What's for Dinner - Creamy Mushroom Chicken

Sometimes I feel guilty for making something easy using a can of soup or some other Kraft or Campbells product. I feel like I'm cheating, like it's not really cooking, and I think the Food Network is to blame. I need to stop watching those Next Iron Chef shows where they work from such complete scratch that I wouldn't be surprised to see them kill their own chickens for authenticity and freshness.

You know what? Some damn tasty things have been made in casserole form with cream-of-whatever soups, and I'm ok with that. Yes, I'll make my own chicken stock or pasta dough when I have time, but sometimes I want to make it easy.

Creamy Mushroom Chicken

1 package button mushrooms, sliced
1 medium onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
4 skinless, boneless chicken breasts
2 tablespoons butter
Olive oil
1 can cream of mushroom soup
3/4 cup chicken broth
Flour
Salt
Pepper

Fry up the mushrooms, onions, and garlic in the butter until they're soft, then set aside.

Mix some salt and pepper into a little bit of flour in a bowl, then dip the chicken into the mixture to coat it. Brown the chicken breasts on both sides in some olive oil, them remove them to a baking dish. Put the mushroom and onion mix back into the pan, add the cream of mushroom soup and the chicken broth (pour the broth into the soup can and stir it to get all the mushroomy goo out), and stir until the soup stops looking like goo and starts to look like soup. Pour the soupy mixture over the chicken in the baking dish, and then put the whole mess into the oven for 30 minutes at 350 degrees. After 30 minutes, check the chicken with a thermometer - once it's done, add some shredded mozzarella cheese to the top of the chicken breasts and put it back in for another 10 minutes.


This was delicious over rice, but next time I will cut up the chicken into small pieces before cooking it, both to reduce cooking time and to make it easier to eat. More mushrooms would also be a great idea - one package didn't seem to be enough, but maybe it's just because we love mushrooms.

Also, I keep forgetting that I have these wonderful Le Creuset dutch ovens of various sizes that I could be using instead of transferring food back and forth between skillet and baking dish. Maybe I need to just leave those suckers on the counter so they're in my face.

Complementary Brownie Preferences

You know how some people only like the squishy middle part of the brownie pan, and some people prefer the edges?

I woke up and found my brownie pan looking like this:


and I giggled and knew I married the right man.

The edges are the best part anyway, so I don't know what he's thinking, going for the middles. Crazy!

Baking - Cranberry Orange Bread

This is my Mom's recipe and it's so good I recommend you double it right away because you're not going to have enough! This makes one loaf, 8 mini-loaves, or 12 small muffins.

Cranberry-Orange Bread


1 cup fresh cranberries, cut in half
1/4 cup sugar

1 3/4 cups flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
2 tbsp shortening
1 tsp fresh orange zest (one large orange should do it)
3/4 cup orange juice
1 egg

Grease a bread pan or muffin/mini-loaf pan, and preheat the oven to 350F.

Mix the cranberries with 1/4 cup sugar until they're well coated. This mitigates their tartness and helps them not to sink to the bottom of the bread.

Mix the dry ingredients (including the non-cranberried sugar) in a large bowl, then cut in the shortening until it's all in tiny crumbles. Make a well in the middle and pour in the juice, egg, and zest, then mix until everything is wet - don't overdo it. Add the sugared cranberries and blend them in well, then pour into your baking receptacle of choice.

A loaf will need 40 to 45 minutes, my mini-loaves only took 20. Not sure how long muffins would take, but I'd start with 15 minutes and check from there.

Notes: I didn't get much more than 1/4 cup of juice out of my orange, since I don't have a juicer thingy - I was stabbing at the orange halves with a fork and squeezing them to death to get some juice out and it didn't go very well. Sadly, the OJ in the fridge was very expired, so I just made up the difference in liquid with plain water and hoped for the best. It turned out really well - still tasted plenty orangey.

