Exceeding my Expectations

While I wouldn't want to end up in the emergency room here, there is at least one aspect of healthcare here that impresses me. Lab services. A boring topic to you perhaps. But, as some of you know, I currently require fairly regular monitoring of my blood. And when people get the little things right, it's incredible how much easier the big things become.

In the States I was making weekly trips to my doctor's office where I had to wait anywhere from 10 to 30 minutes to have blood drawn. I would leave the office, wait 3 days, play phone tag with a nurse, and get my results. If I had any questions, the nurse would relay them to the doctor and maybe, eventually, I'd get an answer.

Now I can go a month between tests but even if I still had to get this done every week, it wouldn't be so bad. Here's the deal -- you tell your doctor's office staff when you want the blood work done.  I usually give them a whopping 48 hours notice. They call the lab and have the lab come to their office at the time you specify. I can even ask for my favorite phlebotomist. Oh yes, I have a favorite. I show up at the specified time. He's usually there before me. The needle work is done in seconds and I'm out of there in 10 minutes or so. 6 hours later, my doctor has the results. 6 hours! My doctor calls me and we talk about the outcome. It's all done in one day (or maybe the next morning). 

And, you may ask, how much does all this personal service cost? Well, there was a major price hike in January. It now costs 750 dinar. Or $11. That's without insurance and includes the transportation fee for the lab guy to come to the office. Pretty steep.

It's not like everything in Serbia is super cheap. Restaurant meals are roughly (roughly I say) comparable to a night out in the States. And clothes are certainly no deal. So it's nice to feel like you're getting a deal somewhere -- even if it is on healthcare. Little do they know what my willingness to pay is for this level of service.

Chocolate Cake with Convection

When our plans included living at an elevation of 12,000 feet, I prepared myself by studying up on baking at high altitude. I was looking forward to the baking soda-filled chemistry projects. But maybe not the brick-like results. With the sudden change in location to Belgrade I figured I was home free. Everything would be back to normal. Alas, I did not plan on the teeny, tiny, euro-sized convection oven that came with our very euro apartment. Our oven, like all of our appliances, has many many settings. Including: 

• Defrosting
• Fan Assisted Cooking
• Door closed fan grill
• Fan plus lower element
• Natural Convection
• Door closed Grilling
• Pizza function

The descriptions for most of these settings make little sense to me. The "lower element" most of all because I fail to see a lower element in my oven. But hey, what do I know? Bear in mind, this oven is hardly half the size of a standard US oven. I keep one rack in there and a single cookie sheet touches all four sides when I slide it in. The concept of roasting, grilling, etc. is rather comical. Adding to the fun is the Celsius degree knob that only has markings every 50 degrees with a little dot to represent the 25's. There are a host of other buttons that would let you set the oven to shut off automatically and probably turn your food, cut it up, plate it and serve it for you but those functions are beyond me at this point.

Despite the fact that all we've cooked to date are 27 frozen pizzas and one chicken (which turned out remarkably well), I really wanted to try Nigella's Old Fashioned Chocolate Cake. It's from her Feast book and kicks off the "Chocolate Cake Hall of Fame." How could this be bad?

Most of the ingredients came with us in our kitchen gear, including flour and sugar. The only thing that I had to buy was the chocolate and the corn syrup. Without the commissary, I can't imagine I would have come across corn syrup in Belgrade. The chocolate would have been easy if I had read Nigella's helpful side note more carefully. As it was, I sent myself to a few extra stores which required a rainy Sunday morning walk. In the end, this was well worth it.

Making the cake was simple and I watched it bake the entire time since I had no idea how long it would take. It's just as well since it was done very early -- as to be expected in a convection oven. Even so, I probably let it go too long.

In the end, I didn't hear any complaints from anyone who got a taste. Except for Bob, who said the frosting was too sweet (shocking). And, they were kind enough to leave half of it for me to finish. I think I'll start working on that right now.