Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

This one wins approval from my hallmates!  I'm posting the original recipe + the "healthified" modifications in parentheses.  The only changes I'd made in my next batch would be to up the spices, perhaps to 1.5 tablespoons of cinnamon and 1/4 tsp. of nutmeg.

 

Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Bread

1.5 cups all purpose flour (replaced all flour with white whole wheat flour)

1.25 cups whole wheat flour

1 tsp. baking powder

3/4 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 tbsp. cinnamon (would increase this to 1.5 tbsp)

1/8 tsp. nutmeg (would increase this to 1/4 tsp)

1/8 tsp. ground cloves (didn't have this)

1 cup canned pumpkin (oops - I used a whole can and it turned out fine!)

2 large eggs

1/2 cup veggie oil (1/3 cup oil and a few tablespoons of applesauce)

3/4 cup sugar (1/3 cup sugar)

handful of chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 375 F.  Grease 1 8.5" loaf pan. Sift together flour, baking powder, soda, salt, spices.  In another bowel, combine pumpkin, sugar, eggs, oil.  Add dry ingredients to pumpkin mixture and gently stir together until combined.  Fold in as chocolate chips.  Pour and scrape mixture into prepared pan and smooth top.  Bake ~40 minutes (check at 30 minutes).  Allow to cool before slicing.

The mixture is pretty thick. Next time, I may experiment with adding half a cup of yogurt to make this bread more moist (although I overbaked it at 45 minutes), but I think it's delicious as is.  Without the whole wheat flour, I doubt you'd need the yogurt.

Honey (Nut) Granola

Another super easy recipe.  Much healthier and I think just as tasty as store bought granola.  Be warned that my adjustments again "healthify" the recipe, so if you like sweeter granola, add more honey and/or brown sugar.  Also, this granola is not terribly clumpy.  To create a clumpy granola, you need to add more honey.

Honey Nut Granola

4 cups rolled oats
1 cup sliced almonds*
1 cup chopped pecans*
1 cup raw sunflower seeds*
1/3 cup canola oil --> I subbed 2 tablespoons olive oil + 1/3 cup applesauce
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1/2 cup honey" --> I used about 1/3 cup and found the granola to be plenty sweet.
*I had none of these ingredients but the nuts really take the granola up a notch.
"If you don't have honey, mix 1/2 cup brown sugar together with some hot water and add to granola.

Preheat oven to 280 F (don't go over 300 F!).  In a large bowel, combine oats, nuts, sunflower seeds.  In a separate bowel, mix oil, honey, applesauce (if using), vanilla, cinnamon.  Add to dry ingredients and mix well.  Spread onto a parchment or non-stick foil lined baking sheet.  Bake 10 minutes, stir, bake another 10 minutes.  Repeat until granola reaches your desired crunchiness.  Remove granola from baking sheet and cool.

This recipe is so versatile.  Potential variations include:
- Adding toasted pumpkin seeds and pumpkin spice for a fall granola
- Dried cranberries, apples, etc. after baking (don't bake these - you'll get a mess)
- Cashews and ground ginger.  Then, add dried crystallized ginger bits after baking.
- Chocolate chips and coconut flakes

Easy vegetable soup

I was in the mood for something filling, healthy and most importantly, had vegetables in it.  I can't even begin to go on about how poor my diet is in the hospital.  Fortunately, my mother taught me something about cooking and I threw together this easy vegetable soup.  Emphasis on the word easy - this soup is so forgiving that even folks like me can successfully make it.  The thing is, I'm not exactly bad at cooking.  It's just that I hate measuring things (1 tsp of cinnamon = okay, I think I'll just do a couple shakes); my pantry does not contain items such as spelt flour, agave nectar, nor Israeli organic sea salt (okay, I made the last one up); and I "healthify" everything such the end product never ends up tasting like what you'd purchase from Panera or Au Bon Pain (think 500 calorie butter-rich blueberry muffins that taste as such).  That's why this soup is perfect - no measurements, no special ingredients, healthy to begin with...and delicious!

