Polly Wanna Cracker?

In a previous post I explained that Dear Husband and I were trying DIY home redecorating, namely tissue-paper "stained-glass" window hangings. This is the second iteration.

Keeping with the "tropical island" theme, I free-handed a parrot.

I mean, it mostly looks like a pigeon, but what can you expect from a city girl?

Gluing the feathers on the pigeon-bodied parrot, surrounded by dappled jungle.

Ta da!

Rememberlutions 2020

2020 was a terrible year: it started with wildfires in Australia, continued with a once-in-a-century pandemic, and ended with severe political discord. It was also one of the best years of my life: I completed a four-year combined Internal Medicine-Pediatrics residency; I was recruited to teach a history of medicine course as an adjunct professor; I studied for and passed not one but two board exams; and I got my dream job as an academic clinician-historian leading a special-needs primary-care clinic. Several weeks into the new year, it's time to finally sit down and pull the scraps of folded paper out of my Rememberlutions Jar (perhaps for the last time?). These are things I want to remember about 2020:

The first items I pulled out of the jar were a ticket to "Titans of the Ice Age," the 3D show at the La Brea Tar Pits, and my ticket to "Light of the Valkyries," the Samuel Oschin Planetarium show at Griffith Observatory. We were lucky enough to take an AMAZING trip to Los Angeles and Santa Monica right before the lock-downs started.

In the spring I taught my first course as an adjunct instructor. We made-do with class 100% on Zoom. (I just wrote a letter of recommendation for one of my students.) Zoom also made it possible to see more of my family than ever before.

I want to remember the time another resident recognized with as "a Med Peds resident and notable local badass" in an email to other residents, and when I was commended by others for my commitment to social justice and medical education. Also the feeling when a patient came out to me as trans...on the anniversary of the nightclub shooting in Orlando.

The first time I heard a murmur in a newborn baby...too bad I didn't know that those babies always need an echo, and she ended up having to be transferred to another hospital for a procedure the next day. The fellow congratulated me, but I wish I had known that to be able to prepare the parents. However, I did successfully learn how to diagnose a clavicular fracture in a newborn after shoulder dystocia from the same fellow. We celebrated the end of a long, COVID-filled month with a particularly delicious lunch of poke takeout together.

When my patient and her family were surprised to learn that the attending was my boss and not the other way around. That was the rotation on which neither the fellow nor the attending had any constructive criticism after observing me leading rounds: "The most empathetic team I have rounded with." I'm still celebrating the (one!) time we finished rounding in the hospital at 10:30am (instead of 11, 12, or 1).

The time a medical student nominated me for a professionalism award that was shared on social media. It reminds me of when a night intern cheered when she found out I would be her senior resident.

One mother of a child with Autism Spectrum Disorder I met in the ED told me my hugs were the best medicine. And when I told another mother over the phone that I was leaving my residency clinic, she cried at the thought that I wouldn't be taking care of her sons anymore.

I was interviewed by a local news organization during a socially distanced faith-based rally in support of our neighbors of color: "We are all created in God's image."

I want to remember the joy of celebrating residency graduation with my cohort-mates.

I gave a couple of lectures--on the history of epidemics and xenophobia, on women as breast cancer patients, and on the history of race in medicine--that went very well. A third-year medical student from China appreciated the first one so much that they sent me their final paper on the progression of the SARS-CoV-2 epidemic in Wuhan by way of thanks.

During the months at home, Dear Husband and I baked, took long walks in Frick Park, and held a personal disaster-themed film festival. I studied A LOT over the summer between graduation and starting my new attending position. Rosamunda and I bonded together over my textbooks. Of course we celebrated with ice cream! 

I want to remember a truly relaxing family vacation to a lake house, between board exams and when the pandemic had subsided a little, that started with a rainbow.

When a colleague (and former attending) welcomed me to the clinic with "You are a great doctor and I know you are going to be super successful. We are super excited!" 

As a new attending, I was heartened to read this comment in a specialist's note: "Discussed with patient that her PCP has done an excellent job in managing her diabetes." 

One patient told me, "On the phone the staff said you were pleasant, and it's true!" Another sent me a message: "You're the nicest doctor I've ever had, I mean that. It's why I don't go, but you're like my angel. I'm going to call you that."

We celebrated Thanksgiving together at the hospital. I got my first COVID-19 vaccination. We had a beautiful white Christmas. Finally, we went to bed on time for New Year's and woke up to 2021.

Thanks for reading! Looking back over previous years, I am struck by just how much we used to DO outside the house before (modified) quarantine became our way of life in March 2020. You can see what I mean here: as a medical student (2015), finishing medical school and starting internship (2016), when I completed intern year (2017), in the throes of residency (2018), and riding high as a senior resident (2019).

