The Process

So I may be poised to get my first B on a test since my second go-round in school and the worst part of it is that the B may be a C. It's That Class again. And, here's the problem: it's important information. It's pretty much How To Be a Nurse (you know, in the head). Here's how to communicate. Here's how people develop. Here's what you can expect from a typical eight-year-old. What are the symptoms of anxiety? How to care. How to comfort. What the heck *is* a nurse anyways? And some of it is kind of snazzy info, too. Like nursing diagnoses. As a nurse I can diagnose people with Risk for Powerlessness, Spiritual Distress, Fear, and Disturbed Energy Field. And unlike medical diagnoses (asthma, depression) you can actually resolve a lot of the problems you diagnose as a nurse! Or, well, at least that's what they say. There's lots of things you can do for Hopelessness and, heck, you don't have to be a nurse to cure someone with Deficient Diversional Activity! And you can see things coming, too, in nursing. You can diagnose people with a risk for....Social Isolation or Ineffective Denial.

So why can't I get it straight? Why can't I focus in this class? And it may just be me having trouble. Everyone else walked out of the test looking heavenward and sighing, "That was much easier than I thought it would be." I left thinking, "Crap, I can kiss a future MSN ba-bye." And not only am I The Virtually Undisputed Queen of Calm and Quick Test-Taking (come *on*, you know me: I'm unflappable in the test world, right?) but I'm also She, Formerly of Liberal Artsdom. Heck, it's ALL about theory there. I should be getting this stuff. I got it before! Could it be that my aging brain is now all about Science and Math (uh, ok, maybe not math. We'll talk later)? Have I lost all patience for anything that is not straightforward, not linear? Could it be the D I got in psychology 20 years ago? It can't all be the miserable room and the confuso-teaching team. It can't all be the unfocused wandering from subject to subject. Some of it has to be....me. Just...Not...Getting...It. "Hi, I'm your nurse. I can take your blood pressure, but I can't comfort you because I forgot Erikson's 20 Stages of Whatever It Is That He Broke Into Stages."

Calzones

Is there any more perfect category of food than Hand Food? Ah, calzones. Put whatver you want in 'em and they say Dinner. I like olives, mozarella cheese, fresh pasta sauce (see recipe previously posted; I'm making the same thing now, but using canned tomatoes), and sauteed mushrooms. How about broccoli? I've used vegetarian pepperoni. Provolone? Carmelized onions? It's your calzone. You decide. Here's the dough. It's ripped off from Deborah Madison. I wont tell if you use store bought, but it' *so* easy to make your own!

Pizza Dough

1 1/2 cups warm water
2 tsp active dry yeast (it's about a package)
2 Tbsp olive oil
1 1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup whole wheat flour (gives it a nice toothsomeness)
3 cups AP flour and then some (up to 1/2 a cup)

Add yeast to 1/2 cup of very warm water. Set aside and let foam. It could take 10 minutes. Sometimes my kitchen is too cold and it doesn't happen and I use it anyways and, so far, the yeast has dome the right thing when asked to.

Add the rest of the water, the olive oil, the salt and beat in the ww flour. I use the dough hooks on my mixer. You could do this part w/ a spoon. Add the AP flour and mix until you get a shaggy dough. (You can do this by hand and just knead and knead until it comes together. ) Turn out onto a well-floured surface and mix, adding dough, until you get a relatively smooth, but still semi-sticky dough.

Put the dough into a lightly oiled bowl and turn it to coat. Cover it w/ a towel and allow to rise until doubled in size. It takes my chilly kitchen an hour to do this. I've started putting it into the oven after I've heated it to 150 and then turned it off and this works well. Still takes an hour.
Preheat oven to 450.

Remove dough form bowl and cut into eight pieces (you can do 6, but those calzones are monsters and will scare the children). Flatten each ball into a disc a using a rolling pin. sprikle them with a wee bit o' flour and let them rest on the counter while you prepeare the filling ingredients.

Mound filling onto half of the disc, leaving some edge free of stuff. Brush a little water on the edge, fold the top part over the filling and roll the edges shut. Do this well or your ingredients will leak all over the place. Bake until golden about 15 to 20 minutes. Brush w/ olive oil and sprinkle w/ parmesan. Your family will diagnose you with Good Dinner-making.