Post-holiday Lethargy

Thanksgiving turned out great this year, as all four of us kids chipped in to help. Thank the powers that be that I had the foresight to plan ahead and make bread and dessert the day before. We wrangled a 24lb bird for the dinner, which we slathered in herb butter. The gravy was thus very rich, oh yes. As part of my "make things simple" initiative, I also found recipes for slow cooker potatoes and a cranberry chutney. There was also a simplified recipe for a green vegetable with mushroom sauce casserole, roasted sweet potatoes and pears,  However, halfway through the day I experienced a bad episode of vertigo, so I was shoved into the conductor role from the couch as my two brothers and sister finished things. Here is a lovely pinterest menu.

School is wrapping up, it looks like I'll pass with good grades and thus be eligible for graduation from the Dietetic Technician program! What this will mean is that once the school processes my transcripts and classes, they will mark me as "graduated" and I will be able to take the credentialing exam to become a Dietetic Technician. With this national credential I can apply for a position anywhere in the U.S. of A!

Playing games: spent less than two days getting a 100% completion game for Psychonauts, including all the Steam achievements! So proud ^_^.
Other games I've played: Incredipede, Eets Munchies, and Fez. I'm also planning to replay Dust for more achievements, possibly Limbo, and then I think some quality time with Dungeon Defenders. I may bust out my consoles to play some Okamiden, or maybe Wind Waker...oh, I definitely want to reacquaint myself with Tomba, which my brothers got on PS3. It's still a touchy state of mind with trying to relax after so long letting my brain buzz with NEEDTOWORKWHATNEEDSTOBEDONE. I'll get twitchy in the morning, buzz around the house cleaning this and that before remembering to chill out, rest a bit, so as not to suffer another vertigo attack.

This season I seem to be in a better position to go to musical theater shows in town. I had the privilege to see my community colleges's fall musical, Rent with one of my good friends. This performance brought me to tears, as it usually does. The story of these friends throughout a year of struggling with relationships, art, and society in the 90s still resonates quite powerfully, I feel. In addition, as part of my birthday this year, my parents did an awesome thing and took me to The Addams Family Musical at one of the local theaters. This show is something to behold. While one may not think the Addams family is conducive to musical accompaniment, the show was amazingly well done. The plot for sure is much better than any of the film adaptations. There are snippets and amalgams of the Broadway performance on Youtube, if anyone is interested, and musical sites like Spotify have the soundtrack available for listening. Finally, I took my young niece to see the community college production of A Year With Frog and Toad. It was ADORABLE! Not only did the performing arts program make a great musical adaptation of the book series, but it did so in a way that was accessible for young children. The play was a series of short story performances, connected by the friendship of a frog and a toad (played by girls!).

Otherwise, I'm just trying to get back into creative output. I'd love to be making art again.

A Veggie Recipe

I made a delicious lunch using the Veganomicon recently. Their rendition of a Po'Boy: Chile Cornmeal-crusted Tofu with a chipotle mayo spread, cole slaw, and pickles is a-MAZ-ing. Not having any sandwich bread handy, I used a spinach flatbread which still works wonderfully well.

This here is silken firm tofu. Using extra firm tofu would work best for frying.

 

I had mixed results slicing the tofu into the recommended triangles. This shape would be best for sandwich or salads, but feel free to experiment.

Making a coating using a cornstarch slurry with almond-coconut milk instead of egg and seasoned cornmeal (this coating also is very nice on seafood, as any good Cajun adaptation should be).

Breading station is ready, and the oil is heating in my favorite cast iron skillet!

Look at that delicious sizzle!

It took me 3 batches with the size pan I had. Some pieces ended up falling apart into smaller bits. These ended up being sampled. For science.

Putting together the cole slaw and mayo was simple. Removing the lid from a pickle jar is also easy, provided you use a decent jar opener.

Assembling the wrap Step 1: make sure the flatbread is warm and pliant.

Assembling the wrap Step 2: Slather on some chipotle mayo

Assembling the wrap Step 3: Pile on some cole slaw.

Assembling the wrap Step 4: Gently layer on some fried tofu and pickles.

Assembling the wrap Step 5: Forget to keep taking pictures and just post the final plate after slicing the sandwich.

Carrot sticks and potato chips go great on a paper plate with a decent sandwich wrap. Don't try to convince me otherwise.

Biology students are perhaps serial killers in training

Hello interwebs! Long time no see, you seem to have gotten more bloated since last we met!

I've been ridiculously busy with my anatomy class. Fast track is brutal. While mostly disgusted with the material, I have been learning useful bits of information that may help in future efforts to help my CPR students to not kill someone in a life or death emergency.

Mostly though, I've discovered that anyone taking biology or going into medical training has to be incredibly morbid and twisted. Historically, researching the physiology of the human body was difficult as it was hard to make observations of a person's innards because skin was often in the way. Heck, early medical students would sneak bodies out of graveyards in order to cut them open to observe what the guts looked like. I will never look at a game of Operation the same way.

Torturing small animals seems to be the favorite way to discover things. For example, to figure out how muscles worked, one experiment has weights put on the calf muscle of a frog at increasing amounts and measuring the electric charge put out. Then there's the experiment where the frogs (while still alive!) were cut open and flooded with saline and had the fluids switched around to demonstrate neurotransmitters and their effect on heart rate! And the rant about injecting small animals with things, and cutting parts off just to see what will happen will have to wait for another time. Besides, my brief temp job many years ago in a medical research facility scarred me plenty on that score.

Then there's my fellow classmates. I have the fortune and bad karma to sit next to people in lab who are really into anatomy. They're the ones who always ask about how things might look fresh, how much force it would take to crack certain bones, which arteries would cause instant death from bleeding out, and so forth. They also break concepts down very easily and use mnemonic devices I can understand, which is useful for exams. However, I have yet to get through a dissection lab without wanting to fervently be somewhere else, because every single time they go at the body parts with gusto like it's a steak and lobster dinner at the fanciest restaurant in New York. It also doesn't help that they fondle the things as they go. FONDLE! The cow heart lab was particularly disturbing on that detail.

I have five more weeks of this class before I'm free to return to the safe world of dietetics and telling people how to eat better. Luckily, no one has offered to have me in a study group, so my personal information is safe from anyone who may decide to observe what *my* innards look like. Also, wish me luck on getting internships, their availability will decide if I can graduate in one more year instead of two!