My Relationship with Yoga

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The closer I get to my move to New York, the crazier things get! It’s normal, but nevertheless still hard. One of the commitments I made to myself this past month was to complete a 30 day yoga challenge. I knew that doing yoga daily would keep me grounded and help me deal with everything else going on in my life.

I am honestly not sure when my relationship with yoga began, I know it was sometime close to starting college. I was inconsistent for many years, a class here and there, a video, a couple of bikrum classes with friends but nothing committal. Two years ago, is when yoga and I started dating exclusively :) , my practice became more regular, I found a style of yoga that really worked for me, both on a physical and metaphysical level.

There are many different types of yoga and different people have different relationships with yoga. For me its both physical exercise for my body and emotional/spiritual exercise for the mind. I feel energized, centered and rejuvenated after even 15 minutes on the matt.

I haven’t had an easy time finding instructors that fit my yoga mold — surprising considering the number of yoga studio’s — but once I found a few, the experience was transformative. I love the studio Urban Flow in San Francisco and while I cannot frequent her classes regularly Clara Roberts-Oss (she is in Canada) is the amazing instructor I went to Bali with. I did my 30 day yoga challenge with the help of a newly discovered yoga website, called YogaGlo. Not only does the site have amazing instructors (Kathryn Budig is my favorite) it tracks my practices, lets me save favorite video’s and posts new video’s on a daily bases.

I love to exercise. I enjoy biking, hiking, rock climbing and many other out door activities. Yoga though is something I can easily integrate into my day no matter where I am or wht I’m doing, though sometime I need to push through the lazy :) . Yoga isn’t for everyone, but for me, this 30 day challange made me realize that yoga will be essential for me during the next two years of my life.

P.S. As you can see the length of practices declined towards the middle of the month. I got a little to enthusiastic and pulled my back. I switched to some feel good yoga for a few days and learned that I need to push a little less and be patient a little more.

Fried Potatoes

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With only a month left till the beginning of school I feel like I am on a roller coaster. Some days I am happy and excited, other day’s I’m freaking out and refusing to even consider the possibility of going back to school and moving across the country. I didn’t call the blog logically crazy for nothing.

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One big accomplishment is that I found an apartment! No easy task! Doing it remotely is a herculean feat! I got lucky, my days of scouring craigslist, quick email composition and the willingness of my amazing family to drive into the city at a moments notice paid off. We got what I think is a pretty amazing, spacious (by NYC standards) 1 bedroom apartment. Walking distance to the subway and a large park (score one for Calvin).

With the apartment secured, I still don’t know when we are actually moving…a lot of things are still TBD….but you know what, I am accepting it! Sorta….maybe…

As always, when things feel unstable and crazy I run to the kitchen and throw myself full force into cooking; the process itself more than the final product is what quiets the ten thousand thoughts floating around in my head.

A few nights ago, I put my own twist on my dad’s fried potatoes. I made them more fancy and even less healthy, hah, if that’s possible.

These potatoes are not for the faint of heart. They are delicious but very ahem hearty and DELICIOUS!!

Can you get who’s plate this was? (not mine)

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Fried Potatoes

Fried Potatoes

Ingredients

  • 3 medium sized Yukon Golds
  • 2-4 purple potatoes
  • 1 large shallot
  • 5-6 cloves garlic
  • 4 thick slices of pancetta
  • 1lbs of mushrooms, chanterelles would be best, but the store was out
  • salt
  • pepper
  • sour cream
  • dill

