The easiest home-made truffles ever...

I have no idea where I found this recipe originally, but it is so simple and so delicious. Now, I don't have a picture because I made them for my mom for mother's day and forgot to take one before giving them to her... but they are still delicious and worth trying!

Oreo Cheesecake Truffles

8 oreos

4 oz of cream cheese 

Your favorite type of chocolate chips (I use semi-sweet morsels)

In a food processor, process the cookies, add the cream cheese (softened/room temp) and pulse. Form the mixture in to little balls and place in the freezer x 1 hour. I usually just mix the cream cheese into the cookies after they've been processed because it lessens the clean up on the food processor from really having to clean off the cream cheese to just getting rid of crumbs. 

After 1 hour (I usually let them sit in the freezer for longer because I'll prep them then go get distracted with errands), Melt chocolate morsels according to package directions ... I melt them in the microwave for a minute or two stirring intermittently. Dip the oreo/cream cheese balls in the chocolate, place back in the freezer for 1 hour. Eat and ENJOY!

Note: I'm really terrible at melting the chocolate chips so I usually use a spoon to help me apply the melty chocolate to the oreo balls as if it were like icing. In the end, still tastes just as good! 

A lovely letter to any patient

Since today I am busy studying for the last exam of my clinical year, I will leave you with a re-post to a lovely letter to every patient about the ever changing practice of medicine. I hope you can grasp something out of this because though we will not all work in the medical field, we all have been and will continue to be patients to our doctors.

Dear Patient

*Note: other bloggers have mentioned the concept of re-posting things to their own sites. I haven't done any investigation and don't yet know if that means linking or copy and pasting with a citation so I've simply linked this one for now until I discover if there is a better way of doing this...

Nanner Bread

How banana's got their nickname "nanner" in my household, I'm not quite sure. What I am sure is that this delicious banana bread rocks. I got the recipe here at AllRecipes.com and have barely changed a thing (usually I tweak recipes as I go, but this one I do the same every time).  The original recipe was designed for 32 servings divided in 4 loaf pans. For me and Howie that would be way too much, so I scaled it down to call for 2 bananas and took it from there. The nice thing about AllRecipes.com is that they will do the calculations for you! Just type in how many servings you want and it adjusts the measurements. For this recipe, 2 bananas = 10 servings... but of course being Americans I think we end up getting 8 good sized slices out of it. One slice is my breakfast.

Don't be shocked by the bananas... they were in the
fridge for a day which always darkens them

Nanner Bread
Courtesy of AllRecipes.com
Ingredients:
1 tbls sugar + 1/4 tsp cinnamon to coat the pan
4 tbls butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 egg
2 over ripe bananas
4 oz sour cream
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1 1/3 cup flour
1 tsp baking soda
Sprinkle of salt
Nuts or chocolate chips (optional)

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees F, and grease a 9 x 5 in loaf pan (the original recipe uses 7x3 but the bake time is about the same either way). Dust the greased pan with the sugar and cinnamon indicated above. I use butter to grease my pan.

In a small bowl combine the butter (soft) and granulated sugar. Add the egg, bananas (mashed), sour cream,  vanilla, and cinnamon and combine. Add the flour, baking soda, and salt and mix. Depending on your tastes add nuts and/or chocolate chips in at the end. I make it more complicated for myself because I prefer chocolate chips only and Howie prefers pecans only; so I put the batter in the pan and then work nuts into one half and chocolate chips into the other half.

 Pop that sucker in the over for 55 minutes, check with a toothpick (should come out clean) and if need be keep it in there another 5 minutes for a total 1 hour bake time. If it's done at 55 minutes that's okay! Mine usually is.

 Once its out of the oven, let it sit for ten minutes, then flip it over onto a paper towel and it should fall right out of the pan. I then flip it onto a second paper towel so it is facing upright. Slice and enjoy the yummy-ness!

Money, money, money

Gosh, don't ya just hate money?? Well, perhaps you love/hate money if you are out there earning an income, but coming from a student, let me just say this: Money can be a total fun-sucker. In recent months money seems to be a constant presence in my life and an ever growing burden. Perhaps because of my care troubles, perhaps because I'm upon graduation, perhaps because my loan money is dwindling at the end of the semester. Truth is, I can't escape it. When I complain, Howie always turns to me and says "That's why every college student should be required to take a business class. I had to take a science, why didn't you take intro to finance?" Well, though I hate to admit it, I think he is right.

So what can I do? I'll have to teach myself, so I'm adding it to my bucket list to learn to manage my finances wisely with my own knowledge, rather than by my parent's continued unsolicited advice (though I'm not quite sure I'll be able to ever stop receiving advice, at least I'll have my own tricks up my sleeve). I'll be graduating in 3 months with a boat load of a debt becoming the new breadwinner of our little two person family. While my breadwinner status won't be official until our wedding day, it will still be in effect to a certain extent unofficially. While I have some time until I'll be required to start paying back my loans, I'd like to get started right away. I'll also be saving for my wedding and be planning to possibly budget more costly living expense if we choose to make the move into the city. With that, aside from reading my bank statements and paying my credit card bills on time... I know little else about truly budgeting and being in full control of my money. What if there are other banks out there that are better? What if there are other ways of reducing expenses I don't even realize I don't need to be spending? What about investing?

