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| Well, I have to write about my experience with the great Louisiana tradition of the Crawfish Boil. There are a few people in our community group with Louisiana roots, and they decided it would be a lot of fun to have a crawfish boil. I think I was with the majority in our group who approached the event with a bit of trepidation. Afterall, my memories of crawfish were the little critters we caught in the creek. Not exactly an appetizing memory. Plus, I don't really like seafood in general, so that didn't bode well for the crawfish. But Steven and I joined the other brave souls prepared to try eating some mud bugs. And guess what, I actually liked them! Go figure. There was a bit of a metal component looking at the cooked crawfish and thinking about eating them.
This is how it works. First, you get the crawfish. The pros in our group, new the best place to get them and they had them shipped up from Louisiana the same day as our boil. Crawfish are like lobster, in that you have to boil them alive. So we had two big boxes with two big nets full of LOTS of crawfish. A bunch of the crawfish are loaded into the boiler basket. Then they are topped with some potato pieces and corn cobs. Then they are dropped into a mixture of boiling water and seasoning and cooked. After a variable number of minutes (depending on how spicy you want the bugs) they are taken out of the water and the goods dumped on a long table covered with newspaper.
Now it's time to eat. But you don't eat the whole thing, mostly the tail meat. This requires breaking the crawfish in half, then removing some scales from the tail and then pulling the tail meat out. Finally, removing the strip of "innerds" till you're left with just meat (some people eat innards and all!). You're left with just a bite-size morsel. Some people dip it in butter like you would lobster. The Louisiana folks also eat the "head juice." I don't think I want to know what it actually is, but it involves sucking out whatever is inside of the other half of the crawfish. I didn't think to take pictures of the process of breaking into these. It took me awhile to get the hang of it. We were laughing that one of our friend's 8-year old daughter caught on faster than me and was helping me break into my crawfish. I think part of the amusement was how much she liked eating them! She was even requesting to have a crawfish boil for he birthday party this summer. I think her parents convinced her that not all of her friends would be as interested in eating crawfish.
Although the bugs, taters and corn is all that is usually at a crawfish boil, we had a couple sides as most of us were concerned we wouldn't like the crawfish. As the night went on, they cooked the crawfish longer, so they got spicier. Although the meat I don't think got that spicy, the potatoes and especially the corn, got wicked hot! I ate a piece from a middle batch and my lips were burning after 1 row! The advice I got was to eat it as quickly as possible :)
I'm having some issues uploading photos, but here are the 2 that succeeded in uploading (maybe): The first is one of the Louisiana guys, Josh, dropping the goods into the pot; the second is the crawfish dumped onto the table, ready to eat.
 
The night continued with surprises of things I would like as I agreed to go see the new Star Trek movie. I don't really dislike Star Trek, but I'm no trekky (although when I was younger, I do admit that my friend and I made up a rap about Star Trek Next Generations and Deep Space Nine - and sang it often). Anyhow, I really enjoyed the movie! It had a nice story, in addition to all the fighting stuff. And nice comic relief.
In the hospital, I'm currently working in the emergency room. I was reminded of my mom saying that there's "never a dull moment in the ER" as I was at work the other evening. I was getting ready to walk into a patients room when I noticed down the hall a patient in a gown (ballpark guess mid-20s (he was about 400 ft away from me) came running out of his room, flailing his arms and yelling and heading out of the department. On his heels were 2 people in street clothes (presumably relatives), several nurses and at least one doctor. What was going on and what happened? No idea. He wasn't even in my area of the ER. So with a mental "that's strange and peculiarly amusing," on I headed into my patient's room.
I'm also amazed at the number of people who end up in the ER for second opinions. They end up waiting for hours because they're not that sick, and then we don't do much for them at all. After all, it is the EMERGENCY room. Oh well. They end up being rather quick visits.
I was a little worried that my ER rotation was alining itself with the swine flu mess, but so far I haven't seen a single patient who thought they had the swine flu. And now the hype is dying down, so I don't expect any big disasters. And the contact precautions have returned to normal flu precautions. Normal being wearing a simple surgical mask when going into a room with a patient with suspected or confirmed flu. The upgraded guidelines had been to wear goggles, a mask worthy of preventing TB, gown and gloves.
