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.