What do biscuits, off-roading, and B-list celebrities have in common?

Our anniversary trip!

Stuart and I will celebrate our 1st wedding anniversary on July 31st!  It's crazy that a year has already passed!  We decided to celebrate a weekend early because I likely am going to have to work this weekend, and one of Stuart's friends is having his bachelor party this weekend.  So Stuart surprised me with a trip to Natchez, MS one week early!

Stuart pinned the white pin in our "next adventure", Natchez, MS!

You may think Natchez is a strange anniversary destination, but we highly recommend it!  It's a sleepy Southern town on the banks of the Mississippi River and is full of charm.  It's been home to the ancestors of the Creek and Cherokee Indians, French colonists, and even Union soldiers.  Of course now the main population consists of southern ladies and gentlemen who like to show off their Antebellum roots.

We arrived on Friday afternoon and were introduced to our home away from home - the Twin Oaks Bed and Breakfast.  

Humidity + camera = foggy lens

This beautiful home is owned by a cute little couple, the wife of which is semi-famous.  Her name is Regina Charboneau, and she has been featured in many magazines and has been on television for her Southern cooking.  She's also famous for starting a Southern-themed bar in San Fran called Biscuits and Blues.  Unfortunately, Regina had a family emergency right before we came and wasn't home for us to meet and greet.  Fortunately, there is a Biscuits and Blues conveniently in downtown Natchez, so we headed on over there for dinner!

We munched on some complimentary biscuits to start, and let me tell you - they were some of the best I've ever had!  Crispy edges and super soft on the inside ... coated with a brush of butter and served with apricot butter!  Can't get much better than that!  And for the entree, Stuart had their famous fried catfish po-boy, and I couldn't resist something called Eggplant Orleans.  It was basically fried eggplant with both a red and white sauce, with grilled shrimp and fried oysters to boot!  Whoa!

Delicious biscuits

Yum!

To work off some of our caloric intake, we decided to walk around downtown after dinner.  Well it didn't take too long before we ran smack into the Mississippi River.  We walked along the banks for a while, both people watching and barge watching.

Please ignore new haircut with the wind-blown effect!

The next morning, we headed across the street to another Antebellum home for our complimentary breakfast.  We piled our plates high because we were planning a hike in a local nature preserve that morning!

After breakfast, I wanted to walk across the street to check out what was behind this mysterious fence I saw from the road the day before.  It turned out to be this really cool cemetery (those are three words you don't often use together).  Anyway, the graves there were from circa 1850.  I'm not sure why, but I think old cemeteries are really neat.  Of course, not for long.!  We got a bit creeped out and then headed out on the road to St Catherine's Wildlife Preserve.

Well, we attempted to head out at least.  I was under the mistaken assumption that a Wildlife Preserve was much like a national park.  You know, with a little office and cutesy maps and nice bathrooms.  Well, I was wrong.  We took the Prius on quite the adventure, driving through miles of dirt and gravel roads to try and find this place.  Eventually, after crossing a few wooden one lane bridges, we saw a quite primitive hand-carved sign saying "lake" one way and "something else that I can't remember" the other way.  We decided seeing a lake would be fun, and took a roger.

Who knew hybrids could off-road?!

Well, after a bit of what my high school classmates would have called "mudding", we saw several strange rusted structures right off the road.  Stuart recognized these as old-school oil and/or natural gas tanks.  I thought it odd to house environmental threats near wildlife, but nevertheless we pressed on.  A few hundred feet later, we rounded a turn to encounter totally water-covered road.  The reverse was switched on and we headed back down where we just came from.

Um, sketchy

Several minutes later we re-encountered that sign, and just for the heck of it, went the other way.  Well what do you know but a bit later we saw a new friendlier sign welcoming us to the wildlife preserve!  I don't know where in the heck we had been before, but we were relieved to have found what we were looking for!  Sort of ...

Once we were actually in the preserve, we couldn't find a place to park!  Of course there was no trail map to be had either.  Bordering on frustration and desperation, we pulled over at the first place where we could see a trail from the road.  Legal?  Probably not.  Did it work?  Yep!

Where in the heck are we?

