Simple Joys

I was extremely happy a few days ago.  Extremely.  I found...

Starfruit! 

Also known as carambola. 

And I ate it.

A Cookie Story

I wanted to make Christmas cookies.  Emily wanted to help decorate.  Surprisingly, so did Nic and Ferdinand.  It quickly went from normal to...pick an adjective.  Not your typical Christmas cookies.  And not entirely politically correct.

I started out making nice, normal-looking snowmen.

 I even tried to accommodate some of my many Jewish friends at Einstein (many of them laughed when they saw these).

Emily went for some more...unconventional colors.

Then Ferdinand came and made caricatures of some of our friends...including Emily (far left) and himself (far right).

 There weren't that many undecorated cookies left.

 Seconds after I warned Nic that they'd soon be all done, he knocked on the door.  And he made a nerdy supernova star (which I appreciated).

Then things got much more, um, creative.  The following scenes are meant to be stories.

 A hungry (not evil, claims Nic) lumberjack successfully hunts a moose in the enchanted Christmas forest.

 Next, we jump to the Bronx, where a shooting has occurred by a man in a trench coat on Pelham Parkway.

Quick, call 911!  Otherwise he'll bleed to death! 

 A first-year medical student, feeling cool but completely useless in his white coat, looks on apprehensively as the attending physician quickly listens for a heartbeat.  The villain runs to the cover of Pelham Bay Park, hoping to evade the authorities.

The Bronx police are seasoned veterans, and the criminal has no chance.  Justice is served.

...and the rest will just have to be eaten.

Brilliant.

Since Fox was dropped by the major cable providers in the New York metro area this week, we have been forced to be creative to watch the Giants/Phillies NLCS showdown.  (Twice, we were forced to watch an illegal live stream of a Spanish network's coverage, wired to a TV from a computer with a shoddy internet connection that tended to freeze every time the game got exciting.  Fun.)  Last night, tired of our makeshift solutions in the Bronx, we headed to the Upper East Side and its bountiful selection of sports bars and pubs for what turned out to be an extremely tense, extremely exciting, extremely weird game of baseball.  (Dropped balls?  Players hit by pitches?  Runners bowling catchers over?  Both teams storming the field?  Weird.)

So what is the "brilliant" all about?  The bar.  Why?  The bar food.  Particularly what?

TATER TOTS.

The end.

Tourists

My mom visited New York this weekend, meaning I finally had the chance to be a shameless tourist for a few days.  YES!  My favorite parts of the weekend were seeing The Lion King on Broadway (my first Broadway show - incredible!) and touring the Lower East Side Tenement Museum (sooo interesting).  More highlights:

 American Museum of Natural History - SPACE and DINOSAURS!  Great on a rainy day.

Crumbs.  Delicious as always. 

Beautiful view of the south end of the city from the Empire State Building 

Happiness in ice cream form: a Monday Sundae from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck 

I got to introduce my mom to the worth-the-wait deliciousness of Shake Shack.

Only in New York.

Bronx Bombin'

Yes, I made it back to New York.  My final week in India was interesting because I was dealing with lingering illness.  Without going into too much detail, I was still having effects of whatever began plaguing me that last night at Darling even when I came back to the U.S.  Luckily, Cipro is essentially miraculous and was able to wipe out whatever residual disease was hanging out in my intestines, and I am now (I think) cured.

I arrived in New York early on Wednesday morning.  By the time I went to bed that night, I had been up for 44 straight hours (except, I suppose, 1-2 hours of napping on the plane).  My body was so confused that I never had very bad jet lag, just a few nights of needing to go to sleep slightly earlier than normal while waking up at a normal time in the morning.  That was fortunate, because we started classes the next day, on Thursday.  My attitude toward medical school has taken a drastic turn since last June, when I was dreading coming back in the fall.  I'm actually very excited and happy to be back.  It's been so fun to see my friends here again, and classes, though harder, will be much more interesting than last year.  Even more than these reasons (which are great reasons to be excited on their own), I now have a goal, a view of the future, a reason to be excited about medicine and my future career.  That goal is flight medicine.  I am determined not to lose sight of it, for it has given me more focus and determination than I have ever felt toward medicine in the past.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying being back in America.  Most of this centers around foods that I missed.  Cold milk, cereal, barbecue, pasta, fresh vegetables, macaroni and cheese, strong coffee...I could go on forever.  It's great to be home!

