winter break

Now that I can knit and bake and watch TV without feeling one iota of guilt, that's about all I've been doing since the end of autumn quarter. I only have two weeks of freedom before its back to libraries and copious coffee drinking -- so I'm trying to make the most the time. First on the agenda was the baby sweater. Knitted in a soft, soft Rowan yarn -- this is the first fully fashioned item that I've cranked out. The moment of truth is yet to come when my niece, who is in the 98% percentile of growth, tries it on. Even though she is only four months, I made it in the 9 months size and am holding my breath a little. All in all, it came out really well and props to Deborah for helping me choose the color.

Now on to cookies. For Christmas the boyfriend, his mom and I are heading to North Cascades to get a little peace and quiet and snow. I made these Ultimate Oatmeal Cookies to sustain us through vigorous cross country ski adventures. Last time Nick and I went cross country skiing it ended up with lots of falling and sore, sore bums. This time we'll have these delicious cookies to make us feel better. Made with chunks of chocolate, tart cherries, and pecans these are the cookies that eat like a meal.


Ultimate Oatmeal Cookie
from the hard working Cook's Illustrated folks

1 1/4 cup all purpose flour
1/2 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
3/4 tsp. baking powder
1 1/4 cup rolled oats
5 oz dried tart cherries, coarsely chopped ( about 1 cup)
4 oz bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
1 cup pecans, toasted and chopped
12 T. butter, softened but still cool
1 1/2 cup dark brown sugar
1 large egg
1 tsp. vanilla


Heat oven to 350 degrees. In medium bowl, whisk together flour, salt, baking soda and baking powder. In another medium bowl, combine oats, cherries, chocolate and pecans.

In large mixing bowl, or standing mixer, cream sugar and butter for 1 minute. Add egg and vanilla, and mix until incorporated, about 30 seconds. Add flour mixture and mix on low until combined. Add oats and chunks mixture and mix until combined.

On two large baking sheets lined with parchment or silicone liner, drop 16 scoops of dough, using 1/4 cup measuring cup. If there is any dough remaining, partition it out among the 16 cookies. Roll each scoop of dough into a sphere and lightly flatten until an inch thick. Stagger cookies on the sheet so that they are about 2 inches apart in all directions.

Place both cookie sheets in oven and set timer for 12 minutes. When 12 minutes are up, rotate sheets from top to bottom and front to back and cook for 5-8 minutes more. Cookies should look slighly underdone and be cracked on the surface. Allow to cool 5 minutes on the sheets and then transfer to wire rack.

rhymes with cadaver

After a few months of looking at human brains, spinal cords (they are so much smaller than I thought they would be) and the odd human knee all out of context, we were finally led up to get the first look at our anatomy cadavers we will be using for the rest of our course. Now, I've already seen cadavers from the summer I took this course in Portland. Many people choose not to believe me when I say "it's not so bad." But it's not. Maybe a little surreal, but not gross.

They try to make it a little surreal, I think. The cadavers are kept in a special room down a special hallway that is always locked. To get to them you have to go up a certain elevator that opens into the locked hallway and then use a number code to get into the cadaver room. Room 666 in fact. The room is Kubrick orange inside and the cadavers are kept sheathed in heavy white plastic. Cadavers are hard to come by, and ours have been used for a year now. They don't stink, even like chemicals. I find the experience of studying them very humbling and intriguing. We're all just tissue in the end.

A new element in cadaver work for me will be the internal organs. Before we only looked at muscles and never even had to touch the cadaver if we didn't feel like it. Now, the rib cage has been removed, almost like the top on a children's puzzle to reveal the world beneath. I will probably feel weird picking up a rib cage to poke around in someone's heart. But after awhile you get used to doing such things and don't think about your own rib cage and how light it will feel if someday someone lifts it out of you.

