How I Feed Myself

I am obsessed with food.  I watch Top Chef religiously; I spend way too much money in restaurants; and when I am unhappy, a surefire way to make me happy again is to feed me good food.  That being said, I hate the fact that I have to feed myself regularly.  I'd far rather eat five really amazing meals per week than have to deal with the tedium of three meals a day, seven days a week.

Tonight, I was driving home late from a long Monday in my inner city clinic, when I realized that I was far too hungry (HAANGRY) to finish making the beef and barley soup I'd started yesterday.  There were a few things in my freezer, but I was not feeling virtuous enough to eat lentil soup or bean-packed chili.  I wanted something tasty.  My initial impulse was to go to McDonald's, but I haven't been back since my nieces informed me that there were 17 ingredients in their fries.  (I was under no illusion that McDonald's food was healthy, but I though that at least their fries were potatoes fried in oil and salted.  Nope.  I was 17 kinds of wrong on that one.)

So I decided to stop at the store.  And what I was really craving was pizza.  I could've just picked up a frozen pizza, but I've mostly been cooking at home lately, and as a result most processed food tastes like cardboard to me.  So I picked up some pita bread for crusts, along with pizza sauce, cheese, canned mushrooms, and pepperoni.  And 1 hour and 15 minutes after I pulled into the parking lot, I pulled six of these out of my oven:

(Only five are shown, because one was in my stomach by the time the photo was taken.)  Once again, the light is terrible (no natural light after 5:30!), but the pizza is super yummy.  Look closer...

Mmmm.  Given that I have five leftover pizzas to freeze, this works out to about 12 minutes per meal for shopping and cooking time.  And that's probably a bit of an overestimate for how long it took, as I spent the last 15 minutes or so sitting on the couch eating my pizza while the remaining pizzas baked.

So this is how I feed myself:  batch cooking.  I am absolutely not going to come home every night and cook for myself, but I am happy to cook big batches of food and freeze leftovers.  Whenever I hear someone say that they don't like leftovers (like my mother), I look at them like they've just grown a second head, because leftovers are my entire cooking strategy.  All hail leftovers!

(Yes, I recognize that pizza is not the healthiest dinner.  When I eat the leftovers, I'll probably invest a bit of extra time into making a salad or some veggies to make it healthier, which will likely stretch the pizzas even farther, as a whole pizza is a lot of food on its own.  With a big serving of veggies, I can probably get ten meals out of the rest of the pizza.  Also, I generally eat pretty healthy food, so I figure that on a day when I am tired and grouchy and just want to eat a quarter pounder washed down with liquid sugar, a homemade pizza is probably acceptable.)

What is your cooking strategy?

The Best Salad

I love good food.  (Not a shock to anyone.)  Thankfully, I also like to cook good food, and over my many years of adulthood, I've accumulated a few really good recipes.  Some of them are for fancy things that come out only for holidays, like the perfect creme brûlée, and others are for everyday things, like ridiculously easy pulled pork.  But I love them all in their own ways.

In case there are other people out there who also like to cook really tasty things, I'm going to share some of my favourite recipes on the blog.  It's kind of like public service.  You're welcome.  The first of these, because it is what I made for supper tonight, is a really tasty salad.

When M and I were first dating, she invited me for dinner, and she made a veritable feast of lasagna, French bread, and this salad.  While I was really impressed by the fact that she had made bread from scratch (something that would later drive me nuts when it happened in our kitchen), my favourite part of the meal was definitely the salad.  That night, I raved over how tasty the homemade dressing was with the salty cheese and nuts and dried fruit.

She promptly waited two years before she make it again.

After she finally made the salad for me a second time, I declared it the official salad of our household.  "What do you want for dinner, Solitary?" would inevitably be answered with "Saaaaaalaaaaad".  I was addicted.

When we separated for the first time last summer, I am not certain whether I was more sad about the end of the relationship or the loss of the salad recipe.  As soon as we reconciled, I made her bring back the recipe book, and I copied the recipe into my computer.  So now I can always have the salad.

(I feel like I have perhaps built the salad up to be more than it actually is.  Do not expect miracles.  But it is a very good salad.)

The recipe for this salad comes from the Simply in Season cookbook, which is published by the Mennonite Central Committee and which focuses on using local, seasonal ingredients.  While I don't agree with MCC's policy of preventing us gays from working or volunteering for them, I do love their salad.