The first thing to do is to look at what I'm spending now. No, I'm not totally out of control, but I have noticed my credit card bill escalating over the winter months. Mentally, I've cracked a little from being stringent and had a mini spending spree with various things, especially at the super market. I've fallen victim to buying things on sale even though I may not need to. I also went a little nuts with textbooks and miscellaneous shopping. What can I cut down on? All three of those things.

Goal 1: Reduce my supermarket bill! I used to be excellent at keeping my bill under $100 for 2+ weeks worth of food for two. Lately I keep hitting $120, $110, $130... all of that adds up. Why? I can rationalize treating myself with food because I have to eat to live. That's bad for my tummy and my wallet. So my goal is to become more strict with buying only whats on sale, if the sale price is less than the bargain brand. If its an item I actually need, then stick with the bargain. If it's neither on a quality sale and its not something that I need, forget about it. The things I buy regardless of sale are only the things that I can't stock up on because of shelf life: i.e. milk, fresh produce.

Goal 2:  Stop buying things just because they are on sale! Its just silly.

Goal 3: Sell things used! I have a stack of old textbooks that I just do not need... Plan to sell them back on Amazon. If I had a yard, I would plan a yard sale of the things I've accumulated but don't really need.

Goal 4: Plan better! If I want to go shopping because I need a dress, make a mental plan that I will only shop for dresses. If I forgot something at the supermarket I need for a meal, ONLY purchase that one item. I need to stop using required shopping trips as an excuse to buy things I never would have gotten anyway.

Goal 5: Educate myself. This is going to take quite a bit of time, but it all starts with the will. I've already been re-inspired today from reviewing several articles I've found on Yahoo! News about saving money: 50 Ways to Improve Your Finances, and 7 Compulsive Shopping Traps. This advice is FREE, and you can find similar articles on any major news site or search engine. With the upcoming changes in my life, I certainly could stand to learn a thing or two about better taking care of my finances. 

Being a "real" commuter

My car has been having intermittent troubles for about 3, almost 4 weeks now. I've had it back and forth to CT to my dad, who is my usual "car guy," and to three different shops up near him. The first was our usual townie shop; they couldn't access the transmission with their computer to look for trouble codes. The second was the Dodge dealership; they were scheming thieves who ended up charging me $300 for a transmission fluid change that was not necessary, on top of $100 for needing to rent a car during that time. The third was Aamco of Danbury; they were phenomenal and honest. Rather, phenomenal because they were honest. They went above and beyond checking the car at multiple time points on multiple days to try to replicate the problem before recommending any work. After 3 days of attempts with the car behaving perfectly (I was starting to fear the car was haunting me), they told me to take it home and bring it back when the problem was more consistent without charging me a penny. Rationale: they didn't want to take the car apart without a plan. Too bad Dodge wasn't interested in that kind of logical service....

So I took the car home. Much to my dismay, the problem wasn't fixed and there were no known solutions. It continued to act out at first start up each morning, but then would be fine. However, Thursday the car was misbehaving ALL day. It was the worst behavior I've ever experience and included coasting backwards down a hill even though it was in "drive" facing up the hill. I took it to my local Aamco (hoping they would be as great as the guys in Danbury). Fortunately, they were able to replicate the problem to get a sense of what was happening. Unfortunately they had to keep it overnight to run tests on Friday to rule out an internal transmission issue. I would have to commute by public transportation. Initially planned for my boys sake, we live along one of the metro north train lines and I would only have to get to the second town away. I mapquested and measured the distance from the train stop to my office: 1.2 miles. Do-able.

Friday morning I got my stuff together, packed on bag with my stethoscope, lab coat, wallet, ballet flats (I planned to wear sneaks for my walk), and my water bottle. Weather report stated the current temperature was 61 degrees. I wore my khaki pants, a sleeveless blouse and a sweater. Given the recent cold rainy weather, it never crossed my mind to check the humidity. I got out side and felt instantly dewy. Likewise, I did not realize the ticket booths were only on the one side of the track... the opposite side of the track. I rushed down, across, and up the stairs, raced through the prompts on the screen, and raced back across as my train was pulling in to the station. Photo finish. I arrived to my destination in 2 stops, 15 minutes. The walk turned out to be very pleasant through a typical Westchester neighborhood. It took me a half an hour to get to my destination at a leisurely pace (I could have taken the later train, but miscalculated my timing). By the time I got to the office my skin felt like water, my bangs were curly, and the rest of my hair a frizzy mess. It was humid. I promptly twisted it all into a bun and clipped back my bangs before getting down to business.