Things That Make Me Happy

Getting free stuff from the enemy...

...because it makes it easier to mock them.

A trellis made out of skis...

...because every garden needs a little kitsch.

Really cool friends...

...because they send me boxes from really cool places.

An inspiring grocery store...

...because I never would have thought to cook swordfish steaks had they not been on special.

And finally, caffeine gum...

...because, well, why not?

Pie, Again

Tomorrow is May 2. I have been looking forward to May 2 ever since February, when I registered for the Tough Mudder, a race that requires substantially more insanity than I am normally willing to admit to. It's held at a ski resort in Pennsylvania, and the course consists of approximately 7 miles of running...plus 17 obstacles. First of all, any race that only gives you an approximate distance has got to be pretty crazy. Second, take a look at some of the obstacles: We'll have to crawl hands-and-knees through snow, drag a log up a hill, slog through a pond of mud, jump 15 feet into an ice-cold mountain lake, scale mud-soaked walls, run through fire, and face a "surprise" obstacle at the very end. Did I mention that we have to run through fire? Yes -- run through fire. The only word I can think of to describe my feelings about this is: AWESOME.

Dinosaurs are tough, just like Tough Mudders. Just don't let them eat the blueberries underneath.

I'm not going alone. I will be teaming up with 4 of my fellow classmates in this endeavor. One has been in the Navy for many years (and has even served in Iraq), one is a former track star, one lived in Antarctica and researched for NASA, and one is the 43rd-ranked discus thrower in the world. Am I out of my league? Maybe, but I refuse to think so. I fully expect to be more exhausted than any other time in my life when the race is done, but I look forward to it.

Gooey chocolate-pecan

Tonight, the 5 of us are going to psych up and carbo-load, as all serious Tough Mudders should. I haven't done the whole pasta-dinner-before-a-race thing since high school, so I'm really looking forward to it. The guys are taking care of the dinner, but I said I'd handle dessert. What could possibly be a better dessert than pie? Perhaps 2 pies? Sure. So that's what I've made this morning: pies. And tonight we'll feast.

I can't wait!

Norway: The Rest

Yes, it's taken me a while, but I'm finally ready to finish off my Norway adventure. (In my defense, we've had 4 tests over the past week, and I've knitted approximately half of the body of a Norwegian sweater in that time. Be impressed.)

I left off with our return from Sognefjord. The rest of my time in Norway was spent in Bergen. In general, the city was quite quiet, because Holy Week is a holiday for Norwegians as well. In this spirit, most had vacated the city in order to stay in their cabins on the fjords or in the mountains, leaving the city (and its shops) deserted, to some degree. However, we still found plenty to do. For example:

We visited Edvard Grieg's house. This is the inside of his "composer's hut," which was behind the house, down a small hill, next to the water. Notice that he frequently sat on Beethoven's sonatas in the hopes that inspiration and greatness would transfer via osmosis.

We hiked up Ulriken, Bergen's tallest mountain. The day started clear...and then it began to rain...and then a thick cloud descended on us, making it impossible to see more than 20 feet ahead. At the top, we could see nothing, but then -- miracle! -- the cloud cleared for 5 minutes, giving us a spectacular view of the city.

We browsed the tourist shops in Bryggen, the old port area. Norwegian sweaters abounded.

We went to church at St. Paul on Holy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter Sunday. Here, on Easter, the crucifix has been uncovered, the Easter candle has been lit, and simple bouquets of daffodils adorn the altar. Beautiful.

