Spring Quiche

Vegetarian friendly quiche

Last week, I had a spinach and mushroom quiche from a local coffee shop next to where I work.  It tasted oily and fatty, not to mention it was overpriced.  This morning, I decided to make my own since I still had a pastry dough untouched in my fridge.

Serving: 4-6 (depending on your appetite)
Ingredients: 
4 eggs (whisk)
4-5 cups of uncooked spinach
Approximately 10 cherry tomatoes (I chose the really round ones instead of the oval ones)
A handful of reduced fat feta cheese   (crumbled or chopped into small cubes)
Half an onion (chopped into small pieces)
Mushroom (1 cup sliced)
Garlic (Diced 1 clove)
Salt & Pepper (2 tsp each)
Red pepper (1tbsp)
Jalapeno (half, diced)
Olive oil
Basil (10 leaves, coarsely chopped)
Store bought pastry dough

Procedure: 

Preheat the oven to 350F for 15 mins.  Slice the tomatoes into halves, drizzle with olive oil, salt and pepper. Put it in the heated oven for 15 mins.

This is more than needed for the quiche. I made more so that I could make pasta. 

Diced half of a medium onion. Brown the onions with some diced garlic and olive oil in a big saucepan. 

Put in sliced mushrooms and jalapenos.  After 3 minutes, add in the spinach for a quick stir fry. Add some salt and pepper for seasoning.

Coarsely chopped the basil and put it aside, while the mushrooms and other veggies are cooking happily in the pan. 

Take out the roasted tomatoes from the oven. Preheat the oven to 450F for 15 mins.  Mix the cooked veggies with the chopped basil together in a bowl. Then whisk the eggs in a separate bowl and pour it into this bowl.  Add feta cheese the last and mix all the ingredients together.

 
Press the pastry dough around an 8 to 9 inch baking dish. Pour in the mixture. Don't worry too much about the edges of the pastry. It will come out like "homemade." Put it in the oven for approximately 30 to 40  minutes. You want to take the quiche out if the edges of the pastry get dark brown.

Look at this! Isn't it gorgeous? At least I think so. It tasted delicious. 

                                 

I took the quiche out with me. Today is a beautiful Sunday.

I used all the left over ingredients to make a round 2 recipe- Anchovies Whole Wheat Linguine with Spring Vegetables and Vegetarian Chicken (Coming up next). As for now, I need to write up a psychological assessment report and then head to a Zumba class to help digest good food. 

Cantonese Steamed Eggs 港式蒸水蛋

Cantonese Steamed Eggs 港式蒸水蛋 

My grandma used to make this dish for dinner while I was still living at home in Hong Kong. As a child, I was able to eat a big bowl of white rice with steamed eggs and soy sauce.  I can always remember how good it tasted. It is smooth like pudding and very easy to digest.

After I moved to the United States, I seldom make this dish on my own. I remember there was a time that I was sick and Honey K made this dish with congee (rice porridge) for me, along with all the Asian side dishes (e.g., pickles). It reminded me so much of grandma and her delicious food.

I an trying to replicate grandma recipe without adding the meat or salty duck eggs in to make it a healthier meal. As most of my Hong Kong and Taiwanese readers would probably be familiar with this dish, I am writing this for my American readers, colleagues and friends, who have asked  "What's steamed eggs?"

Serving: 2

Ingredients 

3 eggs
1/4 cup of vegetable stock or chicken stock*

*grandma told me to add chicken stock to add flavor to it, but Honey K said it is fine to use water

Optional ingredients to enhance flavor and for garnish
2 tbsp of (low sodium) soy sauce
1 stalk of scallions (chopped)
1 tbsp of sesame oil

Procedure
1. Whisk the 3 eggs in a bowl.
2. Add 1/4 cup of water/vegetable stock/chicken stock. Whisk again. Pour the mixture into a shallow dish or bowl.
3. Prepare a wok / a steamer / a rice cooker with water for steaming. Put the shallow dish or bowl into it and steam it for 15 to 20 mins. For best result, allow some air to go into the rice cooker/steamer/ wok, so that the egg will come out smooth without "wrinkles." You can place to 2 chopsticks in between the lid and the pot so that air can goes in.  Do not overcook or the eggs will become too dry and wrinkly to eat.
4. After 15 to 20 minutes, remove the bowl/shallow dish from the steamer/rice cooker/ work. Sprinkle scallions and pour soy sauce (and sesame oil) on the top of it and serve it with rice.

