eat (good) food

ive always enjoyed baking and cooking and have pursued this interest through a variety of ways... everything from organizing holiday food drives to cooking for community service centers to just experimenting with this and that.

lately... ive been spending so much time on food blogs, specifically baking and learning new techniques. today i made amazing coconut and lime cookies (cookie photos to come), which i will bring to lecture on tuesday, followed by the chili fundraiser for haiti. definitely did a lot of recipe researching and im ready... bring it!

so the cookies aren't really a new thing.. but my newest baking projects will be breads! im nervous because the yeast have a find of their own and all the kneading and proofing and stretch test and indent test... and im overwhelmed! maybe ill take it on after finals

on another note... my friend, e, and i got together over the weekend to prepare a dinner. he wasn't able to make my potluck that i posted about previously so i told him that we would do a dinner together sometime to teach him some things and of course, to show him what i got! woot. we made orange ginger glazed salmon with a side of salad. the salad was really great! romaine, cabbage (red and white), tomato, cucumber, almonds, avocado and sesame ginger dressing... mmm! sorry for the laundry list.. i really should be better about photos! for dessert i made earl grey cupcakes with lemon buttercream frosting. there was blip in the recipe i used online (they didn't add baking soda/powder.. and i thought of this too!) and they just didn't come out well... very flat and hard! :( not at all soft and fluffy like i like them.

we were talking about the many benefits of knowing how to cook (well) and all of the reasons go back to... cooking is healthy!! SURPRISE! haha being educated about food and cooking can enable someone to learn how to cook good food, and do it inexpensively! its undeniable that we have an obesity epidemic on our hands and a lot of it is blamed on the expensive prices for healthy organic food, but really what we need is education! delicious healthy food doesn't have expensive! we just have to become more familiar with different kinds of foods and learn how to utilize their versatility. think of something like canned beans (my fav are chick peas!! nom nom nom).. i think normally they are 1.09 a can with almost 4 servings. you can take these and mix them with some low fat salad dressing (italian for me!), a bag of frozen mixed veggies (and maybe a can of tuna if you really want) and thats a meal for a family of four for under 5 dollars!! to switch it up... you could mash them up with some seasoned bread crumbs to make bean patties. another option is to stew them with a can of tomatoes and a small onion with some curry spice. if you wanted to go visit the golden arches and hit up the dollar menu... i guarantee a family of four will be spending more than 5 dollars.

in class we have been talking about motivational interviewing and skills we can use to help empower our patients to change their bad habits and replace them with healthy ones. we're all people and we all have things we need to work on... meaning we all know how hard it is to kick a bad habit! a few weeks ago i saw a woman for high blood pressure (and a slew of other things) and we spent a lot of time talking about her current lifestyle and her motivation for change. i was shocked to learn that she thought a healthy breakfast was a streusel muffin (hello sugar packed!!) and we spent a lot of time debunking a lot of myths surrounding food. her biggest issue for not dieting was that she didn't want to miss flavor and as a new dieter myself... we definitely talked that to death! so many ways to keep the taste without the bad fat and sugars... its endless really! haha in fact we had to stop because we ran out of time but she is seeing a nutritionist now so im sure she's getting great information now.

it was really great talking to her because i felt that for once.. wow! i think i just made a real difference! im not saying that if shes a super fit vegan now that its all because of me.. but i definitely feel that we made a connection and because of it.. shes that much closer to leading a healthier lifestyle. it just goes to show you that in medicine you don't always need medical knowledge to make a difference... and on the flip side, just because you have medical knowledge doesn't guarantee you're going to make a difference either. humanism in medicine... buzz words that have been beaten to death so that's all ill say :p

so it seems that ive totally gone off on a tangent... in summary:

1) lime coconut cookies.. good! recipe and pics to come

2) want to learn how to use yeast to make bread

3) cooking to be healthy

4) we need food education!

