March 10, 2009
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged life, study
as i sit and avoid putting the finishing touches on my pbl presentation for tomorrow i thought i’d give an account of the med o-camp over the weekend
apparently this was the first time in 7 or so years that an orientation camp for 1st year med kids has been held, and because now the programme is at 2 unis they held the camp at port macquarie which is roughly half-way between.
after friday pbl and lectures the 23 UNE kids piled onto a roomy bus and headed down south towards beaches and warmer weather, eventually meeting up with the Newcastle kids and being overwhelmed at the 70 or so that turned up. what we all thought was bizarre was that none of them really knew who was from their cohort, after a week or so we had all at least figured out who was in our year.
one of the more bizarre moments (other than the cabin i was in having a broken lock and none of us could get in until around midnight) was that in the random allocation of people to cabins i was put in with someone studying at Newcastle who was originally from Armidale and who knows in one way or another all the people i am friends with in town.
lots of ‘get to know you’ activities, lots of swishing around in the sunshine. there was an organised sports afternoon that nearly all the UNE kids ditched (including our 2nd year mentors) to go wander around town
even though going to o-camp meant i had 2 less days for study that i really needed, i’m still really glad i went. we had a great group and i felt like i was able to get to know people better. also it cemented for me that i like that we are a small cohort, even if we are miles from civilisation.
November 4, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged food, life
life is getting organised in my new home. i now have my cats up here with me, started hospital orientation today and haven’t had any mysterious chest pain since moving.
but now in the spirit of good food blogs everywhere (quick plug for Mike Spoodle’s Ugly Food for an Ugly Dude) i decided to take you through one of my favourite meals that i can actually make without a recipe, and i took photos along the way which was relatively awkward considering my only means of doing this is with the inbuilt camera in my macbook.
the amount of photographs is entirely unnecessary, but they were entirely fun to take
so!
Spinach & Ricotta Cannelloni (serves 5-6)
ingredients:
- large bunch of spinach/silverbeet
- small onion
- 500g/1lb smooth light ricotta
- 2 eggs
- ½ cup grated parmesan cheese
- tin of crushed tomatoes (i usually buy one with garlic & oregano)
- a box of cannelloni shells
- ¾ cup grated cheddar cheese
method
- preheat the oven to 200˚C/400˚F
- cut off the white part of the spinach and give the green part a rinse
- chop up the spinach roughly as well as the onion
- sauté the onion in a large frying pan with a bit of olive oil, then add some water to the frying pan and toss in the spinach
- pop a lid on and let it steam up and wilt down. drain off the water and set aside
- in a mixing bowl, chuck in the ricotta, eggs, half the parmesan and a generous amount of cracked pepper
- pop the spinach in the bowl and mix well
- in a large baking dish, tip in 1/3 of the tin of crushed tomatoes and spread it around so it coats the base of the dish
- now here is the messy part! you can use a piping bag to fill the shells, but i find it’s easier and less wasteful to just squish in the mixture with your hands. just keep a thumb at one end to stop the filling falling straight out
- keep going until your dish is full, any spare mixture can be used to plug any gaps between cannelloni shells
- tip the rest of the crushed tomatoes over the top and spread it around, then cover with the cheddar cheese and remaining parmesan. crack some pepper over the top for good measure
- cover with foil and bake for 20min
- remove foil, turn heat down to 180˚C/350˚F and bake for a further 10min or until the cheese has gone golden and a fork easily pierces the cannelloni shells
i served mine with some garlic bread and a salad and it was friggin’ delicious
(ps. do you like my housemate’s John Deere hoodie? it’s velour!)
October 21, 2008
· Filed under Uncategorized · Tagged life
In the morning I will be heading up towards my new home for the next 5 or so years while I attempt to do a B.Med.
This will be the 8th different place I have lived in in the past 6 years. I made a deal with myself last year to stay in one place for at least 2 years, but unfortunately the disintegration of a defacto partnership ruined that idea.
I will be moving 7 hours north of Sydney to Armidale, a country town approximately equidistant to my home city and Brisbane and 2 hours from the closest beach. This is not an overly thrilling prospect for several reasons, the biggest being the distance from family and friends. My year so far has been relatively ridiculous when it comes to stressful events, so having my parents and my wonderful friends nearby has been not just handy but entirely essential.
As a result I have been delaying the inevitable, unenviable task of moving house in a variety of ways today including cooking lunch, downloading podcasts for the drive, recording myself singing, compulsively checking google reader, and of course writing a blog post.
So on that note, before I publish and reluctantly finish placing my life into boxes, I will leave you with an excerpt taken from Structured Procrastination via Nicole’s an& tumblr:
“Procrastinators seldom do absolutely nothing; they do marginally useful things, like gardening or sharpening pencils or making a diagram of how they will reorganize their files when they get around to it. Why does the procrastinator do these things? Because they are a way of not doing something more important. If all the procrastinator had left to do was to sharpen some pencils, no force on earth could get him do it. However, the procrastinator can be motivated to do difficult, timely and important tasks, as long as these tasks are a way of not doing something more important.”
