A non-food reflection

I have been pretty inactive on here recently, and that's for two reasons: I started my second semester of nursing school, and I lived through Hurricane Isaac.

My husband and I didn't have power for a week, and we lost all the contents of our refrigerator and freezer (hence the no-cooking posts). My birthday always occurs during one of these hurricane episodes too, which means that I have the day off to do very little with it because everything is still closed from the hurricane. It's pretty depressing.

My husband and I are pretty busy folks - I go to nursing school full time and work whenever possible, and my husband works full time and goes to school four nights a week. My school load has been really arduous lately because now we have to make up the time we missed from the hurrication, so we're both in hyper mode and it has been a pretty miserable, high-stress time for us and I know that it's been hard for me to stay encouraged to keep working.

Given all that, I figured that I would share something that I haven't really shared with anyone.

As some of you reading may know about me, when I started nursing school I was working in an assisted living facility. I wanted to transition into a health care field to help supplement what I was learning in school, and I tend to get bored and frustrated when I don't work. I also recognized that one of my challenges as a future health care provider was my struggle to process feelings of death and felt like working there would give me the opportunity to confront those feelings head on.

I learned untold things from working there - everything from medical abbreviations to drugs to diets to wound care. And yes, I definitely learned about death.

Mrs. B was a resident there who reminded me of one of my best friends growing up, and how I would imagine she would be as an older lady. She tried to stay as independent as possible and as silly as it sounds, most of what I would do for her is "spot" her and make sure she stayed safe and didn't hurt herself. One night I helped her into bed and she asked me to give her a good night kiss. At that point I knew that this wasn't just a job for me.

A few months later, Mrs. B had gone through some changes. She was weak and couldn't get around like she used to. She was sleeping a lot more than usual. She was heavier and couldn't help me to move her into chairs or her bed. She stopped leaving her room, asking for meal trays to be brought up to her. Before long, the trays went untouched and she didn't even want the dark chocolate Hershey kisses that I used to have to wipe away from around her mouth when she fell asleep. She started telling others that she was ready to die.

She refused her medications and liquids, and just stayed in bed. Soon enough, she rested back and lapsed into labored, open-mouthed breathing. We moved her nasal cannula into her mouth so she could get some more oxygen, and we swabbed her mouth out with sponges and cool water.

I left work on a Saturday night knowing she wouldn't be there when I came back the next day. It upset me to think that soon, someone else would be sitting in her place at the table, someone else would be living in her room. I cried my eyes out and knew if I stayed at home that night I would just feel worse, and I needed to get my mind away from it. I went out with my sister and talked through it but the sadness was still in my heart.

Sure enough, she was gone the next day. A sadness loomed over work for the next few days. I remember seeing Mrs. B's daughter cleaning out her mom's things and not being able to keep it together when offering my condolences. I knew that I couldn't keep doing this for the rest of my life and asked myself how I could best cope with the loss of people I had cared for without hardening myself to death.

I wanted to remember Mrs. B forever because she was the first person I had taken care of that died. But I knew there would be many others, and that I would learn something from all of them. So I got a small, pretty notebook and opened it up and wrote down Mrs. B's name.

Her name was soon joined by Mrs. L. After that, Mrs. D, Mr. V, and many more. After each one died, I would write him or her down and think about what he or she meant to me. I would then flip through the book to remember them all and why they were special.

As time went on, I learned that dying is kind of special. It doesn't feel good for the survivors, but a lot of the people who died were ready to go - and all I really did was make them as pleasant and comfortable as possible while they were on their way. There are very few professions that can truly give you an opportunity to help others achieve inner peace.

After I left the nursing home, I kept up with who passed away through friends and obituaries. After the hurricane there have been more deaths than usual, and I've been visiting my book more frequently. But I've started to perceive my book a little differently. I started the book to help me cope with my feelings of sadness and loss. But now every one of the people in the book has helped me to become better at taking care of people, and I owe them my best effort at becoming a nurse because they let me take care of them first. In a sense, my sad little book has become my other-worldly cheering section.

I won't pretend that I never get upset or depressed when I hear that someone else I took care of passed away. But having my book helped me to respect their lives, remember how they helped me, and know that I am better at what I do because I was fortunate to have them in my life.

Comida por un corazon: Quick Chicken Shawarma and Fruit Salsa with Cinnamon Wonton Chips

School is getting ready to start up for both me and my honey. I went today for orientation and start classes Thursday, and he starts Monday. He works weekday mornings mostly, and he works close enough to home that he usually drives home for lunch.

He always looks a little crestfallen when I don't have anything special made for him for lunch, so if I'm in the mood and I have the time I will cook him a nice hot meal.

I found these grilled chicken breast patty things that you cook like Steak-umms at Walmart. They're very convenient and only take about five minutes or so to cook. So I cooked up a couple of those and put some Cavender's Greek Seasoning, dill weed, and lemon pepper on them to season them. I put them on top of some Joseph's pita bread with some roasted red pepper hummus. (If you aren't eating Joseph's pita or lavash, you are BIG TIME missing out. They have great, healthy stats and are very versatile.) I topped them with some romaine lettuce mix and red onion, and used some Tzatziki Yogurt dressing I found at Target to finish it off.

