves as part of some foundation or medical group....except for us. The four of us girls basically sat at the end of the long table (designated the Kiddie Table) and entertained ourselves while the big doctors did the talking. While eating some darned good (free!) food and getting served drinks from the unlimited open bar. I had sparkling apple cider in a tumbler and people thought I was drinking beer. Great.


Here are some pretty pictures! Okay maybe not that pretty, I took them in low light on my iPhone.

Boss Doctor is the one in blue, looking right at me.
He facilitated the discussion.

This place has four dollar signs on yelp.
AND it has a Michelin Star.

Fairytale pumpkin soup with bacon.

Alaskan Halibut with some other stuff on side
(I didn't have much time to look at the menu)

Chocolate mousse with meringue and ice cream. Delish!

After-dinner espresso..I would've asked for more, but it was
already 10pm and I needed to get to bed to catch a flight!

Boss Doctor introduced me to the other doctors as a future medical student and people asked if I wanted to go into ophthalmology. I don't. But of course, one does not say that aloud in the presence of one's boss.

Labor Day

It's my brother's 25th birthday today! Last night, at the dinner table, I asked him if there was anything that he wanted me to bake for him--cookies, breads, scones, pies, cream puffs. Birthday cake, perhaps?


He said, "Your apple turnovers."


I normally try to bake with what I have on hand, but my brother is visiting this weekend from Los Angeles and I don't get the opportunity to bake for him very often (unless I mail him cookies)! So I called on my younger brother to help me run to the store to buy granny smith apples, caramel candies, and cream cheese.


Then I got to work, mixing and folding and rolling homemade puff pastry dough for the next five hours (I rushed the time chilling in the fridge) until midnight. I was determined to get these apple turnovers shaped, into the fridge, and on a baking sheet the next morning. My hands are pretty sore today, and if there was such thing as a rolling pin callous, then that's what I have.

 Here's a taste of delicious flakiness for you, and a peek of gooey caramel.This is probably the third or fourth time I've blogged about these turnovers on separate occasions. They are that good. My brother is taking a box on his flight home tonight.


So there you go. A most labor-intensive recipe for my older brother, born on Labor Day.

Baking at age 8

One of my first memories of baking was with my dad, when I was 8. I loved frequenting the Ortega Library in San Francisco as a child and would often bring home cook books. The colorful pictures dazzled me so.


One day, I decided that I wanted to bake a chocolate cake from one of the books I brought home. In reality, it wasn't a chocolate cake at all. It was a savory pumpernickel bread made with cocoa powder. I even asked my dad what the word "savory" in the description meant, and he didn't know. I thought it meant delicious, and that was good enough for me.


I read through the ingredients and ordered my dad about the kitchen. My dad certainly isn't a chef now, nor was he fifteen years ago. So we fumbled around, trying to gather ingredients. I used to drink Nesquik, and thought that was an adequate substitute for cocoa powder. Same color, right? Check. We didn't have a loaf pan, and so we used an aluminum jello mold that looked like a flower. Good enough. And what in the world was baking powder?


So off we went, mixing things haphazardly, making a mess in the kitchen. After it came out of the oven, I was so excited! The cake was a brown, chocolatey color in a pretty flower bowl.


The cake didn't come out neatly from the pan (we probably didn't grease it, and uhm...jello molds aren't made for baking) so I scooped out a little chunk and tried it. And it tasted so, so bad. It was salty and a bit sweet from the Nesquik, with an awful dense, dirt-like texture. I remember being incredibly disappointed. I had waited patiently for it to bake in the oven for like, a whole hour! Maybe even two! Okay not, but time feels like is passes slower for children. 


My dad also tried the "cake," and said approvingly, "It tastes like bread." He smiled and chewed it some more, and even offered me another piece. Later that day, he secretly scooped out the entire mess and dumped it in the trash before my mom came home. I saw the flower tin soaking in the sink, clumps of crusty failure clinging to the sides. 


That was the first and last time I'd ever baked with my dad. I actually didn't bake much until my second year of college, when I moved into an apartment and had a fellowship group to feed.


Today, as I was baking chocolate cupcakes, my dad said, "Wow, they look so good. You could open a store."  I wonder if he remembers the failed chocolate "cake" from fifteen years ago. If he does, he has never brought it up, nor reminded me of my impulsiveness and know-it-all attitude. My dad remains to this day, the most patient man on Earth.