Let the sun shine!

Dear Husband in particular is mourning the loss of the ability to travel due to COVID-19. For many years we were unable to leave town during the short gray days between New Year's and Easter. He rejoiced when we were able to fly to Tampa two years in a row and to Los Angeles right before the pandemic hit. The weather was a little warmer, we could see friends and family, and there were 300% more palm trees.

We aren't going anywhere this spring. I am about to get my second COVID-19 vaccine shot, but we haven't even begin to think about when DH will be allowed to get his. When he wondered what we could do to brighten up the study, I took my cue from our across-the-street neighbors to make translucent window art out of waxed paper, tissue paper, electrical tape, and watered down Elmer's glue.

Measuring and cutting the waxed paper

I free-handed the design while DH tore up the tissue paper

It took two trips to the Walgreens to get liquid glue (not glue sticks). I wasn't going to sacrifice my basting brush for gluing, but it turns out the back of a plastic spoon works just as well.

Finished product, waiting to dry

Let the sun shine!

Our next project is to acquire some different colors of tissue paper and make a seashell-themed pane for the bottom window

Conferencing in the Time of COVID

 

'Tis the season for conferences. They're pretty much all online these days, which is how I was able to attend the "Navigating Pediatrics to Adult Health Care: Lost in Transition Workshop" "at" the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD. While the speakers talked about urological care of individuals with spina bifida and attempts to improve medication compliance among young adults with sickle cell anemia through apps, I darned the heels of three socks for me and patched two pants pockets for Dear Husband. If idle hands are "the Devil's," I rather suspect that keeping mine busy while I listened prevented me from "multitasking" by checking email or Facebook.

Happy 15th Wedding Anniversary!

Today Dear Husband and I celebrated our 15th wedding anniversary. This year there was no trip, no theater performance, not even a fancy dinner from our favorite restaurant, Altius, which is not even offering take-out right now (thanks, COVID). We did the best we could to celebrate together anyway: DH wore a button-down shirt to pick up salad, steak, and scallops from Paris 66 Bistro; and I set the table with our best china. He picked out smooth tunes from Dave Brubeck, while I dialed up "restaurant background noise" on YouTube. He lit our unity candle, while I pulled out our wedding photo album.

The food was as good as could be expected for having been cooked and brought home. The company was the best! We enjoyed looking through the photos; too bad the honeymoon album is still in a box somewhere. We even danced in the dining room while waiting for the ice cream cake to soften enough to cut. We ate it off the hand-painted plates I purchased on sale in Meissen, which I only just realized depict the Chinese Zodiac. Although we are a Pig and a Dog, we somehow ended up with a Monkey and a Rat. Oh well. I'm still hoping we can take a second honeymoon to the Greek isles...maybe next year. 

Thank you to everyone who helped two "kids" have a special wedding 15 years ago. Many couples aren't so lucky this year, but hopefully they will find truth in the adage that a wedding is only the first day of the rest of your lives together. Oh, the adventures we're having:

"I, Frau Doktor Doctor, take you, Dear Husband, to be my husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer and for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, until death do us part. In the presence of God, our family and friends, I promise to love you unconditionally, to support you in your goals, to honor and respect you, to laugh with you and cry with you, and to journey with you wherever life’s adventures may take us, for as long as we both shall live."

Baked "Scotch" Eggs

Quarantine cooking has inspired me to try new recipes, such as "Baked Scotch Eggs." Here is the absolutely true story of how I found this recipe. I was scrolling through Facebook--as one does--and came across a story about how attractive Scottish actor David Tennant (Doctor Who, Jessica Jones, Good Omens, etc.) is. I learned that he co-stars in an HBO comedy I had never heard of, Camping, and looked it up on IMDB. Somehow in the process of doing all this research, I decided to click on an advertisement for Eggland's Best eggs, a recipe for something called "Baked Scotch Eggs." 

Never yet having achieved the vacation bucket-list item of visiting London--but having greatly enjoyed our 10 days in Scotland (e.g. see this post from Aberdeen, or search "Scotland" in this blog's labels)--I had no idea about the origin stories of Scotch Eggs or debates on how to eat them. For instance, they are traditionally fried and eaten in bars, although apparently you can also get them at "petrol stations" instead of the insipid, over-cooked "hot dogs" found on those little heated rollers at gas stations stateside.

