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?
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