Instructions

  1. Dice the pancetta and place it into a pre-heated cast iron skillet on medium heat. Let the pancetta cook down and get golden.
  2. Dice the shallot and add it to the golden pancetta. Let the mixture cook until the shallot is softened.
  3. Cube the potatoes, small cubes are better. Do NOT do them as large as mine, it is way too hard for the potatoes to cook through.
  4. Turn the heat up to high and add the potatoes, spreading them out into an even layer with your spatula. Let the cook for 2-3 minutes to get a brown skin on once side.
  5. Turn the heat down to medium-low, mix up the potatoes and cover the skillet with a lid.
  6. Every 5-10 minutes, mix up the potatoes.
  7. With smaller potatoes it will take less time to cook, mine took about 45 minutes.
  8. After 30 minutes I added my sliced mushrooms. I let them cook on top for a few minutes and than mixed them in
  9. Once the potatoes and mushrooms are cooked, add salt and pepper and a couple of dollops of sour cream, to your liking and mix. If like me you have expired sour cream, heavy whipping cream worked just fine.
  10. Serve garnished with some fresh dill.
http://www.logicallycrazy.com/adventures/fried-potatoes/

Chicken Tikka Masala

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Two weekends ago we helped our friends Steve and Emily build a garage. Well, to be more accurate, Will continued to help Steve in an on going project to build a garage.

Instead of helping build this time, I spent several hours looking over loan options with the help of the greatest father-in-law in the whole universe. While I’m excited to be going back to school, the prospect of taking out more loans is daunting. When I spoke on the phone to the loan officer and he asked me to confirm the amount of money, I said “Yes, that’s correct and now please don’t say the number again.” For the rest of the call, it was “that number you don’t want me to say.”

For those who may stumble across my blog and are planning to go back to school or about to start school the few things I’d advice are:

  1. Apply everywhere you want to go, even if you think you can’t get in, you may be surprised.
  2. Plan ahead, make lists, spreadsheets and do lots of research. Talk to students at the schools, professors and people with experience doing what you are about to do.
  3. Apply for every scholarship you can find and carefully analyze your loan options.
  4. Do not, give up.

After several hours at this depressing task (loan research, not garage building), I took a break for dinner. We had ordered Indian food and I love, love, love Indian Food. I realized, as I bit into my delicious samosa, that while my home cooked repertoire is quite diverse, it doesn’t include Indian food. Sure I cook curries, but they are of the Thai persuasion rather than Indian. I felt the need to remedy this appalling gap in my culinary endeavors and decided to try to make Bugs’ favorite, Chicken Tikka Masala.

I used a recipe from Pioneer Woman, posted by a friend of hers. It turned out delicious but not quite Chicken Tikka Masala. We had our friends over, one of whom, happens to work in an Indian Restaurant. She gave me some good suggestions to try when I make the dish again.

One tweak I already made is marinating the chicken in the yogurt and spices instead of cooking it right away. I wish I had done this for longer to give the chicken more flavor. My friend recomended marinating overnight. The sauce didn’t have that orange-red color or that same creamy flavor that I find in my favorite Indian restaurant. The rice turned out excellent, though not as evenly cooked as I would have like. Overall, it was a yummy dinner but it needs work. Now I just need to do all those dishes in the kitchen. :-/

Dad’s Fish Cakes

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I was really on a roll for a while there! Posting once a week! But of course life got away from me and things got a bit crazy for a while and resulted in some big changes!

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In about six weeks we will be moving to New York City where I will be attending Columbia University!

About a year ago, I applied to a few schools in hopes of getting into a accelerates bsn/msn nursing program. Hence the recent trip to Portland and the East Cost (that I never posted about) and a lot of weird Facebook comments that probably never made sense to anyone but me. I was fortunate enough to get accepted into several amazing schools; schools that I never though I could get into to. Making my final decisions was tough but I’m really happy to have this opportunity.

My decision was between Columbia, John’s Hopkins and Oregon Health and Science University (where I was waitlisted). The program at Columbia is two years long (full years, working through the summers), one year for the bachelors and one year for the masters. I will become a Nurse Practitioner/Midwife in the end (fingers crossed). This program felt like the best fit for many reasons. It’s going to be an intense two years but I am excited.