Twinings Herbal Unwind Tea

This is my favorite herbal tea. It's soooo delicious. Smooth, faintly sweet, citrus-y, comforting...and because there's no caffeine, I drink this all day. This tea has gotten me through many a final exam and heartache.


Safeway had a sale last week ($1.99 per box instead of its regular $4.29!) so I bought the entire remaining stock. Too bad there were only 3 boxes left.


P.S. Does anyone enjoy drinking Good Earth teas? I have one box each of Jasmine Green tea and Vanilla Chai. Both are too floral-tasting to me, and I'd hate to see pricey teas go to waste. Am willing to deliver them in person in Berkeley.

What's your greatest weakness?

During a mock interview a couple of months ago, Dr. R asked me what my greatest weakness was. I answered in front of the class that I'm afraid of driving. It's not exactly true anymore, but my sixty-something classmates got a real kick out of that. It would be truly sad if I were immobile and incapable of getting myself to destinations. Good thing I'm not.


But really, I think the biggest weakness of mine is being a picky eater. For as long as I can remember, I've always hated eggs. I have never eaten a single hard boiled egg in my 23 years of life. The sulfurous smell of eggs repulse me. The texture of eggs prepared in any way makes me queasy. The way the shell pieces stick to the underlying membrane is gross. The way they turn from transparent to opaque when cooked bothers me as well. My family has been cognizant of this erm, peculiarity, of mine from the start and has always been understanding and accommodating (leaving out eggs in certain dishes, asking me if I want noodles before they crack in an egg, etc.) That being said, I still use eggs as an ingredient in baking. My 3 criteria for eggs are: if I can see it, smell it, or taste it, I won't put it in my mouth.


Besides eggs and all of its more subtle applications (like fried rice, egg custard tarts, and meringues) other foods that I don't eat are shrimp, squid/calamari, oysters, raw fish/sashimi, goat cheese, veal, and lamb.


Not eating these foods is sometimes restricting, if not socially debilitating. For example, most dim sum dishes contain shrimp. In the past, I have avoided eating dim sum with friends because I know I'll just go home hungry and eat another meal. When I eat dim sum with my family, I feel more free to order what I like without being singled out. One would think that my avoidance of eggs would cause me to hate breakfast. But it's actually the opposite. I love breakfast and brunch. As long as the restaurant has an assortment of baked goods or pancakes and coffee, I'll be happy. Plus, ruling out every omelet or egg dish on the menu, I'm usually left with one or two things to choose from--easy for indecisive people like me. This is perhaps also why I enjoy baking so much--who doesn't like freshly baked cinnamon swirl bread, blueberry scones, chocolate croissants, or buttermilk biscuits for breakfast? Yes.


So, what do I do when I'm at a nice restaurant with formal company, and there are foods that my hosts/dinner companions insist I try? I'll usually accept graciously, place the food on my plate, and then eat around the offending dish. The last thing I want to do is to draw attention to my food preferences. A couple of years ago, I had lunch with a friend's family and he announced that I don't eat any of the list of foods above. His mother just gaped at me. She might've also said a few snide comments about being spoiled and not knowing what's good in life. I felt embarrassed and wanted to leave. I don't think the situation would have been mitigated even if I had lied and said I was allergic to eggs and seafood--the damage had been done.


I'm not sure why people judge me quite so harshly. People avoid other things all the time--blood, exercise, giving to the homeless. I suppose food habits are just more apparent on a daily basis.  


A big obstacle for me would be international missions or other cross-cultural immersion, if not for the spiritual and mental toll, then for food. Asian cuisines are typically abundantly varied. But what if someday I find myself in a small village somewhere in the world? How can I turn down a lamb stew if that was the only thing my hosts served? Would I go hungry rather than eat hard boiled eggs for a meal? My biggest fear is that I would lose my lunch (or dinner) as I have before when people push me to eat these foods. I suppose I'd rather be hungry than sick...but I don't know. As strong-willed I am in other areas of my life, I've willed myself to accept certain foods with only limited success. Maybe I should go on Fear Factor or something, if only that were still around.

