Colors

I'll confess that I had a Luna bar and Goldfish for dinner Tuesday night, and some homemade hummus with sliced tomato and pita bread for dinner tonight. But besides Tuesday's fiasco (test week) and tonight's very lazy post-run pre-studying summer supper, I ate very well this week thanks to my friends. I have been cultivating them (the friends) with food for a year...

On Tuesday it was a kitchen-sink stir fry with lots of flavor: fresh basil, garlic, ginger, onion, and hot chili peppers. With some maple syrup in the sauce it tasted extremely Thai and unbelievably delicious.

Wednesday lunch was a Chinese-influenced kale-white bean-sausage soup, made with carrots, celery, and cellophane noodles. For dinner we had Indian eggplant curry with fresh peppers and tomatoes from a friend's garden. Hot, spicy, fresh -- so good!

And today I walked down the hall from the library to the hospital cafeteria to pick up my farm share! Let's see where it takes us...

Thanks, friends!

Don't stress eat!

Last night I had one of those horrible nights where bacteria- and virus-laden nonsense raced through my head as I lay in bed, in powerful mockery of my lame attempts at meditation and mind-clearing. Once an hour this was punctuated by becoming fully awake, getting up, and then laying down once again to the same as soon as my head hit the pillow.

I've been trying to do everything right, too: yoga, running, studying, dinner out, tea with a friend, reading David Sedaris stories before bed. Despite all this, the stress of having an exam every two weeks is overpowering.

So today I am allowing myself to bake a pie, make a fresh salad for lunch, and then resume studying. I will beat these pathogens!

Simple Greek salad: one chopped tomato, crumbled feta, some chickpeas, toasted almonds, romaine lettuce, oil and vinegar dressing. Each bite gives a satisfying crunch!

White girl makes fried rice

There are certain foods that I know how to make quite well, because I have made them a hundred times (tomato sauce) or because I grew up around them (turkey meatballs). Then there are foods that I see the people around me making, and it's fun to try them too (noodle soup).

My housemate makes a healthy version of fried rice for breakfast/lunch all the time. On Monday, another friend, Xin, brought a delicious homemade pork-and-veggie fried rice over for dinner. I like watching people cook dishes that are familiar to them because you can observe their comfort with the ingredients and process.

If you make it right, it seems healthy enough, so I figured I'd try my hand at it.

Zucchini fried rice (for one):

• (1/2 cup dry) cooked brown rice
• 1/2 cup zucchini, in 1-cm pieces
• 1/4 cup hard tofu, in 1-cm pieces
• 2 medium garlic cloves, chopped
• 1 tablespoon fresh ginger, chopped
• 4 scallions, white and light green parts, chopped
• 1 egg
• 1 teaspoon each canola oil and soy sauce

Heat canola oil in a frying pan on high heat. Add ginger and garlic and cook for a minute. Add rice, stirring, then white parts of scallion. After a minute, add the zucchini, tofu, and green parts of scallion. Clear a portion of your frying pan (or use a separate pan) and scramble the egg directly into the pan; once cooked, stir it into the rest of your rice.* Add soy sauce to taste, stir, then cook for a minute longer until crispy to your liking.

Did I get it right? It certainly tastes pretty good.

*Thanks to Xin for this correction to my procedure! She pointed out that the egg should be scrambled separately and then added, not mixed in wet with the rice.

Juggling

For 24 years I lived in Cambridge, Mass. with or near my parents. I was in high school when my maternal grandfather died, and I remember when my mom and brother met me at a dress rehearsal one evening to share the bad news. I was a few blocks away, living at Harvard summer school, when my dad was briefly hospitalized with an ulcer. I lived just one zip code over when my brother was hit by a motorbike and came home early from studying abroad; I was able to greet him with a basket of handpicked goodies from Shaw’s when he finally arrived.

To avoid sounding too morbid, I was often home for happy events too: every family birthday, crew meets, dinners, dirty laundry and snowstorms.

So of course it feels weird to be away, ensconced in medical school, when things have been happening at home. First one grandparent was dying; as soon as that ended, the other one seems to have started dying with hardly a break between. I would like to be there for my dad in a more substantive way than a phone call every few days.

Juggling independence with a connection to home is a regular part of growing up, hardly unique to med school. But for us who are to be managing the illnesses and deaths of other people’s loved ones, it seems invaluable to participate in the illnesses and deaths of our own loved ones. We are missing out not only on important family time, but experiences that would make us better physicians.

Some of my earliest memories are sitting on the counter top next to my dad while he cooked. Now when I’m home, we cook side by side. Last weekend I went home and fried up these zucchini flowers for the whole family.

Fried zucchini flowers:

• fresh zucchini or squash blossoms (best and easiest to find if picked directly from the garden)
• breadcrumbs
• one egg, beaten
• canola or olive oil
• salt

Trim the flowers: snap off their stems and any small green spikes near the base. In a large bowl, toss the flowers in the beaten egg. Cover a plate in breadcrumbs and coat each flower in breadcrumbs. Heat about half a centimeter of oil in a frying pan; test the heat by dropping in a breadcrumb—it should sizzle immediately. Lay the flowers one by one into the frying pan; when golden brown on the bottom, turn each flower over using tongs or two forks. Cook until the other side is golden brown. Take out of the frying pan and cool on paper towels or a paper bag. Sprinkle salt over the flowers and eat immediately.

Fresh from the garden.


Hot and ready to eat!

Thanks to my friend Anna for her gorgeous garden bounty!

Transformations

Sometimes I hear a joke that's just too good, that makes me want to run and repeat it to the people I love. But then I can't because I realize that it doesn't make any sense out of the context in which I heard it.

