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cooking, or lack thereof

***warning: discusses diet slash food choices slash food in relation to health in case anyone would like to avoid***

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so i’m a pretty lazy cook. or, not a cook. but also health-conscious about the food i make.

with my trusty mini instant pot i’d been making a lot of one pot stews and soups, and with my borderline-obsessive need to make everything nutritious, i’d overstuff the pot with various veggies and legumes -- the end result was nutritious, but it lacked visual appeal. texture displeasing? no problem! blend everything. now you have yourself a green-brown-beige goop of mush. garnish with cilantro.

skillet meals turned out better, but it felt like a lot of effort for just a few minutes of chow (i know! when stir frying is too much effort, you have a problem)

so what i’ve been doing is cooking a pot of spiced or herbed bean/lentils to last several days, and in separate containers i keep chopped up veggies to assemble as needed!

ex: 1 container of sliced discs of sweet potato/carrot, 1 container of halved brussel sprouts, 1 container of chopped onions, and of course, frozen bags of spinach (i never buy spinach fresh anymore: it takes too much space in my fridge, it goes bad too quickly, and frozen spinach is nutritionally equivalent to fresh since it’s flash frozen at peak freshness. cruciferous veggies like cabbage, broccoli keep for so long in the fridge <3)

Then at mealtime I assemble a plate kinda akin to this:

(also this Harvard version of the plate discourages people from potatoes. i think potatoes are pretty great, actually. agree that french fries don’t count tho)

(in case you’re interested, other variations of the “plate” such as the US govt endorsed MyPlate https://www.choosemyplate.gov/ which literally includes dairy, fuck Big Dairy, I had to track my food based on MyPlate for a public health class, and i got dinged for the lack of diary. and also http://www.brendadavisrd.com/my-vegan-plate/ the Vegan Plate by a helpful vegan registered dietician, who writes very comprehensive and informative books on vegan nutrition.)

I go by 1/4th legume, 1/4th grain or starchy veggie i.e. sweet potato (my go-to), 1/2 veggies, and then fruit on the side. i try to have a variety of colors (orange, dark green, light green, red/purple/blue) for health and for aesthetically pleasing reasons. sometimes I’ll keep the components of the plate separated; other times I’ll mix everything up.

and THEN:

I microwave it all for 4-5 minutes. Seriously. I don’t even try to steam it. Just straight up microwave. I don’t like to eat too many raw veggies because it’s harder to chew and it makes me gassy :( I swear, it’s still really tasty! The legume, being originally cooked separately, usually has the bulk of flavor (spices, herbs, etc), but I find that microwaved veggies still retain a lot of good vegetable sweetness.

i’ll add salt and vinegar to taste or some other sauce, sprinkle dried cranberries or nutritional yeast, and always eat with a source of fat for maximum nutrient absorption (I like a handful of walnuts or pumpkin seeds, or a tablespoon ground flaxseeds for omega-3).

I eat at least 3 such plates in a day to make sure I hit my calorie needs too, since if the bulk of your food is plant-based you need to be mindful of getting enough calories (veggies aren’t very calorie-dense). I tracked my meals in cronometer the first few days, but don’t do so regularly since I’ve gotten the hang of it.

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thinking about food portions in terms of plates makes everything so easy for me! it makes so much sense too. imagine being at a cafeteria and getting a scoop of rice, a scoop of beans, scoop of veggies, fruit on the side.

being vegetarian, i looked up a lot of nutrition info to ensure i met my daily needs, but having a guideline like this actually really helps take the stress out of figuring out what to eat. and it makes me happy to look at my meals again! lots of variety of colors, no more puke-colored mush.

tbh there was a more stress than i expected going vegetarian, where i started looking up what to eat and then went down a rabbithole of oh god what if i’m deficient in calcium, riboflavin, zinc, iron, b12, protein etc. but really, most vegan dieticians/doctors who advocate a whole foods plant based diet state that if you eat enough calories based on whole foods, you’ll get enough protein and other minerals. i just like to micromanage things. i still do things like:

-chop up allium vegetables (garlic, onion, leek etc) at least 20 minutes before i cook them, for the enzyme alliinase to do its thing (produces allicin which is good for you)

-chop up cruciferous veggies (kale, cauliflower, cabbage, broccoli, chard etc) at least 30 minutes before i cook them, allowing myrosinase to do its thing (produces isothiocyanates, sulforaphane, etc which are also really good for you)

^ that’s also why pre-cutting veggies is helpful. also, pre-cutting a few days of stuff at a time also saves a lot of effort in prep-work.

Anyway, I’m glad I finally found a routine that works, doesn’t require a lot of thinking, and is nutritious.

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as a bonus:

i also like to follow Dr Greger’s daily dozen as a guideline, but i don’t sweat the checklist. even dr greger states he doesn’t make it to 100% daily either, and he’s like a super health junkie. he literally keeps a jug of cold-brewed green tea and amla to swig every couple hours. he’s kind of a nut. but a helpful nut.

anyway it’s a cute list so i’m sharing it:

#why are my posts so long

god I have such wholesome friends

really!!

especially you!! yes you!! you don’t think you’re wholesome but you really care and you listen and ur a homie!! you’re not garbage! seriously.

Exclamation pointies are to indicate excitement not aggression

tbh beans are not my favorite things either, but i eat them bc they’re nutritious and good for you

but you know what!!

i’m gonna convert to lentils

seriously

they’re tastier and they’re a superfood and they have similar/better health benefits

processing BRAIN DUMP! warning

i always feel like i learn a lot about myself by talking with jzhang (thanks jzhang)

so here is a little, like, talkthrough of stuff

after leaving school people would ask me when i was going back and i’d always be like, oh, maybe next quarter -- but if you had asked me what i was going to do or major you i wouldn’t really have an answer for you other than, idk, what i was originally doing?

(biochem was such a mistake. literally 9/10 senpais in biochem told me DON’T DO BIOCHEM and i took their giant warning signs as like a challenge. the lesson learned is be open minded to advice even if your initial instinct is to be defensive, people are just trying to tell you their experience and help you!)

anyway it took literally a year to figure out WHAT IS THIS BLOOD AND GORE IN MY HEAD AND WHY DO I KEEP THINKING THAT I whoa all caps was too much why do i keep thinking that i’ve killed random people on the street and that i’m a threat to society and a whooooole ball pit of crazy that i literally compressed unto myself and my brain was just a roiling THING of dark frenetic sludge cause i was like i’m gonna die and i’m gonna get locked up and they’re gonna kill me and might as well isolate myself and slowly stop moving so i don’t hurt other people or myself.

no i’m not evil nor a serial killer. it’s literally so obvious now. it’s so obvious that my mind is blown that i didn’t think it was obvious. THERAPY HELPED but also literally this NAC supplement saved my life. seriously. i’ve tried 5 different medications and literally NAC works better (it’s a thing!) my brain just is wacky sometimes. it be like that sometimes. thankfully i learned has names for the kind of crazy and other people who are like “same i feel you.” thank god for other crazy ppl.

ANYWAY

ANYWay

now it’s exciting that i’ve figure that out and my brain is no longer like what’s the point of thinking about the future! you have no future! you’ll end up in a dumpster! but now, now i can be excited about life!! wow

when i go back i want to be MIMG (Microbiology, Immunology, and Molecular Genetics) because LITERALLY that’s all i talk about esp to gina. like 4/5 topics are one of the above. the last one is aliens. i don’t know enough physics to pursue a career in aliens. i think imma just start over with the life science chem/math series bc they are NOT my strong suit, i have to admit to myself, and i barely got through the class anyway. makes me redo 2 quarters but it’s worth.

