Garden

A vegetable garden is one of the first things that we wanted to have when moving into a house. We purchased several gardening books over the last two years seemingly just to torture ourselves as we longed for some green space of our own. Now that we finally have that space, the gardening has begun.

We decided to start everything from seed even though we were behind the spring planting curve. We decided on a mix of plants that included tomatoes, squash, peas, some herbs, marigolds, and poppies. The direct sow seeds have done marvelously so far; the indirect not so much. Impatience got the better of us with the glacial progress of the wimpy seedlings that were growing in the house, and decided that since it was unlikely to freeze here in June to go ahead and plant them. They withered up in 24 hours. 

Plan B consisted of buying a few tomato plants from a nearby garden shop, which we have managed to keep alive thus far. I started off thinking about going geek with the garden and meticulously tracking dates, weather, successes and failures, but decided to just let nature take its course and figure it out over time. That and pay attention to the simple directions on seed packets next year. 

Progress

I spent some time the other day thinking about why it has been so long since either one of us has posted anything. Being busy jumped to the top of the list, but specifically for me there were several other reasons. First, the pace of fourth year was a little frantic. I had several rotations where I was only on a service for a week, which based on the volume and the fact that posts would have been low quality kept me from writing about them. In addition to that the application and interview process was stressful, and I was weary about posting my thoughts online. Of course anyone who read before knows by now that our lives have moved forward even as the blog has stayed silent.

Erin transfered to a different department at her hospital, I matched into general surgery here in Memphis, we own a house, and I graduated from medical school. I am going to say there is no time like the present and just skip the details.

There will be a slight shift in the focus of the blog since I have decided that writing about my job could get murky. There are a lot of concerns about privacy and professionalism when writing about medicine and many well-intentioned people have created big problems for themselves. Some get around this by writing anonymously which grants the freedom to write nearly anything they want, but that isn't a path I am interested in at this point since I can't keep up with even one place to post content. Posts about residency will be pretty general and perhaps less interesting, but hopefully still insightful to those who just want to know the basics.

I am going to spend some more time writing about the domestic front and the progress of our first home. There are a lot of things that really excite me about the house on Melrose, and some things that certainly need work.

Time to beat some life back into this old blog, hope everyone enjoys the revival.

PS

Island 49

We don't know much about Arkansas. It is called "The Natural State," is home to the Ozark Mountains and Bill Clinton, and we both see a lot of patients from the Eastern half of the state. After our first anniversary weekend though, we can tell you that it has an amazing natural wonder called Lake Ouachita (WAH-shi-tah).


It is the largest lake in Arkansas, created by the construction of the Blakely Mountain Dam which was completed in 1954 for flood control and power generation. When the area flooded it created hundreds of small islands where the hilltops used to be. The vast majority of the area is a national forest, although there is a small state park as well.

We decided to spend our first anniversary camping. Camping trips over the past year had been foiled several times due to work schedules or weather, but the first weekend of October was looking to be perfect for us to commence our first camping journey together. We had acquired new camping gear over the last year that we were eager to try out and were looking forward to a weekend outdoors. Lake Ouachita seemed like a unique place to camp on the lakeshore.

The trip started out inauspiciously. We arrived at the state park campground and were told that due to it being a busy weekend and the fact that about half of their campsites had been wiped out in a tornado in April, the only campsite available were Class AAA. That means an RV can pull up and set up shop with full water and electrical hookups. Not exactly roughing it. The ranger also mentioned that we could canoe out to one of the islands and camp, but we weren't sure we had prepared enough for that. We took one of the sites left and drove off to see what was in store for us.

To our horror, next door was a camper with large support struts deployed in all directions, a satellite dish setup, outdoor rug and chairs, a tricycle, a Razorbacks spare tire cover, and a dog sitting outside. We were just going to try and make the best of it, but when we rolled the tent out and it only covered one quarter of the allotted space we quickly packed up and rushed back to the ranger's station. That was not the weekend we had envisioned. We decided to take a risk and canoe out to a nearby island and see how we fared.


It turned out to be the best camping experience either of us have ever had. We tossed all of our gear into our rented canoe and paddled into the sunset for 45 minutes, found an island the ranger suggested, and quickly set up camp on the ridge before we ran out of daylight. The island was about a third of a mile long and a quarter mile wide, and we were it's only inhabitants the first night we were there. There was a rock pile for a fire ring constructed by previous guests. Each of the islands is numbered by the Army Corps of Engineers, and ours was number 49.


The weather was ideal; it happened to be a great Fall weekend with highs in the 70s and which cooled to the 40s overnight, and not a cloud in sight. We found that despite our initial reluctance we were prepared for a real wilderness experience. We had brought enough water to drink, and used the lake water for cooking. We had some great backpacking recipes that used dry and dehydrated ingredients in a creative way to create good food. During the day we walked the island, went swimming in the beautiful lake, read, and played a game of Scrabble. We had cell service and checked the score of the doomed Florida/Alabama game a few times. After all, we are Gators.


