Ladies Night!

My local Tea Connection here in Recoleta has a Ladies Night, where they give you a 15% discount AND 5% of the proceeds goes towards women's groups via www.mujeres2000.org.ar.

This was made even sweeter by the fact that there was phad thai* on the menu!!! My first taste of asian food in South America, and while my photos didn't turn out well, the phad thai was delicious! Very unlike phad thai in the US though with corn, peas, and red onions. I also enjoyed a tasty berry iced tea. While ice is a rarity in other parts of BA, this place makes super icy iced tea. Perfect after a hot and humid run.

This might be the best addition to my UWorld QBank studying yet!

I love Argentinian food, but this phad thai was a real treat!

*spelled "phad" thai because that it how it was spelled on the menu :)

El Ateneo

I'm so sad I forgot to bring my camera today!

After a nice walk along Santa Fe, with some window shopping of course, I stopped at El Ateneo. El Ateneo was an old theater where many of BA's greats performed, and now it still has its original bones but has been made into a wonderful bookstore. I had a terrific lunch at the cafe, which is where the stage used to be.  I ate a delicious fugazzetta, that was amazing with some hot tea on this stormy day. Fugazzetta reminds you of Argentina's Italian heritage, with a BA twist. It's a rich cheesy pizza with onions and oregano.

El Ateneo

A replica of the fugazetta I had for lunch

Me in El Ateneo previously

Tea Connection

Tea Connection is a great place around the corner. Enjoyed a delicious chai there on Friday, will definitely return!

Hoy

I had a wonderful time in Recoleta this morning. Starting with te con leche y tres media lunas en La Biela. It was quite an affair!

 Afterwards I perused the Buenos Aires Design Center and the National Museum of Fine Arts

Just a few blocks from where I am staying, was Evita's home in the city. 

Ciao!

Weekly Goods

Attempting to get back in the blogging groove, here are a few highlights of last week.

A good movie...
La Misma Luna
A wonderful movie directed by Patricia Riggen about a boy and his mother.  An enticing summary can be found here. Spanish with english subtitles, so a great movie for improving your spanish language skills as well. It's also called Under the Same Sun. Watch the movie trailer for yourself.

A good song...
Pure Imagination
A hauntingly beautiful song remade by Fiona Apple. This is the song behind Chipotle's latest advertisement, The Scarecrow.

A good book...
The Thoughtful Dresser
A novel by Linda Grant taking a closer, and more serious look into our love of fashion. She intertwines many wonderful bits of fashion history, from Chanel to Christian Dior's New Look, while telling moving stories of the power of fashion and style in the face of of atrocities against humanity. Makes me like fashion even more then I did before. Quick and easy read, if you like fashion at all, this book is for you.

A good eat...
Boulevard
After making a reservation 3 weeks ago, we finally had dinner at Boulevard. If you are up for a gourmet meal, wonderful ambience and the best halibut I've ever tasted, Boulevard is where you should eat. Chef Nancy Oakes lives up to expectations, now I want to check out her other restaurant in town, Prospect.

A good talk...
ACA Town Hall Meeting 
I attended Stanford's Affordable Care Act Town Hall Meeting today. The guest speakers were Congresswoman Anna Eshoo, California Secretary of Health & Human Services Diana Dooley, and Stanford Pediatrician Paul Wise. Enrollment in "Covered California", our health insurance exchange begins next week. Thus why House Republicans are all in a fit this week. Diana Dooley did an excellent job breaking down the 3 legs of the ACA, the delivery and finance reform, prevention and wellness aspects, and expansion of coverage. My favorite quote from the event was via Anna Eshoo, "We love our history once it's been made, but we seldom embrace the fact that we're making it". Let's hope that with the bans on lifetime insurance caps and discrimination based on pre-existing conditions that health care stops being the number one cause of bankruptcy in the US.

A good run...
Palo Alto Moonlight Run
Stanford Med came out in full force, fundraising over $6k for our free clinics in honor of former Dean Phil Pizzo, aka Marathon Man and one of my idols. I entered the 5k race, and wasn't going to push myself, because I strained my calf earlier in the week (yes injuries still mar my existence). But, when the gun went off, I couldn't help myself and I went for it. The sheer joy of racing was felt in every ounce of my being. I was grinning from ear to ear for at least the first half of the run (don't worry shortly after I started to feel like I was going to die from lactic acid). Seriously though, such a joy to be out there with everyone. Racing is a spectacular feeling! Even though I was about 200 people back and took a solid 5 minutes before we were going faster than 10 min/mile pace, I somehow managed to win my age division? I didn't even know this until my advisor emailed me saying she picked up my medal for me. Sure enough, I am now in possession of a blue ribbon medal! A surprising highlight. I think I can run a pretty good 5k in the upcoming year. So here goes nothing...

Ok, first post in two months, have to start somewhere. This was certainly a good week, hopefully I"ll have something worthy of posting soon. Pass along any "goods" from your week.

Bon Voyage!

Check in went smoothly with XL airlines. Everyone was wishing me a happy birthday and it brought smiles to the employee’s faces to know that I would be celebrating in Paris! My Osprey Farpoint 40L bag zipped up nicely just like a duffle bag. I had to check it because XL has stringent carry-on limits. 5kg or less, which fortunately for me, is enough for all my electronics, which include my iphone, kindle, canon cybershot, canon DSLR with telephoto lens, and this MacBook Air I’m typing on. I’m officially a flashpacker. Once I was safely past security, as a farewell to San Francisco, I indulged at Firewood Cafe with clam chowder in a sourdough breadbowl. Yum! Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Finals is on, I hope LeBron and Miami loses, mostly for the sake of Jon’s sanity.  Au revoir San Francisco! 