Since the last dozen eggs Dear Husband bought at the grocery store were smaller than usual, I figured they were perfect for hiding at the center of meatballs coated in bread crumbs. While watching a Zoom about educating anti-racist health professionals, I assembled a double batch by doubling the recipe below. I ended up using closer to 3 cups of the exactly 2 pounds of ground pork DH was able to find, and I used the rest of the meat to make 10 small meatballs that I coated in the rest of the breadcrumbs.

Ingredients:

4 whole eggs

1 egg white

1 ¼ cup minced pork

½ cup diced white onions

1 tsp rosemary

1 tsp ground pepper

½ tsp chili powder

¼ cup breadcrumbs

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325°F. [I did this later, when I was ready to bake them just before dinner.]

2. Boil eggs in hot water for four minutes. Take the eggs out and place them in a bowl of cool water for a minute. De-shell each of the eggs and set aside. [Shelling the soft-boiled eggs took a looong time, because I forgot to try the trick I learned on the Quarantine Culinary Challenge Facebook group of a 1/2 tsp of baking soda during boiling.]

3. In a large bowl, mix together the minced pork, diced white onions, rosemary, ground pepper, chili powder, and egg white to combine.

4. Separate the meat mixture into equal balls and flatten into circles. [You need less meat than you think to fit around an egg.]

5. Place a boiled egg into the center of each circle and mold the meat around them.

6. Spread the breadcrumbs out on a tray and roll each of the balls in them. Make sure that each of the Scotch eggs is completely coated. [I didn't need to double the crumbs to have enough.]

7. Place the Scotch eggs on a baking tray and cook in the preheated oven for 30 minutes. [After 30 minutes the pork was still pink, so I upped the temperature to 400 degrees for a further 30 minutes, which did the trick.]

Tip: Serve with French mustard on the side and enjoy!

I decided to serve ours with warm baked beans and fresh asparagus asparagus dressed with olive oil and powdered garlic, since we're saving the Parmesan cheese to go with chicken next week. Because I had to turn up the oven to overcome the double meatballs having sat in the fridge, the yolks were not very runny, but DH told me he preferred them this way. This was a delightful--and different--meal, and I look forward to recreating it several times over the coming week.

Quarantine Cooking #2

When I realized the chunky onion above was still sitting in the vegetable drawer after another round of grocery shopping, I decided to make one of Dear Husband's favorite restaurant dishes, French Onion Soup. I used a simple recipe from my Better Homes & Gardens cookbook. The flavor was strong, but the consistency was rather thin, probably because it did not require a roux. Served with garlic bread and Greek salad.

Later I made this barley Greek salad while listening to a Department of Medicine COVID update that ran for 1 hour and 20 minutes, in no small part because of a lengthy description of the lottery for patients to receive remdesivir...which had closed the day before due to the institution having run out of its government-assigned allotment of the drug, which henceforth will have to be purchased from Gilead for $too-much-money. It's served with pan-fried salmon dressed with dill and with some of the last watermelon DH could find in the store.

Editor's Note: Click here for more menu ideas as Quarantine Cooking #1.

Quarantine Cooking #1

What have I been up to this summer? It seems like, if I am not studying, I am fixing food, eating food, or cleaning up from one of those two activities. While breakfasts have been a continuous showcase of all the wonderful ways to enjoy fruits and berries--such as the waffles with peanut butter, syrup, and strawberries to the left--and lunches have been a rotation of soups or sandwiches, dinners have included a number of new dishes and/or combinations.




For instance, check out the Treasure Island Chicken above with a creamy cinnamon-pineapple sauce and roasted Brussels Sprouts. I used to bake it with the skin on, but now I buy skinless chicken breasts, and a long time ago I switched from white rice to brown rice for the nutrients. I'm sorry to say I associate this recipe with having a couple over for dinner once who later broke up, as it's a really delightful entree you can make once and eat from for several days.

Speaking of leftovers, I tried a new kind of savory bread pudding, this time with sun-dried tomatoes and corn. Dear Husband usually eats bread pudding reluctantly, but even he agreed this was delicious. From the remains of the French loaf I cut up and froze enough bread cubes for two more casseroles and will probably change up the ingredients to see what else goes together. I have made versions with seafood and with ham and spinach a couple of times, but I notice it has been a while since I made a breakfast bread pudding, and I've only ever made South African Bobotie once before.


Editor's Note: You can find Quarantine Cooking #2 here.

What Residency Looks Like CXVII: COVID fashion

Sometimes residency in the time of COVID looks like "business on the top" and "comfort underneath."

Exhibit A: Comfy solid tee with a statement necklace that will look good on Zoom/Team meetings, with shorts because the room with the plain background gets hot from the morning sun.

Exhibit B: Cover your comfy tee with a scarf, cargo pants on the bottom; very busy domestic background.