***

At the end of the day I was frazzled. I had only noted 3 return train times and the clock was ticking by. I was concerned I would miss the last one, which would get me home to late for a previous commitment I had to attend to. As I rushed down the sidewalks, no longer wearing my sweater, I began to notice the graceful hills as my calves started complaining about my speed walking. I hadn't noticed any inclines on my pokey walk into this office this morning. I knew it took me a half hour at a slow pace to walk the first direction. I knew I had a bit less than a half hour to get back to the train. I knew I was putting much more effort into walking than I had earlier. But still, I was nervous. Unlike my car, the train won't wait for me. So I rushed... C'est la vie.  

More tips for healthier habits and a bit about fruits

Lets start with the bit about fruits. My world was recently shaken up a bit when I came to the realization cucumbers are fruits, not veggies. Shocker, I know. I was eating my healthful side dish of cucumbers, carrots, and left over pico de gallo (raw tomato and onion salsa) and was thinking about cucumbers being at the top of my fave veggies list. Then I thought, are they a veggie? They have seeds... To Google I went! The verdict: Cucumbers are the fruit of a vine plant, like tomatoes, pumpkins, and squash. So my side dish of veggies was really a side dish of fruit plus a rogue carrot.

With that I promptly went looking for nutrition information about cucumbers because the major fruits I actually think of as fruits are usually high sugar, which equals high carb, albeit the natural version. This brought me to a great link that gives nutrition information on almost anything you can think of. This link brings you right to the cucumber, but type in any food at the top search bar and it will give you a list of options of raw, peeled, cooked, sauteed, canned, etc. It even lets you pick prepackaged versions of foods, such as Campbell's tomato soup when you type "tomato." I definitely spent 10 minutes typing in my favorite "veggies" (read: cucumber, zucchini, tomato, rogue carrots...) right before I started writing this.

I also recently stumbled onto this great page that summarizes more eloquently the points I was trying to make in my previous posts about healthier habits. In addition to reinforcing the idea that healthy living is a lifestyle, not a fad only for bathing suit season, the author talks about the "paleo lifestyle." I'm not sure if you've stumbled on to this in your travels yet, but it is a lifestyle that seeks to imitate how a human would eat and what kind of activities they would partake in if they lived in nature. After all, our bodies evolved in nature. The focus is on free range, naturally grown meats, vegetables, and fruits. And while I don't intend on ever becoming strictly paleo (as evidenced by point #3 on my post about lunch April 30th)... it makes sense and after reading about it I'm starting to more consciously consider what I really want my food lifestyle to be.

So, with that, click here for some food for thought  if you are interested (pun intended :) )

My life living with a law student

Today I woke up to Howie peeking out the bedroom window, holding his coffee in his left hand while pulling the curtain back just enough to peer out with his right. I half opened my eyes and repositioned myself under the covers. He looked over at me and said "Hey, buddy," a usual wake-up greeting. He then proclaimed, "I'm waiting for UPS, when do they come?" Of course, being a very terrible morning person this question annoyed me. I rolled my eyes, and told him I don't know. I got up to go to the bathroom and when I finished brushing my teeth he was leaving the apartment. I got back to the bed and answered the ringing phone, "Yes, dear?" "I'm waiting for the UPS man. I see him up the street, but the truck is facing the wrong direction!" I started to chuckle. This is my boy, crazy as ever.

After waiting outside in the rainy day for 10 minutes he comes back in empty handed. Again he starts peeking out the window "I'm huntin' wabbits," he states. Then his body language changes. He starts smiling the biggest smile I've seen in months, "He's Coming! I See Him! He's Coming!" Like a child on Christmas, he peeks into the living room, waits for the doorbell, and starts giggling, "It's here!" He runs to the door and then runs back into the room ripping apart a package. Triumphantly he raises his new prize, Examples & Explanations: Administrative Law.

The lab - neat by usual comparison. 

Welcome to finals season! All the rumors you hear about law school are true. Those videos on youtube, true. Law students are a unique bunch. I would venture to call them insane, but too many of them are my friends and I wouldn't want to insult anyone at this sensitive time ;)

About a month or so ago the real buckle down started for my boy. While he's been in his "Lab" all semester with papers and daily readings. Things have only gotten real weird in the past 2 weeks. The first two weeks of the buckle down don't really phase me; my brain doesn't start registering that the change is semi-permanent until the third week when I start to notice that I'm doing all of the chores and the house is still getting messier. Living with a law student at this time sends you back to the days of simply co-existing with a roommate you just totally are not on the same page with. If I make a meal for the two of us, he inhales it in 5 minutes and that is our "together" time. Other than that, he studies with his noise-concealing headphones, emerges once in a while to say something random or have a 3 second temper-tantrum about hating studying, and that is that.  Recently he got weird enough to tell me I can no longer sit on the couch in the same room with him, even though I'm very quiet and don't interrupt him. He says its too much of a wanted distraction to have me there, I must leave. What can I do? I guess I'll just count down the next two weeks with him until finals are over...