OOOHHH!  Poor thing  =(

The wait and frustration was worth it!  The trail was beautiful!  We saw tons of birds and even a deer on our hour-long walk.  Humans were a rare species on the trail - we only saw one quiet family.  It was so nice to spend some quiet time in God's creation together!

After we had been soaked through with sweat, we decided to call it a day and head out for some lunch.  And what's better after a good work out than BBQ?!  I drove and Stuart GPS'ed us to a place called Pig Out Inn.  On the way, while Stuart was diligently planning our route, I almost killed us by swerving off the highway into the parking lot of THIS great structure:

Yes friends, this is a giant replica of a Southern Mammy!!!  You don't see great architecture like this every day!!  Unfortunately, this famed seller of homemade pies and cakes was closed for summer vacation.  At least I got a picture  =)  And now Stuart and I are inspired to take a trip hunting weird roadside attractions!

Our last event was possibly the best of the weekend.  When Stuart and I were in Napa a few months ago, we got to experience what's called a "tasting dinner".  This is basically where the chef of a restaurant gets to show off and create several tiny courses for the patron to enjoy.  While we were researching our Natchez trip, we saw a restaurant called 1818 that does this very dinner.  And, might I say, at about a quarter the price of a California restaurant!  So of course we couldn't pass that up!

We got dressed for dinner and arrived a few minutes early.  We were escorted into the formal dining room of a Southern plantation.  The table was set with fine vintage china and candles were lit all around the room.  The table was set for 8, and I immediately thought we were going to have a loud non-romantic dinner instead of a quiet night for ourselves.  I think we were both a little bummed, but sat down to view the menu for the night with high hopes!

A few minutes later, in walks the rest of the dinner party.  A mid-forties couple sat across from us.  The wife was blond and gorgeous and the husband had on a white linen suit and one of those messed up wavy hair-dos that takes hours to perfect.  We made some small talk and then eventually found out they were Mississippians who now lived in Los Angeles.  Well, that doesn't happen a lot, so we inquired as to what they did in LA.  Their response?  "Oh, we're in the film business.  We direct, write and produce movies".

WHAT?!

Images flashed into my mind of this nice little originally Southern couple struggling to make it big in LA  Until they explained how they were just finishing up directing "Marley and Me 2: The Puppy Years".

WHAT?!

What are the odds that we just so happened to sit across from this couple at dinner in the sleepy town of Natchez, MS?  Over our third course of sashimi-grade swordfish and glass of Chardonnay, we also found out they produced Flicka, as well as several other family-friendly movies.  At random times throughout the night, we also discovered that the wife, Janeen, was a Solid Gold dancer and starred in several Prince and Elton John music videos.  And, oh by the way, the husband Michael was a big star in The Young and the Restless for a decade or so.

Around course 4 (roasted duck breast with Pinot Noir), Michael learned about Stuart's job at Chevron.  He commented on the recent construction of an oil derrick at the Beverly Hills high school football field.  Stuart and I made the joke to ourselves about the old-school Saved by the Bell episode where a big oil company wants to make a similar structure at their high school.  The Damian's asked what we were talking about and then Michael said, "Saved by the Bell ... oh yeah - I sang the theme song for that.  I almost forgot".

WHAT?!

Then of course they digressed to how they just loved Dennis Haskings (Mr Belding) and were so happy when this dear friend of theirs got the role after years and years of unsuccessful casting.

Anyway, to say the least, it was quite the memorable dinner!  We didn't get to know the other couples at the table too well because we were so excited by the Damian's!  It was pretty neat to hear their stories, and it was also pretty awesome to meet a Hollywood couple who has stayed married for 13 years and believes in the institution of the family!

Dinner ended with the chef coming out to discuss the meal with us.  It was such a wonderful evening!

What a great trip!  Too bad we had to end our nature excursions and celebrity experiences to come back to work!  I'll leave you with some media clips of our new friends (haha) ...

The Damian's ... maybe that's Marley?

The only "couple-y" picture I got of the weekend.

Keeping up with the Saulters ...

Is hard to do when I don't blog regularly!  Sorry about that!

