November 12, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I Ecosia (not googled) searched “Stretching Calming Youtube Video Hawaii” last night. I had the video on and the calming beach sounds while I did some simple stretching for 10 minutes. I had just a normal busy day in clinic. I had extended myself to doing bi-monthly VIDEO sessions with a family that is at a crisis point due to a common pediatric psychiatric diagnosis. The patient is in with the therapist but the appointment is not for another month, and it’s frustrating for both the family and myself. I happened to have a psychiatry book on this topic in my house. It has vetted therapy techniques to “Improve Your Daily Life and Take Back Your Peace of Mind, Calm Anxiety, Diasable Panic Triggers, Prevent Relapses and Setbacks, Manage Responses.” The author I just checked is the director for mental health training at our sister HMO up north. Now I definitely know I am in good hands!

I am sending to the family short lessons from the workbook for their child, and just checking up with them and seeing how they are doing. It is through the secure portal. I’m doing it for them, but I’m also doing it for myself. I’m getting to learn something so valuable that no one has ever taught me. I desperately need to learn for myself and for my patients. How do we heal ourselves?

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November 11, 2020

by drplasticpicker

The vegetarian cornbread is in the oven. I think this is my third batch of cornbread and I’m sure this one will be good. The second batch was a bit of a disaster because I mixed the dry ingredients beforehand and left it on the counter. Something happened to the baking powder and parts of the cornbread were very baking-powdery. This time I made sure to mix everything well, and followed the instructions. I refer to this blogpost https://drplasticpicker.com/non-vegan-cornbread-just-cornbread/. I was inspired to make cornbread because I was rereading that blogpost, and I reread this entry. I had been working through some emotional issues that stemmed from a complicated work relationship. I’ve worked through those issues, and today’s I’m just making cornbread because I want something a bit sweet. Rather than coconut flakes, I threw in chopped walnuts as a foodwaste project. I was going to make another batch of home-made walnut pesto, but our tween daughter indicated that she was pestoed-out. So the chopped walnuts went into the cornbread.

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November 10, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Did you know that Salvia rosmarinus or Rosmarinus officinalis commonly known as rosemary, is a woody, perennial herb with fragrant, evergreen, needle-like leaves and white, pink, purple, or blue flowers, native to the Mediterranean region.”https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary I had known these shrubs on my walks around the parking lot, and I had seen bees around them. But for some reason yesterday I really noticed the plant, and broke off a few branches to smell the leaves. Indeed, it smelled like Rosemary. I thought they were native, but they are a transplant from the Mediterranean that has a very similar climate to our little corner in Southern California. This is a wild growing cultivated plant. Just reading the Wikipedia page there is a long history of it’s journey during Greek and Roman times, through Europe, and finally “Rosemary finally arrived in the Americas with early European settlers in the beginning of the 17th century.” Then at some point it arrived in a little hidden corner of our HMO Parking lot.

I know that the particular non-descript HMO complex I work at was built about 30 years ago. Rosemary plants can live about 30 years. I wonder how old this plant is? I wonder who planted it? I love Wikipedia. It details the history of Rosemary and “In Don Quixote (Part One, Chapter XVII), the fictional hero uses rosemary in his recipe for balm of fierbras.” What is the balm of fierbras? “According to a chanson from 1170, Fierabras and Balan conquered Rome and stole two barrels containing the balm used for the corpse of Jesus. This miraculous balm would heal whoever drank it . . . Don Quixote mentions to Sancho Panza that he knows the recipe of the balm. In Chapter XVII, Don Quixote instructs Sancho that the ingredients are oil, wine, salt and rosemary.” When Don Quixote drinks the balm of fierbras, he vomits and sweats and is healed from it. Sancho gets diarrhea and is nearly killed from it.

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November 9, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s important to give credit where credit it due. I made a super simple Udon Soup yesterday, but it was a reinvention of a recipe for Khoa Tom Pla Thai Rice Soup with Fish) from Retireby40 – one of the personal finance bloggers I follow. https://retireby40.org/sahd-cooking-khoa-tom-pla/ I really love Thai food and Joe is Thai, and his recipes are really good. I find them easy to follow and not too fussy. I called my mom to tell her about the recipe, and she approved. She is a superb Vietnamese cook and she has always thought Thai food is as fresh and healthy as our native foods. Plus Joe’s recipes are usually frugal. Please click on Joe’s original link to give him credit, and also he has links to buy the ingredients if you don’t have them at home.

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Novemeber 8, 2020

by drplasticpicker

We watched President-Elect Biden and Vice-President Kamala Harris yesterday as a family. We made it an event. Before the actual speech and dinner, we had been inspired by real friends on my personal Facebook that suggested Philly Cheesesteak and Arizona Ice Tea in celebration of the swing states that brought the electoral collage home. The entire day had been happy with smiles and CNN playing in the background. Everyone seemed to be smiling, even the political pundits. Trump has really aged Jake Tapper. We were low on kitchen staples anyway so needed to go to a grocer.