Easy Vegetable Soup

Ingredients
- carrots
- potatoes
- cabbage
- squash
- spinach
- other vegetables (see below for suggestions)
- chicken stock, or if you're cheap like me, chicken bouillon

Feel free to mix and match vegetables, but I will say that I think the potatoes are key (sorry carb haters).  They help thicken the soup.  Tomatoes add a nice tang and I think fresh peas would also be delicious.  I love cabbage but they impart a strong flavor.  Essentially, you want to add veggies that take longest to cook (potatoes, carrots) first and wait until later to add the faster cookies ones (tomatoes, squash, spinach).

Dice carrots and potatoes.  Add to enough boiling water so that's there's ~1-2 inches covering them.  After ~2-3 minutes, add chopped cabbage.  When cabbage is almost soft (this takes about 5-7 minutes at med heat), add sliced squash.  When all ingredients are soft, add a few tablespoons of chicken bouillon to taste.  Then add chopped spinach until wilted and mix well.  serve with some bread.  But not the bread that I make.

Bread: 1 Human: 0

I got it in my head a few weeks ago that I had to make fresh bread. All that carby deliciousness - well, I just had to be a part of it.  No matter that I had never made real bread, with yeast, before. I was on a mission.

I hiked over to the grocery store and bought two packets of active yeast and woke up very early in the morning in anticipation.  My hopes were high.  Presenting the result:

 Yeah, that worked wonderfully.  I knew I was in trouble when the bread barely rose at all.

Fortunately, this turned out better:  Recipe to come in another post.

Half way finished???

I officially reached the half way mark of third year.  I can't believe it; third year is flying by way too quickly and at this rate, I'll still be clueless by the end of the year.  I took the neuro shelf and am pretty exhausted.  There were lots of questions about peds neuro and what the heck do I know about that, given that I'd never seen a kid the entire time while on neuro?  I hope that I passed the shelf!

This weekend, I definitely need to think, recharge, and prepare mentally for medicine.  I really want to get the most out of this medicine rotation and do well in it.

Cool (or perhaps not so cool but certainly memorable) things in neurology:
1.  Watching everyone's response to an acute stroke.  It's no joke and has been the closest thing to ER (meaning the TV show, with all the doctors/nurses running alongside a patient's gurney, mowing down everything and everyone in the way) that I've witnessed so.  The urgency of the situation is palpable.  Time is of the essence since there's a 3 hour window from symptom onset to give IV TPA and 6 hours to give IA (intra-arterial) TPA.  Sometimes we get transfers from outside hospitals and can only shake our heads: they scanned the patient, saw an ischemic bleed, yet didn't give TPA - are you kidding?  Now the patient is out of the time window!

2. TB meningitis.  So very rare in the U.S yet we had a patient in the Neuro ICU with what we are almost entirely sure had this.  The patient had the classic pattern of cerebral damage.  Unfortunately, she declined rapidly and passed away.

3. Serotonin syndrome.  Also no joke!  The patient's temp rose to 105, hypertension, tremor, and some serious clonus.  He was taking linezolid and demerol, the combination of which we think triggered the serotonin syndrome.  Did you know that linezolid, in addition to being an antibiotic, is an MAO inhibitor?

HSV meningitis

Classic characteristics:
1. Temporal lobe involvement
2. PLEDs (periodic lateralized epileptiform discharges) on EEG
3. CSF : normal to slightly low glucose, mononuclear pleocytosis with lymphocyte predominance, elevated protein, can have elevated RBC

Parkinson's Disease and Atypical Antipsychotics

We saw a pt today who looked like he had classic Parkinson's Disease - masked facies, cogwheel rigidity, trouble swallowing, stooped posture, trouble initiating movements, and a resting, pill-rolling tremor.  Turns out, he had Parkinsonism, likely from the risperidone he had been taking for many years for his bipolar disease.  So what do you do about pts with bipolar/psychosis/schizophrenia (too much dopamine) who have Parkinson's features (too little dopamine)? 

Olanzapine (Zyprexa), risperidone (Risperdal), and aripriprazole (Geodon), all atypical antipsychotics, worsen motor function.  Clozapine (Clozaril) is an acceptable alternative due fewer extrapyramidal side effects, but since it requires vigilant monitoring for agranulocytosis, the drug of choice is quietapine (Seroquel).