New Favorite Recipe


I've been craving southwestern egg rolls for awhile and Padonia Station has the best egg rolls. I guess it's not really practical to fly to Baltimore just for egg rolls so I was forced to make my own last night. Man were they good! The taste just like the ones at Chile's, only better. Here's the recipe. All measurements are approximate as I don't really measure anything.

1/2 chopped red bell pepper
2 bunches chopped green onion
1 can corn
1 can black beans
handful chopped cilantro
3/4 of a jalapeno, chopped
handful frozen spinach, drained and thawed
2 chicken breasts grilled and chopped into small pieces
1 cup Pepper Monterrey Jack cheese


Saute the red pepper and green onion with 1 tbl olive oil. Add chicken, corn, black beans, cilantro, jalapeno, and spinach. Season to taste with salt and pepper, 1 tsp chile powder, and 1 tsp cumin. Mix together well and turn off the heat. Mix in the cheese.

Now here is where you can be a little creative. You can wrap the filling in won ton wrappers and fry. You can wrap in a flour tortilla and fry or spray with oil and bake till crispy. Me? I wrapped my filling in rice paper and fried until crisp. Yummy!

Now I need to make more to put in the freezer....and make a double batch!

Mark Your Calendar

Even though we can't be in Baltimore for Christmas, we are coming in December. MAybe I can see some snow after all! Pencil us in for December 15-18. Nothing is planned yet, but I want to see lots of people! That means we'll have to do a lot of group stuff since there just isn't enough time to see everyone. Stay tuned for more details!

Ramblings

So I bought this garlic at the grocery store the other day. I couldn't find the regular garlic and wound up with "Elephant Garlic." I wasn't sure what that meant, but hey, garlic is garlic I thought. I pulled it out to put in my pasta sauce and it's freakin' huge! I took a picture of its hugeness but for some reason blogspot does not like my picture and I can not share it with you. Sad. Because it is HUGE. It's almost a small onion. So huge, in fact, I had to cut one clove in half to use next time.

This year will be the first time I make Thanksgiving dinner all by myself. I have to work an evening shift that day so I guess we will eat at 1:00 or so. How big of a turkey do I buy for 3 people? And how early do I have to get up to put it in the oven? And how long does it take to defrost in the refrigerator? I'll have to make a menu so I can do a grocery run soon.

I've noticed at the hospital they have no IV push protocol. Or maybe they have it but keep it hidden because I have seen no one use or talk about it. This is odd for several reasons but I will not go into them. Everything here is IVP. All pt's seem to get narcs and phenergan IVP if they are tolerating po meds or not even nauseous. What's with that??? I pushed metoprolol and labetalol today on unmonitored pt's!!! (RN's on Marburg gasp here.) I nearly freaked out. Nothing is in a minibag. Ever. Except antibiotics. Which I hear they used to push up until very recently. No wonder there are so many addicts!! Phenergan 25 mg? Benadryl 50 mg? Demerol 50mg? Sure. No problem. And another thing. Where are all the supplies? What do you mean I have to order opsite, SCD's, TEDS, and abd pads from central supply? And why can't I get a normal saline bag from the pyxis to piggyback with my antibiotic?? The choice here, you ask? Waste 30 cc of the med (which is a lot if you only have 65cc to begin with) to prime the weird IV tubing or free flow it to the pt. What would you do?

It's Finally Fall!!

It's taken until November for there to be a chill in the air, but it's been worth the wait. Fall is my favorite season. I love watching the leaves change and pulling out the winter sweaters. Going to the pumpkin patch is usually the first event of fall for me. Alas, they have no pumpkin patches in east Texas (or so I am told). I had to console myself with store-bought apples for homemade applesauce. It didn't quite do it, but I'll take what I can get I think. Halloween was a bit of a letdown. We had very few trick-or-treaters. Maybe because we are in the back of the development? Even with the little darlings taking handfuls of candy we had a lot left over. Luckily, I had anticipated this and bought chocolate. Now we don't have so much left.....

I had my first ICU transfer yesterday. It was for hypotension which turned out to be fungal sepsis. It was a bit of a letdown because there was nothing really emergent and that typical adrenaline rush was not there. Not that I want a sick patient, of course!

We are off to Houston today with a list of things to do. We have to go to Ikea to replace a chair that broke and the Asian food store for some more rice. I think we will get dim sum for lunch. I need those little rolls filled with BBQ. I'll have to find out what they are really called!

Back to the Real World

Sorry for the long hiatus. We've been busy getting married, having fun in Hawaii, and generally enjoying married life! If we haven't sent you the ofoto link to our MANY pictures please let us know. (The flikr link is flikr.com/photos/aong765). We'll be more than happy to send it to you....You can let me know what you think of my first attempt at macro photography! Also, our photographer posted a few pictures from our wedding online at www.blog.stacieannsmith.com

Swimming
The underwater casing for the SD 20 came. We had to try it out at the pool yesterday. Pretty good, huh?

This was the sunset from the backyard when we got back from Houston today. 

China Town
 

Dim Sum Yum!

We went to Houston today to this restaurant. Doesn't look like much on the outside, but look at the dim sum they have! People come around with carts and you choose which dumplings you want to eat. it was really crowded.
 

Yes, you saw it here :

Can you believe this price?! I couldn't either. Of course I had just filled my tank up with $2.15 gas. Still I guess that's not bad compared with what we've been paying the last few months...


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