do i still want to go to med school? yes, i think so

the core reason of why most people want to go to med school is to help people. but you can help people in a lot of careers. and like tbh you could probably make a greater impact on the world in terms of helping people but getting rich doing something unrelated and then starting a nonprofit (i.e. bill gates saves more lives than average Dr John Johnson)

so:

helping people

elements of CREATIVITY in determining treatment plan

building progressive experience in the field for moments of INSIGHT

applying INVESTIGATION by taking a thorough history of the patient/condition and puzzling out the diagnosis

and also SYNTHESIS. this is big for me. maybe cause INTP (lol) but i always want to work toward a Big Truth. lots of buzz words in all caps here. do i even know what they mean. i want to work on a long-term project where i get to fiddle and analyze things (in healthcare) that ultimately gives me a big picture answer.

----

so i don’t wanna be a clinician like dyron. i hate the multitasking, the juggling multiple people at the same time, the time crunch, the “i think about this problem for 30 minutes and then i drop it like a hot potato to move onto the next problem”. i need structure and longevity. i asked him if his job is intellectually fulfilling, and he said no, and his answer reallly made me think hard. he said that tbh there are only 1-2 patients in a year who he thinks that he helped.

the answer confused me at first. but he was saying that honestly anyone else could have done the same thing for the vast majority patients, and that’s true -- at this point literally i can predict what treatments he’ll order and what the next step is. 80% of medicine (# pulled out of my ass) is algorithms. this value is abnormal, ok, go down this list of reasons, ok, ruled out everything, apply x first line treatment, if it fails, go to line 2. there’s not a lot of intellectual challenge for him. not a lot of synthesis. he doesn’t really experiment. he says he feels like a robot sometimes in his work. (i make him feel less robot yay!)

i wanna look at the big picture. i wanna experiment. i want to help people PREVENT disease cause i think we focus overmuch on treating diseases that are easily preventable (i’m talking about like obesity and diabetes and not stuff like cancer)

i know a girl who worked at the CDC before med school. i kinda want to do that.

the doctors that i really look up to and admire tbh aren’t like the “glorious surgeons” who publish lots of books about how medicine has consumed their lives. i like the advocates. the ones who look at the big picture and change the way medicine is practiced across the country.

basically in practical terms, i think my ideal dream would be to get a Masters in Public Health after undergrad and then go onto med school, maybe, from there. i wanna consult for the CDC. i want to study epidemiology and how people access healthcare and DISEASE. i wanna be a doctor professor. Professor Wally, MD.

tbh from my work i’ve learned that a lot of medicine is not just about prescribing the right thing

it’s making sure the patient can AFFORD the right thing

that the patient COMPLIES with the treatment because so many patients come back and they actually don’t understand the treatment and thus they don’t even take the treatment seriously

in fact a lot of them don’t really understand how or why or what their sickness is!

(actually dyron wants to be a patient advocate for like free when he retires. literally explain treatments process to patient and patients family to reduce burden on the actual doctor and to make sure the patient really truly gets it and has a guiding hand throughout everything. it’s really sweet. i’m really grateful for him as a mentor. and as a boyfriend. god that really is my kink. the senpai mentor-boyfriend. kill me.)

anyway brain dump if you made it here, wow, thanks!

obviously this all can change in a second (i’m open to that too!)

Whew minor period rant

This PMS week I was craving EVERY CARB in existence and I definitely indulged. Also salt. I added straight up salt to every dish at the table. Friends and family were like whoa did you not eat all day?? You’re so hungry!! My average from the past five days has no joke been 3000 calories (on the plus side I’ve been getting >90% my nutrient targets lol)

Period started yesterday and I definitely look pregnant from all the bloat, it’s actually kind of funny

I don’t regret all the carbs it was worth it

Edit: at some point my mom was telling me about vegetarianism and saying “eat whatever you crave, because that’s what your body needs.” I don’t think that applies here. Glad I’ve always been a carb craver and not a meat craver though

Edit edit: I have tried tofu shirataki noodles with Mel (she’s keto and low net carb) and I don’t like them (she does yay!) I have tried edamame pasta with dyron courtesy of Nikki, and they were so bad he said he’d recommend them to his patients because nobody could ever eat a lot of them. The message is: if you want noodles, just eat noodles. Nothing else will satisfy. When I get a nice kitchen I will make my own pasta!

