Hello again, old friend!

I'm talking about my camera, guys.  What else?  All kinds of fun and exciting projects while I was in NY (some of them actually blog-related), and, not being able to fit my digital camera in my carry-on or possessed of a smartphone, I couldn't just say, "Hold it right there while I get this shot!"  Pity.  The cranberry pie was fun to look at, and the mini molten chocolate cakes (see Beau McMillan's recipe from the Food Network website, courtesy of season 1 of "Worst Cooks in America") didn't fall apart too much as I was plating them.

But now that I'm back in St. Louis (*sigh*) and back to the up-before-dawn work week with no weekends (*double sigh*), I am able to pull up these pictures taken before my month of journaling/subwaying/pastrying/eating.

Behold Claudette.  That's what I'm calling this pattern because of the slight punkiness to it and the Monet's water lilies colorway.  Mentioned it earlier, probably around January when I was doing the wristwarmers.  The scarf is basically a garter stitch border around a 1x1 rib that collapses into what looks like double-thickness stockinette, finished off on the ends with a couple layers of chain-stitch (the only crochet stitch I'm actually capable of faking).  The wristwarmers are a 1x1 rib cuff and fingers with a stockinette body; you make the thumb gusset increases by making 1 stitch on each side of a designated central stitch and then making 1 stitch on either side of that section every other row (increase a total of 2 stitches every other row).

There.  Now it's time to make more things.  Dinner would be a start.

Four and twenty blackbirds...

Or about 400 cranberries baked into a pie.  OK, probably more like 100, whatever makes up a roughly 1-lb bag.  Herein I record the dessert-making adventures of The Crafty Doctor and her comrade-in-arms, aka her sister's roommate.  Last weekend, while the sister was away at voice lessons or classes or studying for the bar or whatever ridiculously difficult accomplishments said sister is in the habit of acquiring, her roommate and I decided it was our afternoon/evening to cook.  Since sister dearest is allergic to practically everything that carries the name of fruit, we knew our options were limited.  C---- has been threatening to make pie for ages but hadn't gotten himself psyched up enough to do it.  I'd made pie from scratch once before (ever) and rather enjoyed it.  Recipe?  We don't need no stinkin' recipe.

The following is an exact recipe of what we made.  Do not follow it to the letter unless you want your pie to be sour--SOUR, I tell you!  In parentheses are changes I'm probably going to make to the recipe if I ever make it again.  Assume American standard terminology.

Pie crust:
2-1/2 cups all-purpose flour (generally I do 3, since the 3-2-1 rule's easier to remember)
2 sticks unsalted butter, cut into approx 1cm slices
1 cup water
1/2 to 2 teaspoons sugar or salt to taste

Cranberry filling
approx 3 cups fresh cranberries
2/3 cup sugar (make that 3/4 cup in the revised version)
zest of 1 lemon
juice of 1/2 lemon (please decrease/leave this out for your poor tongue's sake)
1 teaspoon ground ginger (alternatively, 1 tablespoon ginger simple syrup and decrease sugar back to 2/3 cup)
1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
1 to 2 tablespoons corn starch for thickening

Combine flour, butter, and sugar/salt for pie crust in food processor and pulse until small balls form (I prefer to hand-mix my dough, which makes a tenderer, less flaky crust probably due to larger fat particles but can be a little harder to roll out later).  Add water approximately 1 tablespoon at a time and mix until dough forms.  Divide into 2 balls and refrigerate, approx 20 min to 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 375 degrees (Fahrenheit.  Y'all can calculate Centigrade by subtracting 32 and multiplying by 5/9 if you really want to).  In a large mixing bowl, combine cranberries, lemon juice (if used), lemon zest, sugar, ginger, and cloves.  Toss until cranberries are well-coated.  Add corn starch and stir until mixture starts to thicken.

Roll out pie dough onto floured surface.  Spread 1 round evenly onto bottom of pie plate.  Pour in cranberry filling.  Place second pastry round over the top, shape edges as desired, and trim off excess pastry.  Pierce top of pastry with fork or knife.  Try a decorative pattern, or a joke (pi!).

Bake in oven approximately 1 hour, checking periodically.  If pastry browns too quickly around the edges, cover with aluminum foil.

Remove from oven.  Serve warm or chilled.  Consider adding a dollop of cream-like substance (ice or whipped).  Enjoy.  I dare you.  Makes one 9-inch round pie.

There, I've done it.  Bwa-ha-ha!  Kitchen experiments FTW!

more wedding plans and a letter

I went to my first wedding when I was, what, 7?  8?  Some age where if you're not the flower girl or ringbearer or something importantly cute like that, you pretty much just stand around and try to avoid scoldings for looking too bored.  Maybe that was a sign, because I went 20 full years with not a wedding to come by, only to culminate in...2 in the same summer?  Friend of the bride in June, bridesmaid in August, and lots of fun presents to plot in the meantime.

