Second Semester Schedule

Hey Everyone!

Here is a look at my lecture schedule for the next few months. If you can't read it: The Purple is Physiology 2; the Green is Anatomy 2; and the Orange is Animal Systems with a Farm Safety course (literally a separate course) built into it! Also I will have to walk Nomsa some wednesday-friday mornings if Brian happens to get scheduled for work! thankfully this first week he is off all three days and I get a break (since I walked her all break - my feet are tired haha). Do not fret about me missing lectures because they are almost always recorded so I can listen to them as soon as I can after dogwalking :) however, if technology fails I have made a few friends who would help me out with what was discussed :) As of right now I can tell NeuroAnatomy is not going to be easy! Thankfully physiology right now is sexual reproduction and I have already learnt some of it before! Enjoy!

The Protein Quandry

So I have been asked my family and many others about what I have learnt about nutrition and why I try to follow a vegan diet as best as I can; however, I hate being put on the spot and all the knowledge I have learnt from NUMEROUS documentaries and probably an easy hundred hours of research and nutrition class at UW-River Falls all just gets jumbled up and I cannot not utter a single fact sometimes. Or I can spout of a few facts but they don't really get my point across. The biggest question almost ALL plant eaters get is: how do I get enough protein? Well for this simple question I have found a really good article explaining the myth behind protein in layman's terms. It is a little long, but its a really easy read. I just wanted to provide this information for anyone who is interested or just curious about the topic. :) (Click on the title below to find the article)

The Protein Quandry

Also out of all the documentaries I have watched I highly suggest people watch Forks Over Knives. I am not asking any person to change how they eat or what they believe in any way, but there is no harm in educating yourself. Judgement and disdain stem from ignorance. Just learn some basic facts just for the sake of learning. 

I know my blog seems kind of random at times, but I want to write all about me and my life NOT just about Vet school (WHICH I STILL LOVE EVEN THOUGH ITS HARD) :) and I really hope my family and friends back home appreciate the glimpses into my doings Down Under :)

A Life On Earth

Sir David Attenborough live at the Riverside Theatre at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Center (PCEC) in Perth, Western Australia on Wednesday July 24, 2013 presenting A Life On Earth - A night never to be forgotten!!!

It started on the Friday before the show when the lady we dog walk for agreed to do my hair at her salon. I haven't gone to a salon since late 2009 and have cut my own hair since then. I haven't used box hair dye in I am not sure how long. So I got the TREATMENT! :) She died it dark red at the roots and then dark throughout to give it the most natural look possible and she cut all my split ends off which ended up being a lot more of my length that I expected. I feel so refreshed! The only problem with going to the salon is that I haven't used any synthetic chemicals and especially no plastic that are found in alarming amounts in tarditional shampoo and conditioner. I use a lye bar shampoo with only oils added in and when I need to I do a vinegar/water rinse for pH balance. Granted my hair felt sooooo soft after getting it done, but that is the plastic coating of conditioner :) Either way. It was a good experience, my hair turned out great and the lady who did it, is HILARIOUS! 

The day of the event started as any other on&off Australian rainy day. Brian went to go walk Nomsa and I walked the beagles. We then decided to eat early incase it rained again. Brian and I are getting really good at skywatching for breaks in the rain! We just walked down the street and got chinese food! Our first chinese food in Australia ;) I got a cold about 4-5 day previously and was still sick so I really couldn't taste much of my veggie stirfry in garlic black bean sauce, but Brian assured me it was delicious! :D I ate to much so I was really happy I had time to digest and then look pretty. After relaxing a bit and watching Arrested Development (One of our absolute favorite shows) Brian showered and I began to straighten my hair for the first time in Australia! Its either way to hot or to humid to have my hair down and I get all sweaty and its just not a good time.  I did the works for makeup instead of just eyeliner and mascara like normal. It was really nice to get all dolled up and go to a show! We are usually too broke or buy grownup logical things to do anything this special to us! Once we were looking all nice, we walked down the street to the bus and took it down to the train station. I GOT TO RIDE THE TRAIN AGAIN!! :) I love it, I feel like such a dork, but I really do love the train!  based on the approximate timeline online we thught the doors would open around 7pm so we got to the city at 6pm.  The venue is rightly named because it was literally right on the Swan River and right next to the train station. So an hour early was overkill, but we just enjoyed each others company and explored the city trying to dodge the rain sprinkles. We made it back to the venue close to 7 only to realize the doors were not opening and did not open until 7:40. We instead bought some hard apple ciders and got in line to purchase Sir David's book Birds of Paradise. To our suprise the book was signed by Sir David!!! :) AHHHHH I literally almost peed my pantyhose with excitement!! We also ended up buying the DVD set of Africa. We have seen a few episodes and its truely an epic series. We found one of the last remaining benches and eagerly waited for the doors to open.

I WILL SAY THIS RIGHT NOW: If you do not know who this man is, please look him up or better yet read the following:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Attenborough

On to the show! The show was amazing! It was Sir David and a host (i think Australia's ABC producer). He asked Sir David questions about how he got started in the business of film and documentaries and turned it into a 6 decade career. Sir David originally applied to be a radio talker, but didn't even get an interview. A little bit later he got a letter asking him to help get the BBC into television. He said most people did not even own nor did they know what a TV was and there was only two channels. In between questions Sir David would share funny stories and clips. Sir David originally started out helping produce an animal show  where the london zoo would bring in an animal, put it on a table and explain about it. Sir David said that was stupid and you can't learn about animals without seeing the habitat it comes from and how it behaves. He said it was not enough just to say this is an armadillo and it normally acts like this! haha And from there BBC sent Sir David to around Indonesia to film a Komodo Dragon which was purely legendary and an animal Sir David had read about as a kid and was always intrigued. When him and his camera guy (ONE CAMERA GUY) got to one of the islands the pilot landed on a small grass airstrip. He said it was too mushy and the wet season was there and he would not fly back for 4 months. So Sir David said OK, see you in 4 months and found a guy to take them to the small island of Komodo by boat. The Best part of this story was that his wife had no idea if he had landed or when he was coming home. Overall, Sir David was HILARIOUS!! The whole crowd was laughing the whole night!! The clips they showed were phenomenal and it was awesome to watch the progress of film. After a few years of traveling and making record series for the BBC, the BBC made Sir David a producer of his  own channel. He was responsible for the whole channel and every show that went on it. However, the only way he said he would take the desk job was if he would get an anual leave to travel. On those vacation he still filmed. He only lasted in this position for 2 years or so and went back to traveling. Another fascinating question was if Sir David had pets at home. He brought home two monkeys (I forgot the breed, how aweul of a vet student am I) and they had their own room because they had a habit in the wild to pee in their hands and proceed to touch everythnig to claim it as theirs. Apparently the two were so happy at Sir Davids house that they had babies. :) Eventually he turned them all into the London Zoo. He also bought home a bunch of interesting creatures as you can imagine from all the places he has been. After just over an hour there was an intermission, where Brian and I made it to the bathrooms before the crowd - success and we refreshed our drinks and made it back before the show started again! The second half started with a few clips and then questions from the audience. They had people write in questions in the beginning and they picked 4 people to come to a mic and personally ask their question. Brian Cox, a world reknown particle physicist that works on the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva, Switzerland & also a presenter on COUNTLESS BBC productions, videod a question in: Does Sir David Attenborough have hope for humanity? His answer was exactly how I have always felt, but I am not going to get into that topic on here. :D 

The show ended with a few more clips and Sir David admitting that he is scheduled to go on yet another trip filming next year! A pacemaker will not limit this man! :) SO many funnies stories!! The show even ran over time by a minimum of 30mins. We rode the second to last trains of the night. We got rained on while waiting for the bus. Rode one of the last few busses and our walk home past the park was just slightly sprinkled and Brian made to keep our precious book covered with his coat the entire time! And he didn't even want to bring the coat! I know better! :) When we got home, we were too jazzed about the concert to sleep so I steamed some broccoli and cauliflower! So good and a great end to the night! We got home well after midnight and fell asleep super fast! 

It was a once in a lifetime opportunity to see Sir David Attenborough and I still can't believe it is real! SO UNREAL!!! :) 

 Selfies! Brian looking awesome in his Australian tie from Sherri! <3

 SO EXCITED TO GO TO THE SHOW!!!
My hair was a lot straighter before we left than at the end of the night! It was a good try though

 some lights outside of The Riverside Theatre at the Perth Convention and Exhibition Center (PCEC)

 A courtyard by the PCEC and the walk ay at the back is part of the bus station and a walkway between some of the skyscrapper buildings.

 A painted wall by the bus station exit

 Sitting inside the PCEC. Ballrooms upstairs. Bathroom to the left of me taking the photo. The Theatre is behind that orange wall and there was two mini bars as well around that corner.

 Just a view of the city from my bench inside the PCEC waiting for the doors to open!

 Some building after the show that I saw on the way back to the train station that kept changing colors. My camera is retarded when flash is taken away so sorry the pictures are fuzzy!

Kitchen Kraziness Part 2

This blog will be short and sweet! I am writing this while my internet is currently out, so by the time I am able to post this some of my comments, like dates of events, may have already come and gone - who knows! haha

My next adventures in the kitchen that were noteworthy include: Pasta sauce from scratch and my absolute favorite french dressing

Basically all I did was put some oil in the pot, sautee garlic and onion and when done threw in a whole carrot cut into decent sized chunks and one stalk of celery. I let the veggies steam and sweat while I washed my tomatoes. Next I turned the heat pretty hot. I would core a tomato, squish it in my hand so all the juices and some seeds went into pot and not on my cutting board. then I would cut it into big but manageable chunks. I would do about 2 tomatoes at a time because if you core all of your tomatoes and then squish them all and then try to cut them all up the sauce will never reduce properly. Once you damage some of the tomato skins certain enzymes are activated and you only have about 2-4 mins to cut open the tomato and get it really hot in order to deactivate those enzymes which if activated will NOT let you reduce to a thick pasta sauce and instead you'll just make tomato juice! ha OK back to my story. So once all the tomatoes were squished (which is my favorite part) and cut, I put in some red cooking wine, sea salt and peppercorns, some bay leaves, and any italian herbs I had (oregano, parsley, a little thyme, a little sugar (a little white and brown sugar) to help cut the acidity of the tomatoes and the last of my garlic powder, and then I put the lid on and let cook for awhile. Once everything was breaking down nicely I brought out my fancy immersion blender and let it turn everything into a nice paste! It is so orange because I put a whole carrot in to also help with acidity but who knew one carrot to 15 tomatoes would still turn the sauce orange! Either way It turned out delicious. When I started with the chunks of tomatoes my pot was full, then you can see the line in the picture of where the sauce was when I first blended it and then you can also see how much it reduced after cooking for about 3 hours on the lowest setting with the lid off of course because in order to reduce you need water to evaporate! The sauce turned out super thick and honestly the BEST pasta sauce I have ever had. We ate some that night for dinner, Brian added goat cheese on top and I added cilantro! :) SO good! I had enough sauce left to fill an old sauce jar to the top and put in the fridge for the next two nights meals and also enough to fill another old sauce jar a little more than half way to freeze. It only lasted in the freezer about a week and a half because it was soo good that we wanted to eat it again so soon! :) I think the real key in the sauce is the cooking wine, but that may just be chefs opinion. ;) ALSO a huge note: a lot of people have recipes for sauce making online that include blanching the tomatoes in order to skin them easier because if you do it right the skins pretty much fall right off and some people also go through the trouble of deseeding the tomatoes. I OBVIOUSLY did not do either of those things and the taste was not hindered one bit. I do understand if people do NOT have an immersion blender or do NOT want to put hot liquid into a normal blender then skinning the tomatoes will give you the best texture of sauce, but I also cooked for 3-4 hours when a lot of people try to make great pasta sauce in 40mins. This can only be achieved with the skins off I feel. Next some people think the seeds make a sauce bitter, but with all the other flavorings I added plus with the carrot and sugar cutting acidity, I am sure they probably tackled the bitterness from the seeds also! :)  Either way I encourage everyone to try and make homemade pasta sauce! Especially now that it is summer for people in the states because tomatoes are growing like crazy and have the best flavor right now so if you cook up as big of batches as you can, you can freeze it and have summer fresh pasta sauce all winter long! :) 

Immersion blender to the rescue again! My absolute favorite salad dressing! I love it so much so that I will NOT ever buy store bought dressing again. All it is: Ketchup (I found some that does not contain High fructose corn syrup, no preservatives, and no artificial dyes or flavorings), water, white vinegar (LOVE IT), lots of cloves of garlic, oil, salt, pepper and some dried onion flakes. OH and sugar! :)  I have some raw sugar and it gave this batch something a little different but I like it. Raw sugar is a cool tasty mix between brown sugar and normal white sugar that everyone has. I now actually have all three types of sugar in my cupboard (brian prefers the white sugar on his corn flakes from the bulk bins but will put raw in everything else like tea or coffee haha).

Well, thats about all I have that is food related! Sorry if this bores some people, but anyone who knew me when I was little (like my mommy) is AMAZED at how much I love to cook now since she used to have to beg me to come help her in the kitchen! It was probably more to do with the fact that I never wanted to help clean up and so I figured if I didn't help with the mess then I wouldn't have to help with the clean up ;) 

School starts on Monday, July 29th and I am sorry I didn't post more over break but I didn't do to many fun things. I basically dog walked and try to sleep as much as possible! Also the internet at my apartment has been screwy and I have had a killer head cold my entire last week of break! However, on the bright side I much rather be sick over break than during the semester! 

People Reading this on a mobile device:

On my template page for my blog my mobile blog page has a certain font; however, if I open my blog in a new tab on my iPad like I am trying to read it as a guest it shows up as cursive font and I have to refresh the screen a bunch of times before it goes to the font I originally chose.  I need to know if this is  happening to other people using tablets or iPads or iPods or any iUnit, or any cell phones!!!!! I will immediately try and fix it!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR COMMENTS! 

How do I spend my break?!?

I have been enjoying cooking! Its my absolute favorite [Aussie version = favourite] - downside --> dishes are the bane of my existence! I seriously hate them! haha

My newest kitchen toys and my absolute favorite! I got them at a store that was having a 70% sale! The immersion blender came with a food processor bowl (chopper bowl with normal blades), a pitcher with a nonslip base that can dual as a lid, a mashing leg with 3 texture settings, and a whisk leg.

The first night in my new pot I made dried beans successfully! I have done the soak/stovetop method before and the soak/crockpot method of cooking dried beans before and the texture was never quite right and sometimes downright bad! However, This time was a major success! I soaked them for 6-7 hours. Usually you do it overnight, but I just did it the morning I decided to go back to the home-wares store and buy my treasures. 

Before cooking the beans (1 1/2 cups dried black beans, soaked for a minimum of 6 hours in at least 6 cups of water) rinse and cover with fresh water. Bring them to a boil and make a stock. I added big chunks of two carrots, 2-3 stalks of celery including some of the leaves until wilty and removed them, bay leaves. do not add anything acidic or the skins will stay tough! lots of oil to keep from getting all foamy and boiling over while cooking, salt, and I added my vegan vegetable broth powder. Immediately after boiling bring down  

to a simmer and I cooked with lid on for about 1.5-2 hours.