What's for Dinner - Pork chops, apples, and onions

Because I still work evenings, I need to get dinner figured out pretty early to avoid having to come up with a plan at midnight. Depending on what I'm making, I'll prep everything in the morning or I'll thaw stuff overnight, leaving me with only the cooking part to do once I get home. I don't mind so much having to cook late at night, but thinking is always a problem after a long day, and I hate having to come home and decide what to feed us.

So I reached into the freezer before shuffling off to bed around 2am, and pulled out two ziplock bags with fleshy pink frozen meat inside so I could leave them in the fridge overnight to thaw. I always buy the boneless, skinless chicken breasts at Costco and freeze them individually for easy portioning later, and that is what I thought was in those bags. I had a plan for a lemon garlic sauteed chicken breast dinner, and I was quite pleased with it. Lesson learned: label freezer food. Seriously. Because examination of the thawed meat at midnight after the following long day at work revealed pork chops. Eight teeny tiny thin pork chops.

Now what? After a moment or two of grumpy pouting because I couldn't make the dinner I wanted to, I threw together a new plan.

I peeled and cut up two apples, put them in a covered bowl with about a quarter cup of apple cider, and put them into the microwave for two minutes so the apples would get soft. Meanwhile, I fried up the pork chops in a pan with some olive oil, salt, and pepper, and put them aside when they were done. Next into the pan went half an onion, sliced really thin, with a bit more oil and a dash of thyme. When they were soft, I put in a small bit of flour and stirred that around for a minute before dumping the apple cider and soft apples in. The pork chops and their juice went back in too, and I stirred it all up and left a lid on it with the heat all the way down for a couple more minutes before I called it ready because I was hungry.


It turned out pretty good. It got the husband's thumbs-up and there were no leftovers, so either we were starving or it was decent. I thought it was a little on the sweet side and I think I'll add some apple cider vinegar if I do this again. I probably should have gotten the pan hotter and done a better job browning the chops so they'd look nicer - this meal wasn't very photogenic!

New Job, part 2

Apologies to my readers for not giving you anything all week. I'm often saying that there need to be more hours in a day so I can get everything done that needs doing, so I will use the free hour from the Daylight Savings fall-back to feed my poor little blog.

I've got a few book reviews to cover, and a project or two to write about, but I've been too stressed to focus on writing. I told you a little while ago that I'm going to be moving on to a new job and leaving the hospital behind. That was a hard decision, and one that I wavered on. My coworkers were very sad to hear I was leaving them, and I don't think it was all selfish sentiment from knowing they'd have to fill in all the gaps in the schedule. From the day I gave my notice, they've been trying to talk me out of my decision. They didn't use any arguments I hadn't already wrestled with, but hearing them from other people made me very nervous that maybe I was making the wrong decision.

Manufacturing? Really? Sitting in a quiet lab all day with almost nobody else around, running the same few tests over and over and over? I'm so used to doing four things at once and having to keep on top of everything; will this be too much of a change for me? Will I be bored? Lonely? The group of people I work with in the evenings now is really fabulous and I know I'll miss the goofy fun we have between crises. And I'll miss the high I get from zipping around and managing a situation as it tries to spiral out of control, and knowing at the end of the shift that my work contributed to a patient living another day.

But I'm so stressed out right now. And the stress from the actual work, while it will never go away because of its nature, isn't the problem. It's the little things. The doctors calling us liars when we say it'll take half an hour to thaw plasma. The all-caps emails CC'd to my supervisor threatening to "write me up" if I forget to staple paperwork one more time. The resistance to change and growth I encounter from so many people who tend to react reflexively by putting band-aids on problems instead of thinking about the causes and trying to eliminate them at the source.

I guess I take it too seriously. If I was able to disconnect a little more and just go to work and put in my hours and go home, maybe I'd be happier there. But I can't do that. Everyone who works part-time says it's a lot easier to care less when you're not there every single day, and maybe they're right but I can't afford to drop to part-time right now. So I spend more time at the hospital than I do with my husband all week, and I'm invested in that lab and I am so frustrated that it's not as great a lab as it has the potential to be.