Solitary's Favourite Salad:

Mix together the following:

• 1/3 cup oil (I use canola oil, but you can use any neutral oil.  I think.)
• 1/2 to 1 tbsp Dijon mustard (Start with 1/2 a tbsp and increase to taste.)
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 1 tbsp lemon juice
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp pepper

I tend to squeeze all the juice from a lemon, measure it (last time was about 3 tbsp), and then add proportional amounts of the other ingredients to make a big batch of dressing.  I've never had it go bad on me.

Once you have the dressing, use your imagination to make your favourite salad combination.  You will need the following components, but the exact combination is up to you:

• Some sort of green (lettuce, spinach, kale, arugula, etc.)
• Some sort of soft and salty cheese (feta, goat, blue, etc.)
• Some sort of fruit, sliced into bite-sized pieces (apples, pears, strawberries, blueberries, etc.)
• Some sort of dried fruit (cherries, blueberries, cranberries, raisins, etc.)
• Some sort of nut, preferably toasted (pecans, cashews, almonds, pine nuts, etc.)

Toss the greens with the dressing, and then put the other ingredients on top.  Tah-dah!

I am clearly not a food blogger.  But that ugly photo shows the really tasty salad that I made for supper tonight, which contained kale, blue cheese, blueberries, and pine nuts*.  (I forgot the dried fruit.  Am now sad.  But it was still tasty.)  The dressing is a permanent fixture in my fridge, so it took about five minutes to make.  I have a very large head of kale, so this will be part of my supper every night this week.  And because of the many possible combinations, it will be a different salad every night.

Make this salad**.  Mmmmmm.

*For the record, I am not a ridiculous spendthrift who just tosses expensive pine nuts into all of my recipes.  These are very reasonably priced Costco pine nuts, which I keep in my freezer so that they will last forever.  And I was using up some extras that I had toasted when I made pesto in the summer.  I'm preventing food waste by eating leftovers!

**Bonus points to anyone who makes this salad and posts a picture on Twitter/their blog.  Especially if their photo is better than mine.  (Almost guaranteed.)

Check In - Home and Hobbies

About a month ago, I wrote a post about my goals for "Home and Hobbies" and promised to check in after starting work to let everyone know how things are going.  Here's the update:

Have two knitting projects on the go at all times:

I've been using knitting as a way of relaxing in the evenings (when I'm not mindlessly surfing the internet), and I've made some good progress on my knitting projects.  I recently finished knitting a baby sweater for a friend, and I just need to sew the hood and sleeves for it to be completely finished.  Her son is now seven months old, so it's a good thing I opted for the 18-month size!  I'm also almost to the end of knitting my first sock, which has been a six-month-long exercise in frustration; I may never knit the second one.

Now that I've finished knitting the baby sweater, I've essentially only got one knitting project on the go, so I need to find something else to work on.  I'm thinking maybe something mindless, like a prayer shawl (maybe a Christmas gift for my Mom?), or something big, like a cozy sweater for myself.  Ravelry here I come!

Cook regularly with my girlfriend:

This one has been fairly successful.  We have a ton of produce from our CSA share (too much zucchini), so we've been doing a lot of cooking in an attempt to avoid wasting the beautiful organic vegetables.  I also finally got our BBQ cleaned off, so we've been eating a lot of charred meat.  I feel a bit like a caveman.

Read for pleasure every day:

This one got off to a very slow start due to exhaustion and my unfortunate technology addiction, but it's starting to pick up.  After starting a few books that didn't hold my interest, I finally found "Chasing the Scream", which is a fascinating book about how the prohibition of drugs has led to the worldwide drug war.  If you have even a passing interest in drug laws or racism or gang violence, you should read this book.

Now that I have a good book, I'm finding some time almost every day for reading.  Unfortunately, I'm approaching the end of this book, so I'm not sure what I'll read next.  Any "must-read" books that you'd suggest?

Keep up with my finances:

I've probably been doing too well with this.  I've continued to track my budget on my iPhone, and I've started tracking all of my billings in an Excel file so that I can confirm that I'm being paid properly for the work I do.  All of the monitoring has made me a bit obsessed with money, and I'm finding that I get unreasonably anxious whenever I spend money or drop below a budget surplus that I've arbitrarily decided is "enough".  I'm hoping that the anxiety will wane as I get a better sense of my income and as I make progress with paying off my debt.

