Columnist and in-Training Staff Member
Albany Medical College
Madeline Haas is a graduate of Harvard College and a Class of 2016 student at Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. Cooking keeps her sane and healthy within the limitations of the med school lifestyle and budget. Read her daily blog at The Med School Cookbook.
The Med School Cookbook
The Med School Cookbook offers a weekly account of the challenges and wonders of med school as seen through the eyes of a student. Each post includes a healthy and easy recipe designed for busy people on a budget.
It was a tough week for many of us. Scary events in the news. As phrased so eloquently by a fellow writer here, community injustice is intimately related to patient care. On my psychiatry rotation, I regularly hear about unbelievable violence that stems from and leads people into substance abuse, mental illness and crises resulting in hospitalization. I ended the week feeling sorry for our country and socially isolated from my peers.
“Nothing is more needed than nourishment for the imagination.” This quote from an article in The Atlantic entitled “For the Young Doctor About to Burn Out” is one that is profoundly meaningful as we start the last year of medical school. While most of our mind is occupied with the thoughts of where we will match and spend the next chapter in residency training, we can’t help but also reflect on how far we’ve come, what our career means to …
Last week I made my grandmother’s banana bread and I have been thinking of her ever since. Cooking is a powerful thing: it takes us back to the past not only through taste but through doing the exact same ritual, following the same steps as someone in the past. I’ve been wanting to post for a while about the deaths of my four grandparents, two of whom died this past year and the other two …
I read an interesting article this weekend entitled “Why Nutrition Is So Confusing” that described what all med students know: nutrition data is largely inconclusive, often contradictory, and falls short of strong claims that would make for truly useful recommendations. Trials are often done for a few years and then extrapolate to decades or, conversely, populations are followed for decades and then analysts try to pull out a few recommendations. Although many of us philosophically favor diet …
I went to a couple of talks this week that emphasized the importance of protein. While osteoporosis is a well-known public health problem, sarcopenia, or the loss of muscle mass, is less well-understood by both doctors and the general public. Prevention of sarcopenia is perhaps one reason why people who stand or move around at work may be healthier as they age than people who sit all day (like med students). In terms of the …
Third-year rotations come with a mix of emotions. It’s exciting to get out of the classroom and onto the floors where all the action is, but at the same time reality can set in with every patient that you see. The patient that you see with the acute lymphoblastic leukemia which you had read about extensively in Pathoma is now in your hematology-oncology clinic getting chemotherapy, surrounded by family members who are giving her support …
Last night, I saw a few patients at our student-run free clinic that takes place on Wednesday nights. Every time I get a little bit better at one thing, something else just gets harder. For instance, I’ve figured out how to fill a syringe and deliver an injection at the proper 90-degree angle, but then I realize that I did none of the hard work to coo at and calm down the screaming toddler receiving …
Moving across the country to attend medical school left me without a fridge that was magically full of Russian salads, homemade breads and grilled goodies. This magic was never much of a rainbow. It was domineered by the deep purplish-red of cooked beets. Despite their sweet and hearty favor, I didn’t want my kitchen, cloths and fingers to turn into a heavy and semi-permanent shade of faded purple. I began to grocery shop like a …
We’ve always been on a healthy eating craze and want to send the message that eating healthy does not mean eating boring and expensive foods. We’re all about eating tasty foods that are easy to make, especially when time is so tight. A classmate of ours recently talked about buying frozen taquitos for a get-together because they were easy finger foods that most people enjoy. Taquitos are a great party food item but we wanted …
After a late night out the Friday before Halloween, a long run in the morning and the scent of pad thai on Newbury Street in the afternoon, I came home craving brown rice in peanut sauce. I stood in the doorway and thought about the biology of food cravings, but quickly snapped out of it to scrounge my cupboards for ingredients. I aspire to cook without (printed) recipes like my mom does, so here was …
Over the past year, I’ve had a great experience getting involved with Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP), a national and on-campus advocacy group. The organization’s long-term goal is to reform health care financing in favor of a single, public insurance offering for all Americans (the “single-payer” movement). Its short-term goal is to increase grassroots support among physicians and health professional students in conjunction with Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP). One thing …
Are you the kind of person who, like me, dances around the pasta pot waiting for water the boil, munching on uncooked noodles? Sometimes I pretend that I am going to memorize flashcards during this waiting period, but instead I end up tiptoeing over to the pot every few minutes “just to check on it.” Well, tonight I learned that by being extra lazy, it is possible to make a delicious fresh tomato sauce during …
Columnist and in-Training Staff Member
Albany Medical College
Madeline Haas is a graduate of Harvard College and a Class of 2016 student at Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. Cooking keeps her sane and healthy within the limitations of the med school lifestyle and budget. Read her daily blog at The Med School Cookbook.
The Med School Cookbook
The Med School Cookbook offers a weekly account of the challenges and wonders of med school as seen through the eyes of a student. Each post includes a healthy and easy recipe designed for busy people on a budget.
