Casa D'Mendelsohn

So, I'm snowed in again, Jon having taken the car to work early this icy, freezing morning.  I think this means I should bake bread. White crusty bread for slicing thick and toasting. Toast! How I love toast. As I recently started making various citrus curds and attempted my second annual batch of marmalade last week, I think more toast is necessary. And some scones. I also need more people to stop by and eat all these carbs. I'm not sure how to make our home the walk-in-the-snow destination for those friends that live in our neighborhood - except to post this picture, from Orangette, of my new favorite strawberry scones:

and maybe this picture (courtesy of my favorite home magazine, Pottery Barn):

Just a little enticement. You should come over gentle reader. Right now. I'll even serve tea or a cappuccino, your choice. Yes, I mean you.

Curd

Specifically, lemon and lime curd. I bought too many citrus fruits.  There had to be a solution that didn't involve just putting them in the compost one by one as they began to mold. So I canned curd. Yesterday was a gorgeous day in Rhode Island, the kind of winter day that makes you glad there are no leaves on the trees because there is no good reason to hide a sky that blue.
I had lightly held plans to make pasta this afternoon. I haven't done it since I was a child, helping my mother catch the eggy noodles as one of my brothers turned the crank on the pasta cutter. But it sounded good, with the shrimp and mussels we bought a couple days ago from the Farmer's Market and more lemon, as I hadn't exhausted the overabundance. In the end, I skipped the gym to follow through with this "lightly-held" plan and it was a success. The pasta was really great. And the seafood only slightly overdone due to Jon's day ending at 8:50 pm instead of the 8:00 pm he had anticipated.
Today, I have only one goal (after finally going to the gym). I need to get up to the outlet mall to exchange our CO2 cartridge. Or we might be snowed in tonight without carbonated water.

Pound Cake

Yesterday I began an attempt to bake and cook my way through my new favorite book, "A Homemade Life," by Molly Wizenburg. She also writes the very cool blog "Orangette," which I started cooking from earlier this week. But yesterday I attempted both her Blueberry-Raspberry Pound Cake and her Stewed Prunes with Citrus and Cinnamon. Both were met with approval by Jon, my number one and highly variable critic. Some days I could basically place singed vegetables in front of him and he would eat them with abandon and other days I could present an arduously crafted sauce over salmon and he'd declare himself in suspicion of the sauce's main ingredient. So I'm never sure when he likes something if it is actually good. Generally I feel these where both a success and plan today to make a Chianti Marinated Beef Stew from Giada De Laurentis of Food Network Fame. So far, so good, in following through with my cooking therapy.
I think I would be almost totally content if I didn't have a paper proposal deadline and a grad school application deadline looming large and if I could garden. Sigh. Winter in New England is hard on this gardener, especially since the essential shadiness of my patch of earth prevents the thorough hours of planning that would go into planting edible plants. I instead wait. Hopeful that the pieces and bits of flora I planted last summer will survive and be glorious in spite of the shade.

Two years later...

From my perspective, my declining interest in writing over the last five years can be directly correlated to how much I've enjoyed what I was doing. I found it difficult to write or even, have perspective worth writing about, when the pinnacle of education for which I had longed, disintegrated into the most difficult experience of my life thus far.  Sure, medical school is supposed to be difficult.  But truthfully I expected it to be like the Peace Corps, "The Hardest Job You'll Ever Love." The Gambia certainly was difficult, in all sorts of unexpected ways, i.e. the loss of electricity was trivial next to the loss of identity. However, I did not anticipate medical school causing an even greater loss of identity, with less in the way of redeeming factors.  I am in recovery. Trying to count the good that may be counted, redeem that which was desecrated and rekindle those parts of myself that I have only in memories.

Exam

I took my surgery exam under rocket fire today. We were interrupted three times with warning sirens/radio warnings and had to move to a more protected room. It's strange and unsettling. In comparison with this stress the exam seemed simple.
-K

Safe

I am safe. But very sad. There is a strange calm that I feel despite the rockets hitting the outskirts of Be'er Sheva this evening. I am not worried about anything except my surgery exam tomorrow. But I am sad. That this conflict is happening. That I am so near it. That there are people at home that are worried about me.
I will do my best to stay safe. I am currently in no apparent danger.
-K

Made Me Laugh Out Loud...

Some Things Should Be This Easy...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opinion/04kristof.html?em