Brainphreak

We had grilled salmon and mashed potatoes for dinner the other night.  We love Trader Joe’s frozen chimichurri salmon, but the packages don’t have quite enough in them for all four of us.  The boys devour salmon, and more than once we’ve ended up with a scene because we make them share one filet.  Now that they’re getting bigger, I opted to make two packages and deal with the leftovers later in the week.  I love making new dishes out of leftovers rather than eating the same meal twice in one week, and these particular leftovers created a delicious opportunity.

There was only about 1/4 cup of mashed potatoes left, so I figured whatever I made should mix them in.  Hmmmm….how about salmon cakes?  I chopped up the remaining two salmon filets into small chunks, stirred in the potatoes, added half an orange pepper and half a small onion, both minced up very fine.  One egg to bind it all together and my creation was ready to cook.  I sprayed our big griddle with canola oil spray and browned the cakes on both sides.  While they were cooking, I whipped up a quick sauce for them out of mayo, capers, dried dill and a little squirt of lemon juice.  The result was delicious!

Salmon Cakes with lemon caper dill sauce

As an added bonus, we told the kids they were salmon pancakes, and in a wink they were gone!

I’m starting to think of keeping better track of my Iron Chef Leftover creations in pursuit of a pipe dream of writing a cookbook.  We’ll see.

People often ask me if  residency is like “Gray’s Anatomy.”  I used to say definitely not, but shenanigans of late are starting to change my mind.  The truth is, I don’t ever watch Gray’s, so I have no idea.  I ask you, though, do they know how to have fun like this?

In the NICU, things can get mighty tense, so we decided somewhere toward the end of the month to throw ourselves a little ice cream party.  We did it pot luck style, with everyone in charge of bringing something.  The results were delicious.  Alas, I fear on Gray’s there’d be sexy results, so team CMC NICU was doomed to disappoint.

Emeline made her sundae first, but broke her waffle bowl

Emily digs into the Oberweis fudge sauce

Sarah Z., a.k.a. Cochise is one happy intern

My confection. Oh yeah, there's brownie under there.

Emeline, Gonzo, and Emily

Me with Gonzalo Guillermo Hernandez, my faculty advisor for the last three years.

Cochise with Dr. Dallal

Dr. Allatar

The (Livin' the) Dream Team

I finished the skirt I was working on, and here’s a picture.

As you can see, I like to wear it with my cowboy boots.  As you can not see, I’m wearing it even though it’s starting to be too cold for skirts.  Gotta get some tights, I guess.  I count it as a success, since my husband has referred to it as both “sexy” and “fun”.  I would add “comfortable” to that list.

With the new confidence in my sewing abilities gained from this project, I went on to sew Halloween costumes for the boys.  They both wanted to be cows, originating my first trip to Jo-Ann Fabric for cow print fabric.  I’m so glad Theo insisted on playing with my stethoscope and loudly announcing that “Mom’s a doctor” or I would’ve felt REALLY dumb in Jo-Ann.  That place will dazzle you.  Furthermore, Max asked, “Mom, how do you print a cow?” after I’d said “cow print” to everyone in the store.  I love these glimpses into the way his mind works.

So about 45 minutes before the boys’ school “Harvest Ball” began, we hunkered down to knock out some costumes, with the following result.

Dan was in charge of the spatial relations and cutting out the tunics, and I stitched them up in a heartbeat.  Then, Dan wrapped their baseball caps in cow fabric and I added footie sock “ears” to the headpieces, et voila!

Better look at the headpiece on T-Bird

The goofy faces are because they're mooing. That's Maggie as "a tinker" in the middle.

With these projects plus the purses I’ve been churning out, I’m deeming sewing enough of a success to get my own machine.  I think I’ll spend the $50 in birthday money from my grandma on a used one.

Yesterday afternoon, I bottled the beer my dad and I made on Day 5.  Since Dad couldn’t make it, Dan filled in as bottling assistant and photographer.

The Penultimate Product

Sanitized bottles wait on the tree while I get my instructions

Into the Bottles!

We now have 51 bottles of beer that will condition for 2 weeks.  The final step before bottling is adding “priming sugar” which wakes the yeast back up.  This allows the beer to carbonate in the bottle, like champagne.  So what we have bottled now is flat but tasty and will be bubbly and delicious in two weeks.

Also last night, I finished Max’s scarf!  I think it looks cute in spite of my many mistakes, and he’s happy about it.  The one thing I need to learn before I start on Theo’s blanket is how to increase and decrease on purpose.  I think that would lead me the rest of the way to self-correction for an overall better final product.  Here’s a picture of the man himself modeling his new winter wear.  The glasses are new as of yesterday, and the patch is for the next couple of months to strengthen his right eye.