I love my coworkers and they're all good techs. The hospital is growing and changing and it's exciting to be a part of all that. My supervisor is great. But somehow, we find ourselves griping and sniping and sabotaging each other out of stress when we should all be patting each other on the back and busting with pride at how awesome we all are for keeping the place running with fewer people and resources than we should have to. There are no fingers to point - everyone is guilty and everyone is a victim. I suspect it's a similar story in every hospital lab in the country, because we're all underrecognized and understaffed and the work is so draining.

So I need to step back. I feel like this job is like a boyfriend with potential - if only he'd apply himself a little more! But the relationship is toxic in its current state and it's time for some space. I'm not happy, and I need a break.

Making the decision was hard. There was no counter-offer from the current job (HR policy), but it's not even about the money. I made list after list of good things and bad things and there were so many unknowns, and every five minutes I'd talk myself into or out of staying, over and over. I might get bored. I might come crawling back in a few months. But in the end, I need to try something new so I can preserve a little sanity. I can't go to part-time work, so I need this new job. And maybe I will fall completely in love with it and never want to leave.

Project: Windshield Repair

What do my windshield and Charlie Brown have in common? They both got a rock for Halloween.

I heard it hit, and at first I thought I got away without damage, but then I noticed the big, fat, round raindrop perfectly centered on my windshield. It was starting to rain, so I didn't think anything of it until the wipers slid over the spot without moving the drop. Great. It was only about a half inch in diameter, but windshield damage can spread pretty quickly, and replacing the whole thing is so expensive.

I picked up a windshield repair kit, because I figured if it works I'll save money and if it doesn't I'll only be out about ten bucks, so it's worth a shot.

It's a kit with a small tube of resin and an apparatus to help you apply it to the crack or chip and put pressure on it to remove air bubbles. It's a neat little suction-cup assembly with a hole in the middle, which you're supposed to center over the damage - very hard for me to do effectively because of the location of the chip. I was climbing in and out of the car and onto a step-stool to try and get it exactly centered. The instructions with the kit include step-by-step pictures, and are very simple to follow.


Because of the shape of my car and the shortness of my arms, I couldn't reach the middle of the windshield to actually do the repair, so I had one foot barely hanging onto the step-stool, one leg flung onto the hood, and my body leaning heavily onto the windshield, with one hand holding the instructions and the other trying to do all the work. Note: a Google image search for "woman on hood of car" will not give you an accurate idea of what happened in my driveway this afternoon. It's not bikini weather, for starters.

Anyway, after squeezing the resin into the tube and tightening it to apply pressure, and then loosening it to release air bubbles, the chip didn't look any different to me, so I repeated the whole process again, using a little more resin and readjusting the positioning of the suction cups. After the second round, it looked like the resin had filled the hole, so I moved on to the finishing step - pulling off the device, applying a drop of resin directly to the area, and then smoothing a plastic film over it using a razor blade. Then I moved my car into a sunny spot for a while to let it set. The directions say you can also buy a UV lamp to use in "curing" the resin, but I'm betting that the late October sun, despite having little warmth, has enough UV left in it to do the job.

The result: the bullseye is still visible. I'm a little disappointed, although I'm ready to admit it may be my fault for not doing it right, and a lot of the customer reviews on Amazon say that it took more than one try to get it done. It looks better, in that the center chip seems a little less obvious, but if I run my fingernail over it I can still feel it. Since we'll be getting to freezing temperatures really soon, I want to be sure it's repaired well enough to withstand the repeated freeze-thaw cycles it's going to go through, and stand up well to the snow brush and ice scraper. I might try another round of repair next weekend if it's sunny again, but it's getting late and there won't be enough sun for me to keep going today. My main concern is to prevent cracks from radiating out from that spot and forcing me to replace the whole windshield - and I can't tell if what I've done today will be enough.