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What Residency Looks Like XCII: Caricatures

"He's gorgeous," I say to a first-time mom.

"I bet you say that to all the parents," she replies, wryly.

"I do, but it's also true," I admit.

"I agree with her," says the OB, who is fixing a tear. "They're all so stinking cute!"


COVID-19 has upended the end of residency, which was supposed to consist of a couple weeks of night shifts and inpatient pediatrics interspersed with electives and history of medicine conferences. Instead, for the last 6 weeks, I have either been quarantined at home for my protection or else working at the women's hospital, attending high-risk births as the pediatrician who checks out the newborn baby. For this reason, my life hasn't been all that terribly different under COVID. When I'm home, I keep myself busy writing and studying (and tuning in to live-streamed lectures), and when I'm at work, the women's hospital functions much like it always has, since people still have babies in the middle of a pandemic. We are not entirely sure why adults _seem to be_ having fewer heart attacks and strokes than before, but some awestruck relatives will still take flash photographs while you resuscitate a blue baby...

I am not a fan of the long hours and the uncertain schedule (example: 5 hours of waiting, followed by 5 babies born within 30 minutes). But I do like being a cheerleader for new parents, reassuring them that their babies are cute despite the blood, meconium, cranial molding or swelling, extra digits, and/or weird swelling in the groin that is either a hernia or a lipoma but either way is really just cosmetic, and General Surgery can take it off when the baby is old enough for anesthesia in a couple of months. I enjoy announcing the baby's weight, since everyone has a guess (and sometimes money riding on it). And I particularly like introducing babies to their fathers. Although I have a good relationship with my own father, I think it's a cultural thing I have unfortunately absorbed that suggests it's unusual for dads to be emotionally invested in their children. Which may be why the video of Anderson Cooper choking up while announcing the birth of his son, Wyatt, got me right in the feels this week.

Anyway, I had already completed this required rotation a year and a half ago and wasn't expected to be back, which is why there was no head shot to go on the whiteboard for tracking which procedures we had done. So I drew my own "COVID portrait," hospital-issued paper mask and all. But I had to "break quarantine" to document it: the blur in the bottom left corner is the edge of the plastic bag around my cellphone. It's not very environmentally friendly, but I've been using one a day to reduce the burden of germs on my phone. When I get home from the hospital I remove the bag and clean my phone with an alcohol wipe. Then it just has "home germs" on it.

Next week we will resume something that approximates our "normal" schedules, although patient volumes are expected to remain low, and some visits will take place via video chat rather than in person. It is all so similar, yet different, a caricature of what used to be.

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Quarantine Baking

When I realized there was a bunch of bananas in the physicians' lounge that was so ripe no one would eat them, I stuck them in the freezer until after my shift. I looked up banana bread recipes that were fairly simple to make (no yeast) and would not leave me with 1/2 a container of sour cream. I settled on a pair from Two Peas and Their Pod, in no small part because they offered versions with and without chocolate. Then I made sure Dear Husband brought home sufficient flour, eggs, and butter for all this baking.

To the right is the chocolate chip banana bread I made for myself. Never having baked banana bread before, I was surprised to discover that the skins were still frosty cold, even though the flesh had thawed into pulpy mush!

Above left is the peanut butter banana bread I made for DH and topped with peanuts. It required less flour, butter, and eggs, and no baking powder than the chocolate chip one. However, only after starting the measurements for the second loaf did I realize I had put in twice the amount of butter (1 stick is half a cup, not a quarter cup)! Thankfully I hadn't started mixing yet and was able to skim a quarter cup of melted butter out of the bowl.

I baked them together and therefore lengthened the time a little bit, but I wish I had rescued them at exactly 50 minutes, as they are both a little more done than I had hoped. Now I know for next time!

Want other baking ideas? Check out these posts for Sweet Potato Casserole, Apple Maple French Toast Bake, or Reindeer Turds. I cannot, however, recommend this Blueberry Oatmeal Coffee Cake.

The most quarantine things I did

I have been more or loss quarantined for the last three weeks. The last time I left my house for work was Friday, March 27, but I had basically stopped caring for patients in person the week before that, either because they did not show up at clinic, or because I went to the hospital but did my consults from a distance. Being relieved of clinical duties freed up significant time for me to do other work, when I wasn't managing the influx of COVID-19 related information from the news, social media, my three residency programs, hospital, clinic, and every medical organization that has ever gotten possession of my email. Ditto for a number of companies reassuring me they were ready for the pandemic, and oh by the way did I want to purchase something from them for delivery/to use in the future once I got out?