Living in New York is one of those things that I think I’ve always wanted to do. Everything from lounging around in central park, to New Years in time square to getting lost at the Metropolitan Museum of arts. It will be a very different lifestyle than Berkeley and one I’m looking forward to trying on. My brother lives on the east cost and that is a huge bonus. We haven’t lived in the same city in over 16 years!!! Its going to be a grand adventure and one that I hope to share on this blog.

During this past CRAZY month, of decisions, transitions, tears and excitement, I’ve leaned a lot on my family and close friends for advice, support and guidance. Hence I felt it would be appropriate to share a family recipe today. These fish cakes are my dad’s creation and a family favorite. They disappear before he is even done cooking them. They are mostly healthy ;) and super quick and easy to make. Most importantly they don’t taste fishy!


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Dad’s Fish Cakes

Dad’s Fish Cakes

Ingredients

  • 1 lbs fish (I used tilapia but any soft white fish works)
  • 2 eggs
  • 1/2 onion finely diced
  • 3 cloves garlic minced
  • 2 tablespoons flour
  • 1 tablespoon mayo
  • salt
  • pepper
  • parsley or dill (or both)
  • butter and oil for cooking

Instructions

  1. Cut up the fish into very small pieces
  2. Add two eggs, minced garlic, diced onions and chopped parsley or dill.
  3. Salt and pepper generously, then mix together
  4. Then add flour and mayo and mix well to combine.
  5. Let the mixture sit covered for at least an hour to let everything thicken and stick together.
  6. Put a 1 tbls of butter and 1 tbls of oil into a skillet
  7. Make a fish pancake with your hands about 1 1/2 inches wide and 1 inch thick (I fail at measuring so please refer to the picture)
  8. Fry up the fish cakes on medium-high heat until golden brown, about 2 minutes on each side.
  9. Serve with sour cream or tartar sauce.

Notes

When I made this batch, I had 2.5 lbs of fish. When dealing with half pounds round the number of eggs down. So I used 4 eggs instead of 4.5 or five.

If you feel you need to adjust the amount of flour do not do so until the fish batter has sat for at least an hour. It thickens while it rests and you may find you do not need more flour after its sat for a while.

http://www.logicallycrazy.com/adventures/dads-fish-cakes/

Global Warming is Ruining my Life

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Allergy season has started early.

Anyone who has to deal with the swollen, drippy, or congested sinuses because of trees dumping pollen understands the enormity of this situation. The occasional rain may temporarily scrub the pollen out of the air, but the temporary relief seems to only anger the trees into producing more allergens.

Suddenly, global warming is an annoyingly personal issue for me.

I am now torn between hoping for rainy days spent miserably wet, sloshing to and from class, or beautiful days accompanied by my sinuses trying to explode a hole through the front of my face.

The timing is impeccable.  Murphy would be proud.  Allergies arrived to congratulate me on beginning of my thesis.  Nothing increases productivity like inhaling steam while begging your respiratory track to stop keeping your brain hostage.  Luckily, the glory of modern pharmaceuticals have gotten my nasal passages back on track (side effects pending, keep your fingers crossed), and I can return to boring my friends by discussions on the relative merits of online communication, looked at from various scholarly angles.

All this means that despite Ana being the one going into medicine, and while I’m the one going into Internet, she has been the one keeping up the blog.  Promises to change should be forthcoming, but don’t hold your breath.  Life gets in the way, and cameras are unsurprisingly unwieldy when trying for a fast dinner.

I am also learning that I am a slap dash cook.  “Add spices until it is tasty.  If it isn’t tasty, add more spices.  Or more bacon.”  Truth be told, my cooking could be improved by more structure but right now all of the structure in my life is being channeled toward reading.  My recipes are simmering on the back burner, simmering, until they are ready to send out to the world.

