Apples, apples, EVERYWHERE.

So two weekends ago, I went apple picking with my good friend Dri and a group of people.  Not only did we get apples but it was a fun filled day including lots of yummy baked goods, a haunted house, and a never ending corn maze. 

The corn maze was HUGE.  Really, you could get lost in there.  I mean look Dri blends right into the corn stalk... no one would ever be able to find her.  In all honesty the maze was quite impressive and it made us realize how a family might, with absolutely no directional sense, get lost in a corn maze. 
By the way if the readers would please note the very classy black hat Dri is showcasing... yes, yes made by yours truly.  I know black knit hat, incredibly impressive but for my slow knitting capabilities it is  pretty darn good. 

And here is a picture to remind everyone of how much of a nerd I really am...  just in case anyone forgot.

I think the way corn grows is SUPER cool.  All those roots just so that it can stand straight in the air and catch some sun.  And if you are a dork like me you can look up videos on corn and how it grows.  No, I did not watch those three videos, or like ten others... I swear.

  How beautiful upstate NY is.  It was really depressing to have to drive back to the clutter of Long Island. 

Anyways, to say that I came home with a lot of apples would be a vast understatement.  While above was not my bag of apples, mine was not much smaller.  And so after bringing them home I started getting creative and did some cooking.

Apple Use #1:  Apple Sauce.  

 Apple sauce is one of my favorite foods.  It is so easy to make, delicious, and healthy.  My easy apple sauce consists of: 

1.) apples (the amount depends on when I get sick of peeling them)

2.) a few tablespoons of brown sugar

3.) about a cup of orange juice depending on how much I am making

4.) vanilla extract, I am very liberal with vanilla, but it all depends on your taste buds

5.) Cinnamon, another thing I am very liberal with and never measure!

Place in crock pot on high for about 4 hrs.

We has the apple sauce with chicken baked with panko flakes and squash for me...and mashed potatoes for Dan.  

This is definitely my apple recipe winner.

Apple Uses #2 & #3 Starry Apple Pies and Apple Muffins

 This was the apple bag pre-uses #2 and 3.  I knew I had to get cooking and get the bag down quite a bit more so the plan became apple pie for Dan and muffins for me.  

I began with a massive apple peeling process.  NPR  aided in this and helped pass the time. Apple pie was first.  I got my apple mixture all ready and then I started the delicate process of making my grandmother's most wonderful crust.  Sorry to anyone interested but this is one recipe I will probably keep sacred to the grave.  It actually took me a bit of effort to get it from her!

I was all finished rolling out the crust when I made a discovery, our one and only pie dish was in CT.  We had left it there since Father's Day for which I had made my dad a pie.  With no desire to venture out to the store, I got creative and cracked out my souffle dishes.  By the time I got the bottom crust in all four (painstaking) I had no motivation to make four more circles for the top so cheated with cookie cutters! And thus arose the starry miniature apple pies. 

 

I made quite a mess during this process.

After I tidied up a little bit I began a recipe for healthy apple muffins.  The recipe was very healthy: little brown sugar, lots of apples, whole wheat flour, raisins, non-fat yogurt and oats.  And the taste.... was very healthy.  Not that something tasting healthy is necessarily a bad thing but when there are comments about the muffins tasting "like an apple tree" and you have 30 of them, I am just saying.

After a hard day's baking, note the amount of apples still left.

Apple Use #4: Apple Sauteed Chicken

This dinner is a favorite of mine.  It is quite simple.  Brown the chicken on both sides.  Set it aside.  Brown a few table spoons of butter in olive oil and then slowly add 1 cup apple cider and 1 cup chicken broth.  Mix in the pan on low until it looks like sauce.  Add about 4 apples diced.  Add the browned chicken and let simmer for about 20 minutes until the chicken is cooked.  Delicious!  

We served ours with squash (for me) and mashed potatoes (for Dan) and while we ate I got murdered playing checkers.  

Apple Use #5: Apple Crumb Pie

After the miniature apple pies I had a request from my friend Lauren to make an apple pie with a graham cracker crust.  And so that is what I did...  

I basically just made an apple crumb pie but used a graham cracker base instead of regular crust.  It was fantastic!  We enjoyed it with two of my good medical school friends, Fatima and Lauren, after Zumba class last night.  I mean what better way to motivate us to go to Zumba class than a yummy dinner, wine and dessert afterwards! 

Random Side Note:

We added some Halloween additions: check out my fantastic cat-bat jack-lantern.  Please note that his innards were well used: baked apple seeds and I pureed the pumpkin pulp for future use.