When Sunday morning greeted us, we were able to eat, pack up our campsite and toss everything back in the canoe, and paddle back to the marina. We laughed throughout the weekend at how awful it would have been had we stayed next to the Clampett's back at the campground. Canoe camping is a really great way to get a wilderness experience without having to hike for hours. The added bonus of the canoe is that it can haul more gear than we could have taken on our backs.


It was hard to believe that it had been a year since our wedding, and we talked often about how much fun that day was. It was nice to reminisce about having all of our friends and family together. We have had a fantastic year together, and hope to make this next one even better. We miss all of you, and certainly hope to see you soon!

dinnerz. updated.

P is on a really weird schedule this month and every 3rd day he is at the med from sun up to sun up the following day. So our "week" of meals usually last 2 weeks with me eating something random (spaghetti, waffles...see what I mean) every 3rd night. Meals this "week" included:

1. Asian Rice & Veggie Bowl
Veggies + Rice + eggs = SO good. super light with brown rice (under veggies), oh and also spicy! I used the leftovers the next day for lunch. I wrapped it up in a tortilla with hoisin/peanut butter sauce...which was genius and even better than the night before. P was pretty jealous.

2. Chicken Pita with Tzatziki sauce
This dish was hands down this weeks winner. I think we both wanted to eat about 5o of these suckers.

3. Shrimp, Leek, & Spinach pasta
I will give this one about a 3 out of a 5. I like pasta, I like shrimp, I like spinach...but put them all together not so good.

4. Indian Meatballs
P made this one on a night I went and ate dinner with a coworker after our shift. Sorry no picture. He did say it was a horrible recipe which I agreed with when I had some for lunch the next day. I blame the recipe though, I think it was trying to be too healthy with lean ground turkey as the base.

5. Tuscan Salmon with Rosemary OrzoAnother good one. I have a love/hate relationship with salmon though. sometimes I am just not in the mood.

BUT I did bake this:
I was channeling my inner joy the baker and it turned out delicious! I may or may not have gone a little overboard with the feta...just saying.

dinnerz.

Meals this week include:

1. Asian Rice & Veggie Bowl
2. Chicken Pita with Tzatziki sauce
3. Shrimp, Leek, & Spinach pasta
4. Indian Meatballs
5. Tuscan Salmon with Rosemary Orzo

What's on your list?

Me & Julia Child's kitchen (Washington, DC)

Stop! Whatever you are making for dinner tonight...make this.

Chicken Chilaquiles (adapted from Everyday Food: Great Food Fast)


Serves: 4 and makes fantastic leftovers

Ingredients:
1 tablespoon EVOO
4 garlic cloves, chopped
1 can (28 oz) whole peeled tomatoes in puree
1 small can chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, finely chopped (found in mexican aisle)...I used whole can, why waste?
Salt
1 small roasted chicken, skinned and shredded (about 4 cups)
1/2 cup cilantro + more for garnish
4 cups tortilla chips
1/4 cup sour cream
1/4 cup crumbled feta

Recipe:
1. Combine oil and garlic in large saucepan. Cook over medium heat, stirring occasionally, until the garlic is fragrant and sizzling, 1 to 2 minutes.
2. Add the tomato can (breaking up tomatoes), chipotles and adobo sauce, and 1 cup water. Bring to a boil; season with salt. Reduce the heat and simmer rapidly until lightly thickened, 6 to 8 minutes.
3. Add the chicken and cook, stirring, until hot, about 1 minute. Remove from heat; stir in chopped cilantro.
4. Divide the chips among 4 shallow bowls; top with the chicken mixture and sauce. Garnish with cilantro, sour cream, and feta. Yum.

Week 3

Week 3

Recipe 1: Chicken soup with chickpeas, Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights

Turmeric makes for some radioactive color-like dishes. But apparently it is really good for you, cancer fighting good. Also really yummy to eat.

Recipe 2: Tomato Lasagna, Apples for Jam (Side dish, Green Beans with caramelized shallots, Everyday Food: Great Food Fast)

Eh. Did not care for this dish...and it's 100 leftovers. Next time I will look for a cheesier, meatier version.

Recipe 3: Shrimp Tacos, How to Cook Everything

We LOVE tacos in this household. These passed the excellent taste test. Shrimp was also really easy to make.

Recipe 4: Napa-Valley Basil Burgers, Build a Better Burger

Plain and simple with a hint of basil. Very good indeed.

Recipe 5: Winter Squash Curry, How to Cook Everything

Just made this last night. First time making anything with butternut squash. I don't think I peeled enough of the outer layer off. I will know for next time. They were not kidding when they suggested using a sledge hammer to cut it into pieces...don't fear, I didn't do that!

