Thanksgiving 2015: Hello

Hello. It's me.
I was wondering if after all these years you'd like to meet.
To go over, everythinggg
-proceed to hum/belt out the remainder of the song to your desired length-

I was going to just keep posting lyrics, but my end point of Adele "Hello" humming tends to go on for a very very long time. But pop culture references have aligned with my blog coming semi-back to life, so hello hello hello again! I can't really say that this will be as grand of a return as hers, but there are more upcoming holidays with much baking and cooking to be done.



This sounds a bit masochistic, but there are few feelings of happiness that are greater than getting to return home and go on vacation with literally NO school to think about after getting your soul semi-crushed by school. Don't worry, I'm kinda joking on the soul crushing thing. I mean, its not like med school is supposed to be easy, but the problem (or good thing?) about med school is that no matter how much you might hate the 8 AM lectures, the hours of being in anatomy lab, the excessive amounts of time you spend on a powerpoint presentation that is essentially "google x disease and tell us what you found," or the ridiculous ways you remember words like "torus tubarius" by making up a story about a Taurus whose name is kinda like Tiberius, who plays the Tuba and is an asshole, you can never fully hate it. Because ultimately all of this knowledge and nonsense is stuff meant to help us do our best to help keep people healthy enough so that they can go to their thanksgivings, live their dreams, etc. Which is both energizing and just a downer when you're trying to just be grumpy about your life.



So while I'm being forced to not think about the body or the next thing I need to be studying, here's my list of things I'm happy for in my life. Thanksgiving, like a lot of holidays, isn't really super genuine at its origins (like thnx now lemme give you small pox anyone?), but I'll just on the bandwagon for blog purposes:
1) California dreaming
2) Friends, old and new, who teach me about new emojis, snapchat, feed me spaghetti squash, make sure I'm fully caffeinated, and just make sure I don't go too crazy.
3) Slowly turning into adult siblings
4) The ultimately intense privilege that has been my education and will be my education (and hopefully future job?) going forward.
5) Adele
6) Radio stations that have now started to play straight up holiday music 24/7
7) Fuzzy study blankets
8) And of course, premade pie crusts, because we all know how much of a struggle pie crusts are for me. But my first ever Pecan Pie was a raging success! Well, as raging as a Thanksgiving 70% sponsored by Costco could be.

Pecan Pie Recipe via Allrecipes.
Pumpkin Pie Recipe via Libby's (Allrecipes).

Not Food #1: A Good Day

I don't know what this post will be about food wise, but I just wanted a space to write down some wise words I got yesterday at my white coat ceremony before I forget them. Orientation and these things tend to be filled with cheese and iterations of the same theme, but I think underneath all of that, certain phrases can stick.

So to have a good day, here are the three parts you need:
1) Learn Something
2) Have Fun
3) Do Some Kindness

I'm not super sentimental (if you couldn't tell by the intense bitterness that plagues my stream of consciousness), but I feel like having chosen to do an MD/PhD program, I get to do ALL of that. And its pretty amazing to think of how lucky it is that I am basically doing exactly what I want to do in life right now. Sure, its going to be really really hard down the line (aka in three days), and I have serious fears and dread about studying, doing well on standardized tests, asking the right research questions, publishing, getting grants. I've been so privileged to have the opportunities and access to probably something akin to the 1% of academia. There are so many things just not even within my control- being born in the US, living in great neighborhoods, parents with stable jobs and financial means, that a lot of people way way smarter and more deserving than me just don't have. Hard work is certainly one aspect, but also just being at the right place at the right time.

I'm not going to dwell too much on the sense of "do I deserve to be here" (I'll do that later), but I'm here, and ready, and its good to just move forward. Because the second piece of advice I've gotten this past year that has stuck is the idea that "no decision you make is ever a mistake." It's the decision you make, it's not good or bad, and its the one you've chosen to make the most out of. All in all, I think the choices I have made up to now allow me to fairly easily do all three things needed for a good day most of the time. Which is frankly, pretty awesome.

