Exhaustion, I think, is a masterful teacher of surrender. So is the ground. I was in a yoga class this week and it wasn’t until shevasana (the end of class, when they let you lay on your back, palms up, eyes closed) that I came to fully appreciate the ground beneath me. So much of […]
Tag: bake this day our daily bread
Champagne Spinal Tap Fondue
A toast to the first week of neurology after which I am proud to report that I am batting a thousand in my lumbar puncture record. Three for three glistening champagne spinal taps. I credit the success to having had a surgery rotation preceding—my hand has been steadied to some degree from holding things far […]
Focaccia as Motor End Plate
So surgery was a bit like going to a rave sober. It was hard not to feed off the high of the surgeons so in love with the OR and with operating. The climate buzzed ecstatic. I came out of the operating room each day singing and still throwing punches, bouncing on my toes, chanting […]
Writing as Laparotomy
Returned home to Fuchsia and Lime this morning to find a chocolate cake sweetly plugging a husband-sized hole. The cake will probably only hold the gap for another 24 hours, and then we’re in trouble. I need you far more badly than Portland does, KP. Meanwhile, I am enjoying Izzy’s tail wagging and face licking […]
Pizza Arteries
There’s nothing like an endarterectomy to make you reconsider having pizza for dinner. This might be the last pizza I’ll ever eat. And as such, I’ve shaped it into a large abdominal aortic aneurysm in tribute to the body part it jeopardizes. Surgery has taught me so much. For example, there’s nothing like taking surgery […]
Pumpkin Oatmeal Hepatic French Toast
The Pumpkin Oatmeal Wheat bread I made on Friday is bomb biggity as French Toast. Pumpkin Oatmeal French Toast Whisk together 2 eggs, 2/3 cup milk, and 1 ½ tsp vanilla in a shallow bowl. Sprinkle a little bit of pumpkin spice on the top of the egg mixture. Dip a slice of your Pumpkin […]
Pumpkin Maple Oatmeal Wheat Bread with a Side of Spine
Like I’ve always said—Break Bread, Not Vertebrae. This bread has nothing to do with back pain but has nevertheless been garnished with several stray vertebrae, which I now own, thanks to a disaster in the Pain Clinic. Pumpkin Maple Oatmeal Wheat Bread 2 cups whole milk 1 cup quick maple flavored oats (got mine […]
Calzone with Sutures
Since I’m not allowed to stitch any visceral organs yet, and rightfully so only three weeks into my general surgery rotation, I have been continually getting the privilege to “close”—which sounds like I might be a reserve star pitcher, but really, it’s the grunt work OR job for medical students—stitching closed the incision. I take […]
Pumpkin Spice Maple Oatmeal Raisin Colon Cookies
So I was scrubbed in on a colon operation the other day, and the senior resident had been teasing me for bringing my sourdough starter with me to Florida for my surgery rotation. No one understands how important fresh bread is to my sense of well-being. The attending colo-rectal surgeon, who is a lovely, soft-spoken […]
Pull-Apart Wheat Bread Lungs
It has occurred to me late in the game that all of this time I could have been using my bread baking not only as catharsis but also as a study device. Bread can be more than nutrition; it can be education. Let me explain. Because I spent the last week on ICU and was […]