Of cabbages and kings

Hi hello~ It's been ages, you guys!

Since the last post (over two years ago! I am so ashamed of myself), I have finished two and a half years of medical school. That's right, I'm back in the northern hemisphere and halfway through my third-year clinical rotations.

Which means I really shouldn't be blogging right now. Shhhh.

But can I just say, it's true what they say about med school: every year is better than the last.

The workload increases every year, for sure, and there is less time to study more material, which is utterly overwhelming. But I am learning so much, every single day. Most of that learning comes from the best teachers out there -- real patients who are nice enough to take the time to talk to a medical student -- with guidance from some awesome doctors doling out wisdom.



So... If you are ever in a teaching hospital and a student asks to talk to you, please say yes. It may seem like a waste of time to have to answer the same questions twice, but students have more time and fewer responsibilities than a resident or attending, so we can focus better on you as an individual patient. Besides, just by talking to a medical student, you are contributing to his/her education.

That makes you a teacher! Of medical students!

YES.

I am actually serious. Say yes to medical students. You just may see us a few years later, looking exhausted and harried, but proudly sporting the long white coat in place of the short one.

Anyway. When I'm not at the hospital, I'm usually passed out at home. I know. I am properly ashamed. I'm in NEW ORLEANS, for goodness' sake. But I have been squeezing in a bit of exploration whenever I could!




And of course, Mardi Gras! This year it fell smack in the middle of exam week, but my roommates and I managed to see a few parades and get lots and lots (and lots) of beads.




We also ate so much king cake, you guys. Apparently it's a thing here -- people bring king cake to share at work.

So I found a recipe and made king cake to bring to the hospital.

I mean, what else is a girl to do?

If brains were lard...

The night I got back home from DC, the local news coverage featured a place called Walkerville.

Okayyy? And?

Well, you might have noticed that my adopted hometown of Madison, WI, has been cropping up in the news pretty frequently these past many months.



Yeahhh. Remember now?

Our lovely gov'nor has been keeping quite busy, trying make himself as unpopular as possible among his constituents.



So, we -- by which I mean those of us who either were adversely affected by or disagree with Gov. Scott Walker's actions (or both) -- are hoping he'll be recalled from office... which apparently can't even be brought to a vote until he's been in office for at least a year.

I know. He hasn't even been in office for a year and he's already done this much damage. Terrifying, isn't it? The guy must have set some sort of a record.



So, Walkerville. It's a village of protesters against Gov. Scott Walker, literally camping out on the Capitol Square, because the state police is guarding the entrances to the Capitol. Our tax money is being put to real good use, guys. Anyway, I'm not sure exactly what prompted this timing, but it must have been suffocating in those tents because of the heat those couple of days.

In addition to the tents, there were also several musicians performing to keep the protesters entertained, and witty signs to amuse the walkers-by (heh).



Do you have enough brains to grease a skillet?

Oh, don't worry, these cookies don't contain brains. Just some (relatively) harmless butter. :)

Pay it forward in 2011

Guys, guys. I'm moving to Australia at the end of the year! Starting in January I will be attending medical school for two years in Brisbane, at the University of Queensland, then in New Orleans for the following two at the Ochsner Clinical School! Can you tell that I'm excited??

Now that I have a plan for next year, I'm thinking of what to do for the rest of this one. My current thoughts include spending some quality time in Korea and learning to cook Korean food, and maybe visiting some friends in Europe on my way back to the States, before heading Down Under. I'll think through the details once the more pressing priorities are out of the way.

But to backtrack a bit now. At the start of this year, I made an announcement on Facebook:

Pay it Forward in 2011: I will send something handmade (most likely food, in my case) to the first 5 people who leave a comment here. They must post this in turn, and send something they make to the first 5 people who comment on their status. The rules are that it must be handmade by you and it must be sent to your 5 people sometime in 2011.

Now that we're about halfway through the year, I figured I should get cracking on my offerings before my life gets any more hectic with exams, papers, and Big Life Decisions (see above), and such like.