Better than TV

I decide to put on another piece of clothing before leaving for dinner with my mother. It's chilly out, and we are walking to a Korean restaurant nearby my house. After a minute of contemplation, I decide to wear my Hospital sweatshirt, which I hadn't worn for months. On the front, it says "Emergency," and on the back, it says, "Hospital ER, Better Than TV."


My mother and I walk to the restaurant, and are seated at a table for four. We order the combination tofu soup and bulgogi, which is a better deal than if you were to order them separately.


As we wait for our banchan to come, my mother waves hello to someone at the table behind me. "My students," she smiles. My mom is very popular. I think that if she had a Facebook, she'd have more friends than I do. I turn and look.


At that moment, a peculiar scene catches my eye: seated at the head of that table, an old woman in a wheelchair. Her back is facing me, but it's apparent that she has choked on something. The uncles are prying into her mouth and patting her back. I turn back to my mother and we continue talking.


I tell my mom a story in which one of the doctors at the office told me that in an emergency situation (like for example, a birth on an airplane) if someone asked, "Is there a doctor here?" she would not volunteer. Ophthalmology is a very specific field, and she said she would not be useful in any emergency. My mother chuckles.


A minute or two later, there is commotion at the table behind me. "She's turning purple!" a waitress exclaims. The old woman who choked is apparently not breathing. The waitress hoists the old woman upright in her wheelchair and tries the heimlich unsuccessfully. At this point, the entire restaurant (which happened to be full) turns to watch. One of the grandchildren starts to cry. An aunt calls 911. The uncles lift her out of the wheelchair and lays her down on the floor.


At this point, a waitstaff starts CPR. I get up from our table, and tell her that I am also trained, and roll up my sleeves. I instruct the uncle to take the chopstick out of her mouth (what the heck?) and tilt back her chin, and take over the chest compressions.


The old woman was completely purple. How did no one notice at the table? Perhaps she wasn't very verbal to begin with. I actually feel the sternum crack as I compress, but I don't stop. There is no stopping. Not until the paramedics get here. 


The paramedics arrived with their fancy equipment and take over CPR. I stand up awkwardly, slightly sweaty, and avoid the eyes of all of the diners. I look at my mother. Her face is stern but relieved. What should I do? Sit back at my table? The waitress who brought our food is standing and sobbing with the tray of banchan.


I decide to just stand by and pray. I tie my hair back, since it flounced back and forth into my face while I did compressions. I really hope no one is looking at the words on my sweatshirt. Oh, the irony. A paramedic interrupted my selfish thoughts and asked me to do CPR again. They cut away the old woman's clothing and suction out food to try to intubate her. I pump, pump, pump.


I'm not sure what happened after. At some point, I was told to stop so the woman could be strapped into a gurney and whisked away. I straighten up. One of the uncles thanks me for helping his mother. I nod. The entire family of perhaps twelve people leave the restaurant in tears. My mother waves a sad goodbye to her students.


I sit down next to my mother. We stare at the food, now cold. Neither of us really wants to eat. A woman at the adjacent table asks me if I'm a nurse, and I mumble something about volunteering at an ER. She said, "It was good that you are here!"


Was it really?


Earlier in the day, D and I talked about the cost of pursuing medicine. I prayed in that moment that I would receive affirmation from God that this is the way that He wants me to live. Was this it? What makes the pursuit worth it? A life saved (or not)? Or is it the purposefulness of being able to stand up, and take action when everyone else watches helplessly?


How different it is to do CPR in an emergency room, than to do CPR at a restaurant. My mother and I tried to eat our dinner in peace, which is hard to do after that ordeal. My arms are quivering from the compressions, and I can't quite use chopsticks correctly. We eat slowly and sullenly, ruminating on life and purpose. I pray that the old woman made it, and for the family to remember to love each other more.

Green Tea Cream Puffs

Cream puffs are my not-so-secret weapon. 

I use the America's Test Kitchen Family Baking Book recipe!

   

The first time I made them was for a friend's surprise going-away party. He had made like, a hundred chocolate and orange cream puffs for his co-op's mystery-themed dinner party, and they were delicious. So I was inspired to make some for him! Behold, a photo that contains immense enjoyment of said cream puffs: 

Bad timing? Or thinly-veiled disgust?