6th grade

An elementary school friend recently found and read my whole blog and posted a really nice comment on my Facebook page.

still the same great writer trapped in a nerd's body as you were in 6th grade!

That made me smile, and also made me think back to my sixth-grade self and what she'd think of where I ended up.

Who was I back then? Teacher's pet, nerd to the fourth degree, and a fashion sense to rival Steve Urkel's. Attending my tiny school, with the giant lunch tables that folded in half and lined the gym walls when we weren't having lunch - and the best lunch was always hot dog day, where you gave the teacher your hot dog money on Monday and you'd get a pink construction-paper ticket on Wednesday to exchange for a hot dog and a carton of milk or purple juice. I remember the legendary kickball games with the occasional loose shoe flying over the fence, and the dodgeball games where everyone wanted this one girl on their team because she'd had her growth spurt much earlier than the rest of us and she could palm that giant red boingy ball and whip it at her victims' heads with a remarkable accuracy. Do they still make those balls? I want to get one and bounce it on concrete for the memories.

I couldn't quite call them the good old days, because I was fighting depression even then, and being a dork does make you a bit of an outcast. So young, the girls formed their groups and decided who to exclude, and no matter how I tried I never figured out the magic words that would let me in. Luckily, I had other fantastic dorks with me so I was never really alone, and I am profoundly grateful for those people and sorry that we didn't stay close, because now I wonder what our friendships may have become if we'd tried harder. But Grade 6 is the end of an era. We're hugging and saying goodbye, headed off to high school, and circles are split up with the wedges headed off in all directions. And at that age, you don't know what's coming, you don't know how important those lessons are that you're learning. I didn't know that my family was falling apart, and I didn't know how dark some of my future years would be. The bliss of ignorance.

I wanted to be a writer. Also a marine biologist and an astronaut and a doctor, but always, always, a writer. Plenty of teachers drenched me with praise and encouragement, but I never believed that I was good enough to write. I'd read some of my favorite novels and be both moved and depressed by how wonderful they were - there's no way I could compete with such brilliance. And if I'm not going to be good enough, why try? I know now that such thoughts are just depression trying to keep me from making any effort, and that getting good enough takes practice, but I wasted a lot of years refusing to try for fear of being mediocre.

I think my sixth-grade self would be happy with where I am now. I'm not Dr Jen, space-dolphin biologist, and I'm not a published writer, but I'm married to a wonderful geek, I have a small circle of solidly nerdy friends, and I've come a long way in seeing the good in life. I think she'd also be disappointed to learn that I'm no longer making it a point to have my socks match my sweaters, but I'm comfortable with that.

Jen's Library: The Lost Art of Reading

The Lost Art of Reading: Why Books Matter in a Distracted Time
David L. Ulin

This is a short book. Which is good, because it's so easy to be distracted when you're reading. More and more, we're reading online, skimming novels on our little phones, clicking links and losing that sense of being totally immersed in a book.

The author, a former book review editor for a big newspaper, found that concentrating on reading was becoming more difficult, as was tuning out the buzz of the wired world and getting deeply into a book, and this book is an expansion of an essay he wrote on that subject.

He's not anti-technology at all - he has an e-reader and uses it - but he feels like the connection between the writer and the reader is fraying because we're drifting away from good writing and good reading as we shift to a way of life with shorter attention spans. Some authors are using new digital media as a way of enhancing their work, and he gives them praise, but they're in the minority. It's his personal opinion throughout this book - he doesn't pull up citations and tables to show you how the world is changing, and while he's clearly lamenting the loss of connection with literature, he's not yelling at those damn neighborhood Kindles to get off his lawn.

As a person who has always loved books, I can relate to his sentiment. I nearly always have a book with me. I bring books on vacation. I won't buy a purse until I've tried stuffing a normal hardcover book inside, to see whether it'll fit. The damp scent of old yellowing paperbacks makes me happy. My home is filled with books and it physically pains me to throw any away. I find it strange to see someone reading Pride and Prejudice on an iPhone, although I can understand the convenience factor.

