Amir Schricker

Back from Belize. It was a great trip with lots of snorkeling, diving, lobster eating, and Belikin beers. And, unfortunately, sand bugs.

Anyway, check out my Belize photos.

But I still think it’s funny!

An infinite number of mathematicians walk into a bar. The first one orders a beer. The second orders half a beer. The third, a quarter of a beer. The bartender says “You’re all idiots”, and pours two beers.

My year of hell is finally over! No more notes, no more pre-rounding, and no more writing H&P’s. Now only two more years of general medicine before I begin training in what I’m truly interested in.

This is another great recipe taken straight from Simply Recipes. It is actually very simple to make. Just make sure you have two big pans, with one of them cast-iron ideally.

• 1/2 pound penne pasta
• Salt
• 2 Tbsp olive oil
• 2 cups chopped onion (about 1 large onion)
• 2 cloves garlic, chopped
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• Dash red pepper flakes
• 1/2 teaspoon fresh thyme
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 1 pound (16% fat) ground beef
• 3 fresh basil leaves, chopped
• 2 1/2 cups canned chunky tomato sauce (almost one 28-ounce can)
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 Tbsp chopped fresh parsley

1. Boil a pot of water, add the pasta to the pot, and cook until al dente. Drain.
2. Once you’ve started to heat the water, start working on the sauce. Heat olive oil in a very large skillet on medium heat. Add the chopped onion, Italian seasoning and red pepper flakes. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the onions are softened. Add the garlic, fresh thyme, season with salt and pepper. Cook for an additional minute, until the garlic is fragrant. Remove from heat and set aside.
3. Heat a large cast iron pan on medium to high heat. Once the pan is hot, break up small chunks of ground beef and add them to the pan, without stirring. You want the meat to get well browned, not burned. Once the meat is browned on one side (a couple of minutes), flip the meat over to brown on the other side. At this point you can remove the pan from the heat.
4. Use a slotted spoon to lift the meat from the cast iron pan and add it to the pan with the seasoned onions. Add tomato sauce and break up the bigger chunks of meat into smaller pieces. Add basil. Add a teaspoon of sugar. Bring to a simmer on low heat, let cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes.
5. Adjust seasonings. Add salt and pepper to taste, add a little more sugar if the sauce is too acidic, and add more tomato sauce if the sauce is a little dry. Stir in the cooked penne pasta. Sprinkle with chopped parsley. Serve

Serves 6.

It’s vacation time! I have two weeks off from hell (the hospital) and I spent the first week in the Caribbean with a friend from medical school. Aruba was a nice place, but not nearly as nice and tropical as I thought it would be. I saw everything the island had, and so I probably won’t return again.

Photos will be up soon. Click here or below for a trip video I made.

Thanks to a generous check from my car insurance company, I was able to buy a new 2007 Volkswagen Rabbit. It has a pretty strong engine for such a small car, and like all VWs it has nice interior design, especially the blue dashboard lights (it makes you wonder if American car companies pay any attention when designing their cars). The stereo is also extremely intuitive, more than any car stereo I’ve ever seen.

Some details (not bad for what is probably an entry-level car):

• 2.5L 150hp 5-cylinder engine
• 10-speaker stereo with 6-disc changer
• Seat warmers!

Anyway, I just hope it doesn’t get stolen for at least a few months so I can enjoy it for awhile. For more photos, see my photo album

My poor Jeep Wrangler was stolen. Stolen again, actually, as this is the second time it has been stolen. Unfortunately this time, however, it hasn’t been found yet and it probably won’t be. Pretty shitty circumstances, too…I walked out of the hospital post-call (i.e. after working a 30+ hour shift) and noticed my car wasn’t there. What kind of loser steals cars from a hospital parking lot?

It’s a tough loss since I really loved this car. I drove this car everywhere — across the country and back again, as well as up and down the East Coast. It will be missed. Click here to see the page I created when I first bought the car on April 29, 2001.

This one is from the website of the Food Network — which, by the way, has a lot of great recipes. Make sure that the middle of the tuna is nearly raw, otherwise it’s not  properly seared.

• 4 quarts water
• Salt
• 2 cups packed basil leaves
• 1 cup plus 1 teaspoon olive oil
• 4 (6-ounce) sashimi grade tuna steaks
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• 1 lemon, zested and juiced

1. Bring 4 quarts water to a boil and add 3 tablespoons salt. Set up an ice bath. Blanch basil for 2 minutes in boiling water, then transfer immediately to an ice bath. Cool for 2 minutes, drain, then squeeze excess water from basil. Blend basil and 1 cup olive oil in a blender until well mixed. Strain in a coffee filter or cheesecloth.
2. Heat cast iron pan over high heat until very hot. Season tuna with salt and pepper. Brush lightly with olive oil. Place steaks in pan and cook until bottom is brown and crusty, about 3 minutes. Flip tuna and cook for 1 minute. (Tuna will be just seared on the outside and raw in the middle.)
3. Remove to a plate. Drizzle with basil oil and garnish with lemon juice and zest.

AOL came across my online photo album and must have liked what they saw. So much so, apparently, that they selected one of my photos — one from my Thailand album — to feature on their AOL Pictures homepage. Here is a screenshot I grabbed:

Now that I don’t live in Los Angeles I probably won’t have anymore celebrity sightings, which is one thing I’ll actually miss about that city. These are the few sightings I had during my four years living in LA, arranged chronologically (earliest listed first):

1. Vince Vaughn — I spotted him and then followed him around for awhile at The Grove. He kept turning around and giving me dirty looks. Probably because I was stalking him.
2. Geoffrey Rush — Spotted him during the same trip to The Grove. (I didn’t stalk him, though.)
3. Luke Wilson — he entered Cuban restaurant Versailles while I was eating there. He also looked like shit, as if he hadn’t slept or showered in 3 days.
4. Molly Shannon — in the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Robertson. We held the door open for her and her infant child; she seemed pretty nice.
5. Paris Hilton — outside some fancy shops on Robertson, surrounded by hordes of paparazzi and flashes…looking clueless as ever.
6. Viggo Mortensen — at Empenada Place, ordering in Spanish(!).
7. Annoying and Ugly — I don’t know her name, but she’s the Indian girl from The Office. Saw her at the Arclight.
8. Tara Reid — at the restaurant El Compadre. She looked pretty coherent so she must not yet have started boozing.