Rabbit Stew

I used to say I couldn't live in Barcelona. That was a lie. I could live in Barcelona, but I wouldn't want to for some reason. Mainly I blamed it on the food. Food is important to me. When searching for an apartment recently, I ruled out 3 perfectly good places on their lack of kitchen counter space and/or gas stoves. I keep a food journal. I update it daily. Barcelona's food isn't bad, it's just confusing and (unfairly) dissapointing. It's confusing because it sounds so appealing and usually tastes so average. How many times have you gone to Origen 99.9% for the amazing menu only to eat a bland and forgettable dinner. It's (unfairly) dissapointing because so many credible sources have called Barcelona a food capital of the world. Why? If you can't find interesting food, from unknown chefs, that tastes as good as it sounds, then it's not a food destination. So I used that argument a few times against Barcelona.

But on my tenth visit, I changed my mind. It could have been the Ducki rides, and nothing more. I have a suspicion, though. It might be that I'm beginning to like the food in Spain more than I'm willing to admit. When I returned I had a disproportionate amount of food photos. I must have forced my Dad to gain at least a few pounds on the tapas bars in Sevilla alone. And the two afternoons we spent in Boqueria completely undermined my complaint about the lack of options for grocery shopping. Even the market in Gracia is impressive. I made a rabbit stew with its bounty, and the only thing lacking was David's ovenless kitchen. So maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I just need more time to cook. Too bad it's running out.








My Rabbit Stew:

1/2 pound pancetta, 1 or 2 whole rabbits cut into serving portions, 1 cup red wine, 2 tablespoons olive oil, 2 medium onions, 1 leek and 1 fennel bulb thinly sliced, 4 carrots diced, 4 potatoes chopped into large pieces, 2 cups vegetable stock, 1 bay leaf, 1 teaspoon fresh thyme, 3 anchovy fillets, 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, 16 oz. can whole tomatoes broken into pieces with fingers, 2 ripe tomatoes chopped. Parmesean.

1. Brown pancetta (or meaty bacon) and rabbit in skillet. Remove and set aside.
2. Deglaze skillet with red wine. Add oil as soon as wine begins to steam.
3. When oil and wine are hot, and onion, leek and fennel and sautee until soft.
4. Add carrot and potato, stock, bay leaf, thyme, and pepper. Cover and cook on low for 30 minutes or until vegetables are soft.
5. While stew is cooking, heat anchovy fillets in their own oil on low until they can be broken up and made into a kind of paste with the back of a spoon. Add balsamic vinegar and canned tomatoes. When hot, add to stew along with the fresh tomato.
6. Remove bay leaf and return rabbit and pancetta to stew and simmer until rabbit is cooked through.
7. Serve with grated parmesean.

Drugs, Meat, and Mountains

A week can last a long time. Here are my suggestions for having the longest week ever:

Start by crossing between Latin American borders and only having $50 of disposable income, except in another foreign currency. It really makes you appreciate the Euro, because when you have Chilean pesos and need to calculate into Argentine pesos, but only know the exchange rates in dollars, the moments of paying for things (which are many) last a lot longer. It also makes you wistfully think about the day in the near future when you will have a salary and wont care about how much a sandwich costs. And those daydreams are another good way to make the day last longer. Especially when you try them out in a foreign language. Fun!

Then spend 5 days of vacation studying. While the alpiners at the hostel lunch table talk about climbing Aconcagua, try to concentrate on pharmaceutical flashcards. I was lucky to meet a considerate fellow who found out what I was doing and decided to join in by bringing out his mountain rescue drugs and quizing me. At the time it was a welcome distraction, but it really did help when I took the test.




Emily took another sort of test when she ate a steak for the first time ever. The Argentine's watched her steak greedily as she chewed the first bite for a whole 10 minutes. Then one of them popped up from the table and decided to help her cut properly: "uno para ti, y dos para mi." That's not quite the look of appreciation on her face.