-end cheese-

Root Beer Pulled Pork: Crockpot Angst Update

I've run out of witty/cutesy things to talk about that relate to food. I could talk about all the great barbecue I got to eat this year thanks to travels to Texas and the South. But, given I've grown up in California, where barbecue is burgers and hotdogs on a grill, I don't think I'm in the position to wax poetically about the woes that is fake barbecue or something.

Not to mention the ridiculous idea that root beer pulled pork made in a baby crockpot could ever remotely be close to ~texas~ or ~carolina~ barbecue pulled pork. I do really like that vinegar based sauce from carolina though. I didn't even use sauce here out of pure laziness! And, hawaiian bread, while delicious, is also probably not typical barbecue fixings.

So instead, life updates! MED SCHOOL STARTS IN A WEEK OR THREE DAYS. Depending on if you count orientation. I HAVE TO DRAW BLOOD AT ORIENTATION. Also, apologies to whoever has to deal with me and my sad veins. Uhm, I got sorted at my retreat, and I'm a Gryffindor? But it feels vaguely like a lie given my lack of many many many bro-qualities. Also, serious gender imbalances in the way these houses are working. Let's see, oh I'm already behind and screwing up orientation-lets-all-be-best-friends social affairs and I'm annoyed that if I don't play the "we're best friends, we all love bad beer and clubs and going out" game, I'll have zero friends. I thought going to college taught me that all of this orientation socialization crap is complete bs. Whelp has NO ONE LEARNED? Not to mention the more serious fear that I'll be that person who fails and drops out given my less than stellar study habits/work ethics. Like geez, how did I get into here again? Lol, at talks about "failing in med school," because please, I've already failed an infinite number of times in college. Oh, and my awesomely normal and diversely different from med school roommate is moving out, so that leaves me table-less, crock pot-less, and back in the lottery of who will my new mystery grad student roommate be?

This recipe actually probably works out well for all this incoming angst and random capitalization, given its hands-off nature. The root beer flavor didn't seem to really come out when I first took it out of the crock pot, but after a day or so, the leftovers were definitely deeper in flavor. Or you know, just use sauce like you're supposed to.
Recipe via My Retro Kitchen

Lavender Honey Ice Cream: Provence and Disney Feels

As you can see, the lavender theme of this food blog continues! I am excited to announce that my small 1 oz bag of lavender is now maybe only 1/4 full now! I'm even starting to get anxious that I'll run out soon, and then order MORE, and then we can continue this happy romance with lavender. It's mildly amusing that I love lavender-flavored desserts (and floral flavors in general) so much because most people I imagine associate florals with perfumes, and if there's one thing I hate unequivocally in this world, its an excess of perfumes. So instead of smelling them, I choose to eat them instead. But seriously, what is wrong with the smell of soap.

I wrote the subtitle for this post a while back, so I got really confused about why I was feeling Disney feels. But then, I started thinking about the gorgeous lavender fields in Provence, France and then inevitably that scene in Beauty and Beast where Belle is running through the grass fields belting out her dreams of adventure after avoiding the unflattering advances of Gaston came to mind. Which, based on my iTunes library/Youtube is from Belle (Reprise).

Gotta love reprises. Though, do they have dandelions in France? Probably. I don't have an excessive amount of that ~wanderlust~ that seemingly every middle to high income 20 year old has, but going to a lavender field would 100% make it on my travel list if I bothered to ever make one. Not that I'll have much time for backpacking trips from the next decade....#academiaorbust.

The great thing about this ice cream is that its a fairly simple flavor- honey and lavender, both of which are detectable and well-balanced in this ice cream (gosh, doesn't that sound SO pretentious? well-balanced). You could probably be extra extra fancy and find an interesting tasting honey, and pair it with fresh farmers market lavender (or idk, take a jet to France if you're into that kind of thing) and have that extra effort actually come out in the flavor of the ice cream. A lot of times you can get away with using generics just because so many flavors are being mixed together in recipes. But I think the extra effort put into finding good ingredients would be worth it here. That being said, cheap honey and dried lavender makes for a great ice cream as well, as I and some tipsy medical students can attest to. I need to stop using ice cream as a crutch for social events.

