What interns eat: Peanut Butter and Jelly Overnight Oats

What I eat as an intern varies with each rotation. Overall the theme of cooking as an intern involves making food that comes together quickly and does not need to be refrigerated. I'll address the lack of refrigeration in a future blog posts, and you can refer to my black bean salad for a meal that can stored in your lunch box or backpack without a cold pack. I realize I could also just buy a cold pack or a better lunch box and solve this problem...

I spent the last 2 months working on the general internal medicine wards. I had a very regulated schedule of 6:30am to 6:30pm during the week, a long call day every 5 days, and working one weekend day until at least 3:30pm. The schedule is tough and sucks away any energy that might be left for studying or regular socializing. However, the hours are bearable because all interns are going through the same experiences,so there's a feeling of camaraderie throughout the hospital.  For the past 2 weeks, I've had a change in schedule working in the GW Hospital emergency department. Though I get more days days off per week on this rotation, I have had a hard time adapting to the strange hours and hectic, frenzied pace of the emergency department. Strangely, what irks me the most is the lack of time eat away from my computer. Most shifts, I eat a protein bar or trail mix while typing away at patient notes.


What I miss about my internal medicine rotation is the regularity of my schedule. Each morning, I could arrive between 6:30-6:45am, sit down at my computer to read about patients while eating my breakfast and drinking my coffee. I have a tendency to get obsessed with a certain food and eat it for too long.  For 2 months straight, every morning, I ate these overnight oats out of a mason jar. I miss those seemingly leisurely mornings, and I look forward to those mornings on internal medicine and eventually psychiatry rotations.

The concept of overnight oats is soaking "quick oats" overnight in liquid so they are soft enough to eat in the morning. There are many versions online of overnight oats, including peanut butter and jelly, almonds, coconuts, and dates, and sweeter, chocolate based recipes, and also many include chia seeds and other spices. Chia seeds will make the oats more gelatinous, and this reminds me too much of baby food. I could add more spices, but sometimes I'm lazy. Maybe for winter when I need more spice in my life, I'll add cinnamon, nutmeg or even pumpkin to my overnight oats.

Here are a few good links for overnight oats:
http://www.katheats.com/favorite-foods/overnightoats
http://ohsheglows.com/2015/07/22/vegan-overnight-oats/
http://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen/common-mistakes/article/how-to-make-overnight-oats

 My recipe is adapted from several online sources. Perhaps for my next two months of overnight oats I'll try a new version. For now, I offer you Peanut Butter and Jelly Overnight Oats. My unique contribution is that I use Trader Joe's Quick Cook steel cut oats. Because these are harder, basically small pebbles, even after being soaked overnight, they yield a firmer product in the morning. This way I avoid potential baby food or liquid concrete consistency.

When I make this recipe for myself, I use an assembly line approach and make 4 jars for the week.

Peanut Butter and Jelly Overnight Oats:
Soy milk
Quick cook oats (either rolled oats or steel cut oats)
Plain yogurt
Plain peanut butter, (I keep a jar of the Smucker's natural peanut butter which is also perfect for Asian peanut sauces)
Sugar
Frozen berry medley
Mason jar

Each step should be replicated for however many jars you want to make for the week

1) In the mason jar, stir together, 1 tablespoon of peanut and 1 tablespoon of plain yogurt and 1 teaspoon of sugar

2) On top of this mixture, pour in 1/2 cup of dried oats

3) On top of the oats, add in 1 handful of frozen berries, about 1/2 cup

4) On top of the oats that will be eaten the next morning, pour in 1/2 cup of soy milk. You can adjust the liquid to change the consistency of the oats. For firmer oats, stick to 1:1 ratio of oats to soy milk. For a more liquid product add up to 3/4  cup of soy milk.

One for tomorrow and ready for the
rest of the week

5) Mix together the oats, berries, milk mixture and let it sit in the refrigerator overnight.

6) You can store the rest of the prepared oats in the fridge, and the night before you plan to eat the oats, add in the soy milk, mix, and let it sit overnight. Re-mix the oats in the morning for a good distribution of berries, oats and peanut butter.

7) Experiment! Add a banana or almonds or cinnamon or more sugar or chocolate chips or cheerios to make your Friday morning that much better. Go crazy. What I love is that every morning, I get a pre-made, healthy, non-processed breakfast, made with love by me for me.  To survive residency, I think I will need lots of rituals and acts of self care, and overnight oats falls into this category.

