Lemongrass Clay Pot

Recipe adapted from here! I’ve been loving one-pot recipes lately because they’re so, so easy and convenient. (I have no time to cook. ;_; )

Lemongrass Clay Pot

 

Ingredients:
-2 cups short-grain brown rice
-3 Chinese chicken sausages, sliced
-8 oz shittake & cremini mushrooms, sliced
-1 tbsp ginger, diced
-1 tsp garlic, grated
-3 fresh lemongrass, cut into long, skinny strips
-1/2 cup chicken broth
-2 tbsp soy sauce

Instructions:
1) Rinse rice with water a few times in the rice cooker and drain. Fill with water/chicken broth to the 2-cups-of-rice mark and add everything else into the rice and gently mix.
2) Cook the rice!
3) If you want it to look pretty, garnish with fresh cilantro when it’s ready to serve.

Before I pressed “Start.”

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“after boards, i’ll…”

It seems so far away. So, so far away. Just one more week left and I will hopefully be done with this exam forever. I took a practice half-exam yesterday and it was a terrible, terrible time. (I am the poster child for all the terrible habits/things you should not have/do while test-taking.) But I made it out in one piece, and there are some definite signs of improvement. There’s hope for me after all!

I am officially the last one left in my basement catacombs/cave. :[ It’s sad and kinda lonely down here, but my friend left me with happy reminders/words of encouragement before she moved away, and the maintenance staff are super nice, so it’s better than nothin’!

She left this on “her” window (it faces my room) the night before my super-practice test. :]

It was hard to take a clear picture of this, but it says, “Farrah is gonna do AWESOME. Or the bunnies will get her.”

I’ve been listening to video game music (usually the Chrono Trigger station on Pandora, and most recently, the Mystic Quest OST!) to keep myself motivated. (Time to save the world! Only in this case, the world is really just my future.)

I can’t help thinking about all my after-boards fantasies and all the sunshine and rainbows to follow. What am I gonna do with my 5 glorious days of summer?

I want to do everything, but here’s a list that will most definitely stretch into the rest of the year:

• Completely revamp my blog and switch to self-hosted! (That’s my first after-boards project! I have so many grand plans on it, but I need to get done with this darn exam first!)
• Work out a ton (I’ve been a blob for most of this past month :[ )
• Read A Dance of Dragons.
• Pole classes! Yes, in the 4-5 days that I’ll have. I’m hoping to try out the Fly Gym class too. :D
• Eat everything in CA. Sam and I are planning a day trip to Sac to visit friends and eat at an awesome restaurant!
• Watch a billion movies.
• Catch up on Supernatural (I may or may not be 2 seasons behind. ._.), Once Upon A Time…etc.

fitness 5 on friday (round 4!)

Augh! I can’t believe June is almost over! Where has the time gone?! I’m summarizing my life in pictures. (I’ll spare you of another screenshot of my notes. It just makes me sad. :[ )

My brain is tired. I need this to be over soon.

The messages on our windows continue. We’ve gotten pretty good at writing in reverse. (+1 for useless life skills!)

There are only a handful of things keeping me sane right now. One of these things happens to be good food. <3

Homemade carne asada tacos!

1. Have you ever taken a fitness class?

Oh, whew. Where to start? I used to regularly do pole, BJJ, Tahitian and hula dancing. I’ve also taken aerial silks, salsa, abs/back conditioning, yoga (general / Bikram), pilates, archery, tumbling, kickboxing, aerial hoop, hooping, circus conditioning, ballroom dancing, and belly dancing. There’s probably something left out in that list, but this is the gist of it, haha.

2. Why do you work out?

I really like to eat. (No, seriously. Of my two years in med school, I did not turn into a hypochondriac, but if I were forced to diagnose myself with something, it’d probably be [a mild-ish form of] compulsive eating disorder.)

3. What is your biggest motivator?

I am mostly fueled by my dreams of badassery. :] I like the idea of seeing what I’m capable of, and working towards constantly improving myself.

4. Where do you draw your inspiration from?

I have a pinterest board for dance. <3

5. Do you have routine physicals? (it’s very important to check your health)

I get one pretty much every year and really like getting my lab tests and such back because I like being able to analyze how I’m doing, haha.

