My second week of studying is now over! Slowly but surely, I’m chunking through all the material for the RD Exam. For those less familiar with the Registration Examination for Dietitians, it essentially covers everything about nutrition and dietetics. It’s all four years of my undergrad plus the 10 months of my dietetic internship all rolled into one. Needless to say, it’s a lot to cover and finding that balance between not taking it too soon or too late is a challenge. Studying takes up most of the daytime hours for me during the week which leaves my evenings and weekends for more fun!
One of my favorite things about my dietetic internship ending is that I actually consistently have time to cook now! I’ve been experimenting a lot with creating new dishes and writing my own recipes. Monday’s dish was a particular fave–a Mediterranean-inspired eggplant and zucchini quinoa bowl with roasted turmeric chickpeas, arugula, and homemade tzatziki sauce. As you can tell from the picture, I loved the tzatziki.
Wednesday, we tried making zoodles (zucchini noodles) for the first time. We tried this peanut chicken zucchini noodles recipe. It was very tasty, but a little soupy from all the moisture in the zoodles. I know you can salt the zoodles before cooking to help get out some of the excess liquid. Any other suggestions for how to avoid soupy zoodles?
Wednesday night, Spencer and I watched “Ant Man” in preparation for seeing “Ant Man and the Wasp” in theaters on Thursday. Personally, I liked the first movie better, but they were both pretty entertaining.
On Friday, my parents and I went to my grandma’s house to help her with yard work. We trimmed bushes, pulled weeds, and cleared out some of the million maple seeds around her house. She has this gorgeous, huge maple tree in her backyard which releases tons of maple seeds every year. Those little buggers are hard to clean up! After working hard all day, we went to Chow Grill in Elk River for supper. I tried their garden linguine which was good, but not quite as much as I was hoping. It just didn’t have a very rich flavor beyond the spiciness of the harissa sauce.
Saturday was another “smoke and brew” day in the Hookom household. My dad and younger brother, Ben, smoked some pork butt for pulled pork. At the same time, my dad and I brewed up a raspberry wheat beer.
Sunday afternoon, we went to a pig roast at Lake George put on by my dad’s work. It was a beautiful day with lots of great food–and an overabundance of watermelon! Sunday evening was stormy, so we stayed in and relaxed.
Next week, I have a couple of webinars interspersed with all of my studying. Until then!