High Fiber Oatmeal Cookies

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This is a healthy-for-some-value-of-healthy cookie.  It still have a cup of butter and two cups of sugar, but it also has flax seed, wheat germ, bran, and whole wheat flour. It’s a high fiber oatmeal cookie, with more nutrients than normal.  It’s not a health bar trying to pretend it’s a cookie, this is a real oatmeal cookie that happens to have some good stuff in it.

I have long held that oatmeal cookies are amazing because you can hide whatever you want in them and they are still tasty.  That precept holds true again as the cookies manage to absorb bran (bran!) without ending up tasting like old people food.  It is a magical thing.

Next round, I am going to experiment with replacing a little more of the oats with barley flakes.  The barley flakes don’t have as hearty a texture, so I was afraid that the flakes would turn to mush.  Since the cookies didn’t seem to suffer too much, I am going to try pushing my luck, and just being careful with how much I stir.

Of course, with most of this stuff I have vague knowledge that it is good.  So while I’m sitting with my cookie going “Flax seeds! Omega-3′s!” while feeling good about myself for my oh-so-healthy (yet still butter filled) lifestyle, I’m going to let Ana talk a little bit more in depth about why exactly these cookies are awesome.

After all, she should get a chance to show off her degree in nutrition (and pretend it gives purpose to student loan debt). -E

Lets start with wheat germ, it is the portion of the wheat kernel that is removed during processing into flour. For one, wheat germ is an excellent source of folic acid, folate, the form of folic acid naturally occurring in our body is needed to synthesize DNA. In addition, folic acid contains a powerful antioxidant not destroyed by cooking. Folic acid is also important for pregnant woman, as it help prevent neural-tube birth defects. While it is unusual for a western diet to be deficient in folic acid, it is definitely good for you.

Flax Seed is high dietary fiber, omega-3 fatty acids and micronutrients. Initial research has indicated potential links  between flax seed intake and decrease in incidence of of certain cancers, reduced cholesterol and improved diabetes status. The omega-3 fatty acids are “good” fats and have been shown to have heart healthy affects.

Bran is another part of the whole grain and is usually produced as by product of milling. Bran is also rich in dietary fiber and essential fatty acids.

Barley contains 8 essential amino acids! (very exciting) Essential amino acids are those that we have to consume, our body does not produce them. There are a total of 10 essential amino acids (one is required for the young), so to have 8 found in one place is a big deal and great way to get your body what it needs to run like a well oiled machine. The interwebs propose a very long list of benefits for barley, I would double and triple check sources before believing everything you read (about any of these). My motto tends to be everything in moderation.

I’m not going to go as far as to break down every component of this delicious cookie, but I think the above say’s that the guilt of eating a cookie (if you have said guilt) is pretty well balanced by the benefits listed above. -A

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High Fiber Oatmeal Cookies

Ingredients

  • 1 cup butter
  • 1 cup brown sugar
  • 1 cup white sugar
  • 2 eggs
  • 1 Tablespoon vanilla extract
  • .75 cup white flour
  • 0.5 cup whole wheat flour
  • 0.25 cup wheat germ
  • 0.25 cup bran flakes
  • 2 Tablespoon ground flax seed
  • 1 teaspoon salt
  • 1 teaspoon baking soda
  • 1 Tablespoon cinnamon
  • 2.4 cups oats
  • 0.5 cup barley flakes
  • 0.5-0.75 cup nuts (optional)
  • 1 cup chocolate chips or raisins

Instructions

  1. PREHEAT OVEN to 350 F
  2. Cream together butter and sugars. Add in the eggs and vanilla, beat well.
  3. Mix together salt, baking soda, flours, bran, flax, and wheat germ. Stir into the wet ingredients. Add in the nuts, chocolate chips, or raisins if using. Add oats and barley flakes last, stirring in.
  4. Place rounded tablespoons of the batter on an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake for 10-15 minutes. Cool completely on a wire rack.
http://www.logicallycrazy.com/adventures/high-fiber-oatmeal-cookies/

based on Simply Recipe Grandma’s Oatmeal Cookies

See nutritional information

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

French Toast

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I wanted to have a post up about my trip to Portland today, but that is not going to happen :( I promise its coming soon though!!

