Cooking Attempt #23: Chicken chow mein

Today's recipe is a simplified version of this one.

Guess my excitement when I found Chinese egg noodles in the posh grocery store (from which I only buy tofu and watercress because everything else is so bloody expensive)! Oh yes, I said, I shall master chow mein and it shall be delicious.

Instead of the pepper, broccoli and bean sprouts suggested in the original recipe, I just bought bonsai bok choy (smaller than mini bok choy) and snow peas from Metro (on sale until tomorrow, huzzah huzzah).

I was thinking of the chicken chow mein that Linda so favoured at China Garden, a dinky Chinese restaurant that we used to frequent near U of T. I think the last time we went together, we were with Kevin and all of us wanted to get the chicken chow mein. I didn't see a problem with this, but Kevin and Linda thought it was embarrassing if we all ordered the same dish. Weirdos. Did we end up getting the chow mein anyway? I can't remember.

Anyhoo, their chicken chow mein *is* awesome and very simple. They use only bok choy and no other veggies, but I saw snow peas and thought that the green looked pretty.

I used fish sauce instead of oyster sauce, because it's what I had and I figure that they're pretty much the same thing, right? They're both salty fishy things. I think I added a touch too much of garlic and soy sauce. I also need to figure out how to make my chow mein crispy. And next time, I'm going to be halving this recipe, because my skillet (which I thought was ginormous enough to handle anything) could barely contain everything. There are bits of garlic all over the stove now. This is what I get for cleaning the kitchen before cooking. *grumble grumble*

It turned out yummy. I'm going to have enough to have for dinner tonight, to take to the hospital for lunch tomorrow and to eat for dinner tomorrow night. ^_^ I hope I don't get sick of it.

What's the level of your pain on a scale of 0 to 10 after I've bonked you with my juicebox?

I'm sick to death of classes, conferences, discussions, case studies about pain management. Yes yes, it's a crucial component of health care, blah blah blah here's some morphine.

But are we going to be having conferences at every single clinical location and classes on it every term in one course or another? I'm not kidding.

First year:
Therapeutic relationship - class on pain
Health and physical assessment - assessment of pain (actually useful)
Geriatrics clinical - pain conference
Obstetrics clinical - pain conference

Second year:
Acute stress and coping - 5 insufferable classes on pain
Pediatrics clinical - pain conference

It's not like there's new information, people. Regurgitating the same drivel about why the OUCHER scale doesn't work as well as FACES is not going to help me pay attention. Tell me how to administer analgesics, then. Tell me how to deal with a child that's kicking and screaming, because he doesn't understand what the medication is for. Tell me something that I can use instead of telling me for the sixth bloody time that pain is the fifth bloody vital sign and should bloody be assessed whenever you bloody go talk to the bloody patient.

I was going to insert a joke in here somewhere about classes on pain giving ME pain, but I can't. And the word "bloody" is starting to look weird to me. Like it's spelled wrong but I know it isn't.

Look what you've done now! Are you happy, McGill?

An Open Letter: Help yourself and avoid the stompage of my boot on your face.

Dear Professor Bok-bok,

Would you mind not being so damn inconsistent in your notes? Listen, I know that each hospital and lab has various standards for blood counts and whatnot, but people working at those places have the luxury of having the normal ranges listed RIGHT NEXT to the results.

*claw face*

You can't list normal serum osmolarity as being 280~300mmol/L in a table of important values we should know and then turn around and list 275~295mmol/L in your lecture slides.

Just like how you listed normal arterial bicarbonate as 22~26mmol/L in your lecture slides and 20~30mmmol/L in your module. That's a BIG difference, lady. I don't have the time to sit here and dig out everything that's wrong with your notes, okay? I also can't go buy a whole thing of juice cartons to go on a Rampage of Sweet Righteousness. Throw me a fricking bone, as Dr. Evil would say.

I swear to all that is holy to an agnostic, if I calculate serum osmolarity in one of your questions and the value happens to be something like 277.5mmol/L, I will be writing the following as my answer:
"This client's osmolarity is WNL according to your lecture notes and below normal limits according to Appendix A.3. SUCK ON IT. If you deduct marks, I will throw such a fit that you will think it is the Second Coming of Shoshannah. My foot, your face. Depend on it."

Too much?

Cooking Attempt #21&22: Smoky Potato and Broccoli Soup and Tomato-Raspberry Frozen Yogurt

I got a handheld blender from the Bay this week, so I was all excited to use it. Heh!

Steps to making your very own smoky potato and broccoli soup (modified from this recipe):

1) Peel potatoes and cut up broccoli and onion.

2) Cut 2 slices of bacon into tiny chunks.

3) Pour 1 tbsp of canola oil into a pot and start cooking the bacon and onion.

4) Get taken aback by how fizzy the bacon is and turn down the heat.

5) Toss in 2 tbsp of flour and mix around.

6) Realize that you bought vegetable SOUP instead of vegetable STOCK and utter some impolite words in several languages.

7) Take the pot off the heat and run down to the grocery store.

8) Buy vegetable stock and almost run over someone in your haste.

9) Pour in some stock and pray that the flour hasn't utterly congealed onto the pan.

10) Huzzah! It seems to be working. Bring it up to a boil and toss in the veggies.

11) Cook for 10 minutes, adding in more stock from time to time.

12) Scream "SAVE ME, JEEBUS!" when the stove catches on fire from the bacon fat.

13) Get a giant pot lid and a box of baking soda to smother the flames just in case it happens again.

14) Ladle some of the hot broth into a measuring cup with milk.

15) Add salt and pepper to the milk-broth mixture.

16) Add the milk-broth mixture into the pot. Turn heat off when everything is cooked through.

17) Blend the hell out of the soup with your spanking new SmartStick blender.

18) Yomph it down with a ginormous hunk of crusty sourdough bread 2 hours after you started cooking.



It was yummy and worth the effort, I thought.

Steps to making your own tomato-raspberry frozen yogurt:

1) Get a tomato. Blend the hell out of it.

2) Get a handful of frozen raspberries. Blend the hell out them.



3) Add 4 giant spoonfuls of vanilla yogurt. Blend the hell out of everything.



I added a tomato, because it mellows out the tartness of the raspberries and the fibre from tomatoes are always nice and healthy.