Colorado and back again

Ethan and I just got back from an interview trip/ mini family reunion in Colorado. We drove up last Wednesday and intended to come back Monday; however, snow storms prevented us from driving back until yesterday. I I liked both programs and Denver was BEAUTIFUL so they are definitely on my short list. Also a plus was the fact that at the applicant welcome dinner there were local microbrews instead of the typical Michelob Ultra and Coors light. Since beginning Med school (and having more male than female friends) I began to understand the subtleties of different types of beers; Ethan is a beer afficionado and has taught me even more about beer and how to enjoy it and describe it. (I can never get tired of hops, but too much malt makes me feel like I'm drinking soy sauce).

We were well taken care of by my cousin Debbie and her mom Nancy, and it was great to know that we had a third city ( besides Dallas and Austin) where we have some supportive family.

Driving to Colorado from Dallas is not for the faint of heart, but we got to see a lot of the country; on the way there I discovered that northern Oklahoma looks much like southern Kansas, and Western Kansas looks similar to Eastern Colorado (in other words, there are a lot of fields and abandoned gas stations)
The highlight of Kansas- A wind farm.

Eastern Colorado
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Driving through the Rocky Mountains along I-70:


At the Falling Rock Tap House--They had almost 100 beers on tap, plus more in bottles

During the snow storm in Denver:


Driving back from Colorado



Moose Crossing!


Driving across the country takes a while (especially if the weather is bad), but you have much more flexibility with travel plans, you don't have to plan your packing very well, you don't have to worry about renting a car, and it's also kind of awesome because we were able to see beautiful parts of the country that I've never seen before. Plus, My darling husband fortunately likes to drive so he does it ALL and I just get to sit back and relax! We got back at 1:30 this morning and fell straight into bed. It was good to be home.

Soup Kitchen

Butternut Squash Soup
1 Medium onion, diced
3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
4 Tablespoons butter (more if feeling indulgent)
2 Butternut squash, cut in half longitudinally and de-seeded.
5-6 cups chicken broth (or water with boullion)
1 Tablespoon curry powder
Salt and pepper

Directions:
Roast squash: place, cut side down, on cookie sheet in 400 degree oven for 45 mins to an hour. Squash should be soft enough to scoop out of peel easily with a spoon.

While squash is roasting:
sautee onions and garlic in butter in large soup pot until onions are tender and garlic is fragrant.
Add Chicken broth and simmer for 10 minutes.
Add Squash to broth mixture and let simmer a couple of minutes; add curry powder.
Use an immersion blender (if you want to make this really easy) or transfer in batches to a blender/food processor to puree soup to right consistency.
Add salt and pepper to taste.

I served it with a dollop of yogurt and Turkish paprika. We also froze some and it tasted good when thawed.

Unexpected fact: Reagan loves butternut squash. He went crazy when he smelled it roasting in the kitchen and kept on coming in and whining for some squash! He was acting like the butternut squash was a T-bone steak or something. We gave him some of the leftover roasted squash, and of course I took a picture because I thought it was funny.

Stuff going on

For the last week I've been gone on interviews/ doing a grand tour of Texas. I was shocked when I checked my own blog and realized that I hadn't even put up Halloween pictures yet!
Ethan and I went as Eurotrash. He spoke with an accent all night but I wasn't able to because I couldn't stop laughing long enough to form words.



Last Tuesday we drove to Houston

where on Wednesday I interviewed at Methodist/St. Joseph. The program was nice but the interview day was extremely and extensively way too long (like 6:30-3:00) That night we drove to Austin and got this:

which bummed me out so we went to Santa Rita and drank some yummy margaritas and spent the night with my mom.
Thursday afternoon we drove up to Temple with enough time to make the pre-interview applicant welcome dinner. Our instructions were to meet the residents in the lobby of the hotel, at which point they would give us directions to dinner. We did that and drove 25 minutes from Temple to a restaurant on the lake in Belton. Once there, I noticed something odd; the menus on the table read "welcome Scott and White Emergency Medicine Applicants". I calmly pulled a resident aside and asked whether the menu was correct, which they indeed were. Turns out there were two groups meeting in the lobby at the same exact time, and we had chosen the wrong one. As it was going to be an entire hour after dinner was to have started by the time we got back to the hotel, we decided to just go get some tacos and beer and have a picnic in the hotel room with the company of the history channel. We also perused a Temple real estate guide, which had a house whose selling statement was actually "Kids and Horses welcome!" It was a bit like being in an alternate universe. The residents there were super nice though.
On Friday after the interview we drove back to Austin, napped, and then went to go see La Boheme with my mom, her boyfriend, my sister Erin, and my sister's friend from Spain Irene.

It was an awesome performance in the new Long Arts center. The set design and the voices were both fantastic.




Over the weekend we cooked and baked and relaxed and basked in the glory of my mom's extensive subscription to cable television (HBO on demand is the bomb). My Austin interview was Monday and it was fantastic. Ethan and I spent the afternoon trying to find fixer-uppers in town and we didn't want to come back to Dallas! I still have a few more interviews to go but I'm pretty excited about that possibility.