Recipe via The Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz, a book I seriously recommend, but you can also find the recipe reposted on other food blog sites, such as this one if you wanted to try before you buy or something.

Also, cool side note, but I'm basically internet famous! Jk, not actually, but a photo from my last post about Asian Glazed Drumsticks was successfully submitted to foodgawker! My battle with natural lighting has finally given me one small victory!

Sticky Chicken Drumsticks: Air Quotes Asian

As a kid, getting to tell people the real story behind fortune cookies was incredibly satisfying. And honestly, I still get amusement out of getting to remind people that Chinese American food is really not what people in China eat. Same goes for Chipotle and probably most of the ethnic food that we eat in the US. Which is really sad if you think about it, or read the wiki page about American Chinese food that give racism and the resulting inability to get any actual jobs as part of how American Chinese food was developed.

I mean, when I was a kid, it was a revelation anytime you learned that what your teachers/parents taught you about the world was only one version of the super complex and messy truth. And this was before iPhones, and wireless internet (what up dial-up!), and twitter, and tumblr to teach you that everything in this world is a conspiracy. Nowadays, most people know that fortune cookies are not Chinese, and that Chipotle is not Mexican, but doesn't it terrify you to think about how back in the day your small community was the main source of knowledge, rather than like the infinite internetz?! It scares me at least, because think what research would be without pubmed, and think where the hypochondriacs of the world would be without webmd. Which reminds me of this amazing (AND IMPROVISED) line from the now departed, but forever loved show that is Parks and Rec.

Getting back to Sticky Chicken Drumsticks, this was lovingly categorized as "Asian" from the blog where I found this recipe at. But it's literally the epitome of American Asian cuisine. Like homemaker, food blogger, small town American Asian. Chicken drumsticks, I *think* aren't really part of Asian cuisine? From my n=1 experience, I don't really remember ever eating chicken legs while visiting relatives in China (chicken feet on the other hand, yes). But Asia is literally a continent, and while China is huge, Asia is even larger and there may very well be people in actual Asia who eat chicken legs sans air quotes.

I literally googled "Sticky Chicken History" to see if I could find a wiki page about this dish, like the one for fortune cookies, but alas, goose eggs. This dish is, however, incredibly popular on pinterest, with the words "finger lickin' good," or "melt off the bone," frequently accompanying photos. While I do like "real" Chinese/Asian food, this doesn't exclude me or my family from enjoying things that are "Asian" either. For example, cream cheese wontons? I would happily eat those on a daily basis.

And if you should care to know, fortune cookies are not Chinese, but actually were invented in the early 20th century in San Francisco. So if anything, they're American fortune cookies.
Recipe via Farm Girl Gourmet

Green Tea Strawberry Cake: National Dry Cake Day

I was reading an article the other day via my twitter feed about the fact that we have a "Food/Animal/Normal Thing Everyone Does Day" for essentially every day of the year now and how it's particularly driven by social media. Oh! It was in the NYT I think, because the very first 2 sentences were about some 13 year old from like Palo Alto looking forward to National Watermelon Day so she could post a picture that she took weeks ago of herself eating watermelon. This is what triggered my memory of the NYT because 1) Lol California is so far away from NY and 2) Lol this article is about a 13 year old from a fairly affluent part of the US.

Anyways, the article just spends a very long time talking about how people feel that its weird to just post a "random picture" of themselves unless they can caption it to tie-in with a a national event/day. My second favorite part of that article was when they described this 13 year old's watermelon picture, particularly emphasizing just how boring and uninspiring the picture was. As a quote below (clearly I've become so invested into this article that I of course looked it up and will now link it here):

Ms. Khan does not “have a special thing about watermelons,” and the picture of her eating one was not a momentous event. It was a hot day in June. She and a friend bought a watermelon. Someone took a picture.

Isn't that just magical? To be fair, you probably could go off the deep end here and make a reasonable point about how these random national holidays are favored because they make your watermelon day part of a greater community of watermelon days and obviously at our core, we're social creatures that like to feel that we belong.