on that note... good night people! please excuse the typos and grammatical errors. standard, i know... im notorious for poor typesmanship (questioning the legitimacy of this word.. but i like it). molecular basis of neoplasia time... probably the first path lecture ive actually enjoyed. summer, where are you?

watch out world... here comes immunotherapeutics!!!

dana faber puts out the first fda approved immunotherapy for prostate cancer! its called provenge and instead of being a prophylactic vaccine, its is an interventional treatment for men who already have prostate cancer. what happens is that the patient's white blood cells are extracted (leukapheresis) and APCs are primed with antigen from the cancer. the cells are then reintroduced into the body and... THIS IS SPARTA!! haha :p get it?

compared to placebo, provenge improved median survival by 4.1 months, improved 3yr survival by 38% and reduced the overall risk of death by 22.5%!!!

in the next year, this will become available to men with advanced, metastatic prostate cancer that is hormone resistant. certainly this type of therapy requires a lot of individual tailoring but wow! researchers expect that tens of thousands of men will benefit from this.

i think that in our clinical practice, we should all expect to see more immunotherapies arise and become powerful tools in our arsenal of interventional and curative abilities. our immune system is so finely tuned to discriminate friend from foe so what better way to fight disease than to harness this potential and make it even more focused! lets just help our body do what it does best.

ch- ch- check it out! http://www.provenge.com/

nail maniaaaa

this week was supposed to be my last scheduled clinic visit as a first year... but my preceptor is on vacay so no clinic this week! so taking advantage of this scheduling situation... nail mania!!

i went into cvs with one OPI polish... i dont remember which one.. but i left with FOUR! two from ORLY, one NYC and one sally hansen. i used two tonight and you'll just have to wait to see which ones the other ones are.. gasp! the suspense :p haha

this is what i did tonight... instead of reviewing brain stem lesion case reports.. meh. i actually spent over an hour at cvs testing a ton of different colors so i figured hey, whats another 30 minutes or so?

this is ORLY gum drop base with NYC silver glitter tips. a bit sloppy... no prep or finish but i just couldn't wait!! the ORLY didn't go on as smooth as i had hoped but since im no expert... i might just be my handiness. in terms of the density of the NYC glitter... im still undecided. im thinking about doing a diy glitter polish so i can pick exactly how i want it. i accidentally ordered two clear polishes during a previous order so this would work out great! what do you think?

there will never be, another henry

i was watching grey's anatomy tonight and okay, first of all, here is a disclaimer: yes, i understand it is fiction. even still, that doesn't mean that there aren't things to be learned...

that being said there were two eldery patients, henry and betty, being admitted for various irrelevant reasons and as they were being transported they see and recognize each other. later... we find out that there was a history between them. turns out, betty and henry's late wife (sally) were best friends. before the marriage, betty and henry fell in love with each other and made love- all without sally's knowing. they were each others first. betty was supposed to be in the wedding but felt so guilty that she ran away and disappeared. later, as shes talking about her history with henry to meredith and christina, she explains how guilty she felt and how she willed herself to move on, how she reassured herself that there would be another henry. betty got married and had kids with another man who she said was kind and she loved dearly, but despite this, in the end she realized that there will never be another henry.

later henry explains to betty that he has this beautiful home and wants to share it with someone and asks her to move in. betty declines and insists that she had moved on. later, henry's crashes and betty stays around. when henry is well again, he is surprised that betty is still there and she explains that she never stopped missing him and never stopped wondering.... they kiss and she announces that she will be moving in with him. so cute :p

how many of you have met, loved, lost and/or fought for your henry?

credit card happy :)

i made my first purchase at ideeli!! its like a site with a collection of HUGE sales from various boutiques. stuff is usually still pretty pricey and it goes quick... but if you are a diligent internet shopper (like myself lol) then you can definitely catch a good deal!!

