To Eat & To Watch

And today, I bring you James Cameron and The Perfect Asparagus:

1. James Cameron's Ted Talk on the importance of curiosity

2. The Perfect Asparagus,
this is a recipe all my own, honed over the years of loving asparagus to taste just like asparagus

first, preheat the oven to bake at 375 or to broil
second, wash and cut off the white ends of the asparagus
third, lay them out on a baking sheet
fourth, sprinkle with sesame oil, a little soy sauce, a little balsamic vinegar, and pepper
fifth, bake or broil for 15 minutes

Ta-da!

To Eat & To Watch: 30 and chick peas

In my new (old) obsession with TedTalks while cooking, I serve you Psychologist Meg Jay talking about some lessons for your 20s and a recipe for a dutch baby pancake.

TO WATCH: Meg Jay

   "the only things required  to do something meaningful

 are a good idea and not quite enough time" 

(or something close to that)

A Summary of her Advice to 20-somethings:
(1) - forget about having an identity crisis and get some identity capitol
(2) -work your friends-of-friends-of-friends connections, they might lead you to your next love, job, house, true friend/family
(3) -choose your family of friends intentionally

TO EAT:
Chickpea Salad
(adapted from Martha Stewart's Meatless Mondays)


I'm actually obsessed with chick peas and for some reason, when you bake them they take on this most unexpected, kind of salty, very spicy, super fun flavor.

ingredients:
chickpeas, paprika, garam masala, olive oil, salad greens, tahini, cucumbers

1. heat oven to 350 degrees F
2. drain chickpeas and rinse with cold water, dry a little bit with a towel or paper towels
3. spread the chickpeas on a baking sheet
4. sprinkle olive oil (just a little bit) on top and roll the chick peas in it so they're coated
5. add your paprika, salt, pepper, garam masala and roll the chickpeas again so they're covered
6. bake in oven for 30-40min
7. while they're baking, chop cucumber and prepare salad greens
8. take chick peas out of oven and pour onto salad greens and add chopped cucumber
9. drizzle with tahini and ta-da!  chickpea salad for you!

To Eat & To Watch: manipulating the data

I've started a tradition (or habit?) where I watch Ted Talks while I cook, so perhaps this is a new tradition of a post that combines a must-watch TedTalk video and a must-eat recipe.  If you've never heard of TedTalks, I highly suggest you check them out.  It's a database of hundreds (thousands? hundreds of thousands?) of people talking about the most fascinating topics, and the best part is, every one has to be less than 20 minutes, so they are concise and profound without ever getting boring.  Here's one of my new favorites by Hans Rosling explaining (visually and like a sports caster) how our world dynamics are changing.  I may be a little biased because he starts out by talking about how we all assume that The Western World = long lives and small families and The Third World = short lives and big families, and then goes on to debunk it all.  Enjoy!

For more fun visualization of populations, check out this Racial Dot Map, from the Welden Cooper Center for Public Service.


Recipe: Shrimp Avocado Salsa
(adapted from Smitten Kitchen's Mama Canales-Garcia's Shrimp Avocado Salsa)


(photo credit: smitten kitchen blog)

ingredients&instructions:

-1 lb shrimp - de-vein the shrimp and take the shell taken off.  boil a pot of water, then turn off, throw shrimp in and cover for 5-7 minutes.  ta-da! cooked shrimp!  now chop into small pieces.

-2 avocados - chop into small pieces and put into a large bowl

-1 jalapeno (or less or more depending on your spicy preferences) - chop into small pieces

-3 tomatoes or a whole bunch of little grape/cherry tomatoes - chop into small pieces (you see where I'm going with this, right?)

-2 limes - squeeze all the juice in!  you really can't have too much

-splash of olive oil, a dash of salt, a shake of pepper

combine altogether, serve with cilantro, tortillas and/or good bread.  we ate ours with a decided-ly not mexican bagette and it was delicious.

work I must do

"the best way to predict the future is to create it"

- by one of the doctors at the conference I attended

(I'm going to look up who and correct this soon)

2013 is the year of big decisions and a big transition for me, with the start of residency about half way through the year.  The process of interviewing has been an introspective experience about the doctor I want to become, the service I want to provide, what are the roles I want to emphasize as a physician, and talking with Chris about the best decisions for our life together.

I also had the opportunity this past week to present at a national conference about the medical education of obstetrician-gynecologists.  It was an incredible experience - not just because my presentation was so well received - but also because I was surrounded by people who are really passionate about teaching adults to be phenomenal physicians.  As part of the conference, the participants reflected on the physician they thought they were going to become when they were in medical school and how that compares to their reality.  For me, this was less reflection and more thinking forward about the type of physician I want to become.  In many ways, the writing of a personal statement as part of my application was a laying out of those aspects of the field that are fascinating and compelling to me, but this conference inspired me to be a bit more specific.