Things I've learned on the interview trail:
1. Cocktail party situations in which there are no cocktails are pretty awkward; I am therefore automatically biased towards places that will give me some kind of mild social lubricant during the interviewee welcome dinner
2. If an interview day is well-run, I assume the program will be fairly well organized. There was one place that skipped my interview and had me waiting in a room for three hours before I was called to speak with anyone.
3. I am also biased towards programs whose interviews begin at 8:00 or 8:30 rather than 7:00.
4. I don't really care what the hospitals look like unless I'm thinking about giving birth there myself. It just adds another hour or two onto the day to have to go on a tour.

BBQ chicken pizza

sorry, no pictures. If you have to imagine, imagine delicious
1 packet of just-add-water pizza dough
1 cooked and shredded chicken breast (if you have raw chicken, just broil the breast for 12-17 minutes on a broiling pan)
1 slice of red onion, diced
1 green onion, cut up
3-4 Tablespoons cilantro, chopped
1 (or so) cup mozarella
1/2 cup barbecue , divided

Steps:
Prepare pizza crust as instructed on package; bake crust for 5 mins at 475. I use a rolling pin to get the crust thin enough.
Top with 1/4 cup barbecue sauce; cover sauce with cheese
mix shredded chicken with other 1/4 cup barbecue sauce and put on pizza
Add herbs and onion, and top with a light sprinkling of more cheese.
Bake pizza for 10 mins more.

We had this for dinner tonight and it was so. freaking. good. And the whole thing was probably like $2-$3 for both of us. And it's really easy. you're welcome.

Fall

Finally the weather in Dallas is dropping into the 60's and (gasp!) 50's and it's starting to feel like fall! Fall is becoming my favorite season for several reasons:
1. I like using gourds as decoration for my doorstep.


2. Oktoberfest! And the delicious Oktoberfest beers and pumpkin ales that go along with Oktoberfest.


3. Pumpkin Carving parties: These fine specimens are from the FUMC/Urbanlife party we went to on Wednesday. My pumpkin is carved as a fat kid.


4. Excuse to make harvesty foods including squash and pumpkin pie.


5. I met and fell in love with Ethan at this time last year :)


6. Halloween Costumes. I did NOT get to dress up last year because I had to work! I am going to make up for it this year, trust me.


7. I can go walking and possibly running without suffering heat exhaustion. And I am going to go do that right now.

Pizza Party!

On Saturday Ethan and I had a dinner date with our friends Brittany and Ray. Brittany and Ray go to our Sunday school class and they have a 7-month-old daughter who is cute as a button!


Brittany has a blog of her own
and designed my new fancy blog header for me!

Since we all like to cook and they have an infant, we decided it would be easier and more fun to make our own pizza. We made one with chicken and pesto (which Brittany, Mrs. Crafty Lady, made herself using basil that she grew on her back porch!) And one with peppers, pepperoni, and cheese.



Of course almost as soon as I took out my camera, it died on me, so I didn't get any pictures of either myself or Brittany holding our delicious pizzas. Here's a picture of me and Ethan instead:



And my new kitchen improvement: matching ceramic spice jars from IKEA; we filled them with spices bought by weight at Central Market (which jar and spice ends up being about the same cost as buying a glass jar full of spices). I labeled them with a grease pencil so we can easily change the labels if our spice collection rotates.


Other news: I have eleven interviews (listed in order):
UTSW in Dallas
Scott and White in Temple
UTMB in Austin
Baylor in Dallas
Methodist in Dallas
Kaiser Santa Clara in Santa Clara, CA
Exempla Saint Joseph in Denver, Colorado
University of Colorado Denver
Methodist in Houston
LBJ in Houston
Baylor in Houston

I am going to be one busy lady in November and December!

Wedding Announcements

In honor of our original wedding day, which was October 3 (and which was moved up nearly two months due to the international relocation of our Reverend, Kathryn Ransdell), I'm posting about our wedding announcements. Because we decided to move our wedding forward with three weeks notice, We didn't end up sending invitations; instead, we sent announcements after the fact. I used basically the exact same design but changed some text. Here's how they were designed:

1; I made a paper-cutting of an oak tree with our initials carved into it, and took a picture of said paper cutting with my camera. The paper cutting is now living on a wall in our kitchen above a picture of Ethan's mom from high school dressed as a majorette.



2; I used Picasa to tweak the image so that the brown was richer and the ivory was creamier. I also added the necessary text.


3; I uploaded the image (with Picasa text added) to vistaprint.com and waited until they sent me a coupon for 10 free announcements before I ordered them.

4; I didn't like the envelopes offered by vistaprint so I went to paper source and got some shiny brown ones and lined them with a coordinating envelope liner that probably no one but me will notice, as the envelope is usually ripped open and then thrown away.


I also crocheted a bouquet wrap and ring-bearer pillow. The bouquet wrap was used, but we didn't have a ring bearer or any attendants for that matter. If you're in the market for a light green crocheted ring-bearer pillow, let me know because I have an extra. The bouquet wrap is now living a second life as a wash cloth.

So there you have it! my crafty little wedding announcements.

In other news, I had the swine flu last week and it was really not that bad. I just felt weak and needed a lot of naps for a week, and spiked a fever only on the first day. NOT THAT BAD. Honestly, the scariest thing about this flu is its publicity. People just need to chillax.