I took a nude drawing class in high school and was very nervous about looking at naked people at first. But soon everything was just a line to draw and shade. And now, every thing is just an organ or tube to memorize. Because we're all just a collection of movable, beautiful parts.

life on a hill

Living in a house on a hill can have its perks. You're usually out of the flood plain, you might be privy to a nice view, and during snowy weather, if you've already made it back up the hill in question, you just might get to take a day off of school or work. Such was the case for me, yesterday. The flurries were flying all day in Seattle, but not sticking at all. I kept thinking of the big hill I have to drive up to get to my house in the netherlands of Pierce county and that if snow turned to ice, I'd have a long walk ahead of me. You see, this is one mother of a hill. And as I was driving home last night, I turned up it with a deep breath and a heavy push on the accelerator. It was just raining a cold rain at the time and no snow was on the ground. But as I twisted and turned up the hill, the rain gave away to snow and the ground was a powdery white. I drove slowly and with caution and made it safely to the top of the hill and home. But the snow continued through the night and gave me justification to stay home today and I'm enjoying the bright light reflecting off the snow as I drink my coffee and try to amp myself up for studying.

The cat is very interested in going out and sniffing the snow, but certainly not letting it touch her paws. She had a brief session outside earlier and hastily returned to the warm kitchen. She seems to have forgotten this and woefully waits to be let out again. Another cat, a neighborly orange one, obviously has no qualms about paws on snow and has left evidence of the fact through the snow field that is the backyard.



She's not really looking at snow in this photo, but looking at birds she wants to eat. Both require going outside and, in her mind, might be the same thing.

up where?

Somedays it's a bit of a challenge to get up in front of your class and talk about suppositories. Suppository itself is a mild word, but one full of connotations. And it necessarily goes along with words like vagina and rectum, and if you're very unlucky, urethra. It's good to have a place to pratice using these words with ease and grace. Suppositories are less funny when you have to make them, as was the case today. One of the most challenging specimens of the extemporaneous preparations, suppositories require skill, patience, and knack for covering up mistakes. And my instructor always wants things nice and "elegant." You never knew suppositories could be elegant, did you?

I have to admit that making compounded prescriptions is one of the things I love most about pharmacy. In some ways it's like cooking, which I also love: you follow a recipe and throw things together, but to be really good at it, you have to have a feel for what it should look like. I'd like to think that I have a feel for it, but the other day I totally left out a crucial ingredient for making cold cream (the white greasy stuff your grandmother used) and the product ended up looking like paste. A nice emollient paste, but not quite right.

But on to things that are very right, if you like eggs for dinner, like them poached, and like the sharp taste of raw garlic then turkish eggs with paprika and sage butter should come into contact with your palate soon. Perfect for ameliorating the winter chill.

old pleather

I'm still getting used to Seattle. I've been living in the outlying area for a little over two months now and don't get to spend much quality time in the city proper. The time I do spend is usually in the general vicinity of the U and includes: 1 bus, 2 coffee shops, 2 bars, and luckily, a yarn shop. I still feel like a sneak getting on the back of the bus during rush hour and have to constantly remind myself to pay my fare when I disembark. The other day I was exiting one of the long, white buses with the slick pleather seats and the faux wood paneling. I fumbled my bus pass as I tried to show it to the driver and had to retrieve it from the floor. I apologized, to the driver, to the other passengers who were probably quick and discreet when showing their fare, and to myself for being so clumsy. As silly as it might seem, awkward events like this one make me long for my old life in Portland -- where I understood the whims of public transportation. Where I knew the best bread shops and happy hours. Where other people fumbled.

Despite all of the fumbles, there is something glorious about a new city. A box waiting to be opened. The perfect coffee shop - anticipating me with a clean corner table, a nicely pulled espresso, and a warm oatmeal scone. A stone bench hidden back in the corner of a park - dedicated to the memory of someone who loved obscure nooks in a grove of rhododendrons. The best chair in the library for daydreaming on the fall leaves while trying to study inflammation. There is something lovely about making a little place for yourself in a new corner of the world.

blog reincarnation

A confession: I once had a secret blog. I only let a few people read my varied ramblings on post-baccalaureate education, cooking, films, and unfinished craft projects. But I've grown and am ready to reincarnate the old, secret blog into a new public blog that I'll actually tell people about. A blog where craft projects get finished, I move on to doctoral candidacy, and food is a welcome diversion from studying. Welcome to extemporaneous.