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Friday, April 24, 2015

Weekend Review: Duchess Bake Shop, Alley Kat Aprikat, & Med Humour

This time next week I'll be en route to BC for four weeks of vacation USMLE studying! Edmonton has reverted back to winter, with snow forecasted for this weekend (thankfully yet another excuse to put off washing my car). Hopefully I'll miss any further aftershocks of winter and return at the end of May to sunshine and greenness.

weather edmonton aprilApart from the weather (and having to shell out over $1500 for USMLE Step 1 and 2 CK applications), this week has been a good one; here are some things that I enjoyed:

  1. Duchess Bake Shop -- Duchess Bake Shop, recently named on Buzzfeed's list of 23 Bakeries Around The World You Need To Eat At Before You Die, is a popular local bakery that I finally got around to visiting with a friend last weekend. "Popular" is probably an understatement. This place is a phenomenon! For the duration of our hour-long visit (yes, we were lucky enough to actually find seats), the line remained at least forty people long, trailing down the sidewalk. With my first bites of dark chocolate meringue, strawberry cheesecake brioche, and hummingbird cake I could see why it drew such a crowd -- everything was so so good!
    duchess meringue strawberry cheesecake brioche
    dark chocolate meringue ($0.95) & strawberry cheesecake brioche ($2.75)
    duchess hummingbird cake
    hummingbird cake ($3)
    The pastry dough was perfectly light and flaky and the fillings were creamy and delicious. The prices are reasonable as well ($0.95 for a giant meringue, $3 for most other pastries). It was so tough to decide what to get when everything looked so amazing! I'm already plotting my return to try their enormous pains au chocolat and beautiful scones.
    duchess bakeshop
    tough decisions
  2. chocolate coconut oatmeal -- Eating oatmeal for breakfast (...and occasionally dinner) seven days a week, I try to mix it up. Today's combination of desiccated coconut and chocolate whey protein powder was definitely a winner!
    coconut chocolate oatmeal
  3. celery revival -- I often don't make it through a bunch of celery before it starts getting limp. Yesterday, inspired by that capillary action food-colouring celery experiment (you know, the one kids do in school), I tried soaking my floppy celery sticks overnight in water. Success! (Further experimentation has revealed that this also works for lettuce!)
    limp celery
    soaking...
    reviving celery
    revived!
  4. National Medical Laboratory Week -- In addition to games like "guess the number of gram negative rods", the pathology department hosted a free lunch today in honour of National Medical Laboratory Week.
    national medical laboratory week
    the most exciting part of this meal: Dr Pepper (it was my favourite as a kid and has been missing from my life for far too long!)
  5. Alley Kat Aprikat -- I'd been wanting to try this local beer for a while now and was happy to find it on the menu at Langano Skies. It has a subtle apricot aroma and does actually taste like apricot -- in a good way!
    alley kat aprikat
  6. anthropomorphized organs -- In the interest of adding one thing to this list that is not food, here is a cute medicine-related cartoon from The Awkward Yeti:
    gallbladder cartoon
    gallbladder comic
    (http://theawkwardyeti.com/comic/gall-bladders-day/)
What was great in your week?

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