Putting Up Irene & Rita’s Fresh Summer Tomato Sauce
Ever since I first saw Mrs Frake putting up pickles and mincemeat in the movie State Fair, I’ve wanted to put up something.
As opposed to putting up with something, which basically describes my life.
I did once put up a few small jars of blackberry jam with the kids while vacationing on Block Island. We tried to sell the jam at the playground – I think someone bought one jar – then used the rest of the jars pretty much immediately. And that was the end of my putting up.
Until this week, when I was faced with forty pounds of South Jersey Roma tomatoes (Thanks Patty!) a few days after meeting blogger Mari...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 21, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Canning Recipes Best tomato sauce Canned Tomato sauce Canning tomatoes Garlic Red pepper Toamto sauce with olive oil World's best tomato sauce Source Type: blogs
The Music of The Children Act
Music features prominently in Ian McEwan’s new book The Children Act. The book’s protagonist Fiona Mayes, a family court judge, is also an accomplished pianist, and both she and her husband Jack are lovers of jazz. Almost every important moment in the book, aside from the first scene and Fiona’s time in the courtroom, occurs while music is being played or listened to.
I love how McEwan weaves the musical themes seamlessly throughout the story, informing character, time and place. I listened to the Audible book (a fabulous performance by Linsday Duncan), and found myself wishing that someone had though...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 19, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Book Reviews BOoks ian mcewan Music Sally Gardens the CHildren act Source Type: blogs
Patient Identifiers, Hospitals & the EHR
Current Joint Commission standards call for the use of two patient identifiers to avoid mixing up patients with the same or similar names. For inpatients, these identifiers are usually the name and the medical record number (MRN).
Which is fine if the only place you need to identify the patient is your own hospital.
But your hospital’s MRN is meaningless to me and my EHR.
So if you send me a copy of my patient’s chart (or her lab result or mammogram report) and all that’s listed on the top of the page is her very common name and your MRN, I have no clue who this patient is.
(My EHR gives me a box to check...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 17, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Electronic Medical Records Source Type: blogs
The Not So Scary Truth About HPV
There’s a downside, I think, to educating the public about the link between HPV infection and cervical cancer. And that’s scaring the bejesus out of every woman who happens to find out she has HPV.
It’s not surprising that you’re scared.
You see, we want you to know that HPV infection is linked to cervical cancer, and that we have a vaccine against HPV that can prevent cervical cancer. So we’ve been doing our best to get the word out. (With no small bit of help from the HPV test and vaccine manufacturers.)
But in our zeal to get you screened and vaccinated, we sort of forgot to tell you something equal...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 11, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: HPV HPV & Cervical Cancer abnormal Doctor frightened Gyno High risk pap smear Positive Scared Test Source Type: blogs
Corn, Zucchini and Chickpea Fritters
Our first dinner in the empty nest.
We dropped our youngest off at college, which to our delight is a mere two hours drive north along the lovely Taconic Parkway. To say the campus is bucolic is an understatement, with the Catskill mountains on the horizon, and a lovely little town just a short ride away. This was a happy day for us all, the culmination of an amazing summer for the entire family. She’s launched and we’re so happy for her. (And can’t wait to come back up to visit on parent’s weekend…)
After settling her in, we explore the area, following dead end roads like fingers that end a...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 5, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Vegetarian chickpea corn fritters summer vegetable dinner vegetarian dinner zucchini Source Type: blogs
I’m writing for WebMD
I’m now writing for WebMD. Just one to two blog posts a month.
Here’s my first post.
It’s kind of exciting to actually be paid to write, although I don’t think I’ll be quitting my day job anytime soon.
I’ll be cross posting the Web MD posts here a week later, so you can read me here or there. and nothing will be lost from this blog. (It is, after all, my baby.)
Let’s see where this thing goes… (Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan)
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 4, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Blogging Source Type: blogs
Appetizers for Summer Book Club
As much as I love book club, I love hosting it even more. Because hosting means I get to leave work early and do my favorite thing in the whole world – spend the late afternoon in my kitchen. I’m rarely at home at that time of day, when something wonderful happens to the light in our apartment as the sun begins to peek out from behind the tall apartment towers just south of us, and pours into my kitchen. Add in NPR or a good book on tape and I’m in heaven.
The evening promised good weather, so we planned to meet on the roof. I took my cue for the menu from the book we were discussing – “...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - September 3, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Appetizers Appetizer recipes Book Club Food Ideas Book Club Menu Fig & Blue Cheese Savories Olive all'Ascolana Recipes for book club Source Type: blogs
The Hobby Lobby Solution to Teen Pregnancy
Via Paul Rudnick at the New Yorker -
When it comes to the Court’s decision on contraception, I think I can be of service. For my five beautiful daughters, and the other one, I have used a cheerful heavy-gauge yarn, mixing strands of cashmere, alpaca, and barbed wire, to knit what I call a Crotch Cozy. When my girls wear their Crotch Cozies, they not only receive endless compliments in the locker room but sexual intercourse becomes impossible. Any additional form of birth control is unnecessary. Case closed!
