Dutch Thanksgiving

Reasons I don't generally go home for Thanksgiving:

1. It's six hours and three time zones away by plane

2. We're European, it's not really a family tradition

3. Most of the food is not on mom's Atkins diet

Lucky for me I have generous friends and am usually adopted by someone else's family on a temporary basis. For the past two years, it has been by AH, a classmate. Her family, back in the day, were Dutch and oma (grandma) in particular finds my authentic Dutch self charming. Last year she had me read a Dutch cookbook and indicate which foods were familiar. So this year I baked some Boterkoek and brought it with me. It's super simple and looks fairly plain, but let's face it, anything that's 25% butter is going to be tasty. I like mine with a hint of almond flavouring.

Try something Dutch:

1 cup butter, softened

1.5 cups granulated sugar

2 eggs

1 tablespoon almond extract

2.5 cups all-purpose flour

1.5 teaspoons baking powder

Mix butter and sugar. Add eggs, 1 at a time. Add remaining ingredients. Press into two 8" pie or tart tins. Bake for 30 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit. For best texture, leave uncovered for 12-24 hours. Thereafter, store in an airtight container.

In the sunshine state

Going to visit my parents in southern California turned out to be the best decision I've made recently. My brother and two college friends were in attendance as well, so it was a bustling, full house. We baked bread pudding, which took about three hours, and ate fish, mexican, ahi tuna, and flank steak. We went through quite a few bottles of wine and soaked up the evenings in the hot tub watching for falling stars. We walked, we drove around in the convertible, we rock climbed (sore arms!) and we lounged around.
I'm not really ready to be back, but I guess that's the sign of a well-spent vacation.

Welterusten, oma

On Thursday night I wanted time to freeze. I didn't want those hours counted against my MCAT study time, deadlines at work, and my ever-growing to do list. It wasn't the worst news, my parents and brother are healthy, but it was close. Apparently my maternal grandmother (oma, in Dutch) suffered a stroke and was in a coma.

I love my oma and I am sad that I will form no new memories with her, but she was in her eighties and had moderatley advanced Alzheimers. What really makes the death of a grandparent hard is watching the effect on my parents. My mother was flying out to the Netherlands, after much deliberation, and in the end missed seeing her mother lucid(ish) but just a few hours.

So when my mother returns and I am able to speak to her on the phone, what do I say? What do I say to my mother when she has lost her mother?

And then it was Friday and I had to be at MCAT class. I had to go to my medical school applications workshop - I had to catch up on the work I didn't do while I was staring at the walls on Thursday night. The computer that scores my MCAT isn't going to care that oma died. Neither will the recommendations I need, the deadline for my next vacinnation, my next organic chemistry exam, or the IRB continuing review. Nothing changes.

The biggest change between life before and life in the real world is how hard it is to keep it together. Because nothing changes.

Adding to the family tree

At the wisened old age of 24, I have become a great-aunt. My nephew just had his firstborn, Warren Ashley.

On an unrelated and amusing note, one of the investigators I work with is doing a study on visual field cut after stroke (in children). She is testing it using several custom built (simple) games on a touch-screen computer. Recently a child turned to her mother during a testing session and asked for the game for Christmas.