After a long week of studying and meat chewing we went back across the Andes, by bus of course, and found out the meaning of a long trip home. The driver played the same regaton c.d. 113 times. Yes, I counted. No, not really. That's probably an underestimation. We arrived 3 hours late to Santiago, and wound up spending a painful couple hours sleeping on airport benches. But not until after taking our friends, the backpacks, out to dinner. La Ultima Cena.

Goodbye Chile

It's Not Chilly in Chile

There is a first for everything, and my most impressive one of this vacation in Chile is not trying the incredible lucuma desserts or having protective parents for the first time in my life (host parents in this case) or even seeing a 600 gram baby in a public hospital- nope, it's experiencing summer in January. The southern hemisphere sun penetrates even my SPF 50 sunblock, and there is no denying that life is better on the beach.


I wouldn't be here if it weren't for a nursing class, and even though it cuts down on the beach time I appreciate it because the topics are much more interesting than any undergraduate course I took. We're comparing the Chilean health care system with our own. There are many good comparisons. Despite Chile being a developing country, it has managed to acquire the health status of a developed country, with chronic preventable illness as the major health issues rather than infectious diseases. But unlike the U.S., where 50 million are uninsured, every Chilean can receive health care through their impressive (but not perfect) public health care system.


Last week I visited a rural health clinic and saw an example of aggressive preventative health care. Prevention is clearly much cheaper than diagnosis and treatment, so it serves a community with scarce resources better. Unfortunately, health promotion, education, and disease prevtion are not as lucrative for health care professionals as surgeries and MRI's. Yesterday I visited a 200 year old public hospital in Valparaiso- Carlos Van Buren- and saw how well midwives ran the show in the maternity units; tomorrow we're going to Santiago to see the university hospital and visit the school of nursing. In Chile, all nurses complete a 5 year program and a thesis exam as the entrance to the profession. They are pretty shocked when they hear that nurses in the U.S. can become licensed after an associate degree.


Overall, it's been a bit of a career directing experience. I'm anxious to return and begin nursing. If only it were summer in New York too.

Happy New Year!

"Graduation"

Thanks to the solitary efforts of Mikey B. and family, we had a graduation celebration on Saturday. It was pretty spectacular. Picture an unassuming Veterans of Foreign War Hall in Brooklyn full of nursing students, tables with purple tablecloths, a buffet, an real open bar with real veterans serving drinks, and a two-man-band in the corner.




We were all excited about the results. Even Emily (she's just pretending she's not in that photo). She rounded up the Puerto Rican in the room and pulled off a little dance par-te between the tables.

While I was off partying with the chicken wings...



and trying on other people's Manolo Blahniks. They were lovely when Kara pulled them out of her purse, but as soon as I put them on I felt my heart beat faster. TACHYCARDIA, friends, tachycardia.


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Last Day of Class!

Roughly 15 months ago, I boarded a Jet Blue flight in Portland with 2 overweight suitcases and landed in nursing school.


My first nursing friend was Emily. This was back in the dark days before we had ever had a clinical, and months before we became roommates.



Now we're practically done. Looking back, here is my short list of things I will miss (read, not bring with me into my new life as a real nurse) about nursing school:

-Purple polyester scrubs. Above you see Emily ironing on her NYU patch. The patch I will really really miss. Especially since I only wore mine for about 3 months.

-Studying nursing interventions for 100 of the worst illnesses and then fearing that I have contracted every one of them.

-Class in a Regal Cinema! I have to hand it to our dean for arranging free admission to the Union Square Regal Cinema for 95 nursing students every Wednesday in order to attend "class" because NYU ran out of large classrooms. Yeah, I saw a lot of movies that term.

-Practicing inserting foley catheters, drawing blood, and suctioning tracheostomies on a dummy. It was fun, but it's just not the same thing as doing it to a real person that can squirm and yelp.

-Signing "student nurse" next to my name on patients charts.

-Power point.

-Remembering the answer to a test question based on an episode of ER that I recently watched.

There are many more things I will bringing with me. For instance, beans n' beer nights, my beautiful black littman stethescope (stolen from work and gifted by my mother), a love of drug handbooks, and all the nursing knowledge that I don't yet have.