A very funny read.
Unfortunately, there’s not much else funny about the Hobby Lobby. Read Jan Gunter, MD i...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - July 15, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Uncategorized Hobby Lobby Source Type: blogs
The Berlin Wall in New York City
Meeting friends for dinner last evening at Valbella, I was surprised to discover that the strikingly painted concrete slab on display in the tiny plaza outside the restaurant is actually a section of the Berlin Wall. That’s right. The Berlin Wall. Tucked away in a lovely little plaza on the north side of E 53rd between 5th and Madison. How could I have lived in NYC for over 20 years and not known it was there?
This section of the wall was illegally painted in the 1980′s by Berlin street artists Therry Noire and Kiddy Citny. Noire, who lived a mere 5 meters from the west side of the Wall, was the first stree...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - July 10, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: New York City NYC Moments 520 Madison Ave 53rd St Berlin Wall Jerry SPeyer kiddy Citny Therry Noire Source Type: blogs
Dense Breasts on Mammogram – No Need to Be Afraid
Only in America can we find a way to scare the bejesus out of a woman with normal breasts and a normal mammogram. But that’s exactly what happened when NY Times reporter Roni Caryn Rabin read her normal mammogram results letter -
A sentence in the fourth paragraph grabbed me by the throat. “Your breast tissue is dense.”
I can’t really blame Rabin for being afraid. The information about breast density in her mammo letter was mandatory verbiage crafted by legislators as part of a law that all women be told if they have dense breasts on mammogram.
“Your mammogram shows that your breast tissue is dens...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - June 17, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Breast Cancer Mammography dense breasts mammogram Source Type: blogs
Lemon-Fennel Chicken with Mushrooms & Scallions
For years, my friend Susan (of the famed Chicken Salad Susan) has been making her Italian grandmother’s sautéed chicken breasts with breadcrumbs, parmesan and fennel. Not too long ago, she was also on a diet program that included an amazing recipe for pan fried lemon chicken. I decided to combine both her recipes, and now have a killer entree that I’ve made almost weekly since she first shared it with me.
LEMON FENNEL CHICKEN WITH MUSHROOMS & SCALLIONS
You can just make the chicken breasts, and you’ll have an amazing entree. Or just cut up the chicken breasts, skipping the breading, and have anoth...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - June 13, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Meat & Poultry Chicken breasts Fennel leeks Lemon mushrooms Source Type: blogs
Baba Ganoush, Lebanese Style
My friend Paula and I threw a Middle Eastern dinner party on my rooftop last Saturday evening.
It was really all Paula’s idea. You see, her dad once ran a Lebanese market in Worcester, Mass. Paula inherited not only her father’s butcher block kitchen table and meat grinder, but a real love for the foods of her ancestors. I can tell you that enthusiasm is highly infectious, having caught it from her last year while sitting at the table at our cottage rolling grape leaves under her tutelage. So when Paula proposed a joint party – she’d provide the food and I, the venue and sous chef duty – I...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - June 11, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Appetizers Baba Ganoush Babaganoush Eggplant Bitahini Lebanese Lemon recipe Source Type: blogs
Seven Things You Can Do to Help Reduce Prescription Errors
I just got off the phone with a very upset patient who discovered that her pharmacy has been giving her the wrong medication for the past 5 months, substituting a similarly spelled antibiotic for her rheumatoid arthritis med. She was tipped off when she realized how bad she had been feeling of late and decided to check the expiration date of her med, only to find it was the wrong drug. I won’t get into the unethical behavior of the pharmacist when she pointed out the error, something I’ll be reporting on her behalf to both the head of the pharmacy chain and the state Pharmacy board.
But that’s not the poi...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - June 10, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Medical Practice Women's Health emr medication reconciliation prescription errors Source Type: blogs
Understanding Women’s Choice for Mastectomy
Mastectomy – From Wikipedia
It’s a bit of a conundrum – Despite advances in breast cancer treatment, and ongoing proof that survival is just as good after breast conserving surgery as it is with mastectomy, more and more women are opting for mastectomy for earlier and earlier stage cancers, especially DCIS.
In a well written, insightful post, Dr Deanna Attai, president-elect of the American Society of Breast Surgeons, outlines both the arguments against mastectomy and why women might make a reasonable choice to have a mastectomy anyway.
What we see in our offices is a rational fear: Many women underst...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - June 4, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Uncategorized Source Type: blogs
Vinod Khosla – Still Stirring Things Up
Vinod Khosla (Wikipedia)
Vinod Khosla’s still at it. This time its the Stanford Big Data in Biomedicine Conference.
I don’t really blame him – he’s got quite a thing going on the speaker circuit. As long as he keeps getting invited to give keynote addresses at healthcare summits, he’ll keep cranking through his slide set and stirring up the hornet’s nest by saying that 80% of docs will be replaced by digital devices. Which coincidentally, his venture capital firm finances. Except now he’s calling it big data, since that’s what the most recent summit he spoke at was abou...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - May 29, 2014 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Second Opinions Big Data doctors Stanford Vinod Khosla Source Type: blogs