Like all the other pediatric residents at my institution, I was pulled from the elective rotations I so carefully chose for my last three months of residency for their diversity of experiences--and favorable work hours, I won't lie--to be kept at home "on jeopardy" 1/4 of the time, be off 1/4 of the time, and work 7 days in a row the other 1/2 of the time. The children's hospital is being maintained on a skeleton crew due to the low number of patients and high number of potential COVID exposures on the staff. Quarantine is a novel experience for me, as for so many of us, although I confess that the introverted workaholic who was already overextended is not so secretly grateful to be able to devote so much time to studying, teaching, sleeping, and the following activities:

Cleaned house, did laundry
Sent long email updates to friends and family (if you didn't get one, have you checked your spam folder?)
Never set an alarm in the morning
Alternated my outfits between couch potato and put-together, depending on my mood and whether anyone besides Dear Husband would see me via teleconference
Cooked: potato and bean casserole, tuna pasta, black bean and corn soup ("Pittsburgh soup")
Baked: scones, chocolate chip cookies, blackberry oatmeal bars
Took a walk everyday with my housemate while trying to remain 6 feet away from everyone else
Had a conversation from the sidewalk with friends on their front porch
Watched a lot of COVID parody songs, famous people reading stuff, and late-night comedians become day-time YouTubers
Listened to the entire soundtrack of Hamilton
Held a weekly disaster-themed film series

Things I used Zoom/Microsoft Teams/Google Hangouts to do: listen to COVID updates multiple times per week; participate in live-streamed educational sessions about medicine and/or history; worship on Sunday mornings; teach college and medical students; participate in a hip-hop class; have "happy hour" with friends; celebrate my father in law's birthday; and eat Easter dinner "with" family. (We had ham, roasted asparagus, and black-eyed peas with spinach and onion.)

Pittsburgh "Black and Gold" Soup

This is another Cooking with Frau Doktor Doctor post. Just follow these simple directions, and by the time you are done, you may have something to eat...eventually. Learn from my mistakes!

1. On Monday while apprising the store of foodstuffs relative to the projected length of the stay-at-home order, discover a Tupperware canister of dried black beans. Decide to make the Black Bean and Corn Soup from your Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook on Tuesday night, right before the cheesy tuna pasta runs out.

2. When Dear Husband waits to venture out to the co-op to acquire a few key ingredients until after a care package with homemade masks arrives, finish the pasta on Tuesday after all.

3. The awaited packaged arrives on Wednesday! After DH returns from the the store that afternoon, pull out the cookbook and ingredients. Learn that not only do the beans need to be blanched, but the recommended crock pot time is 8-10 hours. Oops.

4. Rinse 2 1/4 cups black beans, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Cover and let stand for 1 hour. Clean purple-black splatter from the stovetop.

5. Meanwhile, chop 1/2 a large onion and the rest of a desiccated head of garlic. Sure, we can call it 4 cloves. Add to the crock pot with 1 tbsp ground cumin, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1 tsp salt, and a 14 1/2-ounce can of stewed, halved tomatoes that you chop by hand.

6. Substitute an 8-ounce can of drained corn for the 10 ounces of frozen corn in the recipe. Omit the bottled hot pepper sauce and cilantro pepper salsa that your household would never eat.

7. Contemplate trying to recreate the "Mexican spices" that would have been in a "Mexican-style" can of stewed tomatoes. Feel reassured that the soup will be spicy enough when you see that the salsa DH purchased is HOT.

8. Rinse the black beans and add to crock pot. Cook for 4 hours on half heat. Fix tilapia filets, roasted asparagus, and bouillon-cooked quinoa for dinner. Stow crock pot in fridge before bed.

9. After lunch, return crock pot to heating element on high, stirring hourly. Realize too late that, being pre-stewed, the tomatoes were supposed to have been added last. Shortly before serving, mash some of the beans to thicken. Try to ignore that the beans are really rather mealy instead of soft and smushable.

10. Spoon this "Black and Gold" mixture into bowls, top with salsa, and serve with red hot blue corn tortilla chips. Vegetarian serving suggestions include sour cream and Greek salad (tomatoes, cucumber, feta cheese); leave these off to keep it vegan.

This was pretty good, even though it was thinner than I had anticipated, and decidedly more red than "black and gold," especially after I had added a tablespoon of HOT salsa to it. Still, it fit the bill, and DH drained the dregs from his bowl. Finally, it thickened considerably after being left in the fridge in the crock pot instead of being stored in Tupperware (::ahem::). Bon appetit, n'at!

Editor's Note: If you enjoyed this recipe, you might like this one for Stuffed Shell Casserole, my experiment with succotash, or a yummy fall-themed breakfast casserole.