Speaking of Easter, we had quite the Easter celebration. Becca invited several of her friends (almost all of whom were also international students who, unlike the Norwegians, were still in Bergen for the holiday) to come to the apartment for sweets, games, and Easter activities. All day Saturday, we shopped, cleaned, and baked in preparation for the big gathering.

All in a day's work: 8 dozen cookies, 2 bowls of pasta salad, 2 dozen scrambled eggs, 30 hard-boiled eggs, 2 coffee cakes...

...and 2 pies!

The party was a huge success. We ate until we could eat no more, and then we decorated eggs, played Uno, played charades, and tried a mystery-whodunnit type game that one of Becca's friends taught us. (Because it obviously matters, here was the outcome: Becca and Erlend were both arrested for a crime that I actually committed. I used my botanical research to buy a potent poison in Brussels from a time-traveler from the future. I slipped the poison into William Shakespeare's drink at a party I was hosting, because I couldn't stand his misogynistic ideals after hearing of the fabulous notions of women's equality from my time-traveling friend. And that is how Shakespeare was murdered.)

Finally! A clear view of Bergen from Fløyen. This is the Sentrum, where we spent most of our time.

On my final day, we climbed another mountain, Fløyen, with Raanan and Erlend. This one was much tamer, with a paved path the whole way up. There were so many people out enjoying the holiday and the on-and-off sun, just like us. I flew home the next day, slightly delayed but otherwise smooth. After becoming used to the rain, snow, and clouds in Bergen, I was caught slightly off-guard by the sunshine, blooming flowers, and 80-degree days that greeted me back in New York. I can't believe the trip went so quickly; I am so lucky to have such an incredible friend in Becca. I truly felt at home with her, and we had a wonderful time spending time with each other, catching up, and having a few adventures. What a wonderful way to spend Easter!

The smiles say it all.

Weekend Potpourri

When it rains in the Bronx, the Einstein student housing complex turns into a giant vortex of doom. It rained yesterday. The 40-m.p.h. gusts were translated into hurricane gales in the wind tunnel that is Einstein housing. The windows here don't have great sealing (i.e. no sealing), and even in the absence of wind, I feel a healthy draft flowing through my room. Yesterday, that was translated into violently shaking windows, wildly rattling doors, and the pleasant but havoc-wreaking burbling of water seeping in through the nonexistant window seals only to be momentarily spurted by the draft onto the floor.

Bubbling windowsill water

Unhappy, warped kitchen floor -- with happy mold underneath

It didn't stop me from going into the city, as I usually do on Saturdays. Yesterday, I had a new adventure when I donated platelets for the first time. The blood center staff were unexpectedly reluctant to let me do it; they didn't believe me that my veins would be good enough to withstand the constant cycling between drawing and returning blood for 75 minutes. I was persistent, however, and they were pretty desperate for my valuable O- platelets, so they finally acquiesced. I had a very strange sensation of tingliness accompanied with occasional chills and numbness during most of the hour and 15 minutes, but everything went well otherwise, and I was fine as soon as I got out of the chair. Weird.

The wind was bad in the city, too, but it was isolated to certain sections and streets. As I approached East 86th Street from the south, I could see that I was walking into a wind tunnel. I'm not joking: compared to the (relatively) calm breeze on 3rd Ave, the straight-line winds (made exceedingly visible by the rain that was steadily increasing) looked like something out of a movie, and I needed to turn and walk straight into them. Umbrellas were useless. Abandoned, mangled umbrellas littered the sidewalks. I was in for a cold, wet afternoon. My raincoat soaked through, my jeans were shiny from the water, my hair was plastered to my face, and the only part of me that wasn't wet were my feet, happily toasty in my rain boots. Maybe that's why I was so chilled while giving platelets.