Well, I think that's all for this update. Hope all is well in your neck of the woods!
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| Recently, Steven has taken to experimenting in the kitchen and has had a number of successes. While I get to benefit from eating them, I was worried that he was getting more practice than me for our upcoming Iron Chef competition this June. You see, when Ben and Rachel come out to visit this June, the four of us are going to stage (and film) an Iron Chef style cooking competition, complete with secret ingredient and guest judges. And June is quickly approaching!
Last night I had my chance to experiment. We had bought a pork steak at the Soulard Market a few week backs, and Steven thawed it a couple days ago, so it needed to be cooked. The question was, what to do with it? Neither of us had ever had this particular cut of meat and were lacking experience. I ended up in charge of it. After consulting Betty Crocker to get a general sense of how long it should take to cook it, I thought a bit about what to do with it. I thought about making some sort of sauce, and remembered that we still had some little bottles of red wine from a previous recipe and could use that. Then I decided that red wine sauces should make richer sauces, so needed some spices that would complement that. I started sniffing our various spices and chose a couple that I thought smelled "earthy" and that would work together: crushed bay leaves, thyme and ground coriander. Then I got an onion, a green pepper, one celery stalk and a garlic clove to make the base. I chopped those things up (only half the onion, which still put me in streaming tears) and put them in the pot with a little oil. After they had cooked a bit, I cleared out a center portion and put in the pork. Then I seasoned the pork with salt, pepper and the aforementioned spices. After it had seared a bit, I deglazed the pan with the red wine and then let it reduce and cook away. And it turned out quite lovely!
Oh, and the best part were the sides. Steven made mashed potatoes (I don't know if I'm ever going to learn to make them myself cause I like his so well) and then we had green beans! Steven had bought some fresh green beans at Soulard, so we cooked them, good ol' Southern style! Boiled them a looong time with plenty of salt, a bit of pepper, a pinch of sugar and a couple pieces of the pork. Mmmm mmm. I was so thrilled with them. I think that I was so excited because it has been such a long time since I've eaten green beans. If only Steven had bought more of them. Well, it leaves more to look forward to.
And now I should go to bed, since I'm on call tomorrow.
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| Hello All,
I disappeared into the ICU where I worked long hours and spent most of my home-hours vegging on the couch with Steven. Overall, I actually like ICU medicine, though there are the harrowing moments of having a patient critically ill and stewing over the correct path to take to make them better or at least prevent their downturn. It's mainly the long hours that get so grueling. My last call in the ICU, I was on "bed control" - meaning I was making the decisions on who came to the ICU and which team would take that patient. There are two teams, yellow and orange. I was on yellow, and it had come to pass that the orange team was taking over the ICU, so I decided I should try to balance the load. Thus, of the 7 admissions that night, I took 4 and gave orange 3 and I took the ones for myself that sounded like they would be more complicated, longer stays. By about 3am I was wondering what in the world I decided to do to myself as I was wading through outside hospital records in the midst of putting out fires with other patients and creating plans for the new ones. And then there are all the notes to write. Even my attending laughed in the morning when he realized the distribution of the patients. But I had no one to blame but myself.