Steamed eggs served with rice (a mix of barley, wild rice, brown rice and white rice)

The Vow: The search of the self and for the self

"My theory is about moments, moments of impact. My theory is that these moments of impact, these flashes of high intensity that completely turn our lives upside down actually end up defining who we are. The thing is each one of us is the sum total of every moment that we’ve ever experienced with all the people we’ve ever known. And it’s these moments that become our history. Like our own personal greatest hits of memories that we play and replay in our minds over and over again." (The Vow, 2012) 

Honey K. and I watched The Vow a few days ago. The movie was fine but something got me thinking about our identities as human beings. As a psychology student, the above quote should not be surprising at all because this is what I do with my clients most of the time. My client and I search for these moments in their lives that impact who they are and who they want to become in the future. It is often in this very process we come to reject, struggle or accept what define us.

In the movie, Paige woke up from a coma with severe memory loss. She forgets who she had been for the past 5 years and her husband, Leo. As Paige cannot recall her marriage life and her identity as an artist and vegetarian, Leo decides to let go of Paige ultimately to allow her to develop who she wants to be and be happy. Paradoxically, by letting go, Paige rediscovers her passion to art and falls in love again with Leo. This is basically the plot of the movie, not surprisingly.

The idea that one can discover the self on his own still remains puzzling to me. It contradicts with the soliloquy in the beginning, "The thing is each one of us is the sum total of every moment that we’ve ever experienced with all the people we’ve ever known. And it’s these moments that become our history." For me, the idea illustrates the illusion that we have a complete control over our own identities. We can pick and choose who we are and who we want to become. I guess we like to believe in this way because of beneffectance (the tendency to take credit for success while denying responsibility for failure). When an identity is formed, it might be considered to be an achievement by the self, especially during the phase of emerging adulthood when the search of identity/self become a developmental task. Consider how most people tell you about their journey to define themselves. They say, "I finally find out who I am." They rarely say, "These people help me to find out who I am."  In a western and psychological perspective, it makes sense that human wants to take ownership of their self-enhancement. However, I do think our identities evolve from the sum total of every moment that we've ever experienced with all the significant people we've ever known. 

Doctor, I am not sleeping!

"I can't sleep. It takes me forever to fall asleep and I find myself waking up a lot. I feel fatigue in the morning and I can't go on like this anymore. If I don't get to sleep soon, I will not be able to work tomorrow and I have so much to do. Please help me sleep." It is not uncommon to hear patients complain about their sleep and the accompanied anxiety of not sleeping. In the United State, around 9% of Americans suffer from some form of insomnia, which can be characterized as difficulty falling asleep, difficulty staying asleep, non-restorative sleep or any combination of the above. Medical problems such as diabetes, restless leg syndrome and chronic pain can affect sleep, so as psychiatric conditions, including mood disorders, anxiety disorders and substance abuse (i.e., alcohol).  Additionally, acute stressors or hormonal changes (i.e., menopause in women) in life can negatively impact sleep quality. If, ruling out all of the above conditions and your patients are still having insomnia, it is possible that your patients might have developed heightened anxieties about not getting enough sleep which maintain and perpetuate their sleep problem(s). Such sleep difficulty associated with excessive worries is referred as psychophyiological insomnia. 

This type of insomnia might begin suddenly after a significant event or slowly developed over the course of time. If you ask the patient about what they think about when they can't sleep, they tend to tell you how much they worry about not being able to function well the next day. They may also have racing thoughts associated with other negative beliefs about not sleeping (e.g., I am going to look terrible tomorrow. I will fail my work tomorrow if I don't get sleep now. I will die of sleep deprivation.) These worries result in tensions and over-arousal that keep the brain working and the person from sleeping, creating vicious cycles. Battling with themselves, patients toss and turn in their beds until they are able to fall asleep. Their beds, in turn, are conditioned with worries, anxiety and negative thoughts etc... This makes it very difficult to fall or stay asleep. In some cases, patients might feel increasing agitation and anxiety as their bedtime approach and only find themselves awake in bed most of the time at night. In order to cope with daytime fatigue, these patients compensate by consuming too much caffeine during the day that further disrupt their sleep. In short, these patients usually "try too hard" to fall asleep and stay awake. Interestingly, however, these patients often have no trouble falling asleep when they are sleeping in a hotel room or sleep laboratory. 