Last weekend my parents came down to spend some time with us.  They brought with them some produce love from their very own garden, as well as from Chilton County, AL.  We had about 6 pounds of peaches, some berries, and Stanley Jackson's  home-grown squash and green tomatoes!  Super delicious.  I somehow failed to take pictures of our weekend together, but did photo journal my first fried-green tomato batch of the summer season.

The set up.  Let those 'maters rest on a napkin when you're done!

If I had to name my favorite edible parts of summer ... I would have to say juicy ripe peaches and firm green tomatoes.

I like them almost-ripe. I think they're sweeter that way

Anyway, mom, dad, Stuart and I had a great time together!  We chowed down on seafood at a couple of locations, grilled out AMAZING (grass fed beef) hamburgers, and even took a short trip to Orange Beach!  The rain didn't let us stay out too long, but we just had a wonderful time relaxing on the shore.

Love that iron skillet!  Love that sizzle!  I don't love, however, when oil pops on my arm.

Sunday after the fam left, I had my med school gals over for another brunch.  Again, sorry, I didn't think to take pictures.  But you can imagine the deliciousness of a watermelon-feta-arugula salad and goat cheese frittatas!  It's really hard to beat great times with friends and great food to top it off!

That top left one is not broken ...

Other exciting things going on?  Well ...

I'm FINISHED with child and adolescent Psychiatry!  Can I get a Hallelujah!??!  I somehow drew the short straw for my Psych rotation and have just spent a month with violent, defiant, and abused children.  It was not my most fun month in the world, and I'll be glad to be moving on to another rotation in Internal Medicine on Monday!

In other news, Stuart and I are fast approaching our 1 year of glorious marriage anniversary!  We are actually heading out tomorrow afternoon after my psych final exam to Natchez, Mississippi to have some R&R in a local B&B (too many initials there?).  I'm pretty excited about it, and having traits of Obsessive-Compulsive Personality Disorder (just kidding), have already planned our trip out  =)  You can look forward to hearing about it next week!

Independence Weekend!

Stuart and I had a great, All-American 4th weekend.  We headed up to Memphis by way of Jackson, MS to spend some time with Stuart's family.  Our first night we stayed in Jackson with our friends Parker and Allison.  They took us to this cute little restaurant called Julep which is famous for its fried chicken.  I'm not usually a fried chicken fan, but since USA Today had said that they were in the "top 10 of fried chicken in America" I had to try it (American Weekend activity #1).  Whoa.  It was crispy and juicy and covered in a honey rosemary gooey sticky sauce.  Delicious!

Early Saturday morning we continued our drive up to the Memphis area.  All of Stu's immediate family now lives in Southaven, MS, which I guess you would call a suburb of Memphis.  They are all enjoying apartment living as they search for new homes.  When Stuart and I arrived we packed 8 adults, 1 baby, and 2 dogs into their 2 bedroom apartment.  A good noisy time was had by all!  Even Vera Kate enjoyed exploring some new territory.

I enjoyed small spaces too as a child ... but this was a new one for me!

She shut the door herself, I promise.  Sorry Sally for putting this on here!  =)

After visiting for a bit we headed to downtown Memphis for some good 'ol baseball (American Weekend activity #2).  We got the "cheap seats", which just so happen to be my favorite seats in a baseball stadium - the grass!  Put me on a quilt in the grass over a hard plastic tiny stadium seat any day!  The guys watched the game and the gals mostly chatted and people-watched.  And all took part in delicious unhealthy stadium BBQ nachos (American Weekend activity #3)

A couple of superstars in those shades!

Delish and only 300 calories.  Just kidding.

The night ended in an awesome fireworks show which we watched on a quilt under the sky. (American Weekend activity #4) So fun!  Also, it turns out taking pictures of fireworks is easy when you've had a fireworks setting on your camera and not known about it for 2 years.

After the game we walked back to our cars in the lot entitled "parking is fun" to find ourselves in a very non-fun experience: waiting.  We sat in the parking deck for 45 minutes before we were even able to leave our parking spot!  Fatigue and frustration lead to some pretty interesting conversations about environmental laws and the weight of mass produced chickens (long story).  

On Sunday we got up bright and early and went to Sally and Brian's church in Memphis.  The preacher there gave a sermon entitled "Not of This World" contrasting our American citizenship with our Heavenly citizenship.  It was really good!  They also had a short program honoring the military during which my "sinuses" may have acted up a little bit!

