Wednesday Waffles

Waffles slathered in homemade apple sauce with dots of raspberry jam...yum!

Wednesday Morning

Wednesdays this semester are wonderful. It's the only day in the week that the alarm doesn't go off at some ungodly hour...we don't have class till the afternoon, and boy, do we love it!  This morning, Karl and I woke up and stumbled out of bed to the intoxicating smell of: waffles! My roommate Sophie had woken up earlier and there she was, all sleepy and pajama-clad, spooning batter into our trusty old waffle iron and producing these disks of bliss (okay, I may be exaggerating now, when when they're piling up and you're hungry, boy, do those puppies look good!) 
  

Homemade Apple Sauce

She and Pete (her BF, Hong Kong born, Florida raised) had even decked the table, including the homemade apple sauce and her mom's delicious homemade jams. Something about a lit candle at breakfast makes the occasion feel so festive! 

Needless to say, everything was delicious. We had just made some apple sauce the day before out of some no-longer-perfect apples we had lying around. There's no recipe for this: just peel and core and cover in some water. Boil until they're soft and mash mash mash. We don't add sugar (or cinnamon, or cloves, or anything) and it tastes perfect just the way it is!

This is our recipe for waffles:

Ingredients
100 g butter, softened (a little less than half a cup)
60g sugar (that's 1/3 cup or 4 Tablespoons)
300g flour (2 1/2 cups)
3 eggs
375ml milk (1 1/2 cup)
1 teaspoon baking powder
a pinch of salt
a dash of vanilla

Instructions
Beat the butter with sugar and vanilla until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time. Combine flour, baking soda, and salt and alternate adding milk and flour mixture to the batter, mix until smoothly combined.  Easy peasy!

Spoon a ladle-ful of batter into a pre-greased waffle iron and wait impatiently until each waffle turns golden brown. Yum!

Leftover "ich liebe dich" (I love you) cupcake!

And for dessert, the last of the valentine's day cupcakes (they froze surprisingly well!) Thank you, Karl, for dreaming up such a cute and long-lasting surprise.

Look up at the Sky!

-Zanna

PS. The last time we had waffles 

PPS. Who's who? The Boyfriend/Roommate situation explained.

Exam Stress

Oh me oh my. Yesterday I had two exams, today I had two exams, tomorrow I have three exams and after that...sono libera!  That's the only thought going through my head during all this cramming: soon it'll all be over and I'll be home with my family with no scoliosis or kidney stones in sight! Also my roommate Sophie made me waffles this morning before my exams, to fuel me up and brighten my day. It was so sweet of her and they were delicious!

I've been at this whole university-end-of-semester thing for a while, but still the final sprint before the end, the frantic cramming and all-out exhaustion gets to me every time. I just finished the written portions for surgery, urology, orthopedics and anesthesiology. Tomorrow I have the oral tests. I hate oral exams with a vengeance, because despite being relatively well-spoken under normal circumstances I always start stuttering and blubbering when asked to answer the most elementary questions under pressure. And I have to say, while several of the subjects we're studying this semester really interest me, I absolutely hate ortho. All those bones and tendons everywhere, all with their own specific name and random classification to memorize. Ugh. I love the other three though, so I'm going to try and focus on that. 

This is shot of one of our classes last week. The anesthesiology department has a great skills lab set up like an operating theater and a very friendly plastic patient with all kinds of capabilities. He talks to you, tells you where it hurts, blinks, vomits, urinates, cries tears and sweats sweat, he has a heartbeat and breath sounds, pupils that dilate and probably many other functions I have yet to discover. We use him to run drills and learn about different medical emergencies without harming real people during our learning curve. It's actually really fun! 

So here's to learning, which I like, and being tested, which I don't. Three more tests, two sides of the med school coin and one more day until winter break!


Look up at the Sky!

-Zanna