Ready to cover and mix in the morning for instant breakfast

Cooking with friends on a weeknight: Asparagus, mushroom, rice gratin

I hope "cooking with friends on a weeknight" will become a feature of the blog. Cooking with someone else and blogging about it proves it is possible to be an intern and maintain a social life outside of drinking wine and watching TV on my tablet. That said, for someone who counsels patients on establishing and maintaining healthy habits, I know I do not sleep enough and maintain myself on liquid caffeine, daily yoga, and lots of chocolate for extra energy. Basically I'm asking for a daily sugar crash and helping my family history of type 2 diabetes express itself.  For now I think the benefits of spending time with friends outweighs the benefits of 8 hours a sleep a night and ingesting too much processed sugar.  Let's see how I feel in another month...

I am currently on my Emergency Medicine rotation which means I work many night shifts and have some free daytime hours. Though the strange sleeping schedule  will eventually catch up to me, I love having the daytime hours off. I happened to have a full day off on Wednesday.  The weather is perfect in DC with low humidity, high of low 80s, and daylight that lasts until 7ish. With my day off, I offered to bring ingredients for a "surprise dinner" to my friend E's house. My plan was to walk around Trader Joe's and see what ingredients jumped out at me. I am proficient enough in my own kitchen to buy random ingredients, usually whatever is in season, and at home I'll look up recipes or just make my usual meal of roasted vegetables with tofu or eggs.

Today I actually had to walk out of the store with ingredients to make a satisfying meal for other people. When I need inspiration, I usually look at the front page of my current favorite blogs. Before walking into TJ's I checked out Cookie and Kate, Serious Eats, and Smitten Kitchen. Smitten Kitchen has gorgeous pictures and delicious recipes, but can be hit or miss with actually providing accessible after work (I'm tired and have no time) dinner recipes. Today, however, Smitten Kitchen did not disappoint. The home page featured a summer squash rice and cheese gratin inspired by Julia Child.

The joys of cooking an a friend's (much larger) kitchen

Inspiration is the key word. I was unimpressed by the summer squash at Trader Joe's and the Foggy Bottom Farmer's Market (Weds, 3-7pm) that likely was overflowing with summer squash and peaches did not open for another 2 hours. So I made do with Trader Joe's produce. I ended up buying asparagus, mushrooms, rosemary Asiago cheese, and a pork loin as the protein.


Dinner was a success: As an appetizer, pan fried Shishito peppers tossed with lemon juice and salt, followed by roasted pork tenderloin served with asparagus, mushroom, rice gratin, and brownies for a decadent finish. This meal satisfied several senses, as E and I painted with watercolors as the gratin and meat percolated in the oven.

Browning the tender loin and pan frying the Shishito peppers

Here I present an original recipe: Asparagus, mushroom, rice gratin aka a quick and fancy casserole

Ingredients:
1 pound of asparagus
1 package of sliced white mushrooms
1 yellow onion
1/2 wedge of Asiago or Parmesean cheese
1 cup of rice
1.5 cups of water
olive oil
salt
pepper
1/2 lemon, optional
medium sized baking dish

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F
1) Wash and trim asparagus, chop into 1 inch pieces
2) Dice onion and coarsely chop the sliced mushrooms. Over medium temperature, heat olive oil in a skillet. Saute the mushrooms and onions for at least 5 minutes, so the onions are softened and some water releases from the mushrooms

3) In a small pot, bring the 1.5 cups of water to a boil, add the 1 cup of rice and boil for 5 minutes. After the 5 minutes, turn off the heat and allow the rice to sit in the water while you finish preparing everything else.
4) Place the asparagus into the baking dish, pour in the mushrooms and onions. Combine well, then pour in the rice and water. This water will allow the vegetables and rice to steam during baking to complete the cooking.

You can be as generous or stingy on the cheese as you like. Most gratins are saturated with fats like butter, milk/cream, and cheese. In this gratin the major fat is the cheese and a bit of olive oil.

5) Using at least half of a medium sized wedge of Asiago or Parmesan cheese: crumble half your cheese using your hands, basically making small cubes, and use a grater to finely grate the remaining cheese. Add the cheese in with the vegetables and rice and combine well so you can see cubes of cheese throughout.
6) Season this mixture with 1 tsp of salt, a few grinds of pepper and the juice of half a lemon. Stir to combine, then use a spoon to smooth the top.

Before baking

7) Cover tightly with foil, and bake in the oven at 350 for 20-30 minutes. This gratin baked in the oven at the same time as our pork loin for 25 minutes.