Week 4 starts today! Yay!

Week 2

Week 2

Recipe 1: Open-faced Sloppy Joes, The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook

These Sloppy Joes were AMazing, P & I were fighting over every last morsel of leftovers. I will definitely be making these bad boys again.

Recipe 2: Potato & Onion frittata, Everyday Food: Great Food Fast

This meal was only okay. I think it really lacked something creamy, like cheese. So I guess that means it was a healthier fritata.

Recipe 3: Chicken with Herbed dumplings, The Cast Iron Skillet Cookbook

Cornmeal added to the dumpling mixed made for a very sophisticated but good taste.

Recipe 4: Asian-Style Wraps, How to Cook Everything

Definitely another winner. This is actually a picture of leftovers (aka lunch the next day) and it was still as good as the original.

Recipe 5: Baked fish parcels, Apples for Jam

Another awesome dish. I blame the really expensive fish I accidentally bought...it saves to check the prices before you tell the man over the counter what you want...trust me. Lesson learned.

Week 1

Week 1

Recipe 1: Fish pie, Apples for Jam

Sorta fish casserole meets mashed potatoes. A perfect combination. Pretty to look at too.

Recipe 2: My Dad's Chicken Curry, Miss Dahl's Voluptuous Delights

This one's a keeper.

Recipe 3: Lemon-Herb Seafood Stir-fry, Real Simple: Meals Made Easy

Pardon the half way eaten bowl. We ALMOST forgot to get a photo.

Recipe 4: Pork Schnitzel, Apples for Jam (side dish: Sauteed broccoli with tomato, also from Apples for Jam)

The funny name makes this dish even better to eat. P and I decided the tomatoes + spicy chile pepper vinegar made for an excellent twist to plain steamed broccoli.

Recipe 5: Lentil Soup, Everyday Food: Great Food Fast

i love lentils.

Real Simple should hire me

After completing Real Simple's 4 week dinner plan I created my own 4 week dinner plan using various cookbooks that I already have. Whoever constructed the one for Real Simple must have made a lot of money because it took me a whole LOT of time finding the recipes, grouping them together so no one week was too heavy, and then completing the shopping lists. Phew. BUT I have been so happy already having a plan each week of what to eat. Here is what my finished 4 week dinner plan looks like:

Pardon the terrible picture...but you get the point. right.

I can't wait to share the photos with you. In fact I will start now.

Week 4 of 4

Pardon my absence...I will try to not let that happen again. Week 4 was a whole lot of weeks ago... but since we have all these photos I wanted to share them with you. Along with my own little 4 week plan I constructed all by myself (which we are currently coincidentally consuming week 4...say that 4 times fast). Okay enough with the C's and 4's.

Recipe 1: Roasted pork chops with polenta

First time trying polenta...and will definitely not be the last. so good.

Recipe 2: Salmon with potato salad

Salmon was good. Potatoes were way too spicy. Horseradish sauce, not a good idea.

Recipe 3: Seared steak with cauliflower puree

Pureed cauliflower is pure genius. I didn't even miss the mashed potatoes.

Recipe 4: Sweet potato and Brie flat bread

Homemade dough.

Recipe 5: Cajun chicken with collard greensTook leftovers to work the next day for lunch and was asked by two associates to bring them the recipe. true story.

Kiddos

And now time for a delayed post...

December was the end of my pediatrics rotation, and for some reason I have had more inquiries as to how I liked it than my prior rotations. Briefly, I liked it! It was fun to work with kids ranging from premies to young adults. However, I will not be going into Peds. This is another case of a specialty that I did not dislike at all, it just wasn't as good as surgery.

I spent four weeks on one of the general pediatric teams at LeBonheur Children's Hospital. As Erin can attest, I hardly saw the light of day. We were only given two days off the entire month, and were on call about twice each week. Each call lasted 30 hours, and they were very busy since I decided to do Peds during sick kid season. Each day started at 6 a.m. by waking up patients and their parents to see how they were feeling and if everything went well overnight. Any of you who ever stay at a teaching hospital, please take pity on the med student that has to wake you up before dawn. I assure you we feel just as bad about having to wake you up at such awful hours! I had between four and six patients to see every morning, and we were supposed to have our daily notes in the computer before the interns. Mornings were stressful.

At 10 a.m. we would have rounds with the attending to discuss all of the patients, including any important new findings or lab values, and our daily plan as well as the big picture for each patient. This would take up to two hours, but at the end we would have a plan for the rest of the day. During rounds a running list is made of what needs to be done; med changes, discharge paperwork, consults, etc. After finishing the list, we would split up responsibilities and the team would divide and conquer. When the day's work was completed we would meet up and check-out to the intern on call about any patients they needed to keep a close eye on. Then we would go home, rest, and start over the next day. It was the most exhausting month of my life thus far.

