Paleolithic Nursing Student (dia cinco)

(S.F.G.H)
Today I had my secondary training for an E.R. volunteer position at San Francisco General Hospital. I feel privileged to be there and it was not easy to get in. The letter of recommendation from the volunteer department along with the “R.N.” after my name should make me a shoe in for real job there sometime next year. Not that an RN would have a hard time getting a job anywhere, it’s just that I want to work there.

The General is an interesting hospital. I get a real sense of idealism and a “can do” spirit there. The typical stratification of Dr. to RN to LVN is absent and so is the elitism. In the ED, the doctors, nurses, techs and some volunteers all wear the same burgundy scrubs; you can’t tell who’s your boss or who’s your subordinate. Granted, it’s not like I have worked there long enough to really know if this spirit is consistent throughout the system, but I am betting it is. I guess I’ll find out.

Of course I walked there and back; it took fourty minutes each way - about four miles round trip. On the way back, I did some produce shopping in the Mission. I love the Mission. I am already a Latinophil, but the colors, the music, the produce spilling out to the street, the Spanish spoken everywhere, the wall murals (did you know that there are over 445 of them in this town?) all make me feel that I am in another country. And, dios mio, the prices! I walked out of there with a big bag of produce for only $3.43, choosing items that Paleolithic humans might have yanked off a tree.

Years ago, I learned a simple salsa recipe that I imagine could have been made easily millions of years ago. In fact, I bet our distant ancestors must have eaten well. When people think of primitives they often conjure images of dirt caked people struggling for every meal, which often involved a stick with some bland meat on the end of it roasting over a fire. For all we know they had figured out nature’s spice rack hundreds of generations prior and ate dishes with flavors we could not imagine. Anyway - the salsa. Dice up a medium red onion and two medium tomatoes and toss it in a bowl. Chop up three fingers width of cilantro and toss it in with the juice of two whole limes. Now the secret: let it sit overnight. It will be too potent if you eat it too soon. Patience.

(image courtesy: www.abekleinfeld.com)