Salted Caramel Butter Bars

(emphasis on the BUTTER).

I rarely blog about cooking/recipes.
I rarely bake (Recall my NYE cookie fail).
My baking outcomes usually turn out like these (although I don't use Pinterest, I appreciated these hilarious pictures of things of people who "NAILED IT!")

However, we have an Oscars gathering coming up this weekend and I thought I'd try my hand at some salted caramel butter bars from a recipe I got from Lisa, who we met at our weekend in Chico last month. I love the sweet/salty combo, and they were heavenly when she made them. (Original recipe here from Alyssa, the Recipe Critic).
(I also bought some brownie dough as a baking-backup in case the bars didn't work out.)

While they weren't the quickest to make due to the from-scratch dough, it was totally worth it! And
while I cut them a bit too early while they were a bit soft and gooey, they now taste perfect.

Enjoy!!!

• 2 cups butter, softened
• 1 cup white sugar
• 1½ cups powdered sugar
• 1 Tbsp vanilla
• 4 cups flour
• 1 14 oz bag caramels, unwrapped or 11 oz unwrapped Caramel Bits work great
• ⅓ cup whipping cream
• ½ tsp vanilla
• 1 Tbsp coarse sea salt (ok to use a little less for a less intense salty taste)

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line a 9×13 pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil. Lightly spray with cooking spray.
2. In a large mixing bowl cream together butter, sugar, and powdered sugar. Add vanilla and beat until combined. Mix in the flour and combine until it forms a soft dough.
3. Press half of the dough in the bottom of a 9×13 dish and place the other half of the dough into the refrigerator. Bake in preheated oven for 15 minutes.
4. Remove the pan from the oven and melt the caramels, heavy cream and ½ tsp vanilla in the microwave for 1 minute (it was more like 4 minutes for me!). Stir together until smooth. Pour evenly over the hot crust. Lightly sprinkle the coarse sea salt over the crust (may be a bit less than 1 Tbsp). 
5. Take the remaining dough out of the refrigerator and crumble over the top of the caramel. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 25-30 minutes until filling is bubbly and the top is firm. Let them cool completely (i.e. for 12 hours!) before cutting.

DELICIOUS!!!

Petersen Rock Garden: pebbles & peacocks!

After 2 days back at work, I need another 4-day weekend....

Needless to say, we're back home now, but before leaving Bend, we stopped by one more attraction-- the Petersen Rock Garden, which per the online reviews was deemed either "cool" or "creepy." Either way, I was enticed and thought it worth a visit. We also were granted a reprieve from winter/rainy weather and enjoyed some sunshine.

The garden (now on the National Register of Historic Places) is the handiwork of a Danish immigrant, Rasmus Petersen, who moved to Central Oregon in the early 20th century and by the 1930s and for twenty years was creating mini monuments using local rocks.  The property, situated north of Bend just a few miles from our hyggelig room I discussed in a prior post, still remains in the family.

 

I was quite puzzled by this sign!

 

Free-roaming peacocks also graced the property, which interested Pepper greatly 

beautiful creatures!

(and Denmark!)

Wintertime coziness...thanks, AirBnB

We spent two nights in Bend amidst our winter getaway to central Oregon (our second time here [see a previous post from Memorial Day weekend 2012]). Mt. Bachelor is certainly the best mountain I have ever skied, with loooong blue runs (and which has powder until July, although it closes to skiers at the end of May), and which also offers a shuttle service there and back when you're worried (as we were) about your car (a Prius) getting stuck in snowdrifts. With all the rain this area has had, the snow was high and it was pretty exhausting, but definitely worth it.

For this trip, we decided to try staying off-the-beaten path, in a room we found through AirBnB, a lodging-finding site that friends mentioned to us, which lists lodging located in 192 countries (in fact, we'll stay at an AirBnB-listed apartment in Seoul during our trip to Korea in April). The site allows you to search for and find private apartments/suites/rooms outside the typical hotel/motel mold but whose prices are very competitive with local hotel rates (even with their booking fee). Kelvin booked this steal of a cozy room just north of Bend, with a private entrance, king bed, adjustable heating, kitchenette with dishes/fridge/microwave/coffeemaker, wireless internet, flat screen TV (great for our Olympics-watching), neighborhood parks and trails, great hospitality, and which was über dog-friendly. The hosts, Angela and Brandon, actually rent out this back room to help them fund their adoption of a baby girl from Ethiopia... so the money was well worth spending!

Pep enjoyed frolicking in the community parks (extensions of people's back yards) and meeting this 12-week old scottie-dog puppy, Wilson.

 

We'd love to live in a neighborhood like this one some day, and will continue to use AirBnB for our national and international lodging needs :). Check it out!

Painted Hills and Pad See Ew

Kelvin and I took a day off (in addition to our Monday holiday) to have a weekend getaway to the Bend area of Oregon for (with hope) some winter fun/skiing (a lot of CA ski resorts have been lacking snow due to the drought, but now we and this area have been having flood warnings as it's been raining nonstop since last week!).

(west coast snowfall, melted by a bunch of rain, and typical winter attire)

Today, we drove past Bend to visit one of the (three) units of the John Day Fossil Beds National Monument, the Painted Hills Unit.