Well it had to happen sometime, I guess.  I missed my first Make N’ Tell day yesterday.  The only thing I made on Day 21 was a huge mistake: I tried to console myself after a disappointing resident retreat day with a boatload of fried bar food.  My hippie locavore stomach did not care for this, and the food choice quite literally backfired on me and left me feeling so weak I crawled to bed at 6:15 and didn’t wake up until morning.

Today I finished up a whole bunch of canning that was ready to roll from the last few days food prep.  The net gain was 2 quarts of apple sauce, 2 quarts of apple butter, and 6 quarts of tomato sauce.  I also threw another batch of apple butter in the crock pot and worked on Max’s scarf for another hour.  I thought it was closer to done than it actually is, so I’m still humming along on it.  I spent some time on my special birthday art project tonight, too.  That’s right, Make N’ Tell Day 23 coincides with Sarah Year 34.  For now, here’s a photo of today’s effort.  As you can see, I’m learning a great deal about my photo editing tools this month.  Fun!

Oh my goodness!  I’ve been out in the world flagrantly violating rule #3 of Make N’ Tell: Thou shalt not make and not tell!  Better to make and not tell than to have nothing to tell, however, so buckle your seatbelts.  I’ve been the busiest of bees.

Day 18:

I threw together a quick food make, which felt a little like cheating.  I had good reasons, though, since we had a residents’ bowling outing (where my kids learned how to “play bowling.”   How could I have forgotten the camera?) followed by dinner with a couple of buds from my class.  Since I knew it would be a late night, I incorporated my make into our dinner and came up with this creative side dish to accompany buffalo burgers and corn on the cob:

Stir fried veggies

Not that stir fried vegetables is the most revolutionary thing in the world, but what was new for me was I threw in some tomatoes on a recommendation from one of the nurses I work with who said she’s now hooked on tomatoes with soy sauce.  The rest of what you see there is some broccoli and zucchini, with spinach wilted in at the end.  I just cooked it in sesame oil and soy sauce, but the result was delightful.

Day 19:

Again a food make, but the backstory helps explain how I got involved in Make N’ Tell in the first place.  My husband once told me about an exercise he tried in college where you accept every invitation you get for a week.  This means saying yes to everything, and it makes you realize how automatically we start trying to figure out how to say no when someone asks us for something.  The other piece of this is realizing how little we are asked for in our lives.  It’s a fun challenge to try, and it changed my perspective to trying to figure out how to make things possible rather than making excuses as to why they’re impossible.  Hence, when Make N’ Tell presented itself, my first thought was “I don’t think I’ve got what it takes.”  That immediately led me to thinking up a handful of projects and diving in.  It’s a reflex I’ve developed that’s led me to adventures in my life, so I’m a huge advocate.

How, you ask, does this relate to zucchini pancakes?  Well, during the week, Max asked me for zucchini pancakes for breakfast.  My first thought was, “gross.”  Then I thought, “hmmm…hold on a second.”  We have a tasty zucchini muffin recipe that was highly successful in bribing Max while he was potty training.  Could we not alter it just a touch to be a zucchini pancake recipe?  Why, yes.  Yes we could!

The result

Even though he's not smiling, Max approved.

Theo snarfed them right up

My only caveat is that they’re pretty sweet.  Just a little butter was all we needed to add, though the boys also liked them with applesauce.

Zucchini Pancakes

1/3 cup crystallized ginger, coarsely chopped
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1 tsp salt
2 medium sized zucchini, coarsely grated
3/4 cup mild olive oil
3/4 cup honey
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 350F

Pulse crystallized ginger in food processor until finely ground, then add flour, ground ginger, cinnamon,  and salt.  Pulse until combined.

Whisk together zucchini, oil, honey, eggs, and vanilla in a medium bowl, then stir in flour mixture until just combined.

Cook like pancakes.

Day 20:

Today started out like a typical harvest Sunday.  Trip to the farmer’s market and then a mad swirl of cooking, chopping, canning, etc.  I got 2 batches of pesto into the freezer, two more quarts of pickles canned, 2 quarts of apple butter almost done for canning tomorrow, and Dan pureed 25lbs of tomatoes for a new batch of sauce that’s now cooking down in the oven (also to be canned tomorrow).

THEN, El Dugan came over.  She has a sewing machine, or at least her mom lets her borrow hers, and I’ve had some projects kicking around my head for a while.  Also, I then came up with more projects on the fly once we got rolling.