For lunch, where else in Memphis would we go but to Chipotle?!   Stuart's unfailing love for this restaurant never fails to amaze me.  We all had delicious Mexican food (I guess that doesn't qualify for an American activity?) and then headed back to the house.

That afternoon we all spent some QT at the apartment swimming pool while Vera Anne made homemade ice cream (activities 5 and 6)!!  We also got to have a special visit from the Oswalt's, some of the Saulters' family friends.  They are affectionately known as the Oswalt six, which increased our number up to 10 adults, 5 children, and 3 dogs in a 2 bedroom apartment.  I was so glad to finally get to meet them - they are a super family!

Monday morning, after a late and intense night of dominos (activity #7??) we headed back down to the coast.  Our church friends, Adam and Dana, just so happen to live at a marina and own a sailboat.  They were kind enough to invite our small group out on the boat to watch the fireworks over Mobile Bay Monday night (boats and fireworks, activities 8, 9).  If there's anything that Stuart loves more than Chipotle, it might just be sailing and dreaming about owning a boat one day.  So needless to say he was happier than a pig in the sunshine.  I had a good time too, and was super excited that my lame-o motion sickness didn't make me hang overboard.

Jared and Stu on the port side  =)

Leaving the marina

Got a little nervous when Gray, after deciding shimmying up the sail was a bad idea, wanted to take over the wheel

Small group gals!  Me, Lauren, Chelsey, Dana

Trying to get the anchor back up.  I have a hilarious video of this but dont know how to post it.

Stu got to drive!  Probably the highlight of his weekend!

All in all, we had a great weekend and were so glad to spend it with family and friends!

Lesson #1 from Internal Medicine

Keep it simple, stupid.

During my 2 straight months of wards on internal medicine, i somehow wound up having the same patient on 3 separate occasions.  While I thought it was strange that he kept coming back (for legitimate reasons), apparently that is not an uncommon occurance at our hospital ... frequent fliers we call them.

Anyway, this particular gentleman had a host of problems, all centered around his prosthetic heart valve.  He had his aortic valve replaced with a mechanical one a few years back.  This surgery helped him live a more normal life, however it carried with it the consequence of needing to be on blood thinners the rest of his life.  No one really explained the importance of these blood thinners to him and he eventually stopped taking them ... leading to a him having a stroke on two separate occasions.  Then when he finally got back on the blood thinners he wound up having hematuria (doctor speak for peeing blood ... yikes).  Needless to say, he had a healthy distrust for the medical profession, being that he kept seeing doctors and it seemed to keep getting him in trouble.

Well, over the time he was hospitalized we developed a pretty good relationship.  It's funny ... patients in a teaching hospital usually have about 4 doctors on average it seems.  It gets pretty confusing with all of them coming in and out of the room.  The medical student is actually the only stable one ... the one that comes in 2 or 3 times a day and talks to the patient the most.  About halfway through his stay he was calling me his "favorite doctor" .  I must say I didnt mind the new title and only corrected him sometimes  =)

At one point we decided we needed to do an ultrasound of his heart (echocardiogram) to check and see if anything was wrong with his mechanical valve.  During that study, the tech saw a "shadow" on part of his valve.  It didn't really look like a clot, but since he had these two strokes we were concerned it may be something causing a problem.  To find an answer we needed to do another test called a trans-esophageal echocardiogram.

I went to the patient's room and told him we needed to do this test.  I told him the name of the test and that we would have to sedate him and put an ultrasound probe down his esophagus to let us confirm if he had a clot on his mechanical valve.

He looked confused.

Then he said, "So you're telling me that you wanna stick a big tube down my throat ... where my food goes down ... to look at my heart?  How is that connected?"

Me:  Yes sir.  I know it sounds strange but your esophagus is right next to your heart.

Him:  So you can look at my heart through my esophagus, and you want to put me through all this because someone saw ... a shadow?

Me:  Um, yes sir.

Him:  Well, ok.  You're the doc!

So the patient consented to the test and it turns out the shadow was just ... a shadow.  But better safe than sorry.