What do we do with these patients who worry about not sleeping? Cognitive behavioral therapy (for insomnia), which often include stimulus control, sleep hygiene education, cognitive restructuring, sleep restriction and relaxation techniques, have demonstrated effectiveness with this population. Patients are explained the rationale of this treatment approach and introduced sleep hygiene to increase therapy compliance. To dissociate worries and anxiety with their beds, patients are instructed not to engage in any activity other than sleep and sex in their beds. If they find themselves tossing and turning in bed for more than 20 minutes, they have to leave their beds. They will go to another room and engage in a relaxation activity (e.g. deep breathing exercise) while not to look at the clock. Not until they feel sleepy (not tired), shall they return to their beds. It is important to distinct the difference between sleepiness (e.g., eye-lids dropping) and tiredness (e.g., exhaustion) to the patients. The latter state might increase arousal that prevents the patient from sleeping. The goal is to remove the negative thoughts and anxieties associated with the bed, as well as minimizing arousal in bed. When the patients are in beds, they should feel ready to sleep. As different people have different sleep needs, with the help of a sleep log, patients can collaborate with the healthcare providers to determine the best time for bedtime and wake time.

The other component of this approach is cognitive restructuring. Patients tend to engage in inaccurate beliefs and thoughts about insomnia without awareness. It is therefore important for the healthcare professionals to provide accurate sleep information to them. Inaccurate and negative beliefs are also to be challenged, so that maladaptive thoughts can be changed. For instance, the catastrophic thought that "I will fail my work tomorrow if I don't get sleep now" can be replaced with accurate statement such as, "I probably get more sleep than I think and I have many times able to work despite poor sleep." Using a mood-thought record, patients are taught to pay attention to their thought patterns on sleep and challenge these dysfunctional beliefs.
 

Not all the insomniac will benefit from this approach. If the patient has a primary medical condition or psychiatric illness that impacts their sleep, it is important to address these above problems to treat the sleep problem, rather than jumping into cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia.  

Reference

Edinger, J. & Carney, C. (2008). Overcoming insomnia: A cognitive behavioral therapy approach. Oxford University Press, Inc. New York: New York. 

教育是一種特權

我見她已經快要一年半了。每次見到她，我都會想她會抗爭到甚麼時候﹖  有時候，我跟她坐在同一個房間，也會對她從頭到尾不停的投訴感到厭倦，心想她到甚麼時候才會明白她或許不適合留在大專上學。可是，我有甚麼權力告訴她她是在燈蛾撲火，甚至走錯方向﹖

這年多來，我看著一個擁有無比戰鬥力的她為她的教育而戰。儘管她先天患有多動症以及多種的學習障礙，家境清貧，她從來也沒有放棄過上大專，完成輔學士學位。轉眼，她念上了七年 (但還沒有念完)。七年來，因為她的學習能力很低，她每個學期只能修讀一個科目。就是只修一個科目，她的壓力還是很大，加上她的社交和語言能力也很低，她覺得沒有一個人可以明白她和分享她的生活，精神的負擔變得更重，於是她成了我們診所的長期客戶。身旁的人越是勸她放棄上學，或問她甚麼時候完成學位，她就越堅持她的夢想。曾幾何時，我也在想或許她不適合在學校爭扎，或許她可以找一份比較適合她的工作，這樣對她的心理健康，甚至前途會更好。曾幾何時，我甚至懷疑她為了証明自己的能力而去拿學位，而不是真的需要一個學位。可是，我有甚麼權力告訴她她上不了下去﹖ 我有甚麼權力告訴她學位是給有能力的人﹖ 回想起來，我真覺得很是慚愧。