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Apple Butter Yogurt Cheesecake

This is another one of my let’s-clean-out-my-fridge-before-I-move-out recipes, and conveniently happened to fall in time to celebrate a friend’s birthday. :D Recipe adapted from here! I made this about 1.5 months ago, but it feels like it’s been several decades. Funny what a life of studying and nothing (no need to get dramatic here, Farrah!) little else will do to you! :O

Apple Butter Yogurt Cheesecake

 

Ingredients:
-1 package light cream cheese at room temperature (you need it at room temp to have the right consistency!)
-2 tbsp unsweetened vanilla almond milk
-1 tsp vanilla extract
-2/3 cup 0% Fage Greek yogurt
1/4 cup apple butter
-12 vanilla wafer cookies
(Topping)
-crumbled coconut bars

Instructions:
1) Put cream cheese, milk and vanilla in a blender and blend/beat until very smooth. Add yogurt and apple butter and blend/beat until smooth.
2) Put vanilla cookies into a food processor/high power blender and process until they’re fine crumbs. (If you have a lot of anger in you/no food processor, you can stuff em’ in a ziplock bag and beat them with a rolling pin.)
3) Pour cookie crumbs onto 8″ pan and spread evenly over the bottom.
4) Top the cookie crumbs with even portions of the cheesecake filling and smooth it over with the back of a spoon.
5) Sprinkle crumbled coconut bars over the top and let chill in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. (I kinda wanted to stick it in the freezer for an hour to see how it’d turn out, but there was no space. If anyone tries that, please let me know how it goes!)

We stuck an umbrella on it to make it extra-fancy.

This was a DDT Featured Favorite! :]!

And lately, because no post is complete without some kind of randomness. Here’s one of my daily pop quizzes from my friend! She usually writes them on my whiteboard, but was out of town to take her exam, so she emailed it to me instead, telling me to be sure to answer it before 10:30 a.m. As it turned out, we weren’t allowed in the building because the fire alarm went off (thanks, we really needed that ;_; ), and I am slightly ashamed to admit that I was so intent on getting back into the catacombs to study that I completely tuned out and didn’t even realize the fire alarm was going off. -1 for survival skills. :[

(How is that med student so young!?!) There’s a stinking fire alarm going off so I’m answering you on my phone. :[

• Carpal tunnel syndrome, effed up median nerve, Phalen’s & Tinnel’s (or nerve conduction study)! If it’s not treated, more pain/numbness/tingling down lateral side of forearm/hand, atrophy of the thenar eminence, possibly double crush if shit really goes down.
• Large intestine stuffs, small intestine(?), and I’m sure I’m forgetting one of the sexy-time parts but I haven’t gone over the levels since the OPP final. :x will look at it today! Dry and ropy would be chronic, but if there’s edema and erythema at L2, I’d go with acute and more large intestine-y or prostate-y stuffs.
• Pons houses CN 5, 6, 7 and 8, so you’d have effed up sensation to the face, facial expressions, loss of taste to anterior 2/3 of tongue, maybe some vertigo and hearing issues.

I WOULD STILL STUDY BECAUSE ‘TIS MERELY A FLESH WOUND; I must fight on!

The internet is being shitty, so I’m waiting for the meme to load still.

Have a safe trip, an awesomely relaxing day, and you shall kick all the butts tomorrow!!! <3!

In case you wanted to know what the meme was. heh heh heh.

Greek Yogurt Mashed Potatoes

I had a bag of baby Yukon gold potatoes that I’d gotten for 99 cents (yay for manager’s specials at Kroger!) that I needed to use up, so I rescued them from my apartment and brought them over to Linda’s so that we could use up the mountains of fresh dill she had. (We’re trying to clean out our respective refrigerators, so it’s somewhat of a joint process.)

I didn’t think to drizzle in some sriracha sauce until I’d already eaten most of it, but I’d recommend you try it with that! Gives it an extra kick! :D

Greek Yogurt Mashed Potatoes

253 calories, 49g CHO’s, 0g fat, 17g protein, 4g fiber, 90mg sodium!

Ingredients:
-10 baby Yukon gold potatoes
-1 cup Fage 0% Greek Yogurt (Plain)
-2 tbsp Homestead Creamery 2% milk
-1 tbsp garlic, minced
-sea salt, to taste
-freshly cracked black pepper, to taste
-fresh dill
-drizzle of sriracha sauce (not pictured)

Instructions:
1) Wash potatoes and peel skin.
2) Fill a pot with just enough water to cover the potatoes. Bring to a boil, then let simmer on medium heat for ~15 minutes, or however long it takes them to be tender enough to mash with a fork (or potato masher, if you happen to possess one).
3) Add greek yogurt and milk to the potatoes and mash to your desired consistency.
4) Add salt, pepper, dill and sriracha sauce until the flavor is to your liking.