The first batch was made with great trepidation and a cut-off heavy duty ziploc bag. I've since upgraded to a plastic-lined cloth pastry bag. It also helps that I have a stand mixer named JOKER (trust me, you need something to mix fast for tempering those yolks).


After baking twenty-something batches of cream puffs over the last two years, I've perfected them. Just kidding! I haven't. But I do know what a good puff looks like, and what a bad puff looks like:

Probably not supposed to reproduce this image from
America's Test Kitchen

But cream puffs are temperamental little things, and the height really does matter. Squat puffs will be denser, with more of that foamy, eggy batter clogging up fill-able spaces. Risen puffs are airy, crisper, and have more room to fill with pastry cream. Ah, the pastry cream. Sometimes an extra minute on the stove will render the pastry cream too thick and gloppy. In which case I'll dump the whole batch into JOKER, whip it up at high speeds, and hope for the best. There is a narrow window of success in which the pastry cream will be thick enough to pipe out neatly (and not thin and runny), but not so thick that it's like set custard. 

Whew.

As seen on this blog.

Recently, I took a foray into Experimental Land, and so I made green tea cream puffs.

With. Green. Tea!


I was looking for matcha powder at my local Chinese grocery store, but couldn't find any. I did, however, find "Green Tea Powder" and thought, "Heck, I could make that myself!" So I used my coffee grinder to pulverize some good-quality green tea leaves. I sifted the resulting powder, and it looked pretty darned like green tea powder (cuz you know, it was). 


I didn't know how the powder would hold up in cooking, and so I halved my pastry cream recipe for a test batch. My pastry cream recipes call for 5 egg yolks! That's a lot! I usually leave the whites for my brother to consume, but seriously, baking cream puffs is always an investment in eggs. I feel like I use up an entire coop's worth. When I double the recipe, I'm left with 10 whites, and so I sometimes make an angel food cake with them. Waste not!


Anyways, the resulting cream was speckled with foresty green, and it actually tastes quite good! I'm pleased. [Imagine picture here]


UPDATE: I brought them to my postbac program's end-of-the-year celebration and saw in my periphery that some were left uneaten on plates. Oh well. Experimental flavors don't always bode well.

Lemon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread

Over Spring Break, I baked up a Lemon-Scented Pull-Apart Coffee Cake. But it's not actually a cake, at least in my mind. For one, it has yeast in it. You know what else has yeast? Bread. Also, it's baked in a 9x5 loaf pan. You know what else you bake in loaf pans? Exactly. You get the picture...

See that wooden thing? It's actually a pestle. Harhar.

mmm...springy

Piles of dough squares, butter, and lemon zested sugar

sprinkle!

A dough square and his dough friends

All ready for the second rise

So this recipe is actually almost identical to Joy the Baker's Cinnamon Sugar Pull-Apart Bread--the only difference is the filling. This means that you could double the recipe and simply use half for each flavored sugar! But...I didn't think about that until after the fact, so just lemon it is. (Hello, B! I think of you every time I make lemon things).

A funny story: I baked this a couple of weeks ago and brought a slice for my adviser. But it turns out that she doesn't eat refined sugar, and asked if she could re-gift it! Now that's a first. I've never had anyone give away a baked good that I handed specifically to them before. But I wasn't offended in the least. In fact, it had me wondering what my life would be like if I gave up refined sugar forever (not just for Lent)...I also wonder who she gave it to. Hopefully not the trashcan.

But anyways, here's what the lemon sugar pull-apart bread looks like out of the oven:

Hello

I bake it for 55 minutes, not 35 like the recipe says.

There is also a cream cheese glaze that goes with this bread. It has only four ingredients: lemon juice, milk, cream cheese, and powdered sugar. Unfortunately, I made the rookie mistake of mixing the lemon juice and the cream cheese together first. But that caused it to curdle and now no amount of whipping in my stand mixer will cause it to stop looking like cottage cheese. It kind of tastes like it, too. Genius.

Croissants--not for the faint of heart

K and I baked croissants on Sunday night. I use the term "baked" loosely, because one does not simply bake croissants in one night from scratch. No. It takes about 24 hours from start to finish*.

What I actually mean then, is that I showed K how to make the croissant dough, did a "turn" for her, and plopped myself on her futon to sleep at 2:30am. 

Because I have so much time on my hands this Spring Break week, I decided to make a batch myself. I haven't mustered up the willpower to make croissants since last summer because they are so darned time-consuming. If you'd like the recipe, send me an email and be prepared to toil.

Start: Tuesday 8:00pm
Eat: Thursday 10:00am

If you don't like delayed gratification, this recipe isn't for you. Feel free to pick up instant pudding cups at your local Safeway. For the rest of you, feast your eyes.

Dough ready to be rolled out. Look at those layers!

Fast forward to the fun part: this is the dough after 3 "turns" with 2-hour rests in between. A turn is basically when you pound out a yeast dough-wrapped butter square, tri-fold it both ways, and roll it out again after refrigerating it for two hours. The refrigerating is to keep the butter cold, so it forms lots of flaky layers. It's a real arm workout. One also makes puff pastry with a similar technique, with the only difference being that the croissant dough will mischievously expand into a fluffy pillow when your back is turned. That's because croissant dough is yeasted, but puff pastry dough is not.


I won't belabor the dough-making process to you non-bakers out there, but in case you wanted to know, I, too, panicked the first time I made croissants. And that's because the butter is supposed to go from whole-stick form to being paper-thin, all without melting! Just a word of advice: keep pounding, folding, and rolling until the dough is nice and elastic, with no noticeable chunks of butter. It'll happen eventually, unless you have unusually warm hands. Lucky for me (and to D's chagrin) my hands are always ice-cold.

It's not easy rolling things into rectangles.

Everything is better with dark chocolate

I love chocolate croissants, and was oh so disappointed when La Note ran out of them during brunch with some girlfriends. But the beauty of being versed in baking is that I can make whatever I want! (Take that, La Note!) So in go the dark chocolate chips, and voila!--chocolate croissants. Any chocolate chips would do, except for white chocolate. That'd probably taste weird. White chocolate also has a lower melting temperature, so it might get burned in the baking process. This is all speculation though; if you insist, I won't stop you.  On a related note, if I were ever to cater a party, I'd make a miniature assortment of croissants--ham and cheddar, sauteed artichoke and chicken, spinach and mushroom, chocolate, of course...mmm...Moving along.

All rolled up. How cute! Don't let its skinny shape fool you.

 I also made some plain croissants that are, erm, slightly healthier than the chocolate variety, for my parents. After rolling the rough into a rectangle, simply cut into two triangles and roll them up. Tuck in the little point so that it doesn't burn during baking. Eating the little tail first was my favorite part as a kid. I was weird.

Chocolate wants to get in on the action

Portioning out the dough isn't an exact science--my ruler never touches these. But it turns out that I make them a bit smaller than the recipe calls for, yielding about 35 croissants. If I wanted to eat a humungous croissant, I could just buy them at Costco for $5.99 a dozen, with hardly any of the heavy lifting. By my estimate, $5.99 can make you several dozen of these croissants. I can't calculate the cost of your labor, though.

20 hours into the baking process

The formed croissants are now left to rise for another 10-16 hours in the refrigerator. I let them rise overnight so I had breakfast baking to look forward to. If you're the Saves-For-a-Rainy-Day type like me, you can freeze some at this point. Just put the tray in the freezer, and pop them into a ziploc freezer bag when they are frozen to retain their shape.


Okay this next part is going to shock and disgust you. And that is, the egg wash. That's right. You beat a whole egg and then sparingly brush the gloppy yellow stuff onto your beautifully formed croissants right before you bake it. Gross. Oh, that's not gross to you? Eating eggs is normal, you say? Okay, it's just me then.


But guess what? It comes out looking like this:

Get into my belly

Those pale skinny logs of dough flatten out nicely into bronzed cylinders of flakiness when they hit a 400-degree oven. At first you'll be weirded out that you can create--from scratch--croissants that smell just like the ones you've been eating your entire life. And then you'll shout from the rooftops that they taste much, much better.
*And then you'll want to take a break from croissant-making indefinitely because I said that they would be done in 24 hours, when actually you've been working on them for three days. Oops.

This one unrolled, whoops! But see the layers?

Croissants are best eaten still warm from the oven. This makes sharing with my friends somewhat difficult, since many of them aren't in the area. But with some careful coordination and patience, anything can happen.

It's Spring Break!

Oh, hello, faithful readers. It hasn't occurred to me to write here for a whole nine days. I blame the weather. All I've wanted to do is curl up in bed reading The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  It's a brilliant trilogy, by the way--"Makes the Hunger Games look like the Boxcar Children," said my friend R, who introduced me to them. It seriously did. All three books. My dreams were filled with vivid images of violence against women and infiltrated databases and psychological abuse. And that's all I'll say about that.  

I'll start with some pretty things: 

Marimba Master. Betcha didn't know that is a real title. In my head.

Not saying that you are pretty, YDY. Er...not saying that you are not pretty, either. Moving on. Your senior recital was amazing! I'm talking to you directly because I know you read this blog. But yes. I know you worked hard and put loads of effort into showcasing your musical growth.

A great-quality photo from my 4-year old phone.

Here is a lemon bundt cake that I made yesterday. I am quite happy that the cake released fully from the pan. Sometimes I get lazy and spray the pan with only cooking spray without also flouring it. I've made this cake six times now since summer. Not flouring is always a mistake. I eat this cake for breakfast and dessert and snacks in between! All purpose.

Here is a St. Patrick's Day-themed cupcake that I made today for my Thursday Night Fellowship (TNF) group. I'm leading the study tonight. I always wing it. Is that bad? Well anyways, these are just black magic cupcakes and green-tinted cream cheese frosting (with sugar dialed down). Yes, the batter is soupy looking, but it always bakes up deliciously rich and moist. I honestly don't know how 1 3/4 cups flour can yield 24 generously portioned cupcakes, but it does.

As my blog title suggests, my spring break officially started today at 10:32 AM. Only four people showed up to my cell biology class so we ended early. (I'm making it sound more dramatic than it actually is; there are only 14 people total in that class). But anyhow, when I got home, I went to the post office! And did laundry! And washed dishes! And baked the cupcakes! So...pretty much I am uninteresting and need some fun in my life. If you are able to help remedy this any way with this, next week is the time to speak up! Toodles.

Pumpkin Cheesecake

I've been up since 5:45am and had to take a long recuperation nap when I got home. I admit that I only woke up from my delicious nap because I had thoughts about the pumpkin cheesecake I made last night, which was cooling in the refrigerator. There's something about standing on my feet for seven or eight hours that just makes me crave cheesecake. Halfway through my OREX shift today (at about noon) I stepped outside into the lobby and texted my little brother that I wanted to eat it. It was apparently more important to me than watching surgeons cut open body parts and suture them back together.


Is it weird that I'm talking about cheesecake and surgery at the same time? Sorry that it's probably not appetizing to you. Having worked in the Emergency Department for over a year now, sometimes you just throw up your hands during a chaotic, gory shift and say, "Let's go eat lunch!" Or in this case, pumpkin cheesecake.

Have you ever tried to cut a soft, custardy cake with dental floss?
Well, don't with this one. There's a graham cracker crust, after all.

I've made a lot of desserts in my life, but this pumpkin cheesecake from America's Test Kitchen is pretty darned fantastic. It's as if fluffy and luscious cheesecake meets pumpkin pie spiced with cinnamon, nutmeg and ginger and then lived happily ever after...in my tummy. I dropped a little on the kitchen counter while cutting slices and my germaphobic little brother scooped it up and licked his fingers. If that's not a testimonial, I'm not sure what is.

PS. Thanks R, for the springform pan! I'm going to drive to your house and deliver you a slice, right...about....now.

Cathartic Baking

Ever feel really antsy and distracted while studying for an exam, and make mental lists of all the things that you're going to do as soon as it's over?

My list goes something like:

1. Shop for groceries
2. Put on sweatpants and tie up my hair. 
3. Bake tons of goodies. And I mean tons.

This is my list: (Updated!)


Joy the Baker Salted Caramel Cheesecake Pie
Delicious. The crust was a bit crumbly and finnicky though.


Smitten Kitchen Chocolate Cake Roll 
How much simpler can chocolate cake get? Not much. Except when you have to roll it in a towel and it gets stuck everywhere and it breaks off into fluffs of chocolate fluff. 

Cream puffs, from where my cream puff snobbery stems


White chocolate macadamia nut cookies (my fave!)
I think I prefer America's Test Kitchen chocolate chip cookie base to Alton Brown's--higher flour to butter ratio makes for less spreadage in the pan.

