Time to Spare

For those of you keeping track, I have approximately 4 1/2 months of residency left. I am now in the midst of a fairly easy stretch. For the last two weeks, I was on a dermatology rotation. Of the 10 possible days there could be clinics, I worked 5 of those days and I don't think I worked a full 8 hours on any of those days. Now I am on rheumatology consults for the next two weeks. Again, I was home by 2 pm today which was lovely. The rest of the year is hit and miss, with a week of the ED, and week of nights at the VA, a month of ICU, but interspersed with those rotations are more dermatology! More consults! And lots more weekends!

So today when I got home at 2 pm I thought I would take advantage of that spare time and make something exciting for dinner. But I was not very inspired. I went through my files of "recipes to try" and found some turkey burgers from Cooking Light (after the weekend of eating with Kate and Ben we will be on a Cooking Light kick for awhile). But they were going to take all of 20 minutes to make. I needed something more exciting! More involved! That's when I remembered the cookbook Kat got me for Christmas: Montana Cooking, and its recipe for homemade hamburger buns. Yes, I spent 20 minutes making turkey burgers and rather than just picking up some hamburger buns while at the grocery store, I spent 4 hours making my own. They were ok. I still have problems with my bread (it just isn't light and fluffy) but it was fun. When we move back to Seattle however, we're going to need to get a chest freezer because I have filled up our little freezer here with rolls, pizza dough, chili, chicken stock, turkey stock, waffles and now hamburger buns.

Which brings me to the main point of this long-winded post about cooking. I like to find recipes all over the place. My cookbook collection. Cooks Illustrated. Cooking Light. Bon Appetite. Food blogs. Tastespotting. More food blogs. And I save them, until I try them. If they are good, they go into my permanent collection. When I got married, Kate requested a copy of my recipes as a bridesmaid gift. So I searched and searched for a good way to put them all together in cookbook format and I found this. I love it. I made cookbooks for all the bridesmaids and sisters-in-law. I still add new recipes and figured out that I can share my recipe collection on-line. If they want the new recipes to add to their cookbooks, they can order them. And if they have recipes of their own they want to share, they can set up a Tastebook of their own. I'm working on getting my recipes updated, then I'll be sending the link to all the original recipients. If you are interested in seeing what makes the cut with me, let me know and I'll send along the link. Just a warning, I enjoy using cream, butter and cheese. Things taste better that way. If you're worried about calories, just eat less.

Time for bed. We've finally tired Wylie out. Here's hoping he sleeps past 6 am!