It all started with the desire to totally rip off Laura’s great idea for a project bag. I thought this would be a great use for my “fat pants.”  Plus, look at all those pockets!  While I was poking around looking for the aforementioned fat pants, I came across a pair of jeans that were now too small for both boys and a pair of jean legs from some pants Dan cut off (he wears them around the house, don’t worry).  Suddenly, I was pants-bag crazy, and before I knew what had happened El Dugan and I had whipped up 8(!) purses.  Only six of them are pictured here, as I let the Dugan take our two BFF purses with her to embroider badass tattoos on.

Purses for all my homies!

Here’s a closeup of the project bag, which is already providing a home for my knitting.

Thanks for the awesome inspiration, Laura!  I’ll post photos of the BFF tote when I get it back from El D.  Also, I’ll be firing up the sewing machine again soon in hopes of successfully making this skirt.  Wish me luck!

I decided it would be great to have a pair of earrings to go with the reversible necklace I made on Day 9.  Looking through the leftover beads and some others I had, I had the makings of some cute ones.

Sorry the photo’s a little out of focus.  Sometimes I’m not a “details” kinda gal.

As far as future Make N’ Tells go, I have some very lovely dried statice that I’d like to do something with.

I’m thinking of trimming the stems, tying a fat ribbon around them, and framing them in a shadowbox.  However, A) I don’t know exactly how to do this, so I’d be winging it (those pesky details again) and B) I’m not married to this idea and welcome others.  Any input would be greatly appreciated.

I also got about 15 more rows of Max’s scarf done tonight while watching “Balls of Fury.”  Knitting adds a great deal to stupid movies, is what I learned between tonight and a few days ago when we watched “Semi-Pro”.

So my make for day 15 is the one I was going to make for day 14 before we decided to go watch the Patriots game with some friends instead of eating dinner at home.  Ergo, my day 14 make was just more knitting while watching football.  I got another inch plus done on Max’s scarf.

Tonight, my make was a delicious dinner dreamed up entirely in my brain!  It all started with the winter squash that Dan bought at the farmer’s market.  He’s been making an effort to buy one thing we’ve never tried or never cooked each week, and this was what he picked up the other day.  I did a little Mexican flair with them by halving, roasting, and stuffing them with deliciousness.  The recipe follows the picture.

Stuffed Winter Squash with Spanish Rice

Preheat oven to 400 degrees

Halve two small winter squashes and scoop out the seeds with a spoon.

Brush olive oil onto squash halves, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put on a baking sheet.

Bake squash halves for 30 minutes

While squash halves are baking, heat 1 tbsp olive oil in a skillet and saute half an onion until translucent.

Add 1lb chorizo to skillet and brown.

Slice 1 tomato into chunks and add to skillet.

Add the kernels of two ears of corn to skillet.

Reduce heat to low and simmer until squash is done.

When squash is done, stuff meat mixture into cavity in the center.  Top with shredded cheddar cheese and serve with Spanish rice.

Delicious!  I would add that everything for the main dish except the cheese came from our farmer’s market (even the chorizo, thanks to Crystal from C+D Family Farms).  The spanish rice was just a Near East box mix that simmered until the other stuff was ready.  Very tasty dinner that was ready in just about half an hour.

Sundays in September are pretty much dedicated to canning stuff, and today was no exception.  Our fruit vendor at the farmer’s market had another big batch of apples for us, so we got a batch of apple butter going early in the day.  I also made a batch of pesto, which I freeze flat in ziploc bags.  Tonight, the apple butter was ready to can, and I made a quick batch of dill pickles as well.

Pickles and apple butter

I ended up with two quarts of each and started another batch of apple butter to crock overnight.

The apple butter takes about 11 hours to make, so I’m just gonna keep on crockin’ till I’ve gone through the crate of fruit we bought.  Hopefully, I’ll have 4 more quarts to can tomorrow.

Dinner tonight was a bit creative.  I tossed some Trader Joe’s gnocchi with their frozen langustino tails in some homemade pesto.  I overdid it on the pesto a bit, but it was a tasty meal.  Also, I am aware that Trader Joe and I should get a room.  Consider this the obligatory mention for the day.

Finally, a quick knitting update.   I’ve made pretty good progress and have about 10 inches of scarf done.  I screwed up the ribbing, so now I’m working on a checkerboard pattern.  It looks cute and it keeps it interesting.  First, a basic shot to give the idea:

And then the artsy fartsy shot: