A FRIDGE FULL OF FOOD...

Holiday Recap

You know, I don't like starting this off negatively but to really make it understood how nice Christmas was this year, I sort of have to.  We haven't had a family get together among my siblings and step-father (my mother passed away 20 years ago next year) for several years for reasons of the Jerry Springer nature. Let your imagination fill in the blanks or go over to my personal blog www.xanga.com/Marie9949 for a few more details. I'm not actually interested in hanging all my dirty laundry out in the wind but, like I said, if you don't know that we didn't celebrate as a family for a while because of the negative stuff, then you can't appreciate along with me how blessed I feel this year.  This photo, taken Christmas Day, is the first one taken of me, my brothers and sister, step-dad, and the siblings' kids with all of us in the same room, in about five years, if I remember right. Actually, it may be longer than that. The last photo I remember being taken of all of us was at Carl's wedding before Isaac and Kaylee were born.

So having explained that, ta-daaaa:

The players are front row: Carl's kids Isaac and Kaylee.  Middle Row: Suzanne's daughter Sydney, Me, Suzanne, Suzanne's daughter Jordan, Back Row:  My youngest brother Carl, step-dad Tom, and the older of my younger brothers, Kenneth.

Having set that stage, I'm going to backtrack and catch you up chronologically.  My Christmas started off with our traditional girls' night party between my Aunt Miranda, Cousin Ann, and few additions: Ann's daughter Jenn, Susan's daughter-in-law Colleen, Susan's grand-daughter Holli, and Jenn's friend Julie.  No pic. Bad blogger. I slapped my own hands.

But what I did get a photo of was the loot.  Holy cow, Aunt Miranda went nuts.  A few months ago she'd asked me about the sushi making kit at Barnes & Noble and if that interested me. I told her yes, it was the kidn of thing I'd love to get  as a gift but would never probably justify buying for myself just because it would be such a guilty pleasure.  Did she get me the B&N kit? Oh noooooooooooo.  She went all Terminator and went after the good stuff in a really big dramatic way. She went to an Asian Market and look at this haul:

I damn near cried.  She is way too good to me but I so appreciate the love that's wrapped up in this box.  Wow, you know?  Sometimes a gift is just a gift but when someone knows you really well it can be a tangible emotional connection between people. 

We're going to be having some fun in January!  I'll be putting together a sushi party with Aunt Miranda and her husband, me and Gene, and James and Lynn.  What a great present.  Hell, I loved just the leaf plates. I would have been happy with those but look at all these goodies to learn a new food craft with.  I feel all broccoli inside just thinking about it. 

Let me explain broccoli. Our deaf niece Sydney (long blond hair in the pic above) can't say her "s"s  so for her whole life every time she says the word "sparkly", which is one of her favorite things for anything to be, it sounds like she's saying "broccoli".  So of course, being the family that we are, we don't let anyone get away with anything that funny without beating into the ground.  In my family, when we feel good, we feel "all broccoli inside".  Also, by the way, her Easy Bake oven was always her "cook box".  I'm thinking as foodies we need to incorporate that one someday too, don't you?

Also, along the same lines of "ohmygawd, these people love me", Jenn came up with this idea in the "save the trees" venue and her mother Ann sewed these grocery/tote bags for Aunt Miranda and I.  Isn't this cool?

I can't wait to take this with me to Mama Jean's Natural Market. And the regular grocery too. I get tired of those silly little plastic bags and then feel so guilty about throwing them away but what can you do with them? We recycle and use them but it's like they mulitply like rabbits while you're not looking.  So again, I feel very blessed by the generosity of my friends who happen to also be family.