Cream Cheese Caramel Apple Turnovers
You're going to be disappointed in me...I bought store-bought puff pastry.

Peppermint Bark 
My trainee gifted me with a bag of Ghirardelli peppermint bark! I love that stuff and have basically inhaled the entire bag...well not yet, but soon.

Let's pretend there are enough hours in a day to make all of those things. And enough people around me to actually enjoy them (Hospital Volunteer Christmas party on Friday, holla!)


Tomorrow, I'm going to knock out my final for Medical Microbiology, head to Safeway and Trader Joe's, and then make a complete, epic mess in my kitchen. The worst part is always the clean up. I wish I had a dishwasher, of the human variety...

Holiday Cookie Exchange

Bubbly

Sisters I look up to

Homemade cookies and recipes all around!

Not Mahjong or Scrabble, but Bananagrams

Delicious times.

Baking-0, Me-1

See this? This is the flaky, buttery, apple-y product of sheer willpower two weeks ago.


See this? This is a picture of nothing, because I haven't baked anything since then. That fact didn't change tonight.


After 12 hours of studying for my impending MCAT, I was utterly brain dead. I decided that I wanted to bake scones for catharsis. I went downstairs at 10pm and flipped to the well-worn page in my trusty baking book. Then I stared at the words Rich Berry Scones for several minutes in a daze.


My thoughts drifted to all the dishes that I would inevitably have to wash afterward. Nope, didn't want to do it. I went back upstairs to my room.


I remembered how I used to bake as late as 1am in my college days, clanking around the kitchen long after my roommate had gone to bed. One time I was so delirious, I accidentally added 2 tablespoons of sugar instead of 2 teaspoons to pizza dough (it makes little difference); another time I forgot to add oil to a chocolate cake (it makes all the difference); one time I dropped a bunch of flour on the floor and tried to use a wet paper towel to clean it up, only to create a floury paste....Dang, I was committed to my craft. I refused to show up empty-handed to small group if I had an once of strength left in me....Now, back to reality. Those blackberries in the fridge are nearing their last edible days. I'd better bake them. Now. Now. Now.


I went back downstairs to the kitchen. This time, I took out all of the ingredients out of the fridge just to make sure that I would commit to baking the darned scones. Butter. Flour. Blackberries. Sour cream....I was pretty sure my parents think that there is a burglar in the house at this hour. I was so tired. My eyes were drooping. All I wanted to do is climb into my nice, soft bed. I put everything back in the refrigerator and trudged back upstairs.


In the shower, I willed the water to rejuvenate me as I tried to convince myself to bake. Just grate the butter and mix the batter, I told myself. Just freeze them and bake them tomorrow. You'll be glad you did when you can enjoy them for breakfast. Remember college? You were there not long ago? What happened to you? I dragged my feet downstairs for the third time.


I stared at the recipe. I stared at my refrigerator. It was nearly 11pm and I had been debating with myself for a full hour. I'd never felt so defeated by the mere thought of baking before. I pulled out my little half-pint of blackberries, and ate them. The end.

Safeway

I went on a mission to Safeway today. I've been more or less in bed since getting sick on Saturday, and wanted to enjoy the gorgeous weather by taking a walk, and buying a few groceries while I was at it. On my way out, my dad made me put on a sweater. It was 80 degrees out. I still enjoyed my five-block trek, even if I was a bit sweaty (or feverish? I don't know).

Our local Safeway has been under renovation all summer, and it's finally celebrating its re-opening. The sand-colored brick facade is modern and suburban, complete with umbrellas and patio furnishing. Inside, they've done wonders with their displays. It looks so much more homely and welcoming, almost making me forget that Safeway is a supermarket chain, and not a superbly-stocked European mom and pop shop.

What I find semi-uncomfortable is that I can't walk fifteen feet without someone wearing a name tag greeting me. Not because I normally don't like being friendly while perusing groceries, but today I was just sick and wanted to keep to myself. It didn't help that there are now little round tables offering samples stationed about the produce section. A man offered me a little cup of arugula, which I declined. I just think it's weird to eat while shopping--my germy hands are clutching a germy basket, and I'm not about to put anything in my mouth without a good dose of ethyl alcohol. On my hands, that is. Not on the food.