Golden Weekend

There's a thing in residency - the elusive Golden Weekend.

For many of our rotations we work 6 days a week, sometimes longer stretches, but it's definitely not common to have both weekend days off.

Thus, it's called a Golden Weekend. Depending on your program, working both weekend days might be a Black Weekend, and a regular 1 day on, 1 day off might be Gray or Brown, but we pretty much just use the Golden terminology.

Anyway, for the first time in several weeks at least - maybe 3 months? (not including vacation) I actually had a golden weekend built into my schedule.

When I'm working a schedule that gives me regular weekends, I think I don't appreciate them as much as when they are few and far between, but this weekend I really tried to make the most of it.

There were board games, breakfast out, hiking, biking, Church, long dog walks, some TV, a ton of cooking and Game of Thrones on Sunday with an ever-expanding group of friends, which makes it so much more fun.

I almost feel as though I've had a vacation.

So, sad though it was to return to work, I think I spent the time well and that made it feel easier to go back.

Breakfast at the Grove: Oatmeal with Strawberries

John got the pancakes. Apparently they were awesome.

PBJ flatbread on our hike.

And Luna feeling like we are so lame, why are we not still walking?

It's just about time to start another day, happy (belated) Easter and I hope that you had a good weekend too.

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal

A Breakfast Tale

John arrived to visit on Thursday, just in time for me to fall asleep. When I saw him after my day of work on Friday afternoon, I asked how the morning was. The exchange went like this:

Him: "It was all right."

Me: "Did you find something good for breakfast, I know I don't have any cereal."

Him: "Yeah...you don't have any breakfast food. Not even oats."

I proceeded to open my pantry to discover it was very true, I was out of oats. I vaguely remember back to sometime before Thanksgiving, running out of oats. However, I've literally eaten a banana and a Luna Bar for breakfast every day for a couple weeks (with the exception of when I was in Oregon, eating pie for breakfast). This isn't for lack of oats - it's because my stomach's just not awake at 4:30, so it has to be quite portable, and eaten between seeing patients or I'll be starving through rounds - more like 6:30. It didn't even occur to me that I hadn't bought oats. 

It's been a while since I put up a proper food post. This isn't really a recipe - just a favorite easy oatmeal combination I choose to write about in celebration of the fact that I actually got to eat a real breakfast today. I had to round, so was still up at 4 am and in by 5, just in case the list had blown up over night. However, we finished rounds (complete with a little teaching) in time for me to eat breakfast by 9 am, so I held out for some proper oatmeal. 

(Definition - "Blowing up the list": v. When the list of patients to be followed/taken care of on the service in the hospital gets significantly bigger in a short period of time.)

Chocolate Peanut Butter Banana Oatmeal

1/2 cup rolled oats + 6 oz. soymilk 

Microwave 2-3 minutes. Keep an eye on it, mine start to bubble over the sides around 2 minutes. 

Add:

5 g Ghirardelli Hot Chocolate Powder (your choice of flavor - it would probably work with other hot chocolate powders too, but Ghirardelli's pretty much the only widely available vegan one.)

 1/2 banana, sliced

1 tbsp peanut butter

Stir, let sit a few minutes to cool/thicken.

Enjoy like it's the last non-bar breakfast you'll eat for a week. 

Far too hungry to plate it pretty. Pretty okay with it. 

What do you forget when it gets busy?

Breakfast Date: Carolyn's Cafe

When Boyfriend visits he often brings his own cereal. He's a bit of a cereal fiend. If we go out near a grocery store he'll buy some regular milk; otherwise he's willing to use my soymilk.

Unfortunately when he arrived to visit on Thursday night I was completely out of milk, and by this morning, we hadn't yet purchased any. Problem? No. Actually I love going on breakfast dates with him, they've just become much more infrequent since I became a vegan. Pancakes, waffles, french toast, omelettes, all things of standard out-to-eat breakfast past. 

However, turns out most places make great oatmeal with water, and breakfast dates are on the upswing again.

So this morning brought us to an out-of-the-way Redlands breakfast place: Carolyn's Cafe

It was cheery, great service. I loved the quilts on the walls. Very cozy diner feel - I'm not really that much of a fan of quilts as decor in my personal style, but here it fit. 

Coffee for both of us. John got the coffee cake, which came with glowing Yelp reviews, and a side of potatoes. The coffee cake was certainly decadent - swimming in butter. I didn't try it but John liked it pretty well.

For me, oatmeal with brown sugar which came in a combo with fruit and coffee for $6. Yes please. I took out all the strawberries and sliced them into the oatmeal with my spoon. 

I would definitely come back here. 

And finally, guess what I got recently with an extensive stash of old Borders gift cards? (They're going out of business - gotta use them now!)

I hope you're familiar with Sarah's blog - and this book is just more of the awesomeness. She's also from my hometown in Oregon. 

In an extension of my love for Veganomicon, Latin flavors from one of the co-authors. 

And knowing very little about raw food, I picked a user-friendly book I could learn from. 

So much cooking in my happy future.

The Day I Ate Out 3 Times

...and also saw 5+ wedding venues.

I'm visiting John in Irvine this weekend and we've been trying our best to find a place to get married. I've lost count of the venues we've seen, but I know there were at least 5 yesterday. Of course, all the venue hunting requires some fuel.

I like visiting Irvine because it's so close to the coast and there's a lot to do out here, but there is an unfortunate drawback to John's apartment. He lives with roommates who are perfectly nice, but through some inexplicable force of chaos, somehow they leave his kitchen a constant, sticky, mess. John's one of the cleanest men I've ever met and any space he's in charge of is going to look awesome, so I know it's frustrating for him too.

It's literally not safe to walk barefoot through it. I don't even want to think about cooking. We'll sometimes prepare breakfast (with dishes he keeps safe in his cupboard, separate from everything else) but we pretty much eat out when I'm here.

So that brings us to yesterday. It can be a challenge to eat out vegan, but I would say we made some good discoveries:

Breakfast: Oatmeal at Sidestreet Cafe in Costa Mesa. It's a casual atmosphere, lots of signage on the walls and different types of people. The three women next to us were chatting away about one night stands like an episode of Sex and the City. Apparently her best intimate experiences were not with either of her long-term relationships. I'm not sure that's something I wanted to hear, at least before coffee. Service was good even though it was really busy, and I really appreciated that my coffee mug was very attentively refilled. The oatmeal is made with water (vegan-safe) and comes with banana, brown sugar, raisins and milk (though I told them I didn't need the milk). I ordered a side of berries instead of toast. And coffee. Always coffee.

French toast for John.

Post-Breakfast our venue hunting led us on a tour of California beach cities. We drove through Long Beach Port, and a ways up the coast, stopping a couple places until we met up with some college friends for lunch.

The port. 

I love bridges. Not as much as John though. Every time we see a good one he makes sure I take a proper look.

[source]

Redondo Beach Historic Library

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Long Beach Museum of Art

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Wayfarer's Chapel (Beautiful, but won't work for us. Too small/not a reception site as well.)

Lunch: Eduardo's Border Grill. Grilled vegetable salad. I wasn't so sure about the ingredients in the dressing so I kept it on the side and just used salsa. 

It was great to catch up with some friends, and post-lunch we went to see a few more sites.

Did we find our wedding venue? Hard to say at this point. 

This house has a tennis court - on a cliff. What?

Somehow on the way back we ended up on a driving tour of LA's tourist spots. Sunset, Rodeo Dr. etc. When we got passed by a red Ferrari, I wasn't fazed, but I did wish I had at least washed my car. 

Dinner: Somehow with the amount of traffic we hit, it was past 8 pm before we made it somewhere for dinner. We ended up at Diamond Jamboree, which was craaazy crowded and contains almost entirely Asian restaurants, all of which had lines out the door. We picked Tokyo Table, a Japanese restaurant with a substantial sushi menu, but also many other options. The waitress was pretty knowledgeable about what could be made vegan. 

Genmai tea, edamame to start, and stir-fried udon noodles with homemade tofu in the vegetarian ginger sauce with extra vegetables. Beef yakisoba for John. We both saved half of these enormous plates for later. 

The homemade tofu was amazing. We agreed it was the best tofu we'd ever tasted. 

This table was so cool. We got to sit next to each other instead of across even though it was just a little booth.

I'm happy with the food we found, but it was honestly a relief to just make some breakfast on our own this morning. Especially given my dietary preferences, eating out at every meal starts to feel like too much.

And now we're trying to get some studying in at a Starbucks. I have my surgery exams starting in just a week, and I certainly have lots to learn. It's a little overwhelming, but I'd best go study something today.


Have a southern California wedding venue suggestion for me? I'd love your input. 


How do you feel about eating every meal out?