A rather amusing story out of the unit: I had a patient admitted for severe angioedema, that is, she had SEVERE swelling of her tongue, lips and throat. She was emergently intubated in the emergency department and transferred to the ICU. It was so bad that her tongue was protruding out of her mouth at least an inch. The first attempt to extubate her very shortly turned into an emergent re-intubation as she became stridorous (squeaky, strained breathing coming from airway obstruction). My attending quite adeptly intubated her. But it was clear, she HAD to remain intubated. Well, her daughter came to visit one day, and even though we had her mom on sedatives (standard to make intubation bearable), she was still awake and would communicate through writing and such. She was in restraints to prevent herself from self-extubating (taking out the breathing tube). She had already shown her ability to pull tubes as she had pulled out her feeding tube 4 times in one day - even while in restraints! Because of this, she also had mittens on her hands. Well, her daughter wanted her unrestrained so her mom could write and that they be left in private to discuss things. I explained the necessity of her mom being in restraints but compromised by saying the mitten could be taken off so her mom could write while the daughter was in the room. A few minutes later, the nurse came and got me to inform me that the daughter had unrestrained her mom and as the nurse went into the room to fix things, the mom grabbed her breathing tube - so the nurse quickly grabbed her hand to prevent her from pulling the tube out. Oh my, the daughter went crazy. She insisted that the nurses weren't adequately caring for her mom and that her mom wasn't trying to pull her tubes out, she was just itchy. No matter how many times I tried to politely explain things, the daughter became more and more angry. The nurse decided to call the nursing manager, I walked out exasperated and my co-resident went in to try and calm down matters. As I was standing outside the curtain, I could hear them talking and then heard the daughter say, "And then I was bum-rushed by gangstas!" in reference to me and the two nurses. I don't even know what "bum-rushing" someone is, but the whole idea was hilarious. Can you see me doing anything that would cause someone to call me a "gansta?" We almost had to have security escort her out of the ICU (we did get about 4 guards up there, but she ended up leaving on her own accord).
A more nerve-wracking event was when one of my patients had a tension pneumothorax in the middle of the night. This is a life-threatening emergency that has to be emergently fixed or the person will die. I got called around 3-4am and came to find that she had suddenly dropped her oxygen saturations dangerously low for no apparent reason. They had already called anesthesia to intubate her, to which I agreed. In listening to her, I thought she might have a pneumothorax (collapse of the lung from air outside of it), but once she was intubated, that became even more clear (no breath sounds on the right side). A pneumothorax, in and of itself, is not necessarily life-threatening, but then her heart-rate suddenly began slowing incredibly and her blood-pressure started dropping - tell-tale signs of this pneumothorax becoming a tension pneumothorax. Now, from early on in medical school, you hear the quick maneuver to save someone from a tension pneumo - needle decompression. In other words, you stick a big needle into their chest on the side of the pneumo and release the airr. However, this is actually a pretty rare happening, so I had never even known a patient who had one, let alone one I was taking care of. So I asked for the biggest needle available and then with slightly shaking hands, stuck it into her chest at the appointed site. Nothing. I tried again. Nothing. I think the lady was so fat that my needle wasn't getting down to her lungs. So I asked for a bigger needle while doing other measures to keep her alive in the meantime. Surgery was called to emergently place a chest tube. Thankfully they came soon because the third needle I tried was longer, but tiny diameter and while I think I may have gotten some air back, it wouldn't release enough. About the time I tried that the surgery resident showed up and as soon as he cut into her lung cavity, her blood pressure and heart rate began to recover. I breathed a temporary sigh of relief. She was still a very sick lady and it was difficult to get her enough oxygen despite adjusting the ventilator. The next morning my fellow gave me a tip on where to find a bigger needle (in our central line kits). Now I know, though the likelihood of me seeing another tension pneumo is rather unlikely. I think I'm ok with that :)
Ah, but the original intent of this blog was to talk about food. I just got side-tracked with my exciting stories. Anyhow, back to food. Steven and I have recently been taking a close look at our budget. In part because of necessity, but also encouraged by a recent sermon series on money by our church. That led to us trying to slash our food budget. I had already been wanting to work on changing our food habits to buy more local food and eventually less packaged food in an aim to be a more responsible consumer (see my blog on Barbara Kingsolver's book Animal, Vegetable, Miracle). This actually fit in well with eating cheaper, because eating more responsibly is often cheaper. Thankfully, also concombinant with this move, Steven has become inspired to become a better chef. Prior to us getting married, I think his culinary skills were mostly heating soup and making store-bought pasta (with mashed potatoes being a notable exception). In part inspired by Food Network shows such as "Iron Chef America" and also discussions about eating better, he has taken to the kitchen. This was especially helpful as I was in the ICU. Perhaps that was another part of his inspiration :)