Lebonheur was the first hospital I have worked where every aspect of the patient's chart was computerized. Every hospital in the city has some form of electronic medical record, but at LeBonheur every bit of it is online, the paper charts have nothing in them save for a sheet of labels with patient information on them. There were a lot of quirks to be found in the system, but overall I think that it makes patients safer and allows everyone who cares for them to easily and efficiently access information. Honestly, the best part of EMR is that we are no longer at the mercy of terrible handwriting. I can't tell you how much time I spend at some of the other facilities trying to decipher several pages of scrawl that someone left on the chart. The frustration it has caused is responsible for a few of my grey hairs.

After leaving the halls of the hospital and rejoining society I spent the next month in a smorgasbord of pediatric outpatient clinics. Cardiology, neurology, pulmonology, GI, rheumatology, genetics, etc. Some were better than others, and a few were excellent. It generally depended on the attending and how involved we were. I won't go into the detail of each one but I was able to see a spectrum of problems from runny noses to cystic fibrosis, and that made it a decent learning experience.

I spent one week in the neonatal ICU at the Med. In my recap of OB/GYN I shared about the hardly-contained insanity of labor and delivery at the Med, all of the sick and/or premature babies were whisked upstairs by the Peds teams never to be seen again (by the OB/GYN people anyway). The week of NICU work helped close the book, as I got to be one of the people whisking the kids upstairs. There is a special phone in the NICU, very much like the bat phone, that rings when there is a baby being delivered and they suspect that it may be in trouble. There is a staircase directly from the NICU to labor and delivery to allow quick access. I went for three deliveries throughout the week, and walking back into a delivery suite made me realize just how much I did not miss OB/GYN. All three of the kids ended up being just fine, and we brought them upstairs just to be watched.

That is not to say that all of the patients in the NICU did well. There were two on our team that had support withdrawn the week that I was there. We had two other babies who were born at 25 weeks (full term is 37 weeks), and weighed about a pound each. They could have been in the pictures you've seen of babies with wedding bands over their arms, unimaginably tiny. The staff there was incredible. For the two kids who didn't make it, they had a professional photographer there to take some pictures beforehand for the family. There was as much support and care as can be afforded, and although it is of little solace at the time the families tend to be appreciative of such small mementos of their child.

Last but certainly not least was St. Jude. I know that many of you contribute to St. Jude, and it is a unique place. The campus is interesting because as a hospital it is actually quite small. In general they attempt to provide as much care as they can on an outpatient basis, so that the kids don't have to stay in the hospital. For those who do, they could not be in a more child friendly environment. There is a Wii and DVD player in every room, with a library of games and movies on each floor. Every aspect of the place has been designed to put kids and their families at ease. The vast majority of the campus is dedicated to research space, which if of course why St. Jude is so famous. 60 years ago childhood leukemia was almost universally fatal, and thanks mostly to work at St. Jude it now has a 96% survival rate. That being said there is certainly still work to be done. Some of the stories that parents shared with me quite simply made my soul ache, knowing that their children were not going to make it, but participating in experimental treatments in the hope that one day a cure may be found for someone else's child. It was very powerful, and I am glad to have been able to spend some time there.

Next on the list is family medicine, where I get to spend two months on the frontline of primary care. As a bonus, the rotation has a reputation for allowing the most time off!

Merry Christmas!

Someone is a little excited for Christmas...

Catnip may or may not have been involved :)

Merry Christmas to all our friends and family. We love you and miss you very much! P&E

Honeymoon Recap: Fancy Chairs

The morning of "The Biltmore" day we ate breakfast at our Hotel's restaurant (Red Stag Grill). We were seated next to a big window (looking out at the Biltmore traffic...) in fun fancy red seats.

(please excuse the deer on Patrick's head...they were everywhere in our hotel)

(waiting for my double expresso) :)

(Patrick's GInormous breakfast)

Week 3 of 4

To be honest I wasn't looking forward to most of the recipes dedicated to week 3. Boy was I pleasantly surprised each night. I enjoyed every single one of them.

Recipe 1: chicken paprikash

Excellent sauce that made delicious leftovers with various pastas (yellow rice, white rice, noodles). Didn't care for the sour cream or dill.

Recipe 2: shrimp with white beans and toast

Homemade bread! Delicious.

Recipe 3: asian beef and mango salad

This recipe was very light. Perfect mid week dinner.

Recipe 4: mushroom and herb strata

This recipe was AMAZING. Leftovers were even better. And again we used homemade bread. YUM.

Recipe 5: balsamic-glazed pork with lentils

I have a secret obsession with lentils. Especially because they come in lots of fun colors.

Just got back from the store with our last week (week 4 of 4) ingredients. P and I thought it would be fun to have a "best of" week. We are going to pick our top 5 and make them again! I. can't. wait. Week 4 looks promising so stay tuned!