I love sitting down to eat with friends and family. I have so many good memories of loud russian family gatherings as a child and an adult. Just like my grandmother, mother and sister, I love feeding my friends and family, having them all come together around a good meal. Breakfast though, I think is my favorite meal to share with others. I love the casual atmosphere of sitting at the breakfast nook with my parents and chatting about the coming day. The hodgepodge of friends who spent the night or came over in the early morning, the group of class mates who came over to study or even just bug and I.

French toast, is one of my favorite breakfast foods! There is  101 ways to make it. Each on is different in taste and technique and most are delicious. Personally, I’ve never been quite satisfied with my home made french toast. It just never tastes like the french toast of my imagination.  Than I read a recent post on one of my favorite blogs, Dash and Bella, which just happened to provide a recipe for French Toast.

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I’ve made this recipe twice now and it exceeded my expectations each time. It may not be the perfect french toast recipe for everyone, but I am in love. I love the consistency, the hint of orange and the lack of sweetness which is provided by the maple syrup instead of the toast itself. It seems that the ratio of eggs to milk made the biggest difference; creating a custard, that soak into the bread helping create a perfect crust on each piece. Also the type of bread matters, it definitely works best with brioche bread or challah. The recipe is a template and can be modified in many ways, which is great for an experimenter like myself. I also tried freezing the left overs as the recipe suggests. Try it your self, the recipe is here.

A Night at the Orange Room

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I’ve been fortunate enough to make a lot of amazing friends through out my short 25 years.  I met my good friend Artemis in biochemistry class at UC Davis. She is, hands down, one of the most amazing people I know. Not only is she a rock start student (genius), she is also a gifted musician, singer, song writer, yogi and amazing friend. Check out her website.

Pictures Courtesy of Keith Crusher

Artemis is the one with red hair :)

Now lets play six degree’s of separations….only this is a lot less degree’s….more like two. When we were at Davis, Artemis told me about a friend of hers who is also Russian, but she never got to introduce us. Then, two summers ago, I went to burning man and just happened to stay in the camp of this very same lady and her talented musician husband. They live in Oakland and have this amazing performance space called the Orange Room.

Artemis put together a wonderful live music event at the Orange Room the other night, that involved three solo performers. I like the way the website describes it best “Orange Room and RTFM Records present: an intimate evening concert with Steve Lawson, Daniel Berkman and Tom Lattanand. Join us for an evening of looped and unlooped, acoustic and electric strings—guitar, kora, and bass—with three great musicians: renowned looped fretless bass player Steve Lawson, multi-instrumentalist and avant-garde looped kora player Daniel Berkman, and solo guitarist Tom Lattanand.”

This was truly a unique musical experience. While I by no means consider myself to be an expert, having played piano, guitar and taking a serious interest in musicians while in high school ;) I like to think I’m not completely tone deaf.

Tom was amazing on the guitar, making me think of a mixture of Joe Satriani, Al Di Meola and Steve Vai.  The music told a story, it was up lifting and intricate, the small space created a very warm and familial feel. It provided the opportunity to really interact with the musician and the music.

Pictures Courtesy of Keith Crusher

Steve and Daniel played together and solo. One of the amazing things for me about their performance together was that they had just met yesterday.

First of all, I didn’t know what kora was, so just in case, a kora is a West African stringed instrument, with 21 strings. The mighty inter-webs taught me that this instrument most closely resembles the sound of a harp. The musician uses the thumb and index finger of both hands to play and the other fingers rest on posts secured on either side of the strings. The sound is magical, to me it sounded like a harp one moment, a guitar the next and even a flute at times.   Daniel played the kora and did a myriad of other magical things with equipment I can’t name, you can learn more about him here. By the way, RTFM is Artemis’s Label (as in her partner and her own it), how cool is that!

