Happy New Year!

Chinese, that is. My entire life I've had Chinese-American friends, so at this point the holiday seems as regular and relevant to me as Rosh Hashana. Just sayin'.

This week we've been studying lung cancer, pneumonia, tuberculosis... all disturbing diseases that eat away at you, leaving you breathless and in pain. I suppose the latter two are success stories, in the U.S. at least, but I think of the people who died of those diseases before there were cures, or those who health care successes have yet to reach. As in the first 100 pages of "The Magic Mountain" that I managed to get through this summer, with young (rich) people slowly dying of tuberculosis in the Swiss alps.

Lung cancer is still terrifying, of course, with about a 14% five-year survival. My grandmother on my mother's side died of lung cancer, and I've been wondering what that must have been like for my mother, a doctor, as the most healthcare-literate person in the family. I imagine that most people want to be hopeful when they receive a devastating diagnosis, but that such optimism would evade a doctor familiar with the numbers and the process. I wonder if it's unfortunate that she died just a few years before a ground-breaking pulmonary adenocarcinoma drug, or if it wouldn't have mattered anyway. These are not things we talk about.

Anyway, do you ever notice a paucity of salads at potlucks? That's often the case here, and anything raw is usually appreciated. Here's my contribution to a New Year potluck, scrapped together from here and here and what I happen to have in the cupboard.

Napa cabbage salad:

• 1 Napa cabbage, sliced as thin as possible
• 2 carrots (or peppers, sweet peas, bean sprouts), sliced as thin as possible
• handful of peanuts
• 2 garlic cloves
• 1 bunch scallions/green onions
• handful of cilantro, chopped
• rice wine vinegar (I substituted rice wine and white vinegar)
• soy sauce
• chili oil or chili flakes
• sesame oil
• sugar
• white pepper

Slice all of your veggies. Chop the garlic, scallions, and cilantro. Stir together about 1/2-1 tablespoon of each of your sauces, sugar, and chili, adding each to taste (the recipes cited above may help you here). Toss in your garlic and herbs, then cabbage and veggies. Enjoy!

P.S. Suggestions welcome if anyone has a favorite cabbage slaw recipe! I wasn't able to find any one recipe that looked perfect.

Healthy fried rice

I am not one of those people who can walk in the door and instantly get back to work. Rather than pretending, I've started relaxing for a few minutes when I get home instead of opening my laptop. Lying down, reading my book--or tonight, chopping vegetables. Since receiving a second lesson from my friend Xin, I decided to try fried rice again. I noticed that last time I started by frying the rice first, which I don't think makes sense.

This version of fried rice is heavy on the vegetables, with stir-fry "stuff" dominating over the rice. Plenty of brown rice though, still, to lend a heartiness to this dish on a cold day like today. This is also a good dish for when you're raiding the pantry, in those busy weeks just before an exam (I usually have carrots, celery, and onions in the fridge).

Brown rice vegetable fried rice (~2 servings):

• 1 carrot, peeled and sliced into matchsticks
• 1 celery stalk, sliced crosswise on a diagonal
• 1 onion, sliced
• 4-6 mushrooms, sliced
• handful of spinach
• 1" piece of ginger, washed with the skin on, finely chopped
• 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and finely chopped
• 1 scallion, chopped
• 1 egg
• tofu, in 1-cm cubes
• 1 cup brown rice, cooked
• canola oil
• soy sauce
• rice wine vinegar
• white pepper

In a wok or large frying pan, scramble the egg in about 1 tsp of oil. Set aside. Add more oil to the pan and then the garlic, ginger, and onion; after a minute or two (when fragrant and just gaining color), add the tofu and rest of the vegetables (add the vegetables in the order in which you want them to cook, saving those barely-cooked vegetables for last). After another few minutes, when the vegetables are just softer but not mushy (add spoonfuls of water as needed to keep from burning), add your rice and the scrambled egg. Continue frying until parts of the rice and tofu crisp up a bit, seasoning with soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and white pepper to your taste. Garnish with scallion before serving.

I feel better. 

Cooking keeps me sane

Today, after a very good but relatively stressful day in a new place, it was such a relief to come home, unpack my groceries, fill three straw baskets with a variety of produce and dried goods, and chop some carrots and zucchini. Order at home and confidence in a task I know how to do well. The challenge of cooking within local constraints is one I can handle and even find exciting.

This morning I took the history and physicals of five pregnant women in for their routine check-ups. I asked three very simple questions, learned to read a urine stick and measure uterine height, and even got to learn and practice using a sonogram. The women were healthy and the history a little too simple for my taste, but overall it was more patient interaction, independence, Spanish, and technology use than I'd had to date.

Carrots and zucchini with cumin:

• 2 large carrots, peeled and sliced into 1-cm thick rounds (the carrots in Guatemala have so much flavor!)
• 2 medium zucchinis, sliced into 1-cm thick rounds (I used spherical zucchinis instead and sliced them into quarters first)
• 4 cloves garlic, peeled and sliced
• 1 tsp ground cumin
• 1 tsp canola or olive oil

Heat oil in a pan with one slice of garlic until the garlic sizzles, then add garlic and cumin. Stir for half a minute, then add carrots and zucchini. Sauté, adding 1/4 water if needed to keep from burning. Cook for just a minute or two so that the vegetables retain their crunch and flavor. I didn't even season with salt and pepper, but you could.

A pre-spring salad

This winter I have tried to learn the physiology of the nephron as well as how to cook root vegetables, which are cheaper and less egregiously out-of-season than tomatoes. The nephron is a series of parallel tubes in the kidney that filter electrolytes and manage the pH and osmolality of the blood. Root vegetables are starches that grow in the ground. Guess which endeavor met with more success.

Today's lunch:

• 1/2 beet, peeled, steamed, and sliced thin (prepped this over the weekend to have on hand)
• 1 carrot, raw, peeled and sliced thin
• Handful of quinoa (leftover from a Seder last night -- but easy to cook just as you would rice -- my roommate has a small rice cooker that she allows me to commandeer)
• Toasted walnuts, about 1/4 cup or less (a treat! -- also Seder leftovers)
• Arugula
• 1/2 lemon

I pack the quinoa, beet, carrots, and lemon in the bottom of a tupperware with the arugula on top, keeping the walnuts in a separate container to keep them crisp. At lunch I'll squeeze the lemon over everything and toss it all together. The lemon cuts the bitterness of the arugula perfectly.

Today I'll be eating it during an advocacy and service learning meeting on how to do a community needs assessment. What are the needs in my community? What is my community?

California

I've been daydreaming of California lately, can't guess why. I like going to California (the couple of times that I've been), among other reasons, because it inspires me to make new and delicious salads. This is a version of a fancier salad that I had at Gjelena on Abbot Kinney Boulevard in Venice Beach last February. The colors are enough to brighten up this long, dragged out New England winter...

1 beet, peeled and sliced roughly into wedges
1 carrot, peeled and sliced into thick rounds
1/2 avocado
olive oil
pinch of salt

Steam (over boiling water or in a microwave) beet and carrot until a knife just slices through easily. I prefer the carrot to retain some crunch, so I add them to the steamer just before the beet is done.

Slice avocado into large chunks.

Toss all together and season with olive oil and salt. This makes a hearty salad that can stand alone as a lunch, or have it with a yogurt. I ate mine in the library hunched over a textbook, thinking back to those skateboarders with a view of the Pacific...