We have started buying in bulk, eating more veggies and legumes and less meat. I've also started baking more from scratch (when I have time). For instance, I made brownies from scratch for the first time ever earlier this week. It actually wasn't much more difficult than making them out of a box. Sure, it takes a little more time and you get more stuff out of the cabinets, but that doesn't take TOO much time. I'm not sure that they ended up being cheaper, but on the side of being a more responsible cook, it's definitely better (less processed food and packaged food). In thinking of recipes, I've harkened back to some my mom used to make and twice in response to a recipe request I got the reply, "It's in the More with Less cookbook. Don't you have that?" No. But now I do! And after reading the intro, I'm even more inspired! It was originally written and published in the mid-70s during the fuel crisis and, evidently, the first announcement of the global food crisis. The Menonnites had issued a call for their congregation to cut food costs by 10%. Families struggling to meat this goal, led to this cookbook. The Menonnite Central Committee gathered recipes from Menonnites across the US and Canada, sifted through them and made this book. Plus, they talk about general principles for eating better. Furthermore, because it's a Menonnite book, there's actually a spiritual bent with several scripture references (the spiritual angle about caring for those who have less - by conserving our resources, which can be re-directed to the less fortunate, the fact that our bodies are temples of God so should be well cared-for and the admonishen that gathering with friends and family should be more about those interactions than the meal (not that the food should be totally ignored or junky)). It's also interesting that it's a Menonnite cookbook, because Steven recently found a blog called "Menonnite Girls Can Cook" and tried a soup recipe that turned out awesome.
On the road to eating/cooking more responsibly and healthier, Steven and I planted some herbs to grow in our windowsill. They are beginning to sprout, though we forgot to label them, so at this point don't know what's what! We planted basil, thyme, oregano, rosemary and little hot peppers (ok so those aren't herbs - but they can grow in a pot). We'll see how they turn out. I'm also excited to try my hand at jam-making and canning this summer. Surprised? It's a more responsible use of food because I'll can local veggies and fruits, and in the long-run hopefully save money (it'll probably be more expensive this year because I have neither a canner nor jars/lids). We can't store too much at this point, living in an apartment, but I also won't have time to just go hog-wild with canning, anyhow. We're easing into this whole home-grown/locally grown thing :)
Someday Steven and I are both looking forward to having a garden of our own. Till then, it'll be farmer's markets for us. And we're just heading into harvest with the first crops of asparagus showing up.
Per the usual, this blog is long, so I'll end it there.
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| Can you tell I'm on an easy rotation? It's my second update this month! Just a week after my last entry, in fact. Not a lot going on, but a few fun things. Last Sunday night some friends of ours hosted an Oscars party. For the occasion, we were all supposed to dress up - our own red carpet. I had a fun party dress, but Steven didn't have much "exciting" in the way of dress clothes, but he came up with something much more better: his Tibeten hat and Chinese vest. I don't know if I can explain, I think I'll have to let the pictures speak for themselves. Paige and Dan had printed ballot sheets for all the categories, so we all guessed who'd win what before it started. I think I guessed 6 of 24 correctly. It's really not that bad when you take into account the only movie I had seen that had been nominated for anything was Kung Fu Panda. It was a fun evening. Here's a picture of Steven and me, and one of some people watching a clip of one of the animated shorts:
 
Tonight, Steven and I are trying out a new chili recipe in preparation for a chili cook-off between a few community groups from church. It's Bobby Flay's recipe from Food Network. It required a trip down to the Soulard Market Spice Shop to pick up some special chili powders. And it was definitely worth going to a spice shop, because I had never heard of pasillo chili powder, so didn't have a clue what a reasonable substitute would be. They didn't have pasillo chili powder, but gave us another hot pepper powder that would be comparable. We also followed a few recommendations people had left comments about. Namely, his recipe is way too soupy, so we cut back the chicken broth by almost half. And as it's cooking, I think we could have cut back even more. We also added an extra can of beans and some tomato sauce, because although it had a great spice kick, it lacked a little flavor when you first took a bite. And we're probably going to go back to ground beef. He calls for chunks of beef. It's more expensive and we're not convinced it gives it a better flavor. I finally got to use my food processor! I had it out to make the chipotle puree, and as I was dicing the onion and crying up a storm, it dawned on me that I could dice the onion with the food processor. I immediately stopped and switched to the food processor. With 2 pulses, it was diced, voila! Wow! I don't think I'll ever dice onions by hand again.