Back to the apartments. In addition to the flooding (which was very mild in my apartment compared to some others'), the buildings always suffer from the wind in another way: the doors. My building always seems to have the worst wind effect compared to the others, so the sliding door is taken out of commission, forcing us to use the regular pull-handled door. That's not a huge deal, but the wind has a nasty habit of making it shut very quickly, and sometimes unexpectedly. Today my wrist almost got crushed as a gust of wind took the door out of my hands. Luckily, I pushed my elbow out in time, so it was my upper arm that took the brunt of the blow. I don't normally bruise easily, but I have a pretty big spot developing there. My diagnosis? Inappropriate bruising due to lack of platelets. COOL!

Finally, today is Pi Day (you know, 3/14...3.14...nerdy pi), so this afternoon my friends and I had a Pi Day celebration by eating pie! My contribution:

Blueberry. The best.

Multiplying the Loaves

...or in my case, Valentine's Day cookies. As has been pointed out previously, I enjoy baking. Cookies are especially fun because they are easy to give away (convenient; I don't want to think how much weight my roommates and I would gain if we were to keep all the stuff that I bake). This week, I was keen on baking Valentine's cut-outs. I decided to verge from the typical sugar cookie cut-outs and instead try my hand at gingerbread. I used the old, reliable Betty Crocker, which stated that I should expect approximately 2 1/2 dozen, 2 1/2-inch cookies. Now, my heart-shaped cookie cutter was smaller, about 2 inches, so I expected maybe 3 1/2 to 4 dozen, max.

Does this look like 4 dozen to you?!

I did not get 4 dozen. I got 11 1/2 dozen. What in the world...? I was dumbfounded. Appropriately, the daily Gospel for Saturday was Mark's account of Jesus feeding the 4,000 with just seven loaves and a few fish. I was pleased to be able to decorate and give away these cookies to my friends (and even announced to an elevator full of my classmates that they were all welcome to stop by my apartment on their way back to their rooms after class to get some cookies), but I'm still astounded with the vast misjudgment of the cookbook (or of me). How in the world did this happen? At any rate, I am still stuck with 2 dozen or so cookies. I'm hoping I can pawn them off on someone tomorrow. We'll see.

At least they look nice...?

Color and Crunch

Let me just get this out there, in case there was ever any doubt (which is highly doubtful, to say the least): I am a fan of food. Evidence is as follows...

What do you do with a grapefruit, a kiwi (or two), an apple, and a blood orange?

Make a delicious fruit salad!

Mmm...homemade granola

Yes, exams are over (until next month), so I took advantage of my free afternoon to make granola, courtesy of Kate's recipe. It is already half gone.

3.5 Sticks of Butter

I don't want to brag too much, but I have to report that the honey and pine nut tart with sweet tart crust (whew, that's a mouthful!) was an unequivocal success. So buttery, sweet, salty -- perfect. Some mouth-watering pictures:

Yummy pine nuts in a gooey, buttery custard...

Warm tart with cold, creamy ice cream...

Along with some decaf French press coffee, a perfect lunch dessert!

Secret Santas

For Christmas, my Einstein friends and I decided to do Secret Santas, since we wanted to give each other gifts but not spend a ridiculous amount of money. Tristan drew my name, and I have to say he is one smart guy, because look at what he gave me:

If you give me a cookbook of Italian desserts, then you'd better believe I'm going to cook you Italian desserts.

Since today is Cat's birthday, I decided to try out my first recipe from this book of incredibly tasty-looking Italian desserts. For my first attempt, I decided to try none other than the dessert on the front cover, Honey and Pine Nut Tart with Sweet Tart Crust.

The crust required the fresh zest of one small orange. I used, for the fun of it, a blood orange...

...which later held up to its name and gave me a tasty, shirt-staining treat.

Custard, made with honey, sugar, LOTS of butter, eggs, and cream, and finally...

...voila! The finished product.

Other than the bizarre divot, it looks and smells as good as can be. We'll see how it tastes later tonight!