(Please excuse the messy sides of the bowl. I decided to save bowls/water and just mashed em’ up in the bowls we’d be eating in.)

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This week’s Spill It, Sundays theme is “5 Facts!” :]

Five facts about…your family!

1. I have one older brother! We were born 13 months apart and he’s one of my best friends.
2. We used to beat each other up all the time, but when I was around 12, we made a pact to stop fighting and have actually kept the peace ever since then!
3. My parents are awesome and I love em’. :D They are super chill, as far as Asian parenting goes. I’ve never had a curfew (although to be fair, I never did anything with my lack of curfew either, so that might be why).
4. My dad has a somewhat twisted sense of humor though. When I injured my neck and couldn’t turn my head or look down, he’d drop money in front of me and laugh because I wouldn’t notice. :[ These days, he tells me I’m fat and I flex my biceps at him and tell him it’s not good to insult people who can beat him up.
5. My mom is of the variety of human being who only eats it because she has to in order to live. This makes me sad, so I’m constantly trying to make awesome things when I’m home to change her mind.

Five facts about…your childhood!

1. All my family friends my age were guys, so I grew up very much a tomboy and was really upset that I wasn’t allowed to do all the things that they could do (e.g. pee standing up, join boy scouts, etc.).
2. I’m still a little sad that because I refused to do anything “girly” (see #1), I passed up gymnastics/singing/dance as a kid. Better late than never though, right?
3. My parents didn’t know what we’d be interested in as kids, so they just had us try everything. I think this was an awesome philosophy, but unfortunately, I like everything, so I keep picking up new hobbies and keeping all the old ones. I want/need more hours in a day.
4. I’m super grateful that my mom got me started on music when I was little. :] It’s still one of my favorite ways to de-stress and for a couple years, was also what paid for my livelihood through college.
5. I wrote in paper journals for ages (regularly since 2000) and have had an online journal since 2001, but med school has not been conducive to my paper-journalling, so I switched over to exclusively blogging. I still miss the paper sometimes, but time will always be an issue.

Five facts about…you + school!

1. I double-majored in Exercise Biology and Music Performance in undergrad. I had the most amazing professors on the face of the planet and was living with my best friends, so even though I was taking 8-12 classes per quarter (while doing a billion other things), it was an awesome experience, and my last two years there still remain as some of the best times of my life thus far.
2. I am about 2 classes away from having an associate’s in Athletic Training (so close, yet so far!).
3. I moved across the country for a year to do an accelerated master’s program at UMDNJ in Biomedical Sciences.
4. I’m currently in medical school!
5. I have, on more than one occasion, been called a degree slut. I promise I’m stopping after the med school degree?!

Five facts about…you + travel!

1. My mom loves to travel, so I (very eagerly) get dragged along on her adventures when my schedule allows for it. This is actually how/why I ended up on a 12-day cruise through the Mediterranean a couple weeks before taking my MCAT. Perhaps not the best of ideas, but Greece was involved and I couldn’t turn it down. It turned out okay though, because hooray! I made it into med school.
2. To date, my favorite places are Hong Kong, Greece, Thailand and Hawai’i.
3. I’d also love to go on another medical service trip! I went to the Dominican Republic over spring break this year and it was awesome.
4. I love to travel, but I’m not a very big fan of long plane rides. On the plus side, I can fall asleep anywhere and don’t get affected by jet lag, so it’s not as bad as it could be.
5. Somewhere in South America, Tahiti, and Costa Rica are on my bucket list!

Five facts about…your eating style!

1. This one throws people off, but I’ve never knowingly eaten bacon. (My friends like to refer to my church as the “no-bacon-church.”)
2. I like durian, but no one likes to associate with me if I eat it. :[
3. For the most part, I like to eat healthy, but I always designate a cheat meal/day for the week. This is usually Saturday, because my church makes amazing food.
4. …but I’m also very gifted at packing down alarming quantities of food in one sitting, especially if it’s food that I really like. My friends can attest to this. :O
5. I most likely have a missing or mutated acetaldehyde dehydrogenase enzyme (why hello, Asian glow, palpitations, nausea and terrible times!), so I can’t/don’t drink alcohol. This is perfectly fine with me though, because alcohol is expensive, and I would much rather eat good food instead. :]

We’ve been collaborating on flashcards and have been trying to keep each other motivated, so…Pixie stuck this on one of the cards. Thanks, High Expectations Asian Father!