Also check out the amazing wine glass that my mom got me on our "mother-daughter" day in the city!  We had a fantastic day of girl's gossip, pedicures, craft fair shopping and dinner.  I love this holiday inspired wine glass.  The picture does not do justice!

 

We all have them: Here are My Five Guilty Pleasures

Guilty Pleasures...  We all have them or at least I am praying that we all have them so no one can judge me too much on this post.  You know those things that you love/do and are a little ashamed that you enjoy.  The musical artists on your itunes list that you would so much rather be listed as anonymous rather than K7's "Come Baby Come" from the Jock Jams album (that I swear I do not have).  Anyways I began thinking about these today and compiled a list of my top five guilty pleasures so here they are.  Enjoy, just don't judge too much.  And maybe if you have the courage share some of yours.

5.) Holidays, especially Halloween, well and Christmas and Valentines day.  I love the warmth of holidays and think they are so much fun.  I mean what is better than black cats, ghosts in trees, Jack-O Lanterns, FAKE (key word fake) spiders webs with spiders, those FANTASTIC plastic spider rings and candy? While it bothers me that the Christmas decorations are already out in stores, I think deep down the only part that bothers me is that I am not ready to give up Halloween yet.  Come day after Thanksgiving, bring it on.  I am all for Christmas trees, cookies, carols, lights, wreaths, giant reindeer, wrapping, presents with bows, the whole thing really.  So officially I am a holiday junkie.  

 

Our newest addition of spider lights in the hall.  So scary, I know.

Presenting Guilty Pleasure #4: The X-Box. 

 

Yes,  in real life I may be super anti-violence but I love killing X-Box zombies and villains.   Left for Dead II and Portal II have been my recent addictions.  Left for Dead, in particular has been relief from the "pending head explosions" after staring at my computer working on differential diagnosis modules on the 20 different causes of congestive heart failure.  Nothing like killing hundreds of swarming zombies after failing the same module three times in a row.   I love our X-Box and the problem is that very fact, I love it and as a consequence an hour study break is never just an hour.  One of the many reasons we do not have cable is because I feel like watching television is the biggest waste of time ever.  Hypocritical? I think so, even though I try to justify my X-box playing as working on my hand-eye coordination.  Oh well, that is why it is guilty pleasure #4.

Pleasure #3: Buying useless items just because they are so amazingly ridiculous.  Case in point this GIGANTIC universal remote control we found at K-mart.  At a price of $2.50 we could not bare to say no to it.  The past few days just looking at this item has caused infinite laughs and I am hoping that Dan will sync it to the TV, DVD, and surround sound.  Not that I need it, I mean at night by eyes do get a little blurry, but the thing takes up our entire end table.  Check it out in comparison to our regular remote.  

An "I love BACON" magnet, Halloween potholder, map of the world shower curtain, and an "as seen on tv" vegetable chopper are a few other of these purchases.   I have to admit that shopping in pairs does decrease these.  I will pick up an item show it to Dan all enthusiastically, and he will sternly shake his head and say "Put it down baby." 



Guilty Pleasure #2: National Public Radio.  Quite simply I am addicted.  Whenever I am cooking, driving in the car (alone), or doing any household work it is on.  I even have an iphone application that allows me to listen to my favorite shows (Car Talk, Science Friday and of recent Snap Judgement)  whenever I want.  I can not even begin to describe my love for it, and not that I feel like this is necessarily a bad thing, it is just a little embarrassing.   Especially realizing that I hardly ever listen to music on the radio anymore and that I get really excited when I meet someone who has listened to the same program (I mean really excited).  It also does not help that in 2009, according to an NPR demographic poll the mean listener age is 50.  I am just going to take this as a sign of sophistication right?

Guilty Pleasure #1: SLEEP.  Especially sleeping late.  

  So this is actually what prompted this entire post.  This morning I woke up rolled over and noticed it was 11am.  I slept through class and had even gone to bed around 11pm last night.  And what was more embarrassing was that Dan had actually gotten out of bed for a few hours and gotten back in bed and I had no idea.  I thought we both were being lazy and sleeping all morning, but nope, that was just me.  I sometimes love getting those 12 hours in, justifying it to myself as "needing it" but I will admit I feel like a lazy bum.  I just feel like there is always so much to do, so much to learn, so much to experience...  so I hate sleeping so much, but I love it.  Interestingly, the human on average sleeps 8hrs, the cat 12hrs, the python 19hrs.   So I guess some days I just take after the cats, better than mimicking the python. 

 

Breakfast for dinner, surprising my parents AND my dad on my motorcycle.