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November 7, 2020

by drplasticpicker

Something dawned upon me yesterday while I was prepping my fourth 5 lb bag of potatoes. We had grabbed the bag on one of our grocery runs. I think this was from Vons, our local grocer. I had never purchased an entire 5 lb bag of potatoes in bulk before. It would spoil too quickly for me to be able to use it all. My mother-in-law and father-in-law often buy food in bulk including large sacks of onions and carrots, and seem to be always working with basic food ingredients. But for me, I had eaten plenty of potatoe containing foods but they were packaged in plastic and blasted with artificial flavors. The preservatives were likely palm-oil based and likely killed a poor orangatang due to displacement from palm oil plantations. Those packaged “potato” foods likely had the fiber processed out of it.

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November 6, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I was not focused on picking lots of bags this month, as I was very distracted by the election. Indeed while I’m typing up this post, I’m watching Jake Tapper at CNN at the same time. He is a handsome man. I also did other environmental projects that I thought would have a greater impact on climate change especially giving my first graduate student lecture at Virginia Commonwealth University and my first medical student lecture at University of California San Diego. The truth is that I am feeling in general so much healthier, and I try to meet my minimum goal of 20 bags a month. This month I met my goal of 20 bags and exceeded just by 1. Total bags are #321 since I started.

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November 5, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I’m giving a talk at UCSD School of Medicine PRIME HEq program this afternoon. I spent the last few days preparing for the talk, and did practice it last night with Mr. Plastic Picker. After my delivery I asked, “Should I take the Dr. Plastic Picker stuff out? Is it too long?” My Dear Husband and the originator of my eco-avatar name said I should keep it, and that it’s the most powerful part. I had delivered a different talk at the Sustainable Healthcare Project at VCU, but that was clearly a more motivational lecture. This is part of their official curriculum and mostly about air pollution and climate change. The talk is entitled “PEDIATRIC HEALTH & CLEAN AIR: ADVOCACY AS TREATMENT.”

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November 4, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s 530am after the 2020 Pandemic Era US Elections. There was the Executive Branch on the ballot, but so was the Senate, House and many local races. There is palpable sense of disappointment on my personal Facebook feed as there is in our home. Yet I have always known we live in a skewed bubble echoing chamber. Of course California went blue, as did the entire west coast. 65% of Californians voted for Biden. Yet I also know the history of the anti-socialist Cuban community, and I could have told you that they 100% they aren’t “Latino Voters” that would suddenly vote for a ticket with a black woman as VP candidate? They are Cuban-Americans and they hate Communist, just like the community I grew up in. Case in point their favorite son is Mark Rubio. He is not a caricature. He is elected by a population and represents that view. Do you think Cubans and Southeast Asians in the majority care about Black Lives Matter? There is still centuries of internalized racism and colonialism. But we can’t save the earth with just half of the population, and no matter what happens with the election – we know that at least half voted for Trump.

Did anyone ever think it was going to be easy? There are still many ballots to be counted. If this pandemic has taught me anything, it’s that no one can predict anything. Demoacracy will play out in it’s messy and beautiful way. Dr. Plastic Picker believes in democracy – this is the only way things will work. The only way we can save this earth, is changing hearts person by person. We also need to speak the language they understand, which can include finances or faith. It’s hard and messy, and takes engagement and building community. Mr. Plastic Picker looked at me yesterday with a clearer gaze and he said, “You are right. You keep on doing what you are doing no matter what the election results. You’ll still be Dr. Plastic Picker.”

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November 3, 2020

by drplasticpicker

I am almost out of Dr. Plastic Picker reusable tote bags! It’s been fun over the last year giving them out randomly to my patients and people I’ve met. Yesterday I gave one to Priscilla, the nice HMO staff who works on updating iPhones for MDs. She spent over an hour updating my new phone and backing up all my data. As she walked away, there was the Maui Blue Turtle themed Dr. Plastic Picker bag peaking from her small trolley of things. I think those bags are everywhere! They were a group project made from the art of a patient Daniela, my sister’s logo she designed for the blog and about a $1000 a paid to get them done. I just gave them away over the year and it has been great fun.

But it’s time to think about something else to have at work to give away to my families! I have decided to live my dream and finally write a book! I’ve always wanted to be an author. I had tried to write a romance novel back in medical school during our first year, it was Pass-Fail grading system, but I got distracted and only wrote two chapters. I have realized it’s better to write something useful. Since I am a pediatrician and refocused on plantetary and pediatric health, I really ought to write a cookbook. I have never desired to write a cookbook until now. Now I want to write a cookbook because I have learned more new skills in the kitchen, and I want to encourage my patients to eat more plant-based and less processed and less plastic. When I was younger, I had saved enough UPC codes from some company and sent them in for a free kid’s cookbook that was baked goods A to Z. I loved that cookbook. Unfortunately that is probably what derailed me from cooking more because I was in adolescence and making a lot of baked goods and eating a lot of it. I gained probably an unhealthly amount of weight from all that sugary baked goodness.

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