I bring up this entirely forgettable article about how social media works because I'm a bit culpable to it myself. When I have no idea what to talk about for a post (ie here), my train of thought usually goes along the lines of "what season is it, how can green tea and or strawberries be relevant to the fact I'm horribly sunburnt and musing about the fact I just bought a sun cookie cutter because I could make it into an astrocyte cookie too." And darn, green tea and strawberries have nothing to do with any of those things! Arg! If only there was a national green tea strawberry cake that looks great but is actually too dry day.

Unfortunately there is not a day (yet) for such a holiday, so you'll have to just savor these relatively pretty pictures without a "btw it's green tea and strawberry cake day!" caption. As I alluded to earlier, this cake didn't actually turn out as great as I wanted it to due to the fact I continue to suck at baking cakes. I probably could have soaked the cake in a bit more simple syrup to counter the dry factor, and there was likely some fishiness going on with my egg whites folding and integrity. But the color contrasts between the red, white, and green are appealing regardless. So you know, if you suck at baking cakes like I do, just put this out as decoration, but bring out like ice cream when you need to actually serve people dessert.
Recipe from La Fuji Mama, with an added 1 tbsp of matcha/green tea powder to the dry ingredients.

Roasted Strawberry Buttermilk Sherbet: Sweet and Sour Beginnings

I think there's an inverse relationship between me stating on my blog "I promise to blog more consistently!" and me actually blogging consistently. I got into a major baking kick right in early June. And then I went on vacation and hiked some rocks. And then I realized how awful taking pictures of real food is. And then I moved to San Diego. And now we are here.

I probably have been putting off writing a new post because I don't know what to write. Maybe I was hoping that after a few weeks in San Diego doing things I would have things to write about? But unfortunately, my less than chipper attitude seems to be able to render even the biggest, most exciting of life changing moves into something that is just meh. Like yay! I moved! My new lab is cool! I wish I was less shy and awkward! I hate driving for 10-15 minutes stretches in traffic! I miss New Haven pizza! I miss walking to the grocery store even though I can now actually buy things like watermelon with my car! I feel awkward getting a car for essentially free because it was from high school and being so not an adult because I didn't buy my own car here! I watch way too much Scrubs! I need to run more since bad weather is no longer an excuse! What if I'm so unsociable that new lab won't even take me if I do want to do my PhD there! Being quiet sucks when I want to learn to do things and take initiative! My priority plot thing 100% did not work because I didn't fold my laundry until like today even though I said I was supposed to do it like 3 days ago! Clearly I have a lot of repressed slash fake stress given that its summer and school and real responsibilities haven't even like started and I keep using the word like!

So maybe its a good thing I'm forcing myself tonight to post a blog post since every habit starts with a first step. And what better place to sandwich rambling sentences about my life that no one cares about than between really really crafted shots of roasted strawberry buttermilk ice cream (roll credits)? If I were actually a food writer, this would probably be the place where I would start romanticizing youthful summers, and farms, and cows, where kids frolicked and strawberries were so fresh they were a perfume and buttermilk so rich it was heaven or something. But no, we live in a modern world with billions of people on the earth that need to be fed, and the very lucky couple of them doing highly productive things in the labor force to advance society so 'aint nobody got time for romanticizing a pastoral life that is very much not the way we would actually want to live today.

But hey, if you were hoping for your own farm one day- a dream I just crushed because you also now  realized why the midwest is so cheap- let it be known that delicious strawberry buttermilk ice cream can be made with you local grocery store's offerings of such products from commercial big agro farms (this is not to say that there are not issues like antibiotic overuse or labor/wages/lobbying or sustainability issues in agriculture).

If you've never roasted strawberries before, I 100% recommend that you do. Even if you don't eat them. Just soak in the amazing scent that will be coming from your oven, and definitely stick your nose a little too close to the pan when they come out. The buttermilk adds a sour tang to the ice cream that while interesting, felt a little too strong for me relative to the strawberries. I'd probably either add more strawberries or more sugar next time I make this. Because there will definitely be more stress induced posts in the future where ice cream will very very very much so be needed.

Recipe from Bon Appetit.