Adventures in the Kitchen

I mentioned before that my new roommate can bake like nobody's business. Well since he finally finished his surgery clerkship he has taught me a thing or two! Before my mom came to visit we had a souffle baking lesson. He taught me to make Blue + Parmesan cheese souffles and of course chocolate souffles. I in turn taught my mother. As is said - see one, do one, teach one.



Below is a picture of the cheese souffle. Mom is about to pull them out of the oven. See how pretty & fluffy they are!



Yummy!



Next chocolate souffle...



This is the folding in of some egg yolks that have some sugar added and have been beaten to the consistency of ribbons. (don't ask, it didn't look like ribbons)



Bigger cups for the chocolate ones. They don't look as puffy, because these little dishes are wider on top than the bottom. Still yummy!


Next up...the roomie had the craving to make creme brulee. I'm not going to argue. He even has the torch to caramelize the sugar and everything! I didn't help with this baking process, but I did help with the eating process.




I'm starting to think - it's probably not the best thing for my health and my waistline to be eating creme brulee at my computer while studying. It's not one of those things that's supposed to be an everyday dessert.





And then...since creme brulee takes quite a few egg yolks there were tons of egg whites left over. Well he couldn't let them go to waste.
So when I got home today from school - this is what I found.




a fridge with 4 bags filled with tiny meringue cookies - chocolate, lemon, and apricot-nut (or something like that)!




Should I not tell you that souffles are easier to make than they look? I'll try and get the recipes this week and if you are feeling adventurous - you can take stab at it. Even if it doesn't turn out - I can pretty much guarantee that it'll still taste good.

In the coming month - my roomie and I should be having more baking days, because we'll both be on easier rotations. The irony is that I'm on a rotation entitled - "The Clinical Managment of Obesity." We'll see how this turns out.....

Interviews

Sorry I've been a bad blogger lately. I have a good reason though. Ever since my mom left I have been studying for my USMLE step 2 exam. This is the second part of the test I studied for last summer. This time around it's not supposed to be as bad. We'll see though. I'm only studying for 2.5 wks compared to a full 4 weeks last time. Wish me luck - I take the test next Saturday.

In addition to that I'm taking a humanities class. It's called Putting It Into Words. I have written a reflection, a short story, imagist poem, haiku, free verse poetry, and now most recently a sonnet. Most of them have to deal with medicine of some sort. So I have been busy trying to get my brain to get back into creative mode after 3 years of being uncreative. Not the easiest thing in the world to do. I'll share some of my work on the blog later. Some of it is still in the revision stages. Others I'll save I can blog more later...haha

Anyway - as you know my applications went out and....I have heard back from some residencies and....I have set up some interviews. So come October, November, and December - I will be traveling quite a bit. So any advice on packing light and traveling well - would be appreciated.

My first interview is October 16th in Southern Cali - the really exciting part is the day after my interview I get to meet up with my Mom and Aunt Ed and......go to the happiest place on earth! (aka Disneyland). The following Monday October 19th I'll be in Fort Worth. (Ash let me know if you will be there then, highly doubtful since you're in school - haven't heard from Tulsa yet, but will let you know) If I'm coming in a direction near any of you I will be sure to let you know.

So busy busy busy. Here's the suit with me and messy hair in a messy room. Can't see much - mostly black. Also the necklace will only be one or two strands. I'm going to take it apart and make it not so big.



And....a skirt too!

Application Submitted!

This morning, I woke up and finally pushed that submit button for my application to residency. It's done! I finally finished filling in all of those experiences and am finally happy with the dreaded personal statement. I picked my programs -26 right now, but I will likely increase it to 30 by the end of the week. There are a few more programs I need to do some research on and apply to.

Quick explanation on this application process for those of you who don't know how it works.
1. apply to residency
2. wait for interviews
3. go to interviews
4. rank schools 1-20 (or however many) in your preference of where you want to be
5. the residency programs rank the applicants they interviewed in order of their preference 1-100 or whatever
6. the rank lists go into a computer and then some mathematical magic happens and
*poof*
7. you hope a match works out between your rank list & the programs rank list

I know it's confusing.

So....I'm sure you are wondering where have I applied?
- I have applied all over the U.S. - from as far west as California to as far east as Illinois, including everything in between - utah, nevada, arizona, texas (who ever thought that I might end up in texas again? - and actually there are a few programs I really really like there), nebraska, missouri, and more

and I'm sure you are wondering why in the world did I apply to so many programs?

Well...the glitch in the plan is that...I've found someone



This silly boy who somehow convinced me to date him for over the past year and who buys me ice cream (see above) - I can't imagine going to residency without. So....we're going together!
Sief and I are couple's matching, which means we apply to programs in the same area (they don't have to be the same program, preferably near each other in geographical location) and then when we enter the match our rank lists are connected.

This was a really big decision for us, because since we are applying together that expanded the number of programs we applied to in order to increase our chances of matching.

Wish us luck!

Design on a Dime

Mom has been here for the week, which means something in my condo needs to be decorated. Slowly we have made this place feel like home. The last room to be done was the dining room. We attacked it this trip. And after many trips to JoAnne's fabric store and Home-depot and finally Marshall's it is done!

Before picture (a little messy):


The wall is just screaming to have something to wear. And the chairs are begging for more chic coverings, tired of the ol' country yellow plaid look. Something modern & updated.

JoAnne's fabric store was having a sale: Extremely large frame - buy one get one free! So....we ended up with 2 frames. I'll show you later what we did with the other frame.



Bought 2 types of fabric. One blue flowery fabric that we would frame & hang on the wall in the dining room. The other a cappuccino color cover the chair seat cushions.



We ended up painting the frames to better match the fabric. And we found a cheap frame at a thrift store which was perfect to hang over my bar.



Oh and you can't forget the table. The table can't be left naked! So we dressed it with a beautiful table runner. Sadly, I cannot claim to have made this table runner, but we did buy it in Amish country along with some fabric that will make up my next quilt. (pictures of that fabric to follow).




We were almost done, but looked up only to see a bare corner, just begging to have something there to make the room complete. We headed out to find a cheap vase with some wispys and things to stick out of it to give it some height. We ended up with a maroon color to bring in maroon from my living room.



The final product. Ta-Da!