跟她的相遇讓我開始想教育可能本身就是一個特權(privilege)，而並不是權利(right)。我因為相信教育機會是平等的，所以我看不到自己對有缺憾的人的歧視。現實、學習和反思教會我教育機會並不是平等的。有些人天生聰敏，加上後天的努力，在教育大道走著走著，有驚無險。有些人天生有障礙，想學習但沒有能力，走在一樣的教育大道如在無情的大海浮沉，這一分鐘找到救生圈，還要擔心那個圈是否合用，甚至確保它繼續存在。我一生幸福，學習資源充足，雖然也很努力，但是卻沒有辦法體會學習能力低的人爭扎，甚至曾想拿走她的夢想。幸好，我沒有這樣做。現在的她，不但為自己的教育繼續爭取資源，她還為其他有需要的學生爭取學習上的特別安排。這個小小的她突然變得很大，而我變得很渺少。

我看著這小小的螢火蟲，在漆黑的世界，用她微弱的光發出的求救信号，我感謝上天給我遇上這個在我生命中的旅客，讓她照出我看不到的東西，讓我看到我的不善之處。

He & I: Past & Present

期待第四個在一起的情人節

以前，他在樓上工作，我在樓下工作。
我喜歡他來找我，儘管我不知道他來幹麼的，常常胡說一堆，然後說再見。

以前，我住在他左邊，他住在我的右邊。
後來，我住在樓上，他住樓下。
我喜歡去找他，儘管我不知道找他幹麼的，理由借口一大堆，還是輕而易舉的。

以前，我把烤好的餅干拿過去，然後靜靜雞走，心砰砰的跳，想著他吃餅的樣子。
現在，我把餅干烤好，然後大叫﹕「有沒有小朋友想食餅干呀﹖」從房間會跳出一個很高的小朋友，舉著手說﹕「有。」我看著他企定定食餅干，然後聽他說﹕「好食。」

以前，兩個人無啦啦的在超市遇到，一起走回家，我會開心半個晚上。
現在，兩個人有機會一起去超市，我們都會很開心，然後一起推車買東西回家煮。

以前，他第一次來香港找我，我覺得好奇怪，但又覺得好快樂。
現在，他只要來香港，我一家都很期待和快樂。

以前，睡覺前，就是在身旁，我們一定要先講話，才能進入夢鄉。
現在，相距1099 英哩，睡前不講電話，會失眠。

以前，當他牽我的手的時候，我會想這是談戀愛嗎，心中亂跳一通的。
現在，當他牽我的手時候，我知道他是愛我的，心中是甜蜜蜜的。

糾纏

久違了的她昨天跟我見面了。她看起了沒有怎樣變，頭髮還是如長髮公主一樣的長，話題還是圍繞著以往談過的﹕ 離開或停下來，改變或不改變，放棄不放棄。我耐心的聽她講述那沒有心理治療，沒有抗焦慮藥的兩個月，然後我發現她改變了—她開始上學。

雖然她喜歡上學，但是因為長期被關在她的塔裡，她經歷了好幾次的Panic attack (恐慌症)，透不到氣，心跳加速，然後感覺會死亡。她好幾次要放棄上學了，然而她沒有。聽到這裡，我為她感到驕傲，因為她不再逃避情緒，她選擇了用呼吸來克服恐懼，這是她的一大步。

然後，她跟我分享她看了Tangled及她的感受。想起來，她們兩個真像，在她們生命糾纏著的就是那股離開及面對自己的勇氣。長髮公主鼓起勇氣離開了她的塔，然而她沒有立刻的感到快樂，她與她的過去糾纏，她的內心充滿爭扎，一會兒她滿心欣喜，一會兒她充滿內疚，人類真的是十分複雜的生物。當然，長髮公主是迪士尼的生物，她可以在短短兩個小時從塔離開，然後經歷挑戰，之後從此快快樂樂的生活下去，我的客人不忘提醒我。我也不忘提醒她長髮公主找到她想找到的，也看到她想看到的。

每個人都有關著自己的塔。這個無形的塔讓我們感到安穩，因為我們熟識它的環境，我們知道怎樣應對它。就算我們知道需要離開，我們還是不願意離開它，繼續跟它糾纏，糾纏。

離開，還是留下來，這是你的選擇，兩者都有代價，祝君好運。