My original plan was to bake something special for each person, but I was struck with a new idea upon espying a small bead shop near campus. I used to love making bead jewelry in middle school, and thought it would be fun to try my hand at it again.

So, a bit about my four(!) Pay it Forward recipients...

For Joanne: a necklace
I met Joanne through another friend while we were living in Boston. She is an incurable Hello Kitty addict, but I actually associate her more with sunshine, laughter, and bright colors. She is also your go-to girl for fun, pretty jewelry, whose extensive (and ever-growing) collection makes her (awesome!) husband Atom shake his head in mock despair. So, sorry Atom, but I'll be adding to that collection.



For Raba: a set of knitting stitch markers
Raba comprises one-third of The Brain. She and Jodi are my buddies for knitting, quilting, baking, cooking, chick flicks, Chinese takeout, Lord of the Rings, VeggieTales, history classes with a certain professor wearing a mustard-yellow sweater... and so, so much more. I can't think about Williams without remembering the hours we spent giggling over cheeseburgers and buffalo fries at the Snack Bar, and the innumerable movie nights with takeout from Chopsticks. Lately Raba has been incredibly busy with classes and work, but I hope these stitch markers will remind her to take a break once in a while and relax with a movie and some knitting!



For Haydee: a bookmark
Haydee is my math buddy. We became friends while struggling through math problem sets together for three years at Williams (she studied abroad junior year). The janitors in the math building grew quite accustomed to walking in on us in empty classrooms at 6am, exhausted and covered in chalk dust but (usually) triumphant. We made for an excellent team, with Haydee thinking up novel approaches to problems, and me picking through the details to find weak points in her proofs. Haydee is well on her way to becoming a professional mathematician now, having just finished her first year of math grad school!



For Jake: a cake
Jake is another brilliant mathematician I know from Williams, all set to graduate with Honors (High Honors?) come June, and head off to math grad school in the fall. I first met Jake at the start of my senior year (his freshman year), chatting about the math and chemistry departments. He was later pressured into joining the marching band, which I think he ended up enjoying much more than he had expected. Since he was the only guy to reply to my Pay it Forward announcement, he got a cake! He wisely chose the lemon + blueberry combination (my specialty!) over chocolate, so that's what he got.



Yes, in a bright pink box, because that's what the Safeway bakery lady gave me when I asked for a cake box.

A salute to the parents

It's Mother's Day today. But it's also May 8, which is 어버이 날 (Parents' Day) in Korea.



It's customary for children to give carnations to their parents on 어버이 날, and I remember making paper carnations at school like these kids, for my parents and grandparents.

I haven't done that since we moved to the States sixteen years ago, though, and I haven't seen either of my parents in May since I graduated from high school seven years ago. I suppose it's an inevitable part of growing up, but it feels odd to realize it.

My mom still treats me like a kid for the most part when I'm home, but she did have a mild freak-out moment during my spring break when she realized that she got married at my age... and had me a year later. In other words, she is now old enough to be a grandmother!

Don't worry, Mom, you look much younger than your age. And I'm certainly not planning on getting married or having kids anytime soon, even if quite a few of my friends have jumped on that bandwagon recently.

So! A happy Mother's/Parents' Day to all you mothers/parents out there! You all are amazing people.

엄마, 아빠, 고맙습니다! 사랑해요~~! ^^

Don't you? 'Course you do!

Spring! It's the loveliest time of the year, if only for the longer daylight hours.



And spring means spending Sunday afternoons poisoning pigeons in the park with my sweetheart.

Wait, what sweetheart?

Disclaimer: I harbor no particular love for pigeons, but I don't actually condone killing them.



Okay, so that wasn't about pigeons, but swallows are cool birds because they carry things. I had just wanted to share some media that greatly influenced my college years, and fowl just happened to star(?) in both. And you know keeping a blog is all about sharing information nobody cares to have.

In that spirit, here's another song we used to sing a lot in college, about a duck.

Er, I mean, a llama.

And a duck.



Right. So, guys, it's spring! The birds are tweeting outside my window at 4am, the squirrels are frolicking, the flowers are blooming, the pollen is flying...



My condolences to those of you who suffer from allergies, by the way. My allergist informed me last year that I have been suffering from hay fever all my life. Ohhhkay, but do pardon me if I blithely ignore what he said, because as far as I can tell, I am not suffering from hay fever, nor did I before.

I did almost fall out of my chair laughing when he told me that I was also allergic to animal dander, though, because at the time I was a mouse wench spending most of my waking hours in the animal facility. It's possible (probable?) that I developed an allergy from working there for two years, but what can you do?

Well, that's neither here nor there, and my supposed allergies aside, it really is spring, and all this daylight is making me very, very happy.



A while ago there was a post on Sweetapolita about a delightful cake that was the very embodiment of sunshine and spring. I haven't had the time or patience to attempt the layer cake yet, but it's in the queue.

I settled for a lemon-blueberry bundt cake in the meantime, and it's quite tasty, despite the sub-par photos. My trusty dusty Pentax has its limits.

9,131 days

Hey, um, so, I just finished living the first quarter-century of my life.

I'm officially old, guys.

My birthday falls on Arbor Day (식목일) in Korea, so my dad used to tell me that people were planting trees to celebrate my birthday. It's kind of embarrassing to admit, but I believed it when I was little because I thought I was special.



I really used to be that cute... so what went wrong?

I'm from a huge family, where my dad is the second eldest of seven children, and my mom is the eldest of seven. So for quite a few years I was the only grandchild on my mom's side, and the youngest of three on my dad's. Having a lot of unmarried aunts and uncles meant that I had no shortage of babysitters, and was completely accustomed to being the center of everyone's attention.

That is, until this one came along.



Good thing he was adorable, eh? :)

Almost all my aunts and uncles are married and have kids now, and I have seventeen(!) younger cousins to keep track of, the youngest of whom was born just a few months ago. Plus my oldest cousin, who is like a sister to me, is getting married this summer, so I guess I'll have nieces and nephews soon, too?!

Being the "cousins in America" means there is a lot expected of my brother and me, so it can be kind of stressful to have so many people to visit whenever we go to Korea. But at the same time, it is amazing to feel so welcomed every time we go back. :)



My mom cooked me a delicious Korean birthday breakfast while I was home for spring break, and my dad sent me an awesome package full of Korean food, so I was all set for this birthday already. I just couldn't pass up such a good excuse for baking a cake. :)

Coquo ergo sum

A couple of weeks ago, we had a discussion in one of my classes about the evolution of the human brain in relation to the gut, and its effect on our diet.

See, humans evolved to have such huge, fuel-hungry brains, but managed it without significantly increasing our metabolic rates. We didn't even have to evolve a correspondingly large gut to provide all the fuel demanded by the brain -- in fact, the human gut shrank as the brain got bigger, which conserved on fuel by not needing quite so much energy to digest.

Okay, but wait. Doesn't that actually complicate things, since now it's even harder to digest food?

Here's the secret: cooking.

Yeah, that big brain's gotta earn its keep somehow. By cooking, humans are able to eat more easily digestible and calorically efficient foods, like meat. (As opposed to, say, grass, which requires a cow an entire day of chewing cud, plus four stomachs, just to get enough fuel to get through a day. Doesn't leave much time or energy for rocket science, does it?) A diet of easily digestible foods allows for more efficient metabolism, and, consequently, the reduction of gut size.

Totally brill.

Now me, I love meat: it's delicious. And I gotta hand it to our ancestors, they came up with some ingenious ways to cook meat. Plus, you know. Fire!

But a hunk of meat can never look as pretty as a perfectly ripe lemon.



This, my friends, was a beautiful lemon, perfectly yellow and oh! so fragrant. It added a great tanginess to these zucchini muffins.

Another capital city

I'm famous, yo!

Well, not really. But I did wake up to an email from Jodi saying that my mouse cake was included in Ms. Humble's Science Cookie Roundup #6!! Win! Plus, Mr. P even commented on the Pocky whiskers! Double win!

Ahem. Moving on. (Haha! Get it? "Moving" on? Oh dear.)