We spent Christmas eve with Lynn and James which we've done before. None of us have kids so it's a good match.  You know what I mean. They're really lovely to hang out with. Well, let's back up and say I  got to spend most of the time with James and Lynn.  Gene's sister, Linda, called Christmas Eve morning to ask if he'd come down to the farm to get her because she was afraid she'd had another small stroke or was in the beginning of another heart attack. Scary.  He did, of course, and after spending (what seemed like) years in the ER getting a CT scan, cardiac enzymes, and an EKG, she was released.  They could see evidence of the past incidents but nothing new.  We asked several times for Linda to come stay with us for a few days but she decided to go back home but at least she'd already had plans to stay with a friend for Christmas Eve night and Christmas Day so that made us feel a little less worried. So far so good. No more symptoms, for which we're very thankful.

For dinner we had homemade Chicken Noodle Soup (click for my recipe and a prettier pic posted last September) and Parmesan/Chive rolls (recipe after the jump).  I went with soup since Lynn had already been to one big family dinner that day. It was still filling but not engorging. No pants had to be unzipped following the filming of this food pic:

By the way, as a shout out thanks for everyone who were so generous with gifts this year, see the gray sweater I'm wearing in the group family photo?  That was a gift from Lynn this year. It's gorgeous and I love it.  The necklace is from my sister and her girls. A friend of theirs who hand makes jewelry made that and a matching bracelet for me called "Winter Ice". Just beautiful.  James, wicked twisted sense of humor that he has, just like us, btw, send off to the national mint and gave us a poster made of actual uncut dollar bills.  Now that's just sick in a way that you have to smile, isn't it?  That's bloody funny.  Can't wait to have it framed.

Christmas Day was all about preparing for my brothers and sister to come over in the late afternoon, and yes of course, Gene's sister was invited too but she declined.  Since this was the first year we were getting together in a while I wanted to make everything be very special.  The tree was jam packed with presents for the four kids and I wanted everyone to have some favorite food of theirs like mom used to make for us when she was alive, although I also wanted to not completely wear myself out since I had to be at work the next morning at 6am.

Here's what I ended up with:

Turkey (gift from my hospital) and Roast Pork (gift from my sister Suzanne's hotel) sandwiches on home-made white and parmesan/chive rolls:

Pepperoni bread for my niece Jordan--her favorite appetizer (recipe after the jump):

Good old WOBAT stand-by spinach dip for Carl and Suzanne:

And then there was also a variety of chips, cheese & crackers, summer sausage, and finger foods like that, just a big appetizer party gone all Christmas.

For desserts we had Gene's favorite pies: Old Fashioned Buttermilk (recipe after the jump) and Pecan. 

I have to rat Gene out though. We cut one of the buttermilk pies on Christmas Eve so when I was looking for the half pie the next day, Gene's response was to look at his toes like a four year old and mutter "Well, you didn't fix me any lunch."  He ate half a flippin' pie for lunch, which if you knew him wouldn't surprise you at all. What might surprise you is the fact that he's 6' tall and weighs 180 lbs, not 400 lbs like he should considering he ate a half a flippin' pie in one sitting. But it's Christmas, right? What the hell. I laughed and went on. Thankfully it's taken him three days to eat the last half of the pecan pies.

Also for dessert I made peanut butter fudge for Dad and Kenneth, always their favorites. My family has never been a huge chocolate craving bunch, we're more of a white chocolate or peanut butter fudge group and mom always made it for us.  So that was one of our memory treats, along with these cookies that the little kids had made the night before for Santa. Gee, Santa must have gotten full. They made tons of these and he didn't eat them all. Wink Wink.  So we all enjoyed them.

I feel very full of both food and blessings this year. Merry Christmas to all, and my we have a bright shiny happy New Year!

(for recipes, click on the continuation. Starting Monday I'll get back to normal with Doctor's Kitchen Monday, which will also be known as OHMYGAWD, We're Back on Our Diets and not a second too soon)

Viva Las Vegas!

And finally...my trip and food report on last week's respiratory convention trip to Las Vegas. The respiratory convention and presentations parts were fabulous, the food part..eh, not so fabulous but it's not Vegas's fault. I let my system get all out of whack from the beginning and ended up eating mostly Pepcid all week. Oh well. Such is life. Great way to stay on a diet.