Like Ulin, I have noticed my shortening attention span and it bothers me. I've been avoiding reading fiction because I find myself bored, flipping ahead to get to the point. But the point isn't the point - reading is about the trip, and that's getting harder for me to remember. So I've been eating up nonfiction, reading too quickly and not retaining nearly as much as I'd like, because I don't have the time and attention and energy to absorb a good novel and all it has to offer. And that's what Ulin is getting at with his book.

Maybe I'll ease back into fiction by rereading a favorite or two.

Filing cabinet!

Neither of us is very good with paperwork. We get as far as opening mail, paying bills, and making haphazard piles of receipts and warranties here and there, but it's always a struggle to find something we're sure we've seen recently. Getting all my stuff in order for my green card application was a nightmare because I don't have a good system. I've got two expanding file folders, a little portable file folder, and some of those Rubbermaid bins with inserts to make them into filing drawers, but I don't have a filing system.

Craigslist recently provided us with a nice 4-drawer filing cabinet similar to this one and we've been making decent headway against the mountains of paper. The goal is to have a small accordion folder with the most current stuff handy, and to use the filing cabinet for the more long-term papers, like medical information, taxes, warranties, and old school transcripts.

Now we need to decide how to categorize everything. One drawer each, and then a joint drawer for the house and car and cat stuff? Straight-up alphabetical from the top down? Luckily all the hanging files are easy to move around, so we're starting by just filing it away for now to get it all off the counters and coffee tables, and the rest can come later. I'm excited about having one central location for all the paperwork, because it should cut down on the panic attacks I get when I can't find my social security card or marriage certificate for something important.

Unfortunately, I think we both have a tendency to keep things "just in case", which helps us accumulate much more paper. It's hard to know what I need, though. Do I need my old tax returns from Canada? I haven't filed taxes there since 2007. How many months or years worth of utility bills do we need? Should we keep any from the old address? How about my copy of the lease from my first apartment in the US? I don't know why I would need it, but it seems too important to toss. There are some sites I've found that help you figure out how much to keep, but I find myself disagreeing with them and wanting to err on the side of caution. Maybe that's a habit I need to break?

Jen's Library: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks
by Rebecca Skloot

If you've ever learned anything about cell biology, cloning, or vaccines, you should know Henrietta Lacks.

She died young - only 31 years old - of invasive cervical cancer. She left behind a husband, five young children, and a small slice of cancer cells that would end up living longer than she ever had a chance to.

When she was treated at Johns Hopkins, in 1951, her doctors took a biopsy of her tumor. Researchers soon found out that her cells would multiply indefinitely, defying the normal rules of cell division. Usually, a cell divides a finite number of times before dying, which is why we age. Cancer cells tend to ignore this rule, dividing as they please and becoming mutated and unrecognizable versions of their former selves. For years, cell biologists had been trying to create cell cultures - vials of identical cells that they could keep alive and use for research, because standardization is so important. To be sure the results are reproducible, everyone needs to be able to start with the same materials. Henrietta's cells, which became known as the HeLa line, finally gave the scientists what they needed.

Sadly, the Lacks family was completely unaware of the cell line and its contributions to biology. A poor black family living in Baltimore, they didn't have money to go to doctors themselves. Their mother's cells are patented and being sold from lab to lab, all without the family's knowledge or prior consent.

Rebecca Skloot is a reporter who decided to explore the HeLa story and get to know the Lacks family. This book is a fascinating look at HeLa's contribution to modern medicine and genetics research, along with the evolution of medical ethics since the 1950s. I'm embarrassed to say that I knew nothing about this woman. I'm glad this book came out and brought her out into the light so everyone can read about her.

If you're in a scientific or a medical field, you need to read this. And if you're not, you should anyway.