Here's the mission statement I've come up with so far.

*To be healer and promoter of health to my patients and in my community

*To be an advocate for women's access to health care and reproductive rights

*To be an educator and mentor, improving how we train the next generation of women's health physicians

*To be a researcher of best practices - determining how to better maintain and restore women's health

I've also been thinking a lot about the environment I train in, and thinking how important it is for me to be surrounded by people who inspire me, who challenge me, and who make me want to be a better doctor and person.

As part of my thinking about how I want to live my life and what's important to include in it, I read about this guy, Scott Dinsmore, and his company, Live Your Legend, on a great blog that I follow.   Check out his Tedtalk about finding your passion and doing the work you love.  It's definitely inspiring.

gender income equality by state

In a recent post on Slate, there is an interactive map of all the states, then also by county, how much income differs by gender.  It's astounding (and terrifying).  In the BEST states, women still only earn 75 cents to the dollar of men.

According to their data, the best cities for pay equality include DC and Dallas, followed by San Francisco, LA, Austin, Santa Fe, NYC, and Boston.  In most other major cities it's closer to 70 cents for every dollar men earn.



And for a look at data showing that more equal societies are healthier, a Tedtalk by Richard Wilkinson:

choices

oh hey there.  yup, I know I've been away from my blog a while.  (It's been a pretty busy summer!)  But while studying at the beach, hiking around Yosemite, and spending 15 hour days at the hospital on my cardiology rotation (more on those soon) - I've been thinking about the goals of my blog.  It has and will always be a space where I record down the most interesting thoughts that have come up in the conversations all around me.  However, clearly (hopefully!) there are just way too many fascinating questions and thoughts to record them all down - I'd be sitting at my computer typing all day, instead of having interesting discussions!  So I'm going to try to commit to a goal of putting up at least one blogpost a week, and if that feels good, I may expand to 2.  Then I can at least keep track of some of the interesting thoughts that have come up in the past week.  I'd like to do this in a way that lets you know when to expect a new post and also keeps me honest - so I'm planning on a "by Monday evening" weekly posting.  Except for this week ofcourse, because Monday was really second Sunday :)

Maybe because I'm creating my residency application list (due in less than a month!) but I've been thinking a lot about CHOICES lately, as in - how do we make them? Are we even good at making them?  What makes a good choice?  What are the hardest choices we have to make?  What should be the easiest?  So while I construct a post or two about my crazy fascinating month of Cardiology, hopefully these thoughts will get you thinking too:

*An Amazing Book About Choice (called Choice: True Stories) recommended by a dear friend.  It's a collection of essays by women about their choices surrounding reproduction.  Everything from adoption to what it meant to finally be a mother to abortion to miscarriage to raising a daughter.  The authors are lots of famous writers too, so it's beautifully written, and most of all, a great reminder of the impact of these choices, and that how they are made can change the experience entirely.

*I also read a fascinating article (called "The Two-Minus One Pregnancy") about twin reduction (if you're intrigued and/or confused, you should read the article) in the NYT sent to me by another friend.  This friend is going to do a presentation on this to our journal club and I'm really intrigued.  It's definitely a topic that makes me really uncomfortable, as it challenges where the edge of my morals lies.

*I also watched a TedTalk by Sheena Iyengar, who is a researcher at Columbia whose interest is in Choices, how we make them, if we are good at them, etc.  One my favorite examples is when she talks about some of her experiments - including one where she interviews people from post-communist Eastern European countries and offers them an option of seven different sodas.  They all say, this is only really two options: soda or no soda.  Despite the fact that in the US, some of us get angry if we are given a Coke instead of a Pepsi or vice versa.  I'm excited to read more about her.

That's all for now!   But I'm back and more is coming (check back on Monday evening or Tuesday mornings)!

e

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"It is our choices that show who we really are...far more than our abilities"

- Dumbledore

(in JK Rowlings Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets)

positive psychology

a friend recommended that I check out this TedTalk by psychologist Shawn Achor about positive psychology, and then I found another one by psychologist Martin Seligman, and got kinda of obsessed with this whole positive psychology thing: 

the study of not just relieving depression but of actually making life better.

Shawn Achor is hilarious - and also talks about "the medical school syndrome" where as you learn about all the diseases and syndromes that could happen you soon learn that you have them.

"If we study what is merely average, we will remain merely average"

And then Martin Seligman talks about three types of good lifes:

1) the pleasurable, 2) the engaged, 3) the meaningful

I actually found the "engaged life" description the most interesting, as the other two seem pretty self-explanatory.  He discusses the difference between pleasure and engagement as the difference between feeling happy and not feeling anything at all because you are totally and completely absorbed.

when he said that I realized: 

I would take absorbed over happy almost any day.

(note the ALMOST - there's gotta be room for some "just because it feels good" times too)

check them out for yourself: