Pomegranates and more

First - I never finished my last post about Forth Worth. While in Fort Worth, TX I interviewed at a program there and was so impressed that I surprising found myself wanting to return to Texas. It is still early in the interview season so it's hard to say what will happen, but unexpectedly Texas seems to be calling my name again!

Now onto a foodie note. My wonderful Grandmother (i'm sure my aunt ed is making a gagging face as she reads this believing that I'm sucking up to my Grandma - which is ok since today is her birthday!) sent me a box of pomegranates. They are one of my absolute favorite fruits. The hardest part is peeling them and not staining your clothes with pomegranate juice.

This weekend, I had the special occassion of my boyfriend coming back to town after being away for 9 weeks. What better way to welcome him home than to make dinner with the focus being pomegranates! Well, really I just wanted an excuse to make something with my pomegranates and my roomie had a new recipie to teach me.

The menu:
Pomegranate marianted cornish game hen
Twice baked potatoes
Fatoush

This was the first time I had ever made cornish game hen. I had to split the little suckers in half. Not particularly a fan of cutting through bone. As both my dad and my roomie stated - I would not make a good orthopedic surgeon.



Next the marinade consisted of pomegranate juice, honey, cinnamon, allspice, garlic, and coriander. I marinated the little guys overnight and they turned purple from the juice!!!




And what is Fatoush you ask? Well, it is an arabic salad that consists of lettuce, pomegranate seeds, cucumber, bell pepper, green onions, tomatoes, olives, feta cheese, with toasted pita chips in sumac. The dressing is olive oil and lemon.

I made my own homeade pita bread which was an adventure in itself. Waseem left me with pita dough and went out on Friday night. He left me with instructions on how to properly bake the pita bread. Roll out the dough, put in oven at 500 degrees and take out after a few minutes once it has puffed up, then wrap my hand in a towel and poke the pita so the air can escape. The towel around the hand prevents steam burns. Let's just say it's easier said than done. I ended up with 3 good pitas out of 10. 1 frisbee and the remaining 6 were flat. Also, in the course of cooking I managed to set off the fire alarm in my apartment. Good thing for the Fatoush the pita bread is toasted and it doesn't matter that I made flat ones.

Here's a picture of the Fatoush.



And the finished product!! YUM! YUM!

2 more down and a day at the happiest place on earth!

I am back from my trek across the U.S. My long weekend was wonderful. I spent Thursday night with my mom's cousin, which makes her my 2nd cousin? It was great. Roxane put me up in her guest room, treated me to a sushi dinner with her family and then made me breakfast the next day before serving as my chauffeur for the day. It reminded me of when I used to live at home and my mom and I would eat breakfast together every morning before school!

I had an interview at a Southern California residency program with which I will not bore you with the details. After the interview Roxane and I met my mom, my Aunt Edwina, and their friend Jackie at their hotel near Disneyland. We had a yummy dinner filled with laughter and conversation!



Saturday was Disneyland day! I LOVED it, probably because I LOVE Disneyland and my mom, and my aunt Ed, and my new friend Jackie. We had a great time roaming the park and hitting on the wonderful rides. My favorite is still Space Mountain which this time felt faster than I remember.



The Haunted Mansion - decorated appropriately for Halloween! The 3 ladies I spent my day with came last year at Halloween time. We attacked the park in typical Chun-Leonardo (or should I say Utt?) fashion! It was great.



We even convinced my mom to ride the tea cups & trust me she hates the tea cups.
We had a strong cup of tea - all 4 of us crammed (and i mean crammed) into our little tiny cup.



As you can see Aunt Ed was thoroughly enjoying the tea cups & my mother's reaction!

The day was a scorcher (maybe a bit of an exaggeration), but it was HOT! So naturally we headed to Splash Mountain. We grabbed a Fast Pass (which is a ticket that you can get which lets you come back and certain times and essentially cut to the front of the line, the fast pass deal is free with your admissions ticket, but you are allowed only so many fast passes at a time).

Anyway the point is we did not return to Splash Mountain until early evening, after our afternoon nap. So of course there we were soaking wet and it was dark outside. Not the brightest idea, but I was smart enough to bring my newly purchased zip up hoodie with me to keep me warm.



The added fun to the trip this year was the hunt for hidden Mickey's! There are hidden Mickey Mouses all over the park. My Aunt Ed had a book on it and this was what the girls or should I say ladies were up to before I got to the park. They pointed some of them out for me. I didn't take too many pictures, because - I was having too much fun!

Here's a hidden Mickey in the eye of Mr. Toad on Mr. Toad's Wild Ride.

Ok, enough for now I will fill you in on the Texas portion of the trip tomorrow!

The trail blazes on

The interview trail continues. This weekend travel with me to the two other states I have called home. California & Texas!!!!! It's a work-vacation-work sandwich.

First stop is LA, Cali. for an interview on Friday in Southern California.

Then Saturday I'm off to.... do you think you can guess where?????



















If you guessed DISNEYLAND - then you are correct!!!! My mom & aunt Ed have been sending me disney pictures in the mail for the past 2 weeks getting me ready for disneyland. They are there now & will be there this weekend to celebrate Halloween. So Saturday is vacation day at the happiest place on earth!!! I'm super excited if you couldn't tell from all the exclamation marks & the fact that I have disney characters posted all over my desk to remind me that it's getting closer!!! woo hoo

After Disney it's off to Texas. Yup - that's what I said - Texas. Didn't really think there would be the possibilty of me living in Texas again, but such is life. And after living in Pennsylvania for the past 3 years - let me tell you Texas is much cooler! Also extremely yummy Mexican food & breakfast tacos.

Not sure if I'll be able to blog while I'm on the road. I'm not planning to haul my computer clear across the country. If not then I will update you on the trip once I return home next week sometime.

My First Caramel Apple!

It may not actually be my first, but it's the first one I can remember. Also, I highly doubt my parents let me have a caramel apple as a kid. It would have been one sticky mess & I'm pretty sure it would have been bad news for my teeth. But...if you ever have a kid with a loose tooth & you don't want to pull it out - a caramel apple may just do the job for you!




YUM! It was a nice & juicy apple too - from apple fest of course.



I still have all of my teeth. Whether or not I have a cavity is another question.

Apple Harvest Festival

It's apple season! The roomie & I decided to head out to the National Apple Harvest Festival in Arendtsville, PA. It's about an hour from Hershey in the middle of nowhere.



This is us on a big yellow school bus taking us from the parking lot to where the festival was being held. Please note my apple shirt that I wore specifically for the occasion. :)



Here is a picture of a cider press. The man dumps the apples it and they are ground up into pieces that drop into the brown cloth in the bucket below. This bucket then has a piece of wood placed on top of it and a person cranks down and smushes the apple chucks. The juice flows out of the apples into another bucket. That juice is then strained through a piece of cloth and is used to make cider.



There was more than just apples at the Apple Festival. There were lots of crafts and some silly fun. Also, a giant wall of kettle corn! I have never seen so much kettle corn in my entire life. And yes we did buy a giant bag of kettle corn. Haven't put much of a dent in it yet. I told Waseem to wait until Wednesday night and we'll sit on the couch eating our giant bag of kettle corn while watching Glee on the tv! :)



And what would an Apple Harvest Festival be without a tour of an apple orchard? The tour consisted of driving around in a big yellow school bus listening to a tape playing over the loudspeaker telling us about the history of apples. The voice on the tape was creepy. If you have ever watched Family Guy, then you might know the perverted old man who walks around with a cane and always hits on Chris - well that's what the voice of the guy telling us about the apples sounded like.




I learned that the reasons we can buy apples in the grocery store all year long, despite apple harvest happening in the fall is because the apples are harvested and put into a climate controlled environment. This climate controlled environment has all of the oxygen sucked out of the room and it is replaced with Nitrogen. This causes the apples to stay fresh all year long!



Me apple picking! Yum!

Bushkill Falls

I am happy to say that fall is starting to creep in. The leaves are started to change from green to golden yellow, burnt orange, and fiery red. I LOVE the fall. The chilly air that causes you to want to curl up on the couch under a blanket and watch tv, while drinking hot chocolate. YUM!

In order to enjoy fall I decided I need to take a hiking trip on one of my last free weekends for a very very long time. While on the plane this past week, I read about the Niagara Falls of Pennsylvania - Bushkill Falls. It is located in the Poconos mountains. I thought it would be a great time to go with fall just starting. Saturday mid-morning I headed off on a 2 hour road trip to Bushkill PA.



Above is the largest fall, which is about 100,000x's or more smaller than niagara falls, but I will say that Bushkill Falls had more trails to hike and was less touristy. And the weather was amazing - cool and crisp, but not cold.



I hiked over 2.5 miles along a little stream and around to view I think in total over 8 falls.



Self-portrait on the trail.



I fell in love with the golden tree growing straight out of the rock wall. So beautiful in all it's glory. I took quite a few pictures of this beauty. At Bushkill, the leaves were changing colors, but the variety was slim. Mostly yellow & green trees, very little red or orange to break it up. The hike was not a colorful as I had hoped, but still beautiful.



My favorite fall of the day. Bridal Veil falls.



A little trick for the eyes. Look at the above picture - can you tell what is off about it. What seems wrong? Think for a second. I'll tell you at the end.




Beautiful sunset on the drive home. It was an all around great day!



The other picture is a reflection in the water, you can see leaves resting on the water and the ground at the top of the picture.

Oklahoma!

I had a nice relaxing weekend in Oklahoma! Ashley, Scott, and I did a lot of relaxing- which as a medical student is hard to come by and much appreciated. Ash and I caught up since it's been over 2 years since we'd seen each other!
.

We ate yummy Mexican food! It has been a while - since Pennsylvania is lacking in that department. There was also a request for a souffle baking lesson, which I was more than happy to oblige! Yummy x2. And....what sort of weekend would it be without a new baking adventure. Emeril's Chocolate Chip Pie w/ Brandy & homemade whipped cream. Yummy x3.



We had a little trouble with the Chocolate chip pie - a little overflowage and not cooking it long enough the first time, but in the end it was delish!


Happy Souffle's! Now Ashley gets to teach her husband Scott!


Then what would a weekend be with one of my Trinity girl's without a musical and dancing? So....we saw FAME and watched a documentary on the production of 3 high school musicals in Indiana. These musicals were big productions - one had a budget of $60,000! Ash & I decided that Nava - you need to come back to the states and become a high school drama teacher - with musical productions! Thanks!

It was a great weekend with two of my good friends! So I guess if I end up in Tulsa it would be ok - Ash & scott will only be 1.5 hrs away. Thank you two for a fabulous weekend. Miss you & love you both!


And....even though it sounds like all fun, there was work to be done! Interview #1.

Me before heading to my interview




The city of Tulsa was nicer than I expected. A little bit eclectic, but with more to offer than Hershey! Interview #1 went pretty well, except for me getting sick afterwards, but that's a story you don't want me to share.


Only in Oklahoma....