Confession, since it’s Sunday: I joined yet another baking community—The Daring Bakers. I admit to my higher power that I have lost control. This club appealed to my wild side, both with its title and the cartoons, a ninja cook and diva singing into a whisk on the website; I could not resist. The first […]
Category: Medical Educational Breads
Panmarino Rosemary Bread with Auto-Abdominal Exam
So, I say, it is in fact impossible to do a proper abdominal exam on yourself. I haven’t eaten solid food in three days, which is an unconscionable state of affairs for a food blogger, due to what feels like a Charlie Horse of the bowels. At first I thought it was sepsis from the […]
Chocolate Chip Shortbread Cookies and/or Shortbread Morsels
Morcellation is one of my new favorite words from gynecologic surgery. Typically, you morcellate something large, that is, to turn it into morsels so it is easier to deal with. For example, a large fibroid in a uterus might need to be morcellated and put into a baggie to exit through the teensy holes surgeons […]
Pumpkin Spice Challah Back At Me
The tire popped on my moped two weeks ago as I sped out of the Johnny Mango parking lot. Not my finest hour. A chivalrous man came to my rescue on the side of the road and helped me to wheel the scooter into Kwik Trip for free air. He then proceeded to fill it […]
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 […]
Maple Bread Pudding with Pralines
I’m afraid this last week of surgery finds me spiraling into heavier and heavier contemplation. What if these are the last opportunities I’ll have to touch bowel, to fire an anastomotic stapler, to stitch long incisions closed, to stand for seventeen hours around an open abdomen and enjoy the time passing as though we are […]
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 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 […]