It's almost impressive how quickly I accumulate stuff. When I moved to Boston two years ago, I brought just a suitcase, a duffel, and a backpack (full of things, obviously). Well, I have a few more things now.



XOXO to all our science vendors for the shipping boxes! The Great Wall of Science Nerdery could not have been achieved without you.

Becca and I packed all these, plus my bike, into a Scion xB, and embarked on the ZipCar Fiasco to End All ZipCar Fiascos. That is, Becca drove me and my stuff from Boston to DC, then drove back to Boston last weekend! Have I mentioned that Becca is amazing, and my hero forever and ever?

Moral of this story: I need to learn to drive! Really.

Well, so I moved to Washington, DC -- the 4th capital city in my life, after Seoul, Madison, and Boston -- but couldn't move into my flat yet because it's sublet for the summer. My friend Ben and his flatmates very generously let me crash in their living room this week, but I need to get myself installed in Georgetown before my classes start on Monday. Luckily one of the subletters moved out this morning, so I can stay in her room until my room opens up... after my first final exam at the end of the month. Less than ideal, but I'll live.

By all accounts, once classes start I won't have time to do much of anything besides study my tail off, so I decided to bake something for Ben and his flatmates during my last week of freedom.

Heat advisory on the east coast

Fact: It is far too hot right now. I can't even fall asleep, which should tell you something if you know me at all. Clearly with the heat index in the triple digits the past (and future) couple of days, the last thing I want to do is switch on the oven.

So I shall take this opportunity to pimp a great recipe from Cooking Light that I tried a few weeks ago. My flatmate Becca had made a red velvet cake earlier in the week, and there was buttermilk left over. Since we hardly ever have buttermilk in the house, I took the chance to use some to make a cake for a birthday in the lab. The cake was such a great hit -- it was gone by lunch time, and I didn't even get to try it! -- that I made another one for Becca and myself. The rest of the buttermilk had to be used up somehow, you know?


Glazed Lemon Buttermilk Cake
Adapted from Cooking Light.

This cake was deliciously lemony and moist, and not too sweet. The sweetness came mostly from the glaze drizzled on the outside.



Cake.
3 Tbsp. grated lemon rind (2 lemons)
4 1/2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice (1 1/2 lemon)
1 1/2 c. + 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar, divided
3 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 c. (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened
1 tsp. lemon extract
3 eggs
1 c. buttermilk

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Combine zest and lemon juice in a small bowl, and set aside.

Coat a 10-in. Bundt pan with cooking spray; dust with 2 Tbsp. granulated sugar.

Lightly spoon the flour into dry measuring cups, and level with a knife. In a large bowl, combine flour, baking powder, salt, and baking soda, stirring well with a whisk.

Place butter in a large bowl; cream with a fork until light and fluffy. Gradually add 1 1/2 c. sugar, lemon mixture, and extract, beating until well blended. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Add flour mixture and buttermilk alternately to sugar mixture and beat, beginning and ending with flour mixture.

Spoon batter into prepared pan. Bake until a wooden pick inserted in center comes out clean, 45 min. Cool in pan 10 min. on a wire rack; remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.

Glaze.
1 c. powdered sugar
1 1/2 Tbsp. fresh lemon juice (1/2 lemon)
1 Tbsp. buttermilk

In a small bowl, combine powdered sugar, lemon juice, and buttermilk, stirring until smooth. Drizzle glaze over warm cake.

When life hands me lemons...

...I make zest! Honestly, I don't think there is a scent that I love more than that of freshly-grated lemon zest.

A continually overworked mouse-wench-about-to-turn-grad-student, I turn to baking as a way to relieve stress. It is somehow so therapeutic to prepare and combine the ingredients, then to trust the oven to do its job. The chemist in me likes to analyze how each ingredient contributes to the final product, but there is still something magical about the way a goopy mess turns into a delicious cake. Of course the best part about this chemistry experiment is that you can eat the final product!

For the 234th birthday of the United States, I made an apple pie and a blueberry-and-cherry buckle. I am not American, but I guess I won't turn down an excuse to bake something to go with the theme of the day. :)