That night I scooped some beans out of the pot and made pan-fried tofu and black bean burritos with homemade tortillas (which only takes like 20mins) with spinach, soy sour cream, corn, avocados all from the Fremantle market. Where I can get a weeks worth of vegetables (zucchini, red and white cabbage, 20 tomatoes, 10 giant carrots, bell peppers, potatoes, mushrooms, apples [favorite being Pink Lady], mandarin oranges... and lots more) all for $30-$50 MAX especially if you go on sundays with the best deals! 

The next morning I drained and separated the beans from their cooking liquid which I reserved. I then put garlic, onions, herbs, new cubes of carrots and celery with a tiny bit of oil to the bottom of the pot and put he cover on to cause the ingredients to sweat. Set Aside in a new bowl when done. Then I returned the MOST of  the beans and all of the carrots and celery to the pot, removed the bay leaves. I used a little of the stock water as I used my new immersion blender to make bean soup and added stock until desired consistency. Then while reheating I added the rest of the beans and and then onion and garlic veggie mix and BOOM soups done! With the rest of the stock liquid I put into ice cube trays and frozen. Once frozen, I put the ice cubes into a container and now whenever I need veggie broth, I have got tons ready to go! :)

My other treasures from the freo market include:

AN OWL WALLET!! 

It holds my phone, keys, change, cards, and you can see our WONDERFUL bananas! from the market as well

Next treasure is:

SO MUCH CILANTRO (AKA: Coriander apparently)! All this cilantro for only $1.40! CILANTRO IS THE BEST THING EVER!!! This takes burritos to a whole new level! :) 

Also here is a few pictures of the view from the road infront of our place:

It looks a LOT closer in real life than in the photos! Its AMAZING!! 

Keep tuned for Kitchen Kraziness part 2! :) 

First Bike Ride!

Brian and I went on our first bike ride together in Australia. We rode from our apartment north towards the Swan River which feeds into the ocean and then road along it to the West towards Freo! It was a beautiful ride, and all we know is that we were gone for at least 2 hours! My butt is bruised, but no time to rest because I need to be ready to bike to class in two weeks time! AHH

I hope you enjoy the pictures!

Brian's bike has a sticker that says FRONT! Just in case the handle bars were not enough of a clue!

 A random little reserve we found! Locked our bikes to the fence and explored a bit! But in all seriousness, almost every 3-6 blocks there is a park. Usually it is a playground or footy field (AFL - Australian Football league, I still don't understand it fully. It is like rugby but not like rugby, and soccer is called soccer here so that is not an issue) However, this park was like a little nature reserve! So cool!

 We saw this sign upon exiting the park and riding to another entrance haha Big lizard things - Brian has seen one, but I haven't yet

 

 We are at Troy Park and we were trying to get the city behind us! It didn't work! Instead you can see the footy field (OH YEA! All of their footy fields or soccer fields are EXTREMELY FLAT!!! and I mean EVERY park with a field is soo flat! I don't think the kids here understand how good they have it! No twisted ankles for them!) and behind the footy field is the Swan River. If you google maps (Perth) you can see how BIG swan river really is!

 Attempt #2 - still a fail

 You can see the footy poles now and the city just not us! I gave up! ha

 THE PICTURE ABOVE AND THE ONES BELOW ARE A PANORAMIC FROM WHERE WE WERE STANDING IN THE PICTURE OF US ABOVE!

This is at a new park farther down the swan river, closer to freo! My mommy always taught me to take pictures of the info signs or you will never remember later!

 You can see the city center just barely behind the trees!

 We found a little hideaway right off the bike path!

 bike path is on the other side of fence you can barely see

 The city!

 FISHY!

 A black swan couple swimming in the river that is named after them, the Swan River

 look how tan he is compared to me! I gotta get out more apparently!

 cutest little bench water is so high because it rained like buckets the day before!

 we found this carved in a tree right behind the bench, NO WE DID NOT DO THIS, but thought it was fitting to find our initials! <3

 Yet another park along the bike path with a fancy cafe and ice cream shop! This is where decided to turn back for the day

 little piers built like boats

 A sand bar! I was sooo tempted to walk out on it, but I knew how cold it was from our earlier stop!

I can't wait for our next adventure!