Steve is a looped fretless bass player. Again, my understanding of what this entails is pretty limited, but I can tell you it was very very cool. Together, Steve and Daniel created a very fluid, relaxed sound, that kind of makes you feel like you are floating in a calm ocean surrounded by perfectly clear blue sky. Very zen and calming.

Pictures Courtesy of Keith Crusher

Daniel is the guy facing you in this picture. Scroll back up to the picture of Artemis for a better angel of Steve :)

The night was amazing, you can check out a recording of it here. Let me know what you think.

 

 

 

Lemon Meringue Pie

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One of the greatest things about living in Berkeley is that I can get in my car and 45 minutes later I am here.

Napa is a magical place and with this rather dysfunctional winter, we have been able to enjoy Napa longer than usual. This trip we took a tour of the Nickel and Nickel winery. We had a charismatic tour guide and while normally neither Bug or I get into tours, the guide made this one interesting and fun.

They also have this amazing barn, that they rescued from distruction on the east coast. It was transported to CA and restored. They managed to keep most of the original wood work which pre-dates our constitution!

Nickel and Nickel was followed by a few other tasting room which was followed by dinner. We had dinner at Brassica, Cindy Pawlcyn’s new restaurant. Brassica used to be Go Fish, an amazing sushi restaurant which Cindy closed in favor of trying something new. Go Fish (now Brassica), Mustard Grill and Cindy’s Backstreet Kitchen are three of our FAVORITE restaurants and are all owned by Cindy. Brassica is cal-Mediterranean cuisine,  the highlights of the menu were the bacon raped figs, eggplant fries, lobster pizza and my lamb shank.

Of those three restaurants my favorite-ist is Mustard Grill, for one reason, Lemon Meringue Pie . Its so good, that I order it before I order anything else (they run out).  This trip, inspired me to try my hand at making Lemon Meringue Pie and as luck would have it, the recipe for Mustard Grills Lemon Meringue Pie is in on of the cook books published by Cindy.

Unfortunately,my Lemon Meringue Pie turned out a little bit more like Lemon Meringue soup. While I did manage to get the Meringue consistency correctly, I can’t say the same for the lemon custard or the crust. The directions in the book were a bit vague and I hesitated to alter them fearing the pie would loose its magic amazingness. Given a couple more tries I hope to get this right and have more than this picture to share with you.

Kale Chips

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There are very few foods that I do not enjoy. Those that I do not enjoy it’s usually a certain form of the food, not the food as a whole. Case and point, tomatoes. I do not like grocery bought fresh tomatoes. I will eat home grown tomatoes, from my back yard and tomatoes in any form other than fresh but not store bought fresh tomatoes. This post though, is not about tomatoes, its about kale.

Kale is a leafy green full of nutritious value and with a relatively high “dislike” factor on a lot of people’s scales. Kale is a form of cabbage full of fiber and vitamins, especially Vitamins K,  A  and C. A couple of times in the past few months I’ve come across people making kale chips for there kids. I love the mixture of crunchy and salty and with the added benefit of being healthy, I couldn’t resist trying it out myself.

All in all I think they are quite tasty and I think you should try some!

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Kale Chips

Kale Chips

Ingredients

  • 1 bunch of kale
  • salt
  • japanese rice seasoning
  • extra virgin olive oil

Instructions

  1. Wash the kale and dry.
  2. Rip the kale into medium sized pieces. Eye ball this part, just keep in mind that the kale shrinks as it cooks.
  3. Coat lightly with oil. I made the mistake of putting to much oil on one batch and the chips tasted very soggy and oily.
  4. Sprinkle with salt and Japanese rice seasoning. The seasoning also contains some salt so use both in moderation.
  5. Spread out on cookie sheets and bake at 350F until crispy. Mine took about 30 minutes but it can vary based on your oven.
http://www.logicallycrazy.com/adventures/kale-chips/