Movin' On...

My "Roadtrip" starts today. I left work today for the last time as a doctor there. It feels good, but at the same time I will really miss it. I have become a slightly better person if not a better doctor for it. It was different leaving other places because the leaving was always built-in: schools have graduations, training programs have them too, and even the ER job had a really high attrition rate, but this one was one where one might stay for a lifetime, were the situations a little different.
It makes me wonder sometimes why I chose this path. Or was it even my choice? Was it for this very "choice" that I have been there? Did God do that which He had planned? I can only say that I believe it is as He designed, whether I had anything to do with it or not. I can only hope that I was obedient to His call in that time.

Denbo's Crazy Homemade Horchata!

Okay, so normally the drink called "Horchata" is made with ground up uncooked rice (google the recipe if you want). However, as I neither have the means nor the inclination to grind up rice, make a drink, and later strain it, I made a small modification.

If one can't find the right ingredients, sometimes one must be a bit inventive. In this case, I had planned to make a real horchata, but I did not know that it used the rice, because I got a recipe from a waitress at a taqueria that didn't use it. then I looked it up in the 11th hour, only to find it was not what I thought. So off to Central Market I went.

After searching for a premix powder (as some had told me it could be bought, though more likely at the Fiesta Market), I finally realized that I was not at the right store for that sort of thing. Of course they have rice, but I was not in the mood for that.

okay. long story short, here's the recipe I used to make 2 gallons of Denbo's Homemade Horchata:

Take a little water. Add 2 cans of sweetened condensed milk. Then mix well (I just shook mine up). Next add 2 ounces of vanilla extract and 1.5 teaspoonfuls of cinnamon (more or less- I just eyeballed it with a regular spoon). If possible, throw in a banana, the more ripe the better. I just broke on in small pieces, but maybe using a blender would help. I don't bother with those things. The last ingredient (besides a lot more water) is what I chose after careful consideration of the fact that I wasn't about to grind up rice in my coffee grinder and filter the mix with a cheesecloth the next day. Without giving the nod to any particular brandname, I bought 3 juiceboxes of a rice-milk drink (something about dreaming and rice and spilling milk on the box...). Pour that in the mix, add enough water to make two gallons, shake and refrigerate for a day or so. No filtering, no grinding, and (unless you want to) no blenders.

The comments I got were really surprising. I thought it was okay, passable to me, someone who has not had horchata many times and wouldn't know the real thing from a fake. However there were a few who really liked it a lot.

But then, who doesn't like sweetened milk, vanilla, bananas, and cinnamon?

Proverbial Wisdom

As a man thinks in his heart so is he. The heart is a wonderous thing that God has given to us. It is the very thing that sets us apart. Of course I am not referring to the cardiac muscle and all that, because with modern technology one can get a new heart without any perceivable change in the heart to which I refer. Some people squander their lives on futility and wonder why the heart is never fully satisfied or why it always seems to ache from one wound or another. Though we are all going to have "heartache" sooner or later, now and again, it is clear that some people seem to know how to be both "big-hearted" and how to protect themselves from serious heart-felt wounds.

The wisdom found in the book of Proverbs has been so important to me. Everytime that I check out a chapter or two, I wonder why I haven't memorized all of them. "Keep my commandments and live, and my teaching as the apple of your eye." Pr. 7.2.
Just reading this reminds one that the great God who created us has more wisdom in His choice of what color to make the clouds than I ever will on this earth without His giving it to me. See Proverbs 8:22-36 (click on the title to go there).

Take care of your heart and make sure that you let God make it full and rich as He desires.

Where am I going?

It seems that the more people ask me where I am going the less I know exactly what to say- so for now, I don't know. One person thought that by contractor I meant that I was leaving the practice of medicine to go and build stuff (roads, bridges, condominiums, who knows?). That is not what I mean at all. I keep telling people that I am going to go traveling to places where I can work a little while and then move on to another place, but that doesn't always say it well enough. So suffice to say, I am going to be a temp. The Agency I work with helps place me in various medical practices and I have the whole country from which to draw work. But where will I go in September? Only God knows that right now. I'll tell you soon.