check it out here: ideeli

this is what i bought from a boutique called the casting

its ridiculously adorable!! and the girl is a babe... def some motivation to bust my butt at the gym! anyways... i bought it at 70% off!! SEVENTY PEOPLE!!! join ideeli :)

they have stuff for everything and everyone. you can get anything from clothes, to accessories to home decor! they have some standard brands like american apparel, chanel, seiko, bcbg, etc. but what i like the most is that they have so many super cute boutiques that i would have never known about otherwise.

nails!

i haven't touched my fav OPI in forever so i thought it was due time for some moon over mumbai. i also used sally hansen nail pen in white to decorate it with a small line of dots. please excuse the gnawed nails.... pre-exam stress!! eek! its a bad habit im trying to break. apart from that.. what do you think? i have two layers so that its sheer. with more layers it does become opaque (obviously) but it then takes a heavier gray color. i love the gray but i think its more fall than spring. the sheer lets the purple undertone show off more... which i love!

crafting MANIA

last night i went over to my friend J's place to make decorative pillows and it was such a blast!!! it was the first time i had used a sewing machine since high school when i made a towel skirt for the pool. honestly, the sewing machine is a bit scary- the noise, the shaking, the speed! haha

either way... i was there at 9pm.. left at 2am!!!! i had no idea it was going to take so long. we came across tons of technical and logistical difficulties when making the pillow because of the pom pom trim but the turn out was.... well, ill let you decide!

some tips:

1) if the trim is too thick:

-use the zipper foot!!

-attach an extension piece. i used a stretch of lace. it actually turned out really well and added a really cute piece of detail

-use zig zag stitch! it will stick in the thick, then the thin, etc. this way its not too much of a burden on the needle and thread to go directly through the thick the whole way.

2) save money:

-use scraps from old projects! this fabric is left over from some fabric art i have over my bed.

-buy EXTA FIRM pillows and take out the stuffing rather than buying batting/stuffing itself. way cheaper! we picked ours up from walmart for 6 bucks and only used a fraction of the stuffing.

anyways... now i am obsessed!!! i also made a pin cushion for J! i wanna make more pillows because i have tons of fabric left. next up: super large OBNOXIOUS print, body pillow!

also... im thinking about opening an etsy boutique for jewelry... maybe too ambitious. for the summer maybe??

return from hiatus

hello to all my secret readers out there... subscribe! show your face!! haha jk.. (kinda) :p

long time no blog so i guess its high time for an update... ill put it in list form for easy reading... and also to help give my jumbled thoughts some structure

1) secret readers: i totally understand that this is on the world wide web and is accessible to anyone, however, when i found out that people are reading this apart from my subscribers... i felt really weird about it. i really shouldn't though... thanks for reading guys! :) please comment... id love to hear your thoughts

2) quizzes: i know, how drab but being a med student i can't really avoid it. this past round was ridiculous rough... note to self: study earlier!!!!

3) why quizzes sucked: well there was a research poster competition the week before quizzes... and since they were giving out ipads as prizes i thought hey, what a great idea!! well it definitely wasn't. i spent almost a week on it and turns out they didn't even have judges... urgh!

4) post-anatomy: we had a beautiful memorial service in honor of the donors and their family members came. some students submitted some reflections that were read but the most touching part of the service was definitely the submissions from the donors' loved ones... the things that were said were truly beautiful. it def brought a tear to many eyes.

i kind of wish that we had this ceremony earlier... i think that it would have given the lab more meaning. in the beginning, i think it was tough to dissect but towards the end, i felt that a lot of us were desensitized. i think its good because some of things could not have been done without prior desensitization, but i can see that its hard to find that balance of sensitization and desensitization.

either way... the bodies were a priceless gift. i would say that i was prob one of the people who took least advantage of the lab, and even still, there is no way i could have learned what i did without these 'silent teachers,' as they are called. the bodies left behind probably only represented a fraction of the generosity their previous inhabitants displayed in their daily life. thank you.