Household Scissors

Ah. The quarter is over except for two pesky finals (pharm and theory). I'm not going to let two tests stand in the way of relaxing and, even as I say that, I lie. (Major aside that is the side effect of end-o-quarter brain malfunction: one of my favorite Dr Seuss stories is from the Sneetches book,What Was I Scared Of? and one of my favorite Seuss stanzas is from that story:

I said, "I do not fear those pants
With nobody inside them."
I said, and said, and said those words.
I said them. But I lied them.

Tonight it was antivirals and antifungals, the -virs and the -azoles. Brain malfunction: I love the words "reverse transcriptase".

So, my last week of clinicals. My patient was very sweet. I learned "Quantas dolor?" and felt for the first time that I was making a difference for someone when I put lotion on his very dry lower legs. And then, rumor had it, someone was having their wound vac changed (Yes, wound vacuum). Silently, I slipped into the room and about 8 other silent white-clad students were there. We had, the previous week, been very disappointed to have missed the insertion of a nasogastric tube and we were eager to see something a little more... learnable than a bed bath or giving patients medications with a spoon.This fella had a giant wound on his arm (I thought: That's quite the booboo). Polaroids of said wound were drying on the bedside table. And the nurse starts prepping the materials to cover the wound. I turned to the person next to me, "Are those....household scissors that he is using to cut that foam?" and someone asked, "Uh, are you keeping a sterile field?" Anyways, layers of stuff went on the huge booboo and the machine was started, schloooooop, and we went back to helping our patients shower or hiding out and chatting in the staff room.

So, wound vacs and household scissors aside...breadsticks. They're a good thing. I was up for snack week at my son's school and, um, that whole brain problem thing, I'd forgotten. So, what do you make when you have to give a group of kids a nice snack. Right! I though mini muffins, too! But, alas, very little sugar and no sugar-y stuff except malt syrup from my failed pretzel making experience (sigh). So, I did breadsticks. You could roll these breadsticks in anything: nuts, seeds, herbs, cheese, cinnammon and sugar (um, not all at once) and you'd be set. I did a little bit of cheese on some, but, sprinkled most of them with a little bit of salt before putting them in the oven and that was delicious.

Breadsticks, basic recipe

Package of dry yeast
2 1/2 cups warm water
2 Tbsp softened butter
Tbsp sugar
2 tsp salt
6 cups (plus) AP flour
topping of choice

Put warm water and yeast in a large bowl and let sit for 5 minutes. How warm is that water? It should be water that you would like to take a bath in, but your kids would say, "It's tooooo hot!" Add the butter, sugar half the flour and the salt. Using dough hook, mix until combined and add the remaining flour and mix until smooth but sticky. Turn into oiled bowl and cover with clean kitchen towel (notice that recipes ALWAYS specify clean as if we're filthy heathens who would use a damp, dirty towel) and let rise until doubled (an hour, about). Turn dough onto lightly oiled surface and divide into 50 to 75 pieces (it's up to you). Roll each piece into a 10 inch snake (ok, I did mine randomly as you can see in the picture. It was late plus the whole brain problems). Scatter your topping of choice over work surface and roll the snakes over it. Place snakes on a parchment covered cookie sheets. Cover and let rise for 35 minutes. preheat oven to 400 degrees and let snakes rise for another 10 minutes while the oven preheats. Bake for 15-20 minutes until golden and yummy.