I learned two lessons:

1. Sometimes things that make sense to me don't make sense to my patients.  And it takes patience to take time to explain it to them in a way that they understand.

2. Einstein was right ... if you can't explain something in a way that your grandmother would understand, you really don't understand it at all.

The Perfect Weekend

To celebrate the end of my 3-month Internal Medicine clerkship, as well as the pseudo-end of my third year of medical school (still have to make up psychiatry ... gross), Stuart told me to plan "the perfect weekend" for us to spend together.

First though, I must preface all this by announcing we have a new (temporary) member of our family!  His name is Winston, and he is a stray half Schnauzer, half something else, and he is kind of adorable.  Some of our friends who live out in West Mobile saw him in the woods one day and he followed them home.  They couldn't keep him, so we are adopting him while trying to find his family.  We know he was owned at some point before because he's pretty well trained and neutered.  However, after 10 days of "due diligent" searching on our behalf, he is ours if no one claims him!  Until we find out for sure (Wednesday), we are enjoying him a great deal!

I love my dad!

Those ears!!!!!  Maybe he's part bunny.

So anyway, to begin the perfect weekend:

1. Farmers Market - There's not a whole lot I love more in the summer than fresh produce.  I had been wanting to go to a farmer's market for a while, but a lot of them around town are during the week.  But!  I discovered that Mobile has one downtown in Cathedral Square every Saturday in the summer!  So that was the first stop of our Saturday.  We took Winston with us and he was the star of the Market.  Everyone thought he was so cute and stopped to ask us what kind of dog he was ... to which we answered, "Um, a stray".  

All the tents lining the square.

YUMMMMM!

And of course you can't go to the FM without getting a fresh-baked 800 calorie muffin!  Haha

After browsing a while we finally decided on some ingredients for our dinner that night: A ratatouille based-pizza.  First of all I must say that you can't beat buying produce from the farmer that planted it.  And second of all - it's cheaper than at a grocery store (no worries Publix, I'll be back soon!)

2. Shrimp - after bringing all our produce finds back to the house, we headed out to Orange Beach, accidentally by way of Florida.  One of our favorite things to do is drive the back roads of Baldwin County.  We love this place!  The land is gorgeous and we like to dream about building a house with lots of land and having a huge garden and our own chickens (Stu isn't so sure about that one).  Anyway we got so into the drive that we neglected to turn onto the connecting road to the beach and wound up having to drive to Florida.  Once we eventually got on the right road it was about lunch time.  We stopped at a beachy restaurant called Bubba's for some chow.  I don't think you can get the full beach experience unless you eat a big fried seafood platter, and eat we did!  It was great!

3. Beach - After our bellies were full we parked at the Gulf State Park and walked across the street to the public beach.  Somehow, whenever we go to the beach for a day, we find ourselves right next door to some pretty interesting people.  This weekend didn't fail us as we found our towels laid out next to a homosexual male couple and their 3 year old son, Hunter.  Needless to say, that was quite an eavesdropping experience.

We spent a few hours just chillaxing on the shore.  I attempted to read a Steinbeck, but wound up napping in the sun a majority of the time.  While we were on the beach we noticed a huge cloud of smoke behind us at the tree line.  As we sat there the cloud got bigger and bigger.  Eventually, a lifeguard truck came by and told everyone staying at the Gulf State Park to evacuate because there was an uncontrolled fire.

Crazy!

Nothing like a day at the beach!

We were feeling a bit sunburned so decided moving our car and going home would be a good idea.  Later we found out, thanks to someone dumping out non-cooled charcoal, about 500 acres of the park have been lost to fire.  Sad!

4. Cooking together - Now if there's anything I love as much as produce, it's cooking with my husband.  I had recently been inspired for this recipe for Ratatouille Pizza I found online.  I decided to make a homemade pizza sauce from some of the market tomatoes, garlic, basil, tomato paste and other spices, and Stuart chopped all the veggies.  Our pizza turned out not quite as beautiful as the online picture, but it was soooooo good!  And healthy too!  Of course, anything topped with goat cheese can never be bad, right?

Stuart hard at work

Finished product ... eggplant, zucchini and tomatoes with goat and mozzarella cheese!

