Back To School!

Ladies and gentlemen, yesterday marked the first day of my return to school! Registering for classes, meeting my fellow comrades, orientation. It's all very odd, and yet exciting.

The last time I was in a structured learning environment was when I was at medical school, and I graduated from there ten years ago so this whole back-to-school vibe is not as familiar as it once was. Before you start doing any mental math to try to compute my age, let me assure you that I am not as old as the preceding sentence posits. Having graduated from an international medical school meant that I went there right out of high school (as is the case in most countries around the world), thus bypassing the whole undergraduate experience, and earning the distrust of all my early patients thanks to my youthful appearance! In fact, when I was working in the internal medicine ward at a hospital in Queens, one of my first jobs out of medical school, patients often looked at me at with dismay when I introduced myself, saying, "How can you be my doctor? You look like you are 17!"

But back to the topic at hand. For those of you that do not know, I have gone back to grad school to do my Masters in Public Health (MPH), focusing on health care management. Health care and its (mis)management are a hot topic these days and I felt that this was the perfect time for me to do my MPH. I have spent the past few days poring over the courses, my excitement gaining momentum after reading the description of each course I will be taking. Yes, I am a nerd.

This is an exciting new chapter in my life but I will admit, though, that I am slightly scared at balancing it all. The course work promises to be intense. Plus I now have a 45-minute commute. Both are things that will cut into time spent with my baby boy and the hubby, making plans with friends, writing my blog and ofcourse taking exercise classes  (old favorites and new). I am a great multi-tasker so hopefully I will get into the groove soon! I also have some fun new classes I will be previewing next month, along with a great giveaway so stay tuned - I have no plans to disappear on you!

Question: What are you most looking forward to this Fall?

Delusions of Grandeur: Baking Misadventures

So we had a hurricane this weekend. Sort of. It was more like a torrential downpour. Regardless, like everyone else in the city, I stayed cooped up at home. After twiddling my thumbs for a while I decided that I felt like baking.

So I pored over websites looking for some kind of inspiration, something that would work with ingredients that I already had lying around. I had a lot of coconut flour lying around. Plus I had a ton of baby carrots that promised to go bad very soon.

Enter a recipe for Coconut Carrot Bread.

Granted this recipe called for the use of 2 cups of all-purpose flour. I, however, high on the success of my last baking endeavor, and feeling pretty darn invincible, decided that I was going to substitute the two cups of all-purpose flour with one cup of coconut flour and one cup of whole-wheat flour. I fancied myself quite the bakeress. I would soon learn the error of my ways - my delusions of grandeur.

I popped the concoction into the oven and 60 minutes later had this...

Hmm. Not too bad, I suppose?

Except, once I took it out of the bread pan, it looked like this...

Um, it looks a little crumbly, no? Maybe it would not crumble once I cut into it.

Alas, it did.

Gah!

Next time I am sticking to the recipe. Or I will read the label on the pack of coconut flour which clearly says to substitute only 20% of a recipe's flour with coconut flour. Not 50%.

On a happier note, it tasted amazing! The crumbly bits actually went went really well in a bowl of milk.

Question: Do substitutions in recipes always work for you? What's the worst substitution-related disaster you have had?