Spend time daily and weekly on keeping the apartment clean and organized:

Remember when I said "This will be a challenge.  A huge challenge."?  I was correct in my assessment.  Cleaning and tidying have been the lowest priorities in my life lately, so the clutter and disorganization are starting to return.  It's been made even worse by the fact that my girlfriend has been going through her own work transition, leaving her with neither the energy nor the motivation to help out much.

We have been doing a few things right, thankfully.  We've been keeping up with the dishes and cleaning the kitchen semi-regularly, which means that there is usually space in the kitchen for cooking and eating.  I've also been doing laundry every Sunday morning, so my laundry pile is small and I always have clothing to wear.  I've also been filing my mail as soon as it comes in, which is keeping me more on top of bills and other important things than I usually am.  So all in all, not a total failure with this goal.

Any goals that you've been working on lately?  How are they going?

Summer Bounty

Thanks for all of the suggestions on what to do with our abundance of CSA vegetables.  Tonight we had a CSA feast - grilled zucchini and pattypan squash, roasted beets with balsamic reduction, steamed baby carrots, and a cucumber-yogurt salad (thanks for the idea NOLA!).  The vegetables were so varied and flavourful that the barbequed sirloin steak seemed like an afterthought.

Washing down the meal was a bottle of Valpolicella Ripasso that I had brought back in my suitcase from a trip to Italy in 2013.  The bottle had long been stored at the back of our liquor cabinet, waiting for a special occasion to be opened, and I worried that I might have left it too long.  Thankfully the cork came out effortlessly, and the wine inside was smooth and mellow.

It's amazing to me how good local food can be, whether it's purchased in your home community or smuggled home from a special trip.  With such foods, why on earth would anyone buy flavourless food from Walmart* that has been shipped from hundreds (or thousands) of miles away?

*I hate Walmart, but that's a post for another day.

Habits - Home and Hobbies

As I was reading Gretchen Rubin's book "Better Than Before", I kept thinking about habits that I've recently incorporated into my life, as well as habits that I'd like to adopt.  There are so many of them, most of which unfortunately fall into the latter category.  Over the next few days, I plan to write posts outlining the habits I'd like to have in four different broad categories:  home and hobbies, personal, work, and relationships.  (Not necessarily in that order or on four consecutive days.  I'll pick my topics as the mood hits me.)  Because going back to work is going to make habit change challenging, I plan to do a check in on my habits once I'm two weeks in (and finished my first stretch of call as an attending).

In deciding on the habits on which to focus, I'm trying to remember that the end goal isn't to adopt good habits - it's to be happy in both the short and long term.  If these habits aren't making me happier, then I can choose to drop them whenever I please.  (Isn't being an adult wonderful?)

So here we go with habits in the home and hobbies category.  The habits are roughly arranged from what I consider to be least important to most important.

Have two knitting projects on the go at all times: 

I started knitting sometime in the last year after being inspired by the many women (and some men!) at my girlfriend's church who knit.  Some of them knit during the services, and many more of them knit at social events, and I was always jealous when I watched them work.  Since I started knitting, I've knit three infinity scarves (one for myself and two for my nieces), as well as almost one sock and almost one baby sweater.

I love a lot of things about knitting - dreaming about projects and picking out nice yarn, watching a project slowly come together over weeks to months, and having something to distract me when I'm in a boring or awkward social situation.  I also like that it's slightly subversive to be a knitting physician.  Physicians are supposed to be constantly rushing and stressed and short on time, so I love the idea of doing something that is intentionally slow.

This is something that will undoubtedly wax and wane depending on how busy I am, but that's okay.  Knitting projects can sit idle for a long time and then be picked up when needed.  I'm choosing to have two projects going, as it's nice to have something that gives me a bit of a challenge (e.g. a baby sweater) as well as something that is purely mindless and relaxing (e.g. an infinity scarf).

Cook regularly with my girlfriend:

My girlfriend and I both have a huge love of cooking and of trying new foods/recipes, and it's one of the things that brought us together early in our relationship.  We've unfortunately fallen out of the habit of cooking together recently, as my girlfriend's job has required her to stay at work until after the supper hour.  I think our relationship has suffered as a result of us not cooking and eating together, and it's something I want to work on.  Thankfully, starting next month her days will be ending at 5 PM, so hopefully it won't be hard for us to get back into this habit.

Read for pleasure every day:

Have I mentioned recently how much I love books?  I love reading once I get into it, but I sometimes avoid it when I'm tired, because checking Facebook/surfing the internet/watching tv seems easier and more relaxing.  Which it isn't; reading is definitely more relaxing than any activity involving technology.  I want to maintain the habit I've developed this summer of always having a book going and of reading every day.

Keep up with my finances:

I was a bit of a financial disaster during my training.  Not only did I not budget, I also did terrible things like file my tax returns late (really, really late) and occasionally miss a credit card payment.  I've finally gotten on top of everything financial, including meeting with my financial adviser to figure out my get-out-of-debt-as-soon-as-humanly-possible strategy, and I want to keep it that way.  To do this, I plan to deal with financial things (bills, etc.) as soon as they come in, even if that means waiting a day or two to check the mail until I have time to deal with it.  I also plan to set aside time on Sunday mornings (while my girlfriend is at church) to quickly review my bank/investment statements and to do anything financial that didn't get done during the week.

Spend time daily and weekly on keeping the apartment clean and organized:

This will be a challenge.  A huge challenge.  I've done very well this summer at getting the apartment decluttered and organized, and I've managed to adopt the habit of doing annoying little tasks (like unpacking from our weekend camping/wedding adventure) as soon as they come up.  The apartment is so much tidier as a result, and it facilitates things like cooking and reading and other fun activities.  But doing tasks when they arise isn't my default setting, which means that this will be really hard to maintain once I go back to work.  And my girlfriend is much more tolerant of chaos than I am, which will make it hard to get her on board!

My first strategy for achieving this is to set aside dedicated times for cleaning and tidying.  On a daily basis, this will mean taking a few minutes when I first arrive home to hang up my jacket/purse and empty out my lunch container, as well as spending some time doing dishes before bed.  On a weekly basis, this will mean spending some time every Sunday morning doing laundry and tackling some of the items on my to-do list.

My second strategy is going to have to be talking to my girlfriend.  While I've been on holidays, I've assumed the majority of the household responsibilities, and it's gotten stuff done, but it won't be sustainable (or fair) once I go back to work.  As difficult as it may be to do, we need to come up with a way of dividing up the household tasks.  The big challenge for me will be accepting that we have different ideas of what needs to be done around the apartment; therefore, if I want things done better than she does, I may need to do a bit more of the work.

Hmmm....it seems like I have my work cut out for me.  And this is only day one of four!

Long Weekend Plans

Thanks to everyone who responded to my recent question about how to respect my girlfriend's privacy when blogging.  As I read each comment, I thought "Yes!  That's it!", despite the fact that each response was very different from the others.  I guess there are multiple ways of handling this issue...I'll let you know when I figure out which one I'm going to use.

But now, time to look forward to my four days off with no pager and few responsibilities!  What am I planning to do, you wonder?

1)  Haircut:  Not glamorous, but so necessary.  My previous hairstylist, whom I loved, moved away almost a year ago, and I've been trying to find a good new one ever since.  The last one I tried definitely wasn't a good one, and I'm really looking forward to someone undoing the damage she did to my hair.  Here's hoping tonight's stylist is better.

2)  Cooking:  The girlfriend and I both love to cook and bake, and we have some epic plans for the weekend.  Wareniki with schmaunfat, scalloped potatoes, and no-knead bread top the list.

What is wareniki with shmaunfat, you ask?

Mmmmm.  They will take forever to make, but it will be worth it.

3)  Family:  Tomorrow night is dinner with the girlfriend's family, and Sunday night is dinner with mine.  I felt very cut off from family while I was away on elective, so it will be nice to have some extended time to get caught up with them and reconnect.

4)  Read:  I stopped at the library on the way home from work today and picked up two new books, which I am looking forward to reading in my pajamas (probably while cuddling a cat or two).  The first is Adult Onset, by Canadian author Ann-Marie MacDonald.  This novel tells the story of a gay woman who tries to come to terms with her difficult childhood while caring for her own young children.  I started reading it a few months ago, but gave up because I had reached the due date.  It's a bit on the heavy and depressing side, but I'm willing to plod through to the end because Ann-Marie MacDonald is a good writer and because there just isn't that much good LGBTQ writing out there.  (Or is there?  Anyone have any good suggestions for me?)

The second book, which I may or may not get to this weekend, is Complications by Atul Gawande.  I don't know much about it, other than that it's written by a surgeon, but I'm hoping it'll tide me over until the book of his that I really want to read (Being Mortal) is available.

5)  Rest:  I took two days off sick with a cold this week, and I am still hacking up a lung, so I am hoping that in the midst of baking and celebrating and being busy that there will be some time to sleep and recover.  Wishful thinking?

What are you planning for your weekend?