easter

I must admit I failed to properly prepare for this weekend (only the commemoration of the biggest event marking our Christian existence). I hope to dwell on the severity/sacrifice/love/weight of Easter over the next couple days, His death and resurrection certainly merits it, since I have been studying instead of thoughtfully approaching the topic. 

I come back to this poem every year (since I first read it in college) and I do hope it lends you the same perspective it lends me...

Seven Stanzas at Easter
by John Updike

Make no mistake: if he rose at all
It was as His body;
If the cell’s dissolution did not reverse, the molecule reknit,
The amino acids rekindle,
The Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
Each soft spring recurrent;
It was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled eyes of the
Eleven apostles;
It was as His flesh; ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes
The same valved heart
That-pierced-died, withered, paused, and then regathered
Out of enduring Might
New strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
Analogy, sidestepping, transcendence,
Making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the faded
Credulity of earlier ages:
Let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
Not a stone in a story,
But the vast rock of materiality that in the slow grinding of
Time will eclipse for each of us
The wide light of day.

And if we have an angel at the tomb,
Make it a real angel,
Weighty with Max Planck’s quanta, vivid with hair, opaque in
The dawn light, robed in real linen
Spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
For our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
Lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are embarrassed
By the miracle,
And crushed by remonstrance.

baby update

Have you ever been around a couple that recently gave birth? They are out of their minds, ogling over how cute their spawn is, exhaustively attending to its every need, and having whole conversations about its poop. I mean, this last topic might very well be what sets apart parents from the rest of humanity: such intense focus on another being’s bowel habits.

Guess what? I get excited every morning when I let Sister out and she hasn’t peed in her cage. I clap and cheer for her, standing alone in the backyard, when she does her business (and it’s solid). husBen and I haven’t slept through an entire night in over a month, yet we are so happy. Smitten.

Sister and Quimby have really taken a liking to each other too. They talk all morning, making little noises back and forth like they are having a really clever conversation. I don’t think they hear me when I try to tell them “we are a quiet family.” She bites his tail, he tugs at her ears, and they fight over toys like they are real brother and sister.

Okay, we are those people right now.

I whipped up this soup for husBen over the weekend and he said it was the best thing I have made recently. I must need to step up my game if a soup merits that praise. It is pretty fantastic though.

Mexican chicken soup

Serves 4

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil

1 red onion, chopped

8 cloves garlic, minced

2 large boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

2 canned chipotle chiles in adobo sauce, finely chopped, plus 2 tablespoons adobo sauce

2 cups cherry tomatoes

6 cups chicken broth

½  cup fresh cilantro leaves

Juice of 1 lime

Salt and pepper

1 hass avocado, thinly sliced lengthwise into slivers

Tortillas and vegetable oil

In a large saucepan, heat the olive oil over medium-high heat. Stir in the onion and cook until it softens with some crispy edges, about 8 minutes. Add in the garlic and cook a minute more (stir more often here). Increase the heat to high, push the vegetables to the side of the pan, add the chicken and cook, stirring, until golden and nearly cooked through, about 5-8 minutes. Stir in the chipotles and adobo sauce, then stir in the chicken broth. Add in the tomatoes whole. Lower the heat and simmer for 15 minutes, skimming any foam. Stir in lime juice; season with salt and pepper.

Meanwhile, heat up vegetable oil (enough to be about ½ inch deep in your pot). Slice up 1 tortilla into thin strips and add to hot oil until they are crispy (1 minute or less). Remove with slotted spoon to drain and cool.

Distribute cilantro evenly between bowls then ladle in soup. Place avocado slices on top and garnish with fried tortillas. Serve hot!

my words (hack hack)

I am starved for time lately, as I have actually started studying for my psych shelf exam (goes down this Friday). I am also starved for any good thoughts to hash out/write about in this post because I have had a cough for the past week that knocks my brain loose every 5 minutes. Honestly, sickness is distracting. Anyway, below is the recipe for some cookies I grew up on. I always feel taken care of when I eat these, like my very own mother made them (even if I had to make them myself).

cookies cooling on a pizza box. am i a real baker?

 Texas Governor’s Mansion Cowboy Cookies

(recipe by Laura Bush)


Makes about 45 cookies



3 cups flour


1 tablespoon baking powder


1 tablespoon baking soda


1 tablespoon ground cinnamon


1 teaspoon salt


1-1/2 cups (3 sticks) butter, at room temperature


1-1/2 cups granulated sugar


1-1/2 cups brown sugar, packed


3 eggs


1 tablespoon vanilla


3 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips


3 cups quick rolled oats


2 cups sweetened flaked coconut


2 cups chopped pecans



Mix the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt in a bowl.  In a mixer bowl, beat the butter on medium speed for 1 minute until smooth and creamy.  Gradually beat in the sugars to combine for 2 minutes.  Add the eggs, one at a time, beating after each.  Beat in the vanilla.  Preheat the oven to 350.  Remove the bowl from the mixer and stir in the flour mixture until just combined.  Add the chocolate chips, oats, coconut, and pecans.

Using an ice cream scoop, level off the dough and place onto baking sheets lined with paper, spacing 3 inches apart.  I just use the same kind of paper that I put in my printer.  It keeps the cookies from getting too brown on the bottom.  Bake 13-15 minutes or until slightly underdone.  Allow the cookies to cool on the baking sheets for 2-3 minutes before removing to paper towels.

yolo

I forgot how much I like live music. Last night, Beck and the fiancé Ryan visited us to go see Local Natives at Fitzgeralds in the Heights. A friend from medical school, Chandra, met us there and we ran into some of Ben’s friends from the firm, Taylor and Kelsey, as well. The band finally started around 11—an hour that normally finds me in my bed—and I immediately remembered how it felt to be young and unburdened by all the stresses and pressures we create for ourselves again. I simply felt young and able to move without inhibition. I could feel the music reverberating in my sternum and bouncing through my legs. I ceased to care who stood around me and found myself content to just respond to the music with my whole body (don’t worry, I kept it mostly inside the box).

I expect this theme of fun and freedom to continue for at least the next few months until husBen has to start studying for the bar exam. Until that feared turning point, we have adopted some light-hearted mottos to remind us of our intentions this semester: “Live big or die trying” (Ben’s) and “YOLO” (mine). No, we are not embarrassed of these ridiculous phrases, because after applying them to any decision, we always end up grateful for the fun that follows.

This blog space has been a practice in reflection for me, often more frequently documented in times of my life I am busy and stressed (and feel the need to mentally unwind), and paradoxically less so when I am actively enjoying ample free time. I want to do better about remembering the fun I am having now though, as if to write about it will slow me down and make me appreciate this period of laxity in our lives…because after all, You Only Live Once.

Cheers.

Vieux Carré

1 ounce rye

1 ounce Cognac

1 ounce sweet vermouth

¼ ounce Bénédictine

2 dashes Peychaud’s Bitters

2 dashes Angostura bitters

Garnish: thick lemon twist

Combine all the ingredients except the garnish in a mixing glass filled with ice. Stir until chilled and strain into a double old-fashioned glass over one large ice cube. Garnish with the thick lemon twist.

From Bitters by Brad Thomas Parsons, makes 1 drink

like bookends

Ben and I traveled down to Lamar for the weekend to spend time with both our families. By a brilliant turn of events over only the last year, Ben’s sister Becki is now engaged to one of my best friends from high-school, Ryan, whose family has a bay house in Rockport as well (where he is living to finish up classes in order to apply to med school). Now when we go to Lamar, high chances hold that we may see our sweet sister and her lover, and I have yet to cease checking myself in awe at the situation of these two souls finding each other.

On Saturday morning, Ben’s dad indulged me in a jog around the bay (one of my favorite activities when the Smith’s visit). As we were running, per usual passing the time in conversation, he mentioned the idea of buying in Rockport since now 2 out of his 3 kids have connections down there. He mused that if someone had told him a mere 5 years ago that he would be looking at property in Rockport, he would have laughed, never even considering the option. How funny is it the way life turns out, so pleasantly different sometimes than our minds could have planned it.

Saturday night we ventured over to the Oysterfest for some raw oysters and a large dose of humanity (think people of Walmart plus a carnival setting). For a large majority of the time, I wondered around trying to find family members that I constantly lost by standing in line for oysters or something fried, trying not to knock people’s beer out of their hands and on to my white pants. At one point I even indulged in an only partially gnawed on turkey leg like a good ol’ festival goer—Ben tried to joke that the turkey leg was left by some previous patron of the table but I am 99% positive it was his sister's. Ben and I played some carnival games afterwards and won two goldfish, no mind that we probably spent about $10 trying to do so.

 Afterwards the Oakley’s (Ryans parents) invited both Starkey and Smith clans over to their house on Key Allegro for dessert of key lime pie and a rosemary rum bundt cake. I spent ample time in this neighborhood growing up (especially in high school), jumping from house to house with my little rag-tag gang of bikini-clad girlfriends over the summers. Most Fourth of July’s and a good number of New Year’s further chalk up my memory of this place, solidifying again my appreciation that Becki now has the joy of putting down some root here as well. As we drove home, I thought back to this passage in Walker Percy’s book The Moviegoer, where he describes how life offers us discrete packages of time in between two similar events, situated like bookends at some beginning and then again at the present. These “bookends” (the same event, spaced out over time) makes us consider mindfully all that has transpired in between their occurrence. I imagined my little 16 year old self most vividly, traipsing through these exact streets, so carefree and dramatically heavy laden with teen angst I am sure I even discussed with Ryan’s teen self, and now again driving back to my parents bay house as a 25 year old, with my husband (my best accomplishment in this time interval for sure), leaving his sister and her kids at Ryan’s very same house. Again, how funny the way life turns out.

 A little surprise waiting for us upon our return broke me out of my reflective appreciation of this year’s good fortune: Sister, or should I say Shitster, had exploded in her cage. Nice little ending to a great night. Really, though, we love her, and we hardly miss actually sleeping through the night at all. 

angola

One patient persists in my mind, even days after her discharge. I will call her ‘Angola’, for all HIPAA satisfaction, and briefly fill out her picture in order to outline my fixation. I heard she came in yelling and thrashing, all 110 pounds of her, with a wild look in her eye but a genuine fear as well. As I spoke with her the next morning, I could tell the medication had already begun taking effect, as she was far calmer and composed, able to relate to me her story. She grew up in Africa then came to America just a few years back as a foreign exchange student. Around this time, she started hearing “spiritual warfare” in clearly audible way, as if caught in between the banter of angels and demons. She was still able to attend classes and carry on with life as usual. As the years progressed, this warfare grew more tangible in nature and ‘Angola’ felt paranoid like she was being followed and fought over…until finally she saw the Devil and Jesus in her very own home, talking directly to her.  

I must admit, sitting in front of her telling this story prompted a conviction in me for immediately wanting to label her crazy. Yes, my sparse psychiatric knowledge would suggest the beginnings of schizophrenia in this poor girl, but I left wanting to explore the context of her Christianity that may have taught a more tangible picture of spiritual warfare than I grew up with. My mind also jumped back to the saints I read about in college with very vivid visions of Christ who were lauded for their mystic spirituality and wrote books still popular today. Julian of Norwich, for example, was not medicated/commited for her hallucinations in the late 1300s.

I followed up with Ms. ‘Angola’ over the next couple days before her discharge and her clinical picture improved, which on the ward means that she stopped seeing hallucinations. She still reported hearing Jesus speak to her internally, but my own faith makes me want to attribute that to her idea of prayer (we probably all hold varying perceptions of what that communal activity with God looks like exactly). I still wonder exactly what of her illness we fixed and what portion of her faith we silenced as a side effect.