I told Dyron something was “an aesthetic”

He asked what that was so I said it was “a look”

“Huh?”

“It’s a big mood”

My first yelp review

https://www.yelp.com/biz/sun-smog-test-only-san-jose?hrid=aoXsLmwdiaUzD5oOkMT4ow&utm_source=ishare&utm_content=review

I now feel like a member of some privileged class.

Also, I filled my tires yesterday with dj’s help (my car had been feeling lopsided for a while). The air pump at the gas station was $1 for 3 minutes, but I had to pay for 3 more minutes after that because I hadn’t realized that to pump air in with the hose you have to hold some kind of lever down. The air I heard hissing was not air being pumped in, but rather air being left out. Dyron says he’s never had to put in 8 quarters before!! Just 4. It was fun, though. It felt like shenanigans and it was dark and I couldn’t see things without crouching low and I shined my flashlight crazily over my face like I was telling scary stories.

1 time this past week where I didn’t feel like a detective

I came home today and found my glasses waiting for me on the sidewalk.

How did they get there...?

When did I lose them...?

There are many other examples but I have temporarily represssd them.

I don’t remember what prompted this, but I was considering some imaginary scenario and told dyron in that scenario I’d want to be chosen for something because I want to feel wanted

And dyron extrapolated that this maybe this is one of my primary drives in life and I realized maybe this is true!

I’ve always thought that I want to be useful to society, someone or something, but maybe it’s simpler than that

Maybe I just want to be wanted and that’s the drive for why I want to help people

Would I be satisfied even being a useless lump as long as I was wanted by some entity? (A wanted criminal??? ohoho)

Thankfully Dyron says even if I think I’m useless he doesn’t think I’m useless. And it’s ok to be a bum in his opinion if someone is willing to support you. And he totally would. Though he says I’m completely not a bum. Yay on both counts!

2 times I felt like a detective in the past week

1: Lake Tahoe

- noticed claw marks on many birch trees in Lake Tahoe, going upward — bears! I felt like a tracker. For 20 minutes afterward, I imagined myself as a tracker in the olden days, quietly traversing through the forest (my imaginary forest has redwood trees and flying flamingos). Silence reigns. The air is tense. Crack! I step on a twig. The moccasins I wear are soft, but my Achilles’ tendon had twinged and I’d subsequently rolled my ankle. I roll down a hill and land in a lake. What is this? I can breathe and see perfectly underwater, even though the water is murky (also, there is a group of island people who have dived for a living who are able to see underwater well by exercising strict control over the pupils. The ability lessens with age. This is true I maybe read it on the internet.)

Theres an underwater secret lair!!!

Then I remembered that I’m nearsighted and that I probably would have died from asthma as a baby. Daydream ended there.

Landlady is concerned that she has seen neither hide nor hair of my housemate for a few days. Housemate hails from China, arrived on the foggy banks of the California coast alone, without kin or companion. If she squints she can pretend the haze of the horizon is from the smog of her homeland. (Jk she flew here)

Anyway I point out that her makeup and some toiletries are missing from the bathroom. Landlady and I relax bc duh she’s on a trip then. You always take a shitton of makeup on trips. I feel cool for noticing and alleviating fears. The end

Animal death trigger warning

A few days ago Dj was picking me up in his car, when he suddenly swerved and said “oh god what is THAT”

It was midnight and dark and I had been almost dozing until his exclamation.

I shot up and said “what, what?”

And we kept driving and he said “I saw something jerking around in the road! I think it was a cat.”

We drove a few meters more contemplating this and he asked me “what do you want to do?” I asked him what he would have done if he was alone and he said he would have kept driving.

I asked him: if he had been hit by a car, would he mind if people left him there, and drove over him like a piece of abandoned litter in the road. What remained of his visage would be unrecognizable even to his dearest and closest relatives ((me)).