This area of Oregon is now considered "High Desert," but houses fossils and pretty geologic marvels dating from millions of years ago.

The painted hills were really beautiful, even in the gray/cloudy light.

We passed some livestock

... and took a short hike to an overlook

While it wasn't raining during our hike, it was reeeeeeally windy!

Bend is a very quaint town. We enjoyed a quiet but tasty dinner at Noi, a Thai place which got great Yelp reviews.

Fingers crossed for safety and skiing at Mt. Bachelor tomorrow.

What state fits your temperament?

Have you ever wondered if you are residing in a state that is right for you?

Having moved multiple times since I was a child and having attended college, med school, and residency in three different states, I found this TIME questionnaire interesting. I do really love California, which has been my home for the past 6.5 years and whose outdoors, weather, and relatively tolerant mindset does fit my interests and values. However, per this survey, I may be living on the wrong coast for my personality!

You can answer a 10-question survey about your personality here  which will give you a temperament-matching state.

Being a scientist, I took the the test three times, about a month apart, to improve its accuracy and came up with the same result:

North Carolina! (Good news, Laura and Tony?) :)

However, then I got word of another, different survey circulating around facebook (from Buzzfeed). While its questions are of a different nature, I'm not sure if it's more or less accurate.... I got ALASKA!  (while I love the state, I'm not sure I, who whined my way through 4 years of med school in Minnesota could handle the cold.)

What state(s) did you get?

What Doctors Feel

--- is the book title of Dr. Danielle Ofri's latest book, which in my opinion is a must-read for anyone struggling with the demands of the medical field.

I really needed to read this book this past weekend. There are days when I really don't think I am cut out for medicine... days when interruptions every 10 minutes that disrupt efficiency and productivity really drive me nuts (a NYT article I read last year commented that interruptions and multitasking really make you more stupid), days when I forget to or don't have time to eat because I'm so caught up in others' needs or have procedures scheduled over the noon hour, and days when, when I [finally] get home, I (very much an introvert) have no physical or emotional energy left for myself or my spouse (or for anyone else, for that matter).

"Compassion fatigue" which you can read about here is a very real phenomenon among health care providers, and, also, in my opinion the inevitable "natural outcome of putting smart, competitive, perfectionist people in a high-stress system with myriads of ever-changing tasks for which they feel professional responsibility, coupled with sleep deprivation and the granite-hard fact of only twenty-four hours in the day..."  as Dr. Ofri writes on page 34 of her book.

The book, which includes numerous anecdotes from her own "trainee" days as a student, intern, and resident and eloquently discusses challenges of being an attending physician, touches on how doctors' emotions-- including fear, shame, guilt, anxiety, frustration, anger, empathy, and more, affect patient care (in both good and bad ways).

When you (you as a patient) are annoyed when you are stuck in the waiting room of your doctor's office, remember that your doctor (at least this one) hates to run late and feels a whole lot of guilt for seemingly wasting your time (and always apologizes). I am running late likely because there was a late patient before you who we felt still needed/deserved to be seen, or someone who needed some extra care, or an emergency or unanticipated delay at the hospital.

Your doctor (at least this one) hates 15-minute appointments, because they generally are not long enough to really address more than 1-2 of your concerns and delve into how you really feel (or discover what else is going on in your life), and they breed fear of not making the right diagnosis or making a mistake in such limited time.  Lack of time with patients is a top reason why many doctors are dissatisfied (but we are largely powerless due to enormous pressure, stress, and demands of documentation, paperwork, and the goal of "productivity," which is measured by the number of patients seen, and not the quality of care provided).

Most of us doctors (at least this one) are working long before clinic starts, during lunchtime when the office is "closed," and charting after work. We are often working finishing notes or refills at night or on our days off remotely from home, because we have families (and lives), too and like to be home at semi-reasonable hours; however, we worry about you after-hours because being a doctor isn't really a 9-to-5 job. We gave up our twenties (or another decade) to work 80-hour weeks (on average) and learn to competently take care of you while missing birthdays, weddings, and other important events of our loved ones. We still miss many of these things, due to on-call responsibilities, even though residency is over... We work nights, weekends, holidays, the days after working nights or weekends on very little to no sleep, while sick, and often on very little reserve in the tank because we don't want to inconvenience you and we want to make you better, although we may not be doing so well ourselves.

We share your joy at the birth of your child when we are lacking our own, and share in your accomplishment when you successfully quit smoking, lose weight, or get your hemoglobin A1C under 7.0%! We grieve, sometimes cry, and feel entirely responsible when there is a surgical complication, missed diagnosis, bad outcome, or a death, and wonder, "could I have done something differently to prevent this?" We are hard on ourselves. We feel shame.

Many of us often think about what it would be like to change careers and have "normal" hours, less stress, and to not have so many people depending on us all the time and expecting us to be virtual superheroes who can "do it all" and do it all well.  But we also know that this field, with its relationships, can be very rewarding.

So if you are a patient, a provider yourself (particularly a primary care doctor), or someone who lives with or loves a doctor, please read this book (and thank a doctor today). Remember and embrace that doctors are not perfect but we are living, thinking, breathing, and feeling human beings who want the best for you and are doing the absolute best we can.