Welcome Back??

Hello!! It’s been a while. I have been busy with school and work, and also my laptop’s motherboard is died in the beginning of July, which seriously puts a damper on blogging!

Yesterday was my of the fall semester for grad school, and Next Wednesday starts the beginning of my full time clinical internship. From what I have heard-- this semester is going to be BUSY. So, we shall see if this is just a quick hello or not.

The past two days I have had comically bad luck. As aforementioned, yesterday was the first day of school, which consisted of being told all of the assignments we had to do this semester, and how stressful and difficult it would be. We were even given the number to the counseling center (So basically, this program is going to drive us into therapy??)

Some of the girls were going to Acapulco's after class, so I decided to stop by there to be social. Once I got there, my car was smoking. Apparently I have a severe transmission fluid leak.... Thankfully my father was nice enough to come help me out. And I still got to eat a lot of chips and salsa, and do some mingling. In the end I had to have my car towed, and didn’t get home until after 10 pm, exhausted.

Today, I was going to bike to Harvard Sq to get some work done, but alas, my back tire was flat. I decided to walk to Davis Square instead... Some how I managed to fall on my face, then roll over into someones driveway. I am not going to lie- I think it was a pretty impressive fall, and I regret more people were not there to witness it because I am sure it would have invoked a few laughs.

Any way…. hopefully my luck will change and I'll see ya'll soon!

Semester 1 Internship Down!

This past Tuesday was the last day of my internship for this semester. I had been interning at Caritas Carney in Dorchester, working in outpatient counseling.

Overall, it was a great experience. I had previously done most of the work I done at my internship through school or other jobs, but practice makes perfect. Also, my preceptor was AMAZING. She is just one of the nicest women, and was constantly full of great advise. Since I was about the same age as her kids she seemed to form kind of a maternal bond and kept giving me words of encouragement and advice for the future.

Since I was leaving, I wrote her a Thank You card and decided to make some Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies!


I basically used this recipe from allrecipe.com (check out the link):

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

• 1 cup canned pumpkin
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1/2 cup vegetable oil
• 1 egg
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons baking powder
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon milk
• 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
• 2 cups semisweet chocolate chips
• y f1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Directions

1. Combine pumpkin, sugar, vegetable oil, and egg. In a separate bowl, stir together flour, baking powder, ground cinnamon, and salt. Dissolve the baking soda with the milk and stir in. Add flour mixture to pumpkin mixture and mix well.
2. Add vanilla, chocolate chips and nuts.
3. Drop by spoonful on greased cookie sheet and bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for approximately 10 minutes or until lightly brown and firm.

I did not add the walnuts, and used less chocolate chips. I also used a about 1/2 white unbleached flour, and half whole wheat pastry flour.

I usually never measure ingredients, and I generally barely follow recipes. but since these were a present, I followed more carefully to ensure they came out good.


I packed up about 20 cookies for my preceptor and kept a few for Dan and myself (have to taste test them!)

Despite decreasing the chocolate chips - they were still a little too chocolatey. I generally love chocolate, but these were just a bit too squishy.

Also, they were a little bland for a pumpkin pastry product. If I were to make them again I would add more cinnamon and some pumpkin pie spice. They were very soft and tasty. THey also weren't very pumpkiny tasting despite having a whole can of pumpkin (they were very orange, but I think the excess chocolate drowned out the pumpkin) so these would be a good option if you were just trying to sneak in a vegetable but were not persay that interested in a pumpkiny taste. I personally love pumpkin, so in my opinion I would want to taste it a little more.

Sookie as usual was being very helpful in the process. She had a fun time trying to play with one cookie as a hockey puck, so I tried to catch her in action. The first time she got her head in the way :

And then she decided to look up just as the flash was going off.

I need to work on my photography skills, and she clearly needs to work on her modeling.