Sometimes we have these nights when we are just not sure what to eat for dinner.  And it always happens sort of like this. 4:30pm: me: "hey what do you think we should do for dinner I didn't take anything out?" Dan: "I dunno" 6:30pm : Dan: "so what are we going to do for dinner?" me: "I dunno." And then at 8:30pm I wander into the kitchen open up the fridge and decide... BREAKFAST.  Eggs, toast, pancakes, bacon... are some of my favorite foods and yet often they get overlooked for the healthier options, cereal, smoothie, oatmeal...  A few nights ago Dan and I had above conversation.  I have to admit while delicious, I think we both have decided to go bacon-free for a little bit. 

This weekend being a beautiful 85 degree weekend, Dan and I decide to ride our motorcycles to CT and surprise my parents. It was only a few months ago that my parents learned of my motorcycling riding.  After two motorcycle road trips and about 4,000 miles of riding, I finally gained the courage to tell them.  In my defense, they did claim that they would disown me if they found out I had been riding.  But all in all they took the news very well and my mom now likes to sing this Motorcycle Mama song whenever I am around.  We had originally intended  to show my parents my riding abilities on the 4th of July but long story short we had to abandoned my first baby on the side of the Jersey turnpike.  So Dan and I decided that this weekend we would ride up and show them by beautiful new red Ninja.   Funny thing about surprises is that sometimes they do not work out quite as you plan.  We drove up on Friday afternoon, beat the unbearable traffic and arrived at my parents house in the evening only to discover they weren't there!   Not knowing we were coming they decided to go to a friend's party but they did return late that night.... and the next day....

 

My dad, a long time rider, gave both our bikes a spin.  Look at the smile, if I am not careful he just might steal it.








AND if that was not amazing enough.  My mom rode on the back of the bike with Dan! and she liked it.  We are now trying to convince them that they NEED to get a Honda Gold Wing to cruise the countryside with.

I have to admit, I had a wonderful amazing weekend.  So much so that this morning when I woke up and realized we had to leave I got a bit sad.  On Saturday we hung out with my parents and made a trip to Cabela's, which for us nerds is like a child in a candy shop.  On Sunday, Dan and I got to enjoy the wonderful CT roads which are joyously free of insane traffic.  We took these great roads, ate at First and Last, visited Gillette Castle, and then when we got home we had a wonderful visit with Vasana and my nieces and nephew.
I swear that I am not encouraging them too young.

To top it all of there was Scrabble (totally the cherry on my sundae), although Dan had play to while multi-tasking.   

Cape Cod, Study, Study, Exam, Pedicure

I am okay, I have not run away, I did not move to the moon, join the circus or anything like that.  If and when I go MIA for a week or so, please do not assume the worst, assume it is exam time and I am waking up at insane hours so that I can study for over 12 hrs, go to bed and then do the same thing the next day.  No need to alert the officials to start a search party, unless there is a need to do so, in which case please do.  Also, please do not take it personal if I do not answer my phone, check my facebook, or respond to emails or texts... during these times my boyfriend and cats meet a different person.  They see is an insane woman making giant posters with notes, and diagrams, and flow charts... and lets not forget to mention the hours of out loud flash card repetition.  I think that in this process Dan, and the cats all should be able to get medical degrees with me, hey four for the price of one, right? 
 So now that we have addressed the "Heidi is a crazy study head" situation, we can get on to the blogging.

The weekend before I became "the crazy study head", my parents invited Dan and I to Provincetown, MA where they were vacationing for a week.  In our typical luck it was a rainy weekend but we made the best of it. 

As we were driving we passed a sign that said something about the side of the road being "soft." A little bit of an understatement?

 We got to celebrate my dad's birthday.  His request... lobster. 

All though it was cloudy/rainy most of the time, the view from the house they rented was amazing.

The first day that we were there, Dan and I were feeling a little under the weather so we bummed around the beautiful house.  Dan taught me how to play "Joy to the World" on the piano, although even having a patient teacher, I have the musical abilities of a rock.

 The following day, my parents and I went to a spice factory, which was really cool.  I stocked up on some tea, a baguette pan (really hard to find), and a whole bunch of different spices (obvious statement).  Then mini (aka my mom), my aunt and I went on a shopping adventure.  I have to say I was proud of my purchases a dress and a bunch of really cute handmade cards.  All in all it was a nice weekend. 

 Must be nice to be able to just walk right out to your boat during low tide.  

And so the week following us getting back, I to quote a friend, started "living under the medical school rock".  But all was not bad, I learned a lot, still really enjoy cardiology and respiratory systems.... and I got a pedicure after!  BLUE with sparkles.  I have two feet, but there was too much coordination involved with taking a picture of both of them. 

And as promised the after photo of the living room/ new desk make over.  I love it.  I was actually able to study at my desk rather than take over the kitchen table for this exam!  I feel like a real adult... yeah, that moment passed.