Anyway, he said he’d mind, so I told him we should get the cat off the road. And check to see if it was alive, of course.

So I told him to turn right around, and we slowly drove the other way until I saw a faint gray lump on the road. Dyron had described a jerking object but this lump was unmoving.

He parked the car in the middle of the lane (there were virtually no cars around us), right in front of the cat. He didn’t want to see the cat’s body so I put some gloves on and went out the investigate. In retrospect, I’m glad I wore booty shorts for what was supposed to be a (nightly) booty call because pants would potentially require more cleaning.

Confirmed, cat. Confirmed, cat was not moving, assumed dead. Guts showing, eyes and mouth wide open but not moving nor blinking nor breathing, assumed dead. No collar, but apart from the bits of gore it appeared fairly well groomed, and when I wrapped a towel around it, being sure to tuck the towel underneath so the organs wouldn’t leak out, I recall it feeling distinctly squishy. Could be well fed, indicating an owner, could be just the result of a high impact collision with a car. Dyron thinks the SUV in front of us hit it. In that case, it didn’t struggle for long.

I wanted to get the cat out of the road partially because of respect to a dead body, partially so that it could be recovered to its owner (if microchip), but also because I remember when Mel shrieked and swerved out of the way of some roadkill and said “oh my god oh my god did I just run over something” and when I went out to investigate, no, she hadn’t run over anything, and there was a dead possum that had clearly been there for a while. Didn’t want anyone else to go through the same shock and guilt, however momentary.

It was 1AM at this point, and I didn’t know what else to do, and Dyron seems squeamish, so I filed a report for both San Jose and Santa Clara animal control with a detailed message, and left the bag hidden in a bush. (It was on the border of the counties)

The next morning Dyron told me he had driven by the area and the bag was gone. San Jose animal control never got back to me, but Santa Clara said they were unable to find the remains of the cat. So I dunno who took it, hopefully San Jose animal control, maybe some random passerby who was VERY ALARMED when they looked inside (some psychopath dumped a dead cat here!), but hopefully it’s been scanned for a microchip.

The end! Dyron said he’s a big wimp and expects to have flashbacks of the jerking cat. He felt sick when he saw it struggling in the road. I’m glad I didn’t see that part. I won’t have flashbacks but I caught myself half-believing I had killed the cat, or that the cat was alive the entire time and I hadn’t examined closely enough.

I wonder if I would have kept driving if I was alone, like Dyron did.

Getting a housemate today, Chinese exchange Berkeley postgrad doin internship? Was described as a “stylish young girl. Poor girl, she has no car and walked her suitcases over with heels on!”

My landlady hyped my image up and told her that I speak Chinese too! Etc

I have lent this stranger a carpet and mattress pad though I haven’t seen her yet

Am tempted to crawl in my room through the outside window so I don’t have to say hi

oh!

aw i don’t remember his name :(

i love anime friends

i love gay anime friends

i need a sci-fi friend

i’m gonna read rendezvous with rama, been meaning to anyway, it’s a first contact classic

and i’m gonna hit that cute dude from high school up

his name.... was jeremy?? quiet guy from lit class, only ever talked about rendezvous with rama

OCD trigger warning

For Jane, don't read on!

I've only actually tried to saw off my leg once

Not even a scar because once I started I was like oh! This is dumb

This is why exposure and response prevention is the gold standard in OCD treatment I guess

Now how to convince self that I haven't murdered anyone...

Anyway one person asked "how do I write my OCD thoughts without being locked up or put in a mental hospital"

Therapist said yes in the past some incompetent people have had others committed because they didn't understand

But basically, label your journal OCD thoughts and it's all Gucci

I feel like I'm supposed to be missing a limb

Felt this way for years

Lesson is: never trust what you think! Don't trust what you feel!

This is nyoooooormal

God

Why do I even bother with fan fiction when there are so many amazing books in the world

I love scifi

God

It’s been so long

Beautiful

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