I even made some dessert - some fruit salsa a la Pinterest with some wonton chips with sweet cinnamon! I seasoned them like so: 

• 1 1/2 tbsp honey
• 2 tbsp melted coconut oil - this only takes about 20 seconds in the microwave
• cinnamon to taste

I used the same process as before for the most part, but I used some vegetable oil on the muffin tin because the sugar content is considerably higher and I didn't want them to stick. They came out delicious - light and crispy, and a wonderful complement to the fruit salsa. My husband loves fruit (especially apples, strawberries, and peaches - all the fruit I used), so I knew this would be a hit.

Unfortunately, my honey had to work through lunch so I had to enjoy all the yums by myself. Don't worry, there's still plenty of chips and fruit salsa for him to snack on, and it only takes a second to whip up another shawarma. But I was a little sad. 

So I decided to take advantage of the time I had alone to enjoy something my husband really hates when he's at home. I'm semi-addicted to 12 Corazones - I don't know how to describe it other than a Latino version of "Singled Out," but with the Zodiac. And before you ask, no, I don't speak Spanish. For some reason, I just like it - and it drives my husband nuts. So since I didn't have mi corazon with me at lunchtime, I spent my lunch with 12 of them. :)

Eaglemoss Icebox Cake: A Work in Progress

We are a DC Family.

My husband is a fanatic of all things DC Comics, Batman in particular. He recently started collecting these iron figurines of all his favorite DC characters that are called Eaglemoss figurines. After our trip to the grocery store this morning, for some reason he was compelled to display them in a more organized fashion in our living room.

While he was fiddling around with his Eaglemoss figurines, I made this dessert that I had been thinking about trying to throw together in a slimmer fashion for a couple weeks now. I called it Eaglemoss because it seems like kind of an old-timey name for an old-timey recipe.

If you've never heard of an icebox cake, the basic idea is that before the dessert gods made boxed cake mixes, a home chef would make a cake by layering cookies and whipped cream or ice cream until the cream got into the cookies and made the whole thing a gloppy delicious mess. No bake, no fuss. So I figured, perfect summer dessert. Two ingredients, no oven required. Why not try to make it more calorie friendly?

So on our visit to the store this morning I bought the light frozen whipped topping. I didn't buy the fat free kind because that usually means they try to sneak a boatload of sugar in there to improve the flavor. I also purchased some reduced fat chocolate cookies.

I came home and got out my springform pan - one of those pans with the loose bottoms and the side with the buckle. I had no intention of taking the pan apart because I intended the cake for me and my hubby to snack on and not for any great presentation, but if you elected to do so that's the best way to get it done.

I started with a bottom layer of eight cookies, but you should be able to get by with more or less depending on how you crumble the cookies. It seems that each cookie layer requires 5-8 cookies, and the finer the cookies are crumbled, the longer they go toward making a whole layer.

I topped this layer of cookies with a layer of 12 tablespoons of whipped cream.

Repeat until the cake is at the top of the pan and end with a layer of whipped cream. Freeze for about 3-4 hours to set. Serves 8-12.



I say this is a work in progress because my cookies didn't get as mushy and melty as I'd hoped. Also, it seemed like the cookie to cream ratio was too much in favor of the cookie side. I may experiment with this further, maybe using those 100 calorie packs as cookies instead of the regular kind. But all in all, a serving of this cut for 12 people is only 186 calories! My husband was a very happy fellow and enjoyed this thoroughly after getting his figurines just right...

Bayside Wonton Chips!

I enjoy cooking a lot, especially when I have time for it and can experiment with a good idea. I'm not a huge fan of recipes, and I like to think I have more culinary successes than failures using this method. One of my favorite rules that I learned from Sam the Cooking Guy is when in doubt, 375 is a good go-to temperature for most things.

My husband and I have been dieting lately, and I was hoping to make some quick, healthy, grab-and-go breakfast for us using this idea from Pinterest. So I had some wonton wrappers and a mini-muffin tin, but I guess it didn't occur to me how little those wonton wrappers were because I had a lovely crispy bowl that was too small to hold anything. However, the texture reminded me of another one of my favorite crispy foods that are pretty much off-limits for dieters... 

So I made a bowl mixed with olive oil, salt, garlic powder, and lime juice and mixed it all together (easy on the olive oil, about 1 tbsp for the whole recipe - if you use a brush, you'll be able to make it last longer - and the rest to taste). I took each wonton skin and cut it in half with a pizza cutter to make two triangles.  I dunked the wonton triangles in the mix and used the same muffin pan for the failed tortilla bowl experience to stand up the wonton triangles and make the lovely curve that helps hold the salsa on the chip. 

I baked them for five minutes at 325, salted them again fresh out of the oven, and I came out with these: 

They actually stand up to salsa better than regular chips because the dough is denser than tortilla chips, and they are still light and crispy! A serving of 16 wonton chips is sixteen chips for 160 calories (give or take a couple calories for the olive oil) versus 140 calories for only 7 of the tortilla chips above - half the calories per chip! Also, 6g protein and 0.5 g fat for the wonton chips, versus 2g protein and 7g fat for the tortilla chips! And you can make these taste any way you want - onion powder, chili powder... even cinnamon and sugar with some yummy fruit salsa!

As an aside, they're called "Bayside Wonton Chips" because "Saved by the Bell" was on TV while I was making them, but feel free to call them whatever you want as long as you make them and enjoy them! 

Firsties!

I've been toying with the idea of blogging for a while, but have resisted doing so because like many things in my life I feared getting carried away with it and losing time for all my other pursuits. But I figured, eh, why not. For those of you hopping around that aren't familiar with me or anything else about me, I'm a newlywed and a nursing student. I guess you'll find out the rest along the way. Enjoy!