Alas, I can't tell you what the presents are going to be.  Spoiling surprises is not something I ever do...knowingly.  All I'm gonna say is since they're my former med school classmates, there's gonna be too much science/fantasy nerd to be contained in words.

I can mention the dress I'm making for wedding number 2.  Technically, I have a dress, or will have, since the bridesmaids are all getting custom-made saris.  But C--- told us to bring reception dresses for when the saris fall off or get too restrictive, so again, mental catalog of my closet, shudder, to the fabric store.  This time experimenting with a light satin with chiffon overlay.  Oh, nothing floofy (blech!).  I was thinking spaghetti strap and almost camisole-ish top.  For reference, see Kiera Knightley's dark green evening dress in the movie "Atonement," but think shorter and swirlier on the bottom, maybe knee length.  Also, considering what was going on in the joann.com fabric sales, think hot pink.  Yeah, I'm a little apprehensive too.  It might declare war with my hair, now that I think about it.  Or it could be really pretty.  I haven't drafted my own pattern from scratch since "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," so I'm actually kind of pumped.

I mentioned a letter.  That...may be the product of a very long subway commute.  See, my sister used to be a lawyer with an interest in copyright.  She's also only slightly less of a die-hard "Doctor Who" fan than I am.  We're both surly Americans who want to be able to stream our favorite shows from across the pond, thanks much.  So here's what we came up with.

Dear BBC,

Had a really good idea to help with the budget issues.  A number of us across the pond really love your shows (ahem, "Doctor Who") and really dislike having to wait to either stream/download episodes illegally or buy the adulterated BBC America versions when they come out on DVD.  Unfortunately at the moment there does not seem to exist a mechanism to stream your shows legally from the internet.  I have no objection to paying $1 per episode to watch legally the day after air time.  I will probably still watch episodes repeatedly even if I have to pay.  High quality a plus.  Think of it as an economic investment.  Please and thank you.

Yours, etc.

Greetings from sunny New York!

Yeah, I said it.  I'm writing this at a window in my sister's apartment, and it is in fact a sunny day in Brooklyn.  In February.  And 50-odd degrees outside.  What is the world coming to?

The reason why I'm writing this at my sister's apartment window in Brooklyn is that I felt the intense desire to write something and really couldn't think of anything story-like or poetry-like to work on.  So, blogs it is.  I know you feel blessed and favored.

The fact is I've been feeling a lot of pressure to write since I got up here.  Medical journalism may not be my cup of tea, precisely (Sanjay Gupta I ain't), but with all the slogging through scientific journals and figuring out how to make medicine accessible and even interesting to the lay public, I'm actually having to think about things like grammar and style and subject-verb agreement and all that English-teachery goodness I haven't touched since college.  It's really rather refreshing.  It also opens up the floodgates so that I keep wanting to write poetry on the subway.  Wanting to, not being actually able to either mentally or, well, physically: this is the Q we're talking about here.  Hypergraphics of the world unite and grab your pens/laptops and don't stop till you run out of words?  Somehow that just doesn't have a nice ring to it.

Well, in any case, because you may not care but I believe in the sharing-is-scaring principle, things I've accomplished so far in the Big Apple:

1.  Finished the TARDIS washcloth.  Picture below:

2.  Made my sister a Regency gown with sash.  Only took me about a gazillion tries to get the top to actually fit.  I don't remember the pattern giving me that kind of issues the first time around.  What a difference a thicker/stiffer fabric makes?
3.  Discovered I need gray embroidery thread for awesome wedding present.
4.  Covered the Whitney Houston story for 2 hours on a Sunday and compiled expert quotes for a flu season update.
5.  Sat on the set of ABC World News and watched the back of Diane Sawyer's head.
6.  Wrote a poem.  Yeah, and it doesn't totally suck.  Few more weeks of this and I might actually get back to college level.
7.  Started a Twitter account.  To be more accurate, my boss made me start a Twitter account.  When your boss is the chief medical correspondent at a major news station, you get your arse on a computer and start twittering.  Tweeting?  Whatever.
8.  Made hot buttered rum without a recipe.

Actually, maybe I'm proudest of that last one.  Think if the pediatrician thing doesn't pan out I might have a future as a bartender.  No, I'm not serious, you can go back to the bars now.

Let it not be said

...that I avoid keeping my New Year's resolutions by avoiding situations where I'd be forced to keep them (i.e. posting new entries).  This is the tale of too many projects and not enough time/willpower in the world.

It started with a dress.  Not just any dress, but a dress fit for a wedding.  OK, not my wedding, of course; my friend's wedding.  It's not a bridesmaid dress because she's not having bridesmaids (something about traditional Jewish weddings?), so basically I'm allowed to wear whatever I want.  I took one look at my closet, shuddered, and started rifling through patterns.  What I turned up was a lovely halter dress circa 1947, Butterick B5209 I think (double-check me on this one, because my dyslexia has definitely bitten me in the hindquarters before) and somewhere in the vicinity of 2 yards of leftover periwinkle-blue crepe-back satin from my costumes-mistress days with the med school musical.  Insert idea to mix it up with both sides of fabric--satin for the midriff and crepe for the skirt and bodice--and voila, fabulous not-bridesmaid attire!  Except there wasn't nearly enough uncut fabric to put together the 4-piece skirt in the pattern.  Necessity as the mother of inventiveness?  Would I have it any other way?  Apparently it's not only feasible but easy to turn the front of the skirt into a 3-panel affair and still maintain the delightfully swirly fullness at the bottom and enough fabric up top to do the requisite gathers.  And, while we're on the subject of alterations, do we really need to do side closures (a lot of the major pattern companies seem to be in love with those)?  Let's use the still-2-panel back as the launching point for a midline zipper closure.  After a lot of plotting, some straightforward cutting and sewing, and surprisingly few mistakes, a dress was born.  Whether it was successful, we'll have to see from the wedding pictures.  Frankly, I'm getting a little tired of taking pictures of myself in the bathroom mirror.

Project number 2 also started with an upcoming wedding (same one, actually, are we seeing a trend here?).  My friend is a huge Lord of the Rings fan, so I'm going to do a cross-stitch that plays on her fantasy-devouring tendencies.  On second thought, perhaps I should wait till I've finished it and given it to her as a wedding present before I unveil it to the "general public."  You never know who's listening in, and I do still believe in surprises.  Only a few tantalizing details: 1) I spent an afternoon scouring Google images and have now drafted my pattern from screen tracings, and 2) somehow I managed to lose a skein of light gold embroidery thread somewhere between the Jo-Ann and my car.

As for project 3?  Nothing to do with weddings--I hear your sigh of relief now.  I've now done 3 Dalek washcloths in different colors.  The first (blue) I gave my sister and her roommate, the second (red) I gave to a friend back in St. Louis, and the third (yellow) I'm keeping as a souvenir.  My friend of the red Dalek told me the colors were different roles in Dalek society according to their new incarnation, but alas I don't remember what they are, so you'll have to ask someone else if you're curious.  I'm getting better at knitting off a chart.  And because I'm getting better at knitting off a chart, my brain automatically hopped to "I can plot knitting patterns on a chart now!"  I have blue yarn left over.  Of course I'm plotting a TARDIS.  Really must remember that graph paper is only a loose approximation of knitting stitches, and this thing's going to have to look as elongated as an El Greco painting on the chart in order to turn out the right proportions in real life.  Also I'm still cracking up at the wisecrack, "You should leave one at the Way Station for when Matt Smith goes to visit again!"  Heh, as if.  And yet...it would be amusing.

By the way, did I mention I'm still a little over 4 months away from finishing residency and am still tying up loose ends in the job-hunting game?  Eh, that's just a hobby.  Somebody have an idea repository I can borrow?  Dumbledore's Pensieve would be almost ideal.

New Year's Resolutions...or something like them.

The theme of my New Year's resolutions this year seems to be to get back to my roots.  While that could punningly refer to my hair color at the moment, it also refers to my educational background.  It means that henceforth I plan to write and, yes, even blog as if I were a former English major who once seriously considered burying myself in dusty tomes and stacks of papers for the rest of my poor but blissfully well-read existence.  This also from the person who would count her most influential book during her medical school years, while others raved over Gray's Anatomy and the memoirs of countless great physician-thinkers, to be a collection of Keats's poems and letters picked up completely on a whim from the undergraduate library.  Well, that in itself should be a bit of a warning sign, I suppose.

In any case, going back to my roots also involves revisiting a task I haven't really attempted, much less completed, since I first picked up Grandma's double-points (again) at the age of nineteen.  I've mentioned the fingerless mitts, of course, but this is--shall we say?--old-school: narrow 1x1 rib cuffs, stockinette body.  The yarn has some novelty to it, being some homespun-looking stuff that varies in thickness along its length and has a subtle metallic gold-colored thread running through it, and as one of my former college roommates once pointed out, somewhat to my surprise, the colorway is very...Monet?  Monet's water-lilies, in fact, if you wanted to narrow it down: this is Impressionist thread at its finest, but I digress.  The point is it's a pattern of very simple stitches and, hopefully, simple lines.  It's already teaching me a thing or two about the simple gifts of patience and foresight.  Someday, when they're finished, they'll complement my first truly independent "pattern," a 1x1 rib scarf with garter border (it actually ended up looking like a double-thickness stockinette that--miracle!--doesn't curl) made of the same yarn many years ago, like paintings in an exhibit.  And, after all, there are worse things in life than to have anything at all in common with an Impressionist.  Well, Van Gogh could be a bit problematic...

Oh yeah...

It occurs to me I haven't actually posted pictures of the finished Dalek washcloth.  It's now hanging on one of my sister's kitchen cabinets, where those in the know might hear a metallic voice droning, "Halt, you are about to be ex-foliated!"  Or not, but it still looks pretty neat where she put it.  Enjoy!