Vegan Dreams – Less plastic, More plants, More Fiber – Page 6 – Dr. Plastic Picker
 

Category: Vegan Dreams – Less plastic, More plants, More Fiber

Voila! Sphaghetti squash. Super easy. Even @drplasticpicker could do it.

Janaury 8, 2020

by drplasticpicker

It’s 11pm and Mr. Plastic Picker woke me up. He was putting away the folded laundry very martyrish. Please know dear readers that it is his parents that do the laundry, not him. Then our daughter could not find her PE shorts, and between Mr. Plastic Picker’s antics and wanting to make sure my daughter had her shorts – I got my drplasticpicker body up out of REM stage 3 sleep and went to her room. I turned on the lights and the bright light shocked my cortisol up and my melatonin plummetted and I cleaned out her whole closet in 7 minutes and found her shorts.

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Park City, Utah. We drove from So Cal. Photo credit by drplasticpicker.

December 27, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Our family cooked again! Thanksgiving was the first time we attempted a holiday dinner and it was a big hit. Our family of four cooked for ourselves and my parents. Expectations were low, and my mother had a back-up meal ready, but we did a good job with a small 7 pound herb-butter turkey, boxed stuffing, salad, french baguettes and two kinds of home-made pie https://drplasticpicker.com/cooking-a-turkey-saved-money-used-less-plastic-and-finally-felt-at-home/ We tried to minimize food waste with a semi-traditional dinner, but still had enough to make Turkey Soup that fed us for another few meals https://drplasticpicker.com/turkey-soup-how-can-homemade-soup-save-money-time-family-and-the-earth/. I took my mom’s back-up meal home and we had it later that week.

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Our 3 impossible burgers with 2 reusable cups. We drank tap water! Photo credit by drplasticpicker.

December 23, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It’s 6am and my circadian rhythm is set and drplasticpicker is up! I am an early riser especially now that my sleep is more restful. Our family is in Las Vegas for a brief night at the New York New York hotel. When the plastic picker children wake up, we will head out and drive to our final vacation destination. We decided to drive rather than fly, as we take the climate crisis seriously. Mr. Plastic Picker is driving our trusty red Prius which averages 50 MPG on the highway. We don’t need to rent a car when we get there! Ca-ching ching! The 1500 mile round trip from our home to our mountain destination would have expelled 1.12 tons of carbon if we had flown, instead we will contribute 0.23 tons of carbon. Driving expels only 18% of the carbon of an equivalent flight according to carbonfund.org since we have four in our car. And this adventure of environmentalism has given us new experiences. Let me describe how choosing to drive and not fly made the Impossible Burger possible, but reminded us the home-cooking is best for our health and the environment.

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December 1, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Our turkey stock. Cooking and photo credit by drplasticpicker.

The Saturday after Thanksgiving, our family spent a quiet day at home. I had gone out Ocean Plastic Picking early in the morning, and quickly picked up 2 bags of ocean bound plastic and hauled home at least 10 items. Interestingly enough it was a monetarily high yield salvagable day as I found one almost new Corkcicle water bottle which retails $32.95 and a pair of Men’s Arizona Slide Sandals by Birkenstock which retails $44.99. I never had heard of Corkcicle before until my recent interview with Dr. Craig Canapari who uses this brand of water bottle https://drplasticpicker.com/dr-craig-canapari-pediatrician-and-environmentalist-2/. Those items have been carefully washed and I will regift them soon and deploy them back into the circular economy.

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Herb butter roasted 7lb turkey on a ceramic serving plate. No plastic! Cooking credit by drplasticpicker. Photo credit by drplasticpicker.

November 29, 2019

by drplasticpicker

Happy Thanksgiving and Indigenous People’s Day to everyone from the Plastic Picker family. Today was one of those milestone days. Like riding your first bike, aceing an organic chemistry midterm or draining your first abscess – today drplasticpicker cooked my first Turkey! It was a 7 1/2 lb bird and it was glorious!

One of my middle management friends is male, older and wiser and always says, “For those that have great strengths, they have great weaknesses.” My great weaknesses are some of the practical matters in life. I became a good driver late in life, and now in my mid-40s I cooked my first Turkey and I am beyond bursting with pride.

For the actual turkey recipe, it was the first one I googled “Easy, No-Fuss Thanksgiving Turkey” https://tastesbetterfromscratch.com/easy-no-fuss-thanksgiving-turkey/. Thank you internet!

Being a second-generation American and married to a first generation American, Thanksgiving was always a complicated holiday for me. I grew up watching Thanksgiving on TV with those 1980 sitcom families, and that was what I thought “Thanksgiving” was supposed to be. Then going off to college, living away from my nuclear family for 15 years, marrying a first-generation immigrant from New Jersey whose family also did Thanksgiving a bit “off” compared to TV shows, and then having children while still doing medical training and feeling that I should be providing them a sort of tradition that I never had myself.

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“Bowtie Persimmons” a photo project by patient’s family and drplasticpicker. Better together.

November 28, 2019

by drplasticpicker

It’s the first rainstorm of the year and it is 4am on Thanksgiving morning. I sleep well now, the sleep of the blessed as I told the reporter from PB Monthly https://drplasticpicker.com/keep-it-simple-and-back-to-basics-after-my-interview-with-pb-monthly/, and still wake up at 4am which is really just 5am before the recent daylight savings change. I woke up to the gentle sound of rain. The storm had started yesterday afternoon.

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November 10, 2019

by drplasticpicker

The trip to Food4Less to maximize $8 for the San Diego Food Bank https://drplasticpicker.com/how-8-cash-found-on-the-beach-became-80-meals-and-a-daughter-mother-outing/reminded me that trying to eat seafood sustainably is hard! I love a bargain and had been shopping at Food4Less for years. But about 5 years ago, we stopped going. I had forgotten why we stopped? This week’s trip was the first time in years and it jogged my memory.

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