A Rant about Foodies

I was going to add a fifth reason to why I joined a CSA, but decided to make it a stand alone blog post. My fifth reason was going to about the whole environment and health part of joining a CSA. However, I have mixed feelings about this. I really don't like things that get overhyped, and there is something about the "locally grown" and "sustainable" trends that irks me. Yes me, the passionate outdoorswoman and environmentalist. I think what rubs be the wrong way is that people are such zealots around here.

I used to eat a lot of fastfood, it's tasty, on the way home, and affordable. I still do, especially when traveling, because $4 at Wendy's vs a vapid overpriced salad seems like a no brainer to me at times. And sometimes after a 10 mile hike what you really want is Carls Jr curly fries and a chocolate shake.  I have fond memories of always stopping at Panda Express on the way home from backpacking in Yosemite. Plus, there are so many people that would in theory love to eat well, but it is overpriced and no one knows how to cook these danged vegetables. I have certainly come a long way from my days of microwaved cheese quesadillas. Yes, I will still keep a stock of frozen vegetables and precut sweet potato fries in my freezer at all times. No I don't have a garden that I love spending hours in. I probably won't until I'm 80. If I'm lucky I'll have an herb garden in which all the herbs don't die in under two weeks. No I don't think brussel sprouts taste amazing and should be eaten raw. I have a giant sweet tooth and rank dulce de leche next to godliness. And yes I have never seen the giant orange/lemon fruit delivered in my box this week, and my giant purple cabbage has an uncertain future, I will try the recipe but will not hesitate to dump it if it tastes bad. Now stop judging me!

The "foodie" movement is overtaken by an air of "I'm better than you are because I eat dirt" that feels elitest and pretentious. When something seems overhyped, I tend to stay away. However, that doesn't mean that I don't agree with the values and principles. Especially in the great state of California, where we have a wonderful climate to grow and harvest delicious foods, I'm going to support our locally grown produce and join the charge against the big guys. I haven't read enough to feel that I can truly speak on the health effects of pesticide-free organic growing methods, but I will say that getting a giant box of any fruits and vegetables on my doorstep is going to be a good thing for my health!

CSA

2013 marks my first foray into the world of community supported agriculture (CSA). Luckily, I live in San Francisco, the mecca of such activities. I thought joining a CSA would be a good idea based on a few reasons. 

One, receiving weekly deliveries of food for the week on my doorstep cuts out a trip to the grocery store. I actually enjoy trips to the grocery store, but decided with my medical school schedule that I like real runs more than grocery store runs. 

Two, the weekly deliveries of food removes a lot of decision-making from my daily life. I don't plan meals based on the infinite amount of ingredients at the store, instead I receive my food supply in the box, with recipes included. Doctors, even those still in training, make hundreds of decisions every day, many very small, but still using the decision-making parts of our brains. Decision fatigue is a real thing. I just became less decision fatigued. 

Three, rutabegas delivered? I cook rutabegas. Doesn't matter that I didn't know what a rutabega looked like until I googled it. I have an easy recipe and 2lbs of rutabegas- it will be done. I like the fact that being part of a CSA forces me to try new things on a regular basis. I consider this a good thing. Change is good, a few years ago I wrote a post about inertia, and how it slowly and steadily overtakes us. I could detail perfectly my Trader Joes run, what I choose in the vegetable area, my route down the isles, and thus my fridge and food stay strikingly similar week to week. Don't get me wrong, I still love my Trader Joes, and will definitely continue to go there as needed. My new weekly CSA delivery is a system that fights against this inertia and builds in change to my week.

Four, my CSA box teaches me what fruits and vegetables grow in different seasons. I've been enjoying Farmer's Markets for several years now, you learn to appreciate the revolving cycle of food during the year. When summer rolls around my excitement grows for the plentiful amounts of zucchini and peaches. As winter nears, my stomach rumbles for sweet potatoes. On a psychological level, I  find there is something good for the soul about the sensory perception of time passing. California doesn't really have seasons, so sometimes you can't really feel the change in time. It's why I put away my summer clothes in the fall, and am happy to bring out my rain boots. I like that my food expresses to me the change in seasons and a CSA helps with this. 

In the end, I sorted through the vast numbers of CSAs in the Bay Area and decided to try LolaBee's Harvest. Lolabee's works as an online store that sends a weekly harvest box, a smorgasbord of fruits and vegetables, and also allows you to add other locally grown items to your order including meats, cheeses, eggs, herbs and other fruits and vegetables as you wish. Keep you posted!

Happy Mother's Day!

After a brunch at Bistro Vida!

Dinner in Sacramento

Fun guy trio

Mezza Luna in Eugene, OR

The Crazy Norwegians

Port Orford, Oregon

Food Rules

What I liked most about Michael Pollans' compilation of advice in Food Rules wasn't the aphorisms themselves, but the creative and whimsical drawings!

Eat food, mostly plants, not too much.

Study Break!

No Diet Coke for me

I haven't had diet coke since sometime in earlier August! I decided to stop drinking diet coke after reading about the shaky FDA evaluation of aspartame, and after my own realization that I think it's very addictive. I was drinking 4-5 diet cokes a day, sometimes much more. Since going cold turkey, it hasn't been much of a problem. I drink a lot more tea and water, I focus on getting more sleep, and occasionally I'll have a regular coke when I'm at a gathering etc. It hasn't been too bad. I was so trained to pop a diet coke when I began studying, the hardest part was getting out of the routine. No more diet coke for me!

Lilly!!!'

The Burger Joint

Sweet potato fries!!!!

Divino

What do you order at an Argentinian restuarants? A lot of meat.
Definitely coming back here!!!

Five Guys

The Cajun fries are addictingly delicious.

Man cookie

Brought to you by Leslie's cupcakes