Strawberries and Cream Scones: Day Light Savings Treats

Today I slept in to the gloriously late 8 AM thanks to day light savings. And today I decided to spend that extra hour baking Strawberry and Cream Scones, because strawberries from a Halloween sangria were starting to look a little sad. An extra hour gained doesn't feel like it should feel meaningful to me. After all, I waste many hours doing things as mindless as watching tv I don't even like (looking at you Grey's Anatomy), learning more about memes on reddit, or just hitting cmd+T and typing in "facebook.com" or "buzzfeed.com" or "twitter.com" or "nytimes.com." The usual eclectic mix of online fake news.

The "busy-ness" I experienced during medical school last year *should* have given me a new sense of appreciation with my time. After all, back then I would savor at just the rare treat of helping cook dinner, or just taking a walk. But I guess similar in the way thinking in graduate school is not quite the same as thinking in medical school, so too is my free time. All of which to say graduate school is not some leisurely afternoon tea. More like a tea for the queen that you have to put on entirely on your own and she wants some bake and tea that no one else has ever created and you as a completely inexperienced baker and pure coffee drinker don't even know where to begin.

But thanks to my extra hour, I can at least have some of these scones with which to eat while crying over why I don't understand visual cortex or why I have no interesting ideas or whatever thing decides to make my grad school day blue. I've already tested them on Ikea furniture building tears today and they held up well, so lets hope grad school tears are about the same as Ikea tears. 

Recipe from King Arthur Flour, with 1/2 flour substituted with whole wheat flour. 

Peach Tau Peach Tart: Double Pi

I wrote a lot of word vomit in like June trying to get this post out. But it sounded all wrong. And then I remembered that I have literally not written anything of considerable length in almost 2 years. Aside from maybe editing bits and pieces of a paper. Of course, I've written SOAP (subjective, objective, assessment, and plan) notes, H and Ps (history and physicals), and the letters OLDCARTS (onset, location, duration, characteristics, aggravating, relieving, treatments, significance) over and over again on crinkled pages in my pocket.

But, desserts and foods are not humans suffering in a million different ways, through which careful questioning and trust may only answer about 1/10th of those ways. So how do I talk about my own life and food again? I've never *really* written about food on here. The idea of using an never ending list of adjectives to describe juicy, flakey, melt in your mouth sensations has always sort of creeped me out. I clearly find (like most people), talking about myself significantly more interesting.

The best way (I think) to learn how to write and think outside of a medical note is probably just practice. After all practice, on standardized patients, on classmates, on unwilling pets, and semi-willing SOs is how I got to kinda figuring out how to ask people nosy questions about their lives. (I didn't ask my dog questions about her life, I just listened to her heart murmur lol).



So in honor of "practicing," here is post with 2 pies/tarts, both an iteration of peach and homemade crusts, and a testament to the ideas that 1) improvement can happen, and 2) you can always have more improvement. Pie crust has been something I've dreaded tackling for a while now. Food bloggers and state fairs love to romanticize pie crusts that must use ice cold butter cut in x dimensions, or vodka, or that t-shirt that wins all the football games and makes all the pie crusts perfect.

But just like expert pie contest judges can't always tell what is a homemade vs. real crust, I guess my family at least cannot tell what is good/bad homemade pie crust. The pie crust was actually not as scary to work with as I thought (see Tau Peach Pie), and the challenge was rather dealing with the excessive ripeness of my peaches (thanks over fertile peach tree). However, not having a real pie tin really put a damper on have a nice pie edge. I think the peach tart (red white and blue for 4th of July), ended up having a more uniform crust, though the crust style was a bit more cake rather than flake. Still delicious though.

Alas, peaches that are fun to eat as a snack do not like being put in hot ovens where they will proceed to create a peach juice pool. But, given the depth of human existence, I think I can live with a little bit of peach juice for now.

Peach Pie recipe via I honestly do not remember anymore because I forgot to save my sources, so I will forever be shamed. I swear I am not trying to avoid citing my sources!

Peach Tart recipe via Food and Wine.

Peach Ice Cream: Summer Beginnings

My least favorite thing about blogging is having to do the "well, long time no see" intro necessitated after every long lull in blogging. But since I hate it, I won't do it this time!
Its finally summer, and being forever in school, I have lot of things I've accomplished this year--

• Done with 2.1 years of medical school
• Maybe know a few things about pregnant women and non-pregnant women
• Finally got those 3 little numbers that more or less say what I can or cannot go into as a specialty in the future (so romantic right?)
• Found a lab to call my home for the next 4 years and ready to nerd out about some neurons

Things I have yet to accomplish--

• Dreadfully behind on my run 201.7 miles New Years resolution.
• What is baking? What is ice cream? 
• Soaking up enough sun to prove to people I actually live in California.

Fortunately I have 2 weeks of pure freedom during which I can start making progress on a few of the things on my "to-do list." Starting obviously with the most important- ice cream. My parent's peach trees have been reproducing like mad, and peaches dropped rotten on the earth just are a waste of life.
This ice cream is stupid easy to make- if I could make it after not touching an ice cream maker for over a year, then anyone can. If you're so lucky to live in a beautiful town where you can wander to your front yard and have your pick of fresh peaches, all the better. :)
Now time for some non-medical reading and living luxuriously out in the sun. But don't worry, there will be more peaches and creations to come!

Recipe from David Leibovitz's The Perfect Scoop. 
Also found here.