Well, I want to go make some cornbread to go with our chili, so I better go. Hope you're having a good weekend!
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| It's been a nice, relaxing couple weeks since I switched to allergy and immunology, which is clinic-based. So I have weekends off! Next I move onto pulmonary consults, which is also a nicer schedule. Then it's to the ICU, so I've gotta enjoy my time while it lasts!
Some of what I've been able to do more with more time is cooking more. For Valentine's Day, Steven and I decided we didn't have enough money to go out to a nice dinner, but we could make a nice dinner here. And in addition to dinner, we could have a fun breakfast. Really, the breakfast sprang out of looking up Valentine's Day menu ideas online. But it sounded good to us! So, for breakfast we made banana crepes. It was our first venture into the world of crepes - and it went well! I had always been intimidated by crepes, but these weren't so hard. I guess I shouldn't really speak, I put Steven in charge of the crepes while I made the filling. But he did very well. The filling was really rich - butter, cream, brown sugar and vanilla! Then you cook the bananas, cut lengthwise in half, in the sauce for a couple minutes. Then one banana half gets wrapped in a crepe and extra sauce drizzled on top. I'm glad I cut the recipe in half. We don't need THAT many crepes :) Here's a picture of the finished product.
That night I took over the kitchen and let Steven work. I made walnut-encrusted pork tenderloin with a cranberry-wine sauce. It was my first time cooking a tenderloin, but it was surprisingly easy. I mixed crushed walnuts and rosemary, then sprinkled that all over the pork (along with salt and pepper), then put it in the oven to cook. The sauce wasn't too bad, either. Mix some red wine (which, we were fortunately able to find little bottles or we would have wasted a bunch of wine), cranberry sauce, lemon juice, rosemary and then let it reduce. I was worried that the wine would carry too strong a flavor, but it didn't. For sides I made wild rice, cooked carrots and broccoli with cheese sauce. Yummy! And we busted out the china again - it's always fun to have a reason to get it out. And we had pork for several days after that. For dessert we had cupcakes from The Cupcakery. Another yummy! Here are a couple pics from the evening:
  
Friday night we went bowling with our community group. I think I bowled the worst game of my life. I only got a 41!! The first two frames were all gutter balls. Oh, it was bad. But my second game I improved a lot, and in fact got a strike in the 9th frame. We had rented the lanes for 2 hours, and we were running out of time, if we wanted to finish out second game, so we started speed bowling. No stopping to think, just bowl! The limiting factor was the pin machine. But we were ready to go, just waiting for the gate to begin to rise. The crazy thing is that our scores began to improve! Adrenaline? No more overthinking? Don't know, but it was still fun. Here's a picture of Steven bowling.
Saturday was a relaxing day, too. Steven spent most of the day working on his Budapest course and I spent the day cleaning and doing laundry. Plus, cooking. I made some more homemade oatmeal bread. Hmmm, there is nothing like homemade bread! And totally from scratch. No bread machine for me. We were joining some friends in our community group for dinner that evening, so I made a salad and then a potato dish. The official name is potatoes dauphinois, but I just called them potatoes and cream. That's basically what they were. Sliced potatoes in a baking dish with butter, cream (with a bit of milk mixed in), salt and pepper. Brent has a smoker, so he had smoked corned beef. And they had an ice cream machine, so we made ice cream. Their machine only takes about 25 minutes! It was a fun evening. I think we both feel like we know Brent and Mary better, and their kids, too. We left the evening hoping to plan a community group camping outing this spring.
We went to church this morning and are now kicking back relaxing (well, Steven is reading more academic papers). I think I might make cookies later. We're going to an Oscar's party tonight, so it would be nice to bring something along. The debate is snicker doodles vs oatmeal cookies. Oatmeal are easier. And we have A LOT of oatmeal. We discovered how cheap it is when you buy plain oatmeal (not the little packets) and bought a bunch :)
That's what's happening around here! Have a wonderful week!
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