5. Church - while Internal Medicine was a blast, I have worked every weekend for the past two months.... meaning of course that most of the time I haven't been able to be at church with Stu.  We made up for it this weekend by being there with bells on bright and early and being greeters!

6. Grand Hotel - going to the Grand Hotel for Sunday brunch is our occasional fancy treat.  It's where we go when we have a reason to celebrate and want to eat a whole lot of delicious food.  And when I say eat, I mean eat!  I may or may not have had 3 plates of food, including, but not limited to, mahi mahi, cornbread stuffed sausage, cheese blintz, southwest corn, and cheesecake.  It was amazing.  Of course after we came home we had to take Winston for a walk to work part of it off!

Ahhhh what a great weekend!  We did a lot of fun stuff, but we were just glad to finally have a whole weekend to spend together!

I started my psych rotation today and hopefully can remember some good internal medicine stories to share with you later!

An Open Letter to Kim Kardashian

Dear Kim,

My Internal Medicine team admitted a patient the other night who is one of your biggest fans.  Unfortunately she was having chest pains and couldn't immediately share why she liked you so much. 

I mean no offense by saying this, but I didn't really know too much about you until a few months ago.  Apparently you became famous by being the daughter of a rich lawyer in LA.  Just being known for that wasn't enough, so you decided to explore the world of acting with a couple appearances on semi-popular TV shows.  But your big break came when you posed for Playboy a few years back.  After that, you were offered your own reality show documenting your stressful and chaotic family and dating life.

Anyway, back to my patient.  She's a nice lady who weighs about 300 pounds and was admitted to the hospital for chest pain..  For the past few months she had wanted to lose some weight and start exercising so she could be healthier.  Unfortunately, eating healthy wasn't working fast enough for her, so she opted for a quick fix, appropriately named Quick Trim.  I believe you'll recognize this as a diet pill that you endorse.

After we ran a bunch of tests on this lady and luckily found she did not have a heart attack, we were suspicious for another cause of the pain and decided to look into these pills of yours a little more.  Oddly enough the ingredients aren't listed on the back of the pill bottle, but with much searching online I found them. 

1. Caffeine.  Specifically, the same amount of caffeine that is in 4 cups of coffee.  Imagine not realizing that was an ingredient and taking it with your breakfast which in most Americans' case includes a big cup of coffee!

2. "Herbs" - while herbs aren't necessarily bad for you and can add great flavor to your dinner, there are some out there that aren't worth consuming ... like willow tree bark extract.  Turns out this herb actually enhances the action of caffeine.  So we'll up that to the equivalent of 6 cups.  Wow, that's making my chest hurt already!

3. Diuretic - this is basically something that makes you pee.  We give diuretics to patients who have too much fluid in their body - like people in heart failure. If you give a diuretic to a normal person, they wind up peeing out too much water (dehydration) and also losing a lot of their electrolytes. 

4. Laxatives - um, self explanatory.

You market these pills as "natural fat burners that rid your body of excess water and waste".  What does that mean exactly?  Well based on the ingredients it means that a person desperate to lose weight will take these and be super jacked up on caffeine, and always be near a bathroom secondary to ingredients #3 and #4.  If they're unlucky, they may have some supra-ventricular tachycardia from all the caffeine and a little chest pain due to their heart beating so fast.  If they're extra lucky they will have peed out all their potassium and have muscle breakdown and some changes on their EKG.  Kim, were you aware that you encourage people to do this to themselves?

Well, fortunately, our patient turned out okay.  She had a little chest pain from the caffeine but it turned out to be relatively harmless.  I just feel bad that she went through all that worry and built up a pricey hospital bill and didn't even have any weight loss to show from it.  While counseling her at discharge, we couldn't decide which of your lifestyle promotions we would rather her take up: your Quick Trim, endorsement of Carl Jr cheeseburgers, or Sugar Factory Lollipops.  

Maybe I'll just suggest she go about being healthy the recommended way: healthy responsible eating and regular exercise.

Thanks for putting your product out there and keeping hospitals in business; unfortunately its from side effects and not because they are "consulting their doctor before beginning any weight loss regimen".

Sincerely, Kacie