We all managed to get through our presentations with no one wetting themselves or dropping to the floor into the fetal position--hey, don't laugh. We, being all newbie therapists, were terrified of embarrassing ourselves or our program directors.  But everyone did great. I'm so proud of my class. Not only are they good people, they're a smart group of people with basically even more b***s than brains when the need arises. :-)

Our program directors told us later that they were told that we held our own against therapists who've been presenting projects for years.  That's the biggest compliment we could have gotten--we fit in!

A few pics of the conference (Las Vegas Convention Center)...

The official opening of the 52nd American Association for Respiratory Care conference.  In the upper left hand corner are about five of my classmates and our program director. 

Group pic of all but three of us immediately following our presentations:

Yours truly, along with Doug our program director, and Rachel:

The whole thing was an incredible opportunity to speak and be published by the national association.  I'm still flutterbugged every time I think about it.  Once in a lifetime. Or not if I work hard.  I'm now very pumped up about research, seeing respiratory care in the big picture, and about writing more and publishing within the field, whether that's research or articles for general consumer magazines. One of my big goals for 2007 is to publish more respiratory articles in general magazines. I have one credit for an article about asthma for a children's magazine but I'd like to expand that into the adult market for more in-depth pieces.

And now for the just for fun pics...us in front of our black hummer limo we took from the airport to the MGM, running the strip and hanging out of the sunroof snapping pics along the way--of course:

And a bunch of us in front of the Christmas tree in the Conservatory of the Bellagio:

Sorry to disappoint but no beefcake photos of Dr. Respiratory Love, Chris, from the trip although I do have this one of him being...well..basically himself:

And this one of him trying on the jacket I bought at the d.fine men's store in the Bellagio for Gene's Christmas:

Great jacket, eh?  It's crushed suede and looked even better in person.  Chris wanted to be put into Gene's will to inherit it but, unfortunately, Gene's arms are longer than Chris's and the jacket had to be returned. Bummer. Now Gene gets a dvd for Christmas instead.

Now, we're up to food stories. Let's see...what happens when you get completely out of your sleeping and eating routine to the point where you're walking around scoping out where the nearest bathrooms are in case the sudden urge to upchuck hits you. And gee, that's even without the stereotypical aid of cocktails.

I would have loved to have eaten at Joel Robuchon at the Mansion (since we were staying right there at the MGM) or even at L'Atelier, or heck, even Emeril's or Pearl, and that's just in our own hotel.  But it didn't happen. Between my stomach being upset almost constantly the entire time we were there and the fact that this particular trip wasn't a high dollar budget affair, I was lucky to suck down a boring piece of cheese pizza once in a while or even enjoy the $50 Benihana meal. But let's be honest, Benihana was fun but not because of the food. I can get the same japanese hibachi meal here in town for the half the price. It was fun to be out with my friends:

(Chris, me, Mechelle, Rachel)

(Trish and Aaron)

Another night we investigated the mythical cheap Las Vegas Prime rib dinner--and found it!--for $6.95 at (Bart Simpson would be so proud) The Dam Restaurant inside the Hooter's Casino across the street from the MGM:

They said the prime rib was okay, not bad or great, but worth the $6.95 (not sure what that means exactly but you can figure it out for yourself).  I, being sick (have I whined that enough yet?) to my stomach choked down some of the worst chicken noodle soup I've ever tasted in my life. I didn't even take a photo to remember that nightmare by. Just in the big questions of the universe way--how in the hell do you screw up chicken noodle soup? I would never have guessed that was even possible but let me assure you from personal knowledge, not only is it possible, it's scarier than any novel Stephen King ever wrote.

But we did have some good Dam Nachos delivered to our table by our personable waiter, Trevor:

But let's not pretend I didn't overcome my queasy stomach to imbibe a little either. Immediately following our convention presentations, Rachel and I and others from our group ran to the Star Trek themed restaurant inside the Hilton to share yummy appetizers and the goldfish bowl-sized Borg's Sphere, which is basically a Long Island Tea with some kind of green something and dry ice to make it bubble over.  There, we basically recapped the last few hours and let our adrenaline run out all over the table and each other.  Hopefully we were fun without being too obnoxious to our fellow patrons.

With my sincerest apologies to my homeboys Joel Robuchon, Bradley Ogden, Wolfgang Puck, Thomas Keller, and Emeril, I have to admit that my favorite meal in Vegas was at Quark's.  You'll have to forgive me if I say it was "out of this world".

What Happens in Vegas...will be blogged about when I get home

Awhile back I mentioned that my program director for respiratory school turned our last semester research projects into the AARC--American Association for Respiratory Care--and that all five of our projects were accepted to be presented at the national convention in Vegas this upcoming week, which is a big deal.  My understanding is that more projects came out of our school than anywhere else in the nation, except one other school out west. That's great for us. We did work hard, but I think that says fantastic things about our program and clinical directors.  A big shout-out and Thank You to Doug and Aaron!  Our research was also published in the December issue of the AARC medical journal.  We're very excited and a little embarrassed now about all the complaining and whining we did back then considering that work has paid off into such a great opportunity. 

For most of next week about a dozen of us, 2-3 people representing each project, will be staying at the MGM but running all over Vegas.

Yes, Chris, aka Dr. Respiratory Love, aka Captain Respiratory Man, aka Red Fox, will be there. As a matter of fact, we're picking him up on the way to the airport so he won't have to pay a fortune to leave a car out there. Gene will drop us off and pick us up. 

Today is all about the packing. I'm organized and have my list so armed with that and a little luck I won't forget anything important--like my exhibit poster!  And hopefully I'll return with lots of great food, and otherwise, stories and pics of our adventures.

By the way, here's my abstract.  We basically manually measured the amount of air trapped in the lung at the end of expiration (particularly useful when ventilating COPD patients) and compared that to the high falutin' internal computer measurements of the vent itself.  The result?  The vents are extremely accurate.  We live in an incredible world of medical technology, folks.

 

Comparison of Auto Peep Readings and Measurements on SIX Ventilators

Glenna Muse RRT, Terry Glaubitz,CRT, Rachel Myers RRT, Summer Thompson CRT

Ozarks Technical Community College, Springfield , MO

Background: Auto peep, also called intrinsic peep, in positive pressure ventilation is the residual pressure left in the alveoli at the end of exhalation caused by air trapping. Most ventilators produce an auto peep reading but we were curious as to how they compared to an external manometer reading.

Method: We set up a total of six ventilators: the Viasys Avea, Drager Evita XL, Drager Evita 4, Maquet Servo i, Puritan Bennett 840, Puritan Bennett 7200. On each ventilator we used the same circuit, test lung, and manometer. The ventilators were set up in pressure control mode with an inspiratory pressure of 25cmH2O, 0 set PEEP, and inspiratory time 1.5 seconds. Only the respiratory rate was varied in the testing. Peep was read from each unit at the same time it was manually measured with the manometer. Each set of tests were performed a minimum of three times until the results were at least duplicated, if not triplicated, for legitimacy.

Results: The ventilators ranked, in order of percent difference from the manometer readings: Maquet Servo I with a total percent difference from the manometer reading of 7%, Drager Evita 4 of total percent difference of 9%, Drager Evita XL total percent difference of 9%, Puritan Bennett 840 total percent difference of 12%, Viasys Avea with a total percent difference of 12.5%, and Puritan Bennett 7200 with total percent difference of 16%.

Conclusion: Comparing the six ventilators using the mechanical manometer, the Maquet Servo i produced the closest measurement of peep between its electronic interface and the manual manometer with a difference of only 1 cmH2O in Peep measurement difference. The other five ventilators, while having a greater difference between the manual and electronic interface readings, in most cases produced differences of only 1 - 2 cmH20 between the two readings.

          

Everyone think good thoughts for us especially Wednesday about 11am Vegas time and I'll let you know next week how everything went.  I also promise to bring back more recipes and incriminating photos of our favorite weekend beefcake blogging boy.