I heard a joke this week, from a classmate: non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (Advil, aspirin) work to prevent inflammation by inhibiting enzymes called COX1 and COX2, which produce molecules that cause fever, swelling, and pain. So instead of calling this class of drugs NSAIDS, why aren't they called COX blockers?

Anyway.

This is just one tiny way in which med school transforms us from the people we were into the people we are going to be. I would expect the same from any good job or school or intense experience.

"But I can't swim!"

Last night my housemate dreamed that she missed the pathology exam; she was told that she had to take the make-up exam under water. "But I can't swim!" she realized. Our kindly pulmonologist-dean swam down and offered her oxygen, then rescued her and told her she could take the exam in his office.

We are drowning.

I woke up to pouring rain, which was lovely and much-needed and caused me to sleep through my alarm. Followed by a drenched walk to school to record this morning's lecture. Of AV (those students among us who record lectures so the rest can watch from home), I thought:

"Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds."

Love the rain! Here's to more studying.

Peptic ulcer, obviously

Whereas this is obviously a shocked small bowel, duh

The Hebrew school paradigm

I was always a good student in elementary school, going so far as to do extra chores around the classroom in fourth grade to rack up "good checks" with my teacher. But in Hebrew school, I was something different. I would sit in the back row and skip the homework, struggling to answer questions about Hebrew vocab when called on. I wasn't proud of this behavior, but it could be fun.

This experience helps me to understand our collective approach to our evidence-based medicine and health-care-in-society classes. As a professor recently told us, we are all gunners, that's why we're in medical school. So it's a bit of a relief when the entire class bands together to do the best we can to give the least effort possible during a few of our required non-science classes. The computer screens below me display Facebook, League of Legends, golf videos, newspaper articles, and the occasional academic slide. Certainly nothing to brag about, but also a sign of collective de-stressing.

Thank goodness my former self can't see me now.

"Med student syndrome"

Speaking of model patients, sometimes I feel like a walking textbook. Amidst lectures about acute and chronic inflammation and healing, I have a banged up ankle, two banged up toes, and a cankle due to an hypersensitive reaction to a bee sting. With class and homework as reminders, the temptation to obsess over every bump and bruise is irresistible!

White coat ceremony 2.0

A friend and I both noticed that since the first years arrived, the second years have been much nicer to each other. In their hesitant and formal speech, clean-cut appearance, and in the packs they move in so as not to get lost, we see how far we have come. It sounds corny, but a hike with friends on Saturday marked the one-year anniversary of the hike we did together before starting orientation. As a result, there are more high fives, more big hellos, more hallway chats. It's what I imagine moving to the midwest would be like.

This afternoon, we "coated" the first years. Here's what I wrote about the ceremony last year:

The white coat ceremony was lovely: second years each gave us our coats and helped to put them on, then sat next to us for the rest of the hour. It was sweet, caring (I felt cared for, at least): the introduction of a mentor, someone who wants me to succeed. And also for a moment I had a flash of myself doing this next year for someone else: proof that I can succeed Year One. In my pocket were three chocolates placed there by my peer.

After each first year received their white coat from a second year, both classes stood and recited the Hippocratic Oath. It seemed appropriate to have this reminder 1) at a time when it's not such a blur and 2) when we're feeling confident and no longer on our toes.

On their best behavior!

(Photo courtesy of Phyllis Ying)

Summer non-cooking

In the summer, even I don't feel like cooking. I'd rather be outside. I'd rather eat raw, fresh food. My appetite is diminished. Etc.

However, too much of this attitude and I wind up eating yogurt, berries, granola bars, and grilled cheese for meal after meal. Enough is enough!

Fortunately, summer dishes can be mostly raw and therefore take less time to cook. Simply toss a few things together, or pour one thing over another thing.

For instance:

• 10-minute pickles that will last a week (I halved the recipe for 1 large cucumber and 1 small head of celery from this week's farm share)
• cold soba noodles and stir-fried Chinese greens with garlic
• tossed summer grain-and-corn salad

Cold soba noodles: boil the noodles as directed, then drain and immediately run under cold water until cool. Toss with a little bit of soy sauce, ponzu, and scallions. Enjoy with tofu or greens or as is.

Stir-fried Chinese greens with garlic: wash and chop greens into large pieces. Peel a few garlic cloves and leave whole. In a large frying pan or wok, heat about a tablespoon of canola oil until very hot (test with a drop of water or a piece of garlic), then add garlic. Cook for a minute, then turn off the heat and add the greens (if you don't turn off the heat, sometimes the whole thing will catch fire). Turn the heat back on and cook for a minute on high. Season with salt if you're feeling indulgent (or just went running!).

Summer salad: toss together the following ingredients.

• any grain, cooked al dente (I used some cool-looking black forbidden rice)
• 1 ear of corn, steamed and de-kerneled
• handful of chopped cilantro and scallion
• half an avocado, cut into small pieces
• handful of cherry tomatoes, sliced in half
• lemon juice
• red pepper flakes

Happy Swiss Independence Day!

Today I studied pharmacology (think Geneva-based pharmaceutical industry), ran some hills with the housemate, and finished the day off with a homemade potato-and-green-onion soup (using CSA ingredients! the most flavorful potatoes of recent memory) topped off with Gruyere cheese and black pepper, followed by cherries for dessert.

Potato leek soup (vaguely following what I remember from a Julia Child recipe):

• 5 small potatoes
• 1 leek or 2 green onions
• water or chicken stock
• sour cream, regular cream, whole milk, or Greek yogurt
• salt and pepper

Peel the potatoes; chop both leeks and potatoes into large pieces. Boil in just enough water or stock to cover the vegetables until potatoes are soft enough to mash with a fork. Puree using an immersion blender or food processor. Add cream, salt, and pepper to taste. Not exactly a summer dish, but do I have any say over when my CSA delivers me potatoes? At least it has been threatening rain all day.