What do you think... 

salted honey pie...squares

This rotation on Psychiatry greatly encourages me in carrying out my old new year’s resolution to “spend more time around friends, doing nothing.” Sunday night we watched the Oscars at Mel’s. Monday night I made fried Portabella sandwiches and Devils on Horseback (blue cheese-stuffed bacon-wrapped dates) and Ben and I caught up on some Game of Thrones and Girls. Tuesday night we went to Little Matt’s with our growth group for some good food and margs and time with their kids. Wednesday night I had my long lost high school girlfriends Stephanie and Kim over for fish tacos and black bean sweet potato soup. Last night (Thursday) Ben was out of town so Mel and I hit the town (okay, we just went to Anvil but that’s about my max effort at “going out” these days). Ahh, I love pysch.

I want to tell you people so many stories about my interactions with patients on this rotation but I am still processing the insanity/tragedy of it all myself, so I will eventually share when I can figure out how to do so eloquently and tactfully. For now I can honestly say I am enjoying it for the amount of real daylight hours I get to see, the newly found time with Ben and our little family (Quimby and Sister), and this very interesting flavor of patients.

For our Oscar watching last week, I attempted a Salted Honey Pie and burned the crust an embarrassing amount. It had promised to be an excellent crust (flaky and buttery, and tender to boot) so I was reluctant to just scrap the whole pie…so I got creative and turned the pie into bars. Hey, if at first you don’t succeed, cut off the burned edges and move on!

I copied this recipe exactly from http://southbrooklynpost.com/2011/02/pie-mavens-share-recipe/ so I hope you have better luck with it than I did.

Salty Honey Pie

By Melissa and Emily Elsen

Makes one 9-inch custard pie.

Preheat oven to 350F. Have prepared one pre-baked pie shell of your choice. We use an all butter crust. Recipe below.

For filling:

1/2 c butter melted

3/4 c white sugar

2 Tbsp white cornmeal

1/4 tsp salt

3/4 c honey

3 eggs

1/2 c cream

2 tsp white vinegar

1 tsp vanilla paste

1 or 2 Tbsp flake sea salt for finishing (Maldon is a good choice)

All of the mixing can be done by hand, or with an electric mixer: Melt butter and combine with the sugar, salt and cornmeal to make a thick paste. Add the honey, vanilla and vinegar and mix together. Fold in the eggs, add the cream and blend.

Pour the filling into a pre-baked pie shell and bake at 350 F for 45 to 60 minutes. The filling will puff up like a marshmallow and the center will be just slightly wobbly. Once cooled (at least one hour), finish with a sprinkling of flake sea salt. Slice and serve with freshly whipped cream.

Four & Twenty Blackbirds Pie Crust

By Melissa and Emily Elsen

This recipe makes one double crusted, 9-inch pie (I found this to be enough for two pie crusts…maybe this is where I failed actually).

2 1/2 cups all-purpose unbleached flour

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon sugar

1/2 pound (2 sticks) cold unsalted butter, cut into 1/2-inch pieces

8-10 tablespoons ice water with cider vinegar, or more as needed (combine 1 cup cold water, 1/8 cup cider vinegar and ice)

Whisk the dry ingredients together and blend with a hand-held pastry blender the chopped, cold butter, being careful not to overwork during this step. The butter should be in pea-sized chunks, not too big, but not completely incorporated.

Slowly add the ice water and vinegar mixture and bring the dough completely together by hand, again being careful not to overwork. Aim to create a marbleized effect, so that the butter is still visible.

Divide into 2 discs, wrap in plastic and chill 1 hour or more before use.

To pre-bake a crust for a custard pie: Roll one disc of crust out to fit a 9-inch pan, about 1/4 inch thick. Place in a buttered pie pan, and crimp the edges as desired. Allow to rest and cool in freezer or fridge for at least 20 minutes.

Line the rolled-out crust with tinfoil or unwaxed parchment paper, add pie weights or about a cup of dry beans if you don’t have pie weights. Distribute them evenly.

Bake in a 375 F oven for 20 minutes. Allow to cool slightly before filling with custard.