For a traditional gratin you can add breadcrumbs and cheese to the top of the gratin, and broil at 450 for 5 minutes.

The finished product after serving 

What interns eat: Mexican corn, bean, and zucchini salad aka corn salsa

As many of you know, I am a psychiatry intern who started on July 1, 2015. I'm currently on internal medicine wards, so I'm living the life of a traditional intern working at least 80 hours  a week and learning so much that sometimes I feel like my brain is expanding out of my skull. It's an interesting  and tiring feeling . Who knows why I felt the need to start blogging again the in the context of being tired and overworked. My psychodynamic theory is that I need to identify with something other than medicine so activities like food blogging and yoga keep me human. 

I am one of the lucky interns who works Labor day. Mostly I'm happy that I'm not the unlucky intern working Thanksgiving or Christmas. Who knows what patients I'll encounter tomorrow...Maybe the sweet grandma with community acquired pneumonia? Or perhaps, more likely, the older, usually drunk gentleman, who decides that Labor day weekend is the perfect time to try to quit alcohol and starts withdrawing. In order to provide compassionate and effective care in either one of these scenarios, I pack breakfast and lunch of delicious food prepared in my tiny kitchen. 

I find cooking relaxing. However, I cook for both sustenance and a way to unwind--I have to be efficient in the kitchen. Today, in 2 hours,  I prepared an eggplant and tofu stir fry, the vegetable salad I present today, and made breakfast for the week. This way I have most of my meals covered throughout the week and can supplement the missing meals with fried eggs or kimchi quesadillas. 

Lots of tiny kitchen cooking and dish-washing

I've recently made many iterations of the "vegetable salad" which is basically chopped vegetables tossed with a tasty sauce. Last week I made a tomato, artichoke heart, cauliflower, pesto salad.  A vegetable salad is versatile  and can be eaten over rice, noodles, with an egg, on top green salad, or any other way your imagination might lead you. I make a good amount of the chopped vegetable salad and eat it in a variety of ways for either lunch or dinner. This way, I'm not always eating in the hospital cafeteria or spending too much money at the super trendy and too attractive Whole Foods two blocks from my apartment. 

This week, this vegetable salad is a result of half-hearted grocery shopping as I haven't sincerely grocery shopped in two weeks. I cobbled this salad together with vegetables left over from my last trip to  the farmer's marks and this morning, I went to the Dupont farmer's market with a visiting friend. 

Farmer's market goods and the
last of my HEB products

Mexican corn, bean, zucchini salad with salsa verde aka the Mexican chopped vegetable salad aka corn salsa

2 ears of sweet corn with the kernels off the cob

2 summer squashed, halved and thinly sliced

1 clove of garlic thinly sliced

a large handle of cherry tomatoes, quartered

3 carrots, cut into small cubes

1 can of red kidney beans or black beans

about 1/2 cup of green salsa (Usually, I prefer the small can of Herdez salsa verde sold in the Latin section, but I had the end of a jar of Trader Joe's Hatch Valley green salsa

olive oil

salt to taste

Chopping all the vegetables is the most time consuming part of this recipe, but once everything is chopped, the salad comes together in 10 minutes

1. Start by washing and thinly slicing the zucchini aka summer squash and slicing the garlic

2. In  large frying pan, add 2 generous tablespoons of olive oil, once warmed over medium heat, add the sliced garlic to flavor the oil. Do not burn the garlic, we are going for a subtle taste of garlic. Add the sliced zucchini in a flat layer to the oil, and let it sit without stirring for about 5 minutes. The goal is lightly browned zucchini. After these 5 minutes, shake the pan, cook for another 2-3 minutes and then pour the zucchini into a large bowl. 

3. While the zucchini is browning, you can start to prepare the rest of the vegetables: slice the kernels off the corn, cube the carrots, and tomatoes, wash the kidney beans

4. Combine all the vegetables together in a large bowl. Add the green salsa to the vegetables, and gently mix together. Add salt to taste.

 Enjoy as a salsa with chips, use it as the filling for tacos, eat as a topping for fried eggs, the options are many. Another great addition is adding avocado and scallions right before you serve it.

 This salad can be made with any type of vegetables that mix well with Mexican flavors. In winter time when I want homemade salsa, I use canned corn, canned black beans, radishes, red onions, and carrots and because of modern agriculture tomatoes are available year round. The basic formula is canned beans, 2 types of crispy vegetables, tomatoes, a little bit of onion and salsa. Viola, you have food  for a party or food for the week. 

Mason jar lunch