Maudlin Meanderings

I have been in a very low mood of late.  Actually verging on tears for several days.

It was initially hard to see why...although apparently not so much for those who commented on my recent Facebook status: Vet school is about to end.

I have two weeks left until graduation.  Two weeks.

deep breath now...


Two.

Weeks.

I have invested so much into these past four years.  More money than I care to contemplate right now; vast quantities of time and sleepless nights; most of my energy; many emotions getting swept right along...tests both literal and figurative, blood sweat and tears (also both literal and figurative)...

And then of course we come to all my friends.  I can't quite describe the bond that something like vet school gives a group of people, except to say that they are family now.  Maybe it has to do with all that blood sweat and tears, maybe spending 5 days a week for 3 years in the same classroom, maybe it was the enforced bonding time we had in the woods of Idaho before vet school started.  Spending 60+ hours a week together in the teaching hospital and depending on each other for our sanity probably has something to do with it too.  Suffice it to say that I have become very close to some amazing people.  And among my group of friends, I now count several fabulous residents and interns as well.

My entire life has been leading towards the goal of "Veterinarian."  And it is about to happen.  And then suddenly my goal is achieved, I will need to work on new goals (jobjobjobjob), and these past four years will be gone and my friends will be scattering to all corners of the country.  How do you say good bye to all that?

I haven't figured it out yet.  If anyone else has, please let me know.

These are a few of my favorite things

Gonna wake up in a smoothie...

Breakfast this morning....

Unfortunately without glorious pictures.  I need to find my camera so I can take glorious pictures of our food.  My cell phone just doesn't cut it!

In any case: breakfast this morning.  Smoothies!

In our freezer I have been saving chunks of banana (I don't like just eating banana so when I put some on toast I don't want to waste the rest) and I still had some cut up peaches and strawberries from last summer.  I also found some blueberries but I am going to use those for a different smoothie on a different day.  I dumped all these frozen fruits plus a container of non-fat vanilla greek yogurt (Lucerne- not nearly as good as my Greek Gods yogurts) and a sprinkling of flax seed meal.  I ended up having to add some milk to allow things to actually mix up in the blender- it was too thick!  If I had been thinking I would have dumped some rice or almond milk in there in order to minimize my milk intake but I was mostly just grabbing things from the fridge at that point.

End result: thick and creamy and filling and delicious.  We also each had a slice of toast (Milton's Whole Grain) topped with some margarine which Andrew claimed was the best toast in the world.

The Search for the Perfect Tomato Soup pt 1

It should be no secret that I love tomato soup.

I LOVE TOMATO SOUP.

I ate the condensed Campbell's soup as a child (and in college...although I often added chili powder at that point).  I loved the Progresso Tomato Basil in high school.  Safeway has an amazing Creamy Tomato Bisque with just enough spice to make my nose run a little bit.  And most recently I have been grabbing these little Campbell's Tomato Parmesan Bisque drinkable soups- they are great for lunches at the hospital when I sometimes only have 10 minutes to eat.  Or on a day I needed to run an errand and ended up carrying my handy-dandy soup with me.

There are just two sticking points to this handy lunch plan:

1. High Fructose Corn Syrup.  Now, as I have said in the past, I am not against this nutritionally...I am more against the pervasiveness and sneakiness with which this ends up in an appalling number of products.  
2. Cost.  These handy meals (or parts of meals- this is not enough to call lunch alone) are around $2 each.  More than I prefer to spend on something I will eat every day.  That is $10 of our weekly budget for only a portion of my lunches.

So I am launching into a quest for perfect tomato soup.  Soup that tastes just as good as what I have found in a can/cuppy thing/plastic container from Safeway but that ends up being cheaper and better for me.

This is my first attempt:

It was from Mark Bittman's book: How to Cook Everything.  This was a recent purchase and I am very excited about many of the recipes therein.  Unfortunately....this soup didn't do it for me.  It was theoretically sound.  Saute some tomato paste, then saute some onions and carrots, add in canned tomatoes, then some chicken stock (homemade- hoorah!).  Then I added some Parmesan and some plain Greek yogurt for creaminess and blended that business up.  

It looked delightful.  And I thought it tasted pretty good when I dipped my finger in to test the amount of Parmesan and yogurt I was adding.  But it just didn't end up good.  Which is disappointing.  This recipe made 5 slightly-less-than-1-cup portions for lunches plus an additional 3.5 cups which I froze for later.  And I have to admit that these will probably all end up getting dumped down the sink.  Because, unfortunately, I just don't want to eat them.

Soon I will psych myself up enough to try another recipe.  Specifically, this one, from Eat Live Run.  She claims it will win over any Campbell's condensed hold outs.  I will be withholding judgement until after the first lunch attempt!

On the plus side:

Tomato paste in a tube!  THIS IS A REVELATION!  No more using 2 tbs from one of the tiny cans and then wasting the remainder!  I will never go back...