Homemade Shrimp Stock
Recently, my sister Marylou gifted me a box of Aneto fish broth that she had bought, but thought she would never use. I decided to use the broth to make a shrimp risotto, something I’ve made many times over the years, but always using chicken stock. (I love chicken stock…)
Well, let me tell you that shrimp risotto was a revelation. I had no idea it could taste so amazing. What had I been thinking all these years using chicken and not fish stock????
But there was a problem. As good as the Aneto’s fish broth is (and it is amazingly good), I inherently hate stock-in-a-box. Something about it just makes...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - April 7, 2024 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Soups Fish Stock Homemade Homemade stock Risotto Shrimp Shrimp Stock Source Type: blogs
Whole Roasted Squash With Tomato-Ginger Chickpeas & Za ’atar
I read myself the riot act about 6 months ago, when my cholesterol level reached a new high. My doctor seemed nonplussed, perhaps because my cardiac calcium score was a perfect zero. But I was not happy. Yes, I had lost weight and was exercising, but to be honest, my heart belonged to cheese. And eggs. And ice cream. Something had to change.
Breakfast was easy. The whole eggs (which I had been eating almost daily) were replaced by Starbucks Sous Vide Egg whites or oatmeal served with a side of chicken sausage. Lunches were yogurt or soup or vegan bean burritos or salad or tuna or peanut butter. I started snacking on nu...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - February 21, 2024 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Vegetables Butternut Squash Chickpeas vegetarian za'atar Source Type: blogs
Will We All Have To Become Biologically Enhanced Superhumans?
Okay, hands up who can tell who’s the most famous biologically enhanced superhuman in the world? True, it’s a quite close call between Captain America and The Incredible Hulk (sorry Spidey, you’re not even close). But are human-invented superhumans just a thing of a Stan Lee comic, or is it an actual scientific idea from a real laboratory?
As a matter of fact, enhancing human capabilities has been on the minds of people for ages, but it has come a long way from ancient training methods to exoskeletons. Enhancing our abilities, be it permanently or temporarily is a tempting but risky matter. Will it be possibl...
Source: The Medical Futurist - November 21, 2023 Category: Information Technology Authors: berci.mesko Tags: Forecast Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Augmented Reality Bioethics Biotechnology Cyborgization Digital Health Research E-Patients Genomics Health Sensors & Trackers Healthcare Policy Medical Education Robotics Science Ficti Source Type: blogs
Great Food Can Improve Brain Development (Even Before Birth)
What we eat – and what our kids eat – affects so much in life: appearance, energy, cognition, focus, mood, how often we get sick, how quickly we get better, how likely we are to develop a chronic disease, and how we age.
Every bite of food is either an investment in our future, a new debt we are taking out, or some of both.
There are many ways to enjoy the benefits of real food. One healthy way of eating that has been studied a lot is the Mediterranean diet, a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, fish, herbs, spices, and olive oil. Red meats, processed foods, and added sugars are limited.
...
Source: Conversations with Dr Greene - September 5, 2023 Category: Child Development Authors: Alan Greene MD Tags: Dr. Greene's Blog Uncategorized Mediterranean Diet Pregnancy Nutrition Top Family Nutrition Source Type: blogs
A Trio of Mushroom Dishes for a Trio of Mushrooms
If you’re ever in the Lake Winnipesaukee area, as we were last month visiting family, stop in at the New Hampshire Mushroom Company in Tamworth. If you’re lucky, the mushroom-growing rooms will be open to the public when you visit. Unfortunately, most of the crew was out giving a mushroom foraging tour the day we visited, so no back room tour for us. Nonetheless, we still managed to score a HUGE box of gorgeous shrooms – Lion’s Mane, Chestnut and Blue Oyster. I was a bit worried we’d never manage to use them all, but my fears were ungrounded, as we had several occasions the following week to s...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - August 4, 2023 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Appetizers Pasta Rice & Potatoes Dried mushrooms Lasagna Mushroom crostini mushroom toasts Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Thank God it's over
We have finally come to the end of Nehemiah. Just a reminder, we ' re following the order of books in the protestant Old Testament, which is different from the Tanakh. That ' s important here because we have already read the Book of Ruth, which was written later than this and comes after it in the Tanakh, although it is set in the time of the Former Prophets, specifically in the time of Judges, before the founding of the kingdom and construction of the Temple.The Book of Ruth is relevant here because it is all about the marriage of a Moabite woman and an Israelite man. This chapter, parallel to the last chapter of Ez...
Source: Stayin' Alive - July 5, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Taking the pledge
Don ' t worry, we ' re getting close to the end of Nehemiah and the books that come next are a lot more interesting. Ch. 10 starts off with the sort of pointless list of names that the Chronicler and whoever wrote this seem to like. Note, however, that Ezra once again seems to have disappeared.Then it describes the pledge the people took which mostly has to do with giving stuff to the priests, which is a major emphasis of all the material we ' ve been reading going back to Deuteronomy. Which is no surprise, don ' t forget who wrote this.Nehemiah the governor, the son of Hakaliah.Zedekiah,2 Seraiah, Az...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 25, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The New Deal
Nehemiah 5 may be a tad confusing because it doesn ' t give context -- we just find the situation as it is. The society has become highly unequal, with a small ruling class exploiting the masses. The people are in debt, they don ' t own their ow fields, and have even sold their daughters into servitude. So Nehemiah does an FDR and puts and end to debt slavery and for that matter, to lending money at interest. He also renounces riches himself, in contrast to previous governors. I can get behind this, but it hasn ' t become a universal norm among Jews, of course, who span the political spectrum. There obviously isn ' t ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - June 7, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Let's do the time warp again
The Book of Ezra continues to be chronologically challenged. The character of Ezra finally appears, in the 7th year of the reign of Ataxerxes, which would be 72 years after the death of Cyrus and something like 80 years after the return from exile described in the opening chapters. Therefore Ezra ' s father, and grandfather must have chosen to remain in Babylon, along with other priests, musicians, and temple servants as described in verse 8. While in Babylon, these people apparently exercised their offices, and Ezra studied to assume his hereditary priesthood. Why and how this happened is not explained, and it ' s especia...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 10, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: The man grants permission
Ezra 6 probably requires some historical context that the book itself does not provide. Darius was a cousin of Cyrus the great, who usurped the Persian throne in 522 BCE, eight years after the death of Cyrus. So, on the one hand it is plausible that he would not have known about Cyrus ' s orders concerning the Jewish temple and so would have had to search the records, on the other hand the chronology doesn ' t seem entirely plausible. The temple should have been finished, or at least well on the way, by this time. Also, the mention of Ataxerxes, who took the throne in 465 BCE, is entirely anachronistic. The muddled ch...
Source: Stayin' Alive - May 7, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: Let the slaughter begin
The action in Ezra 3 is pretty straightforward. The priests build an altar and start up the sacrifices, then they lay the foundation for the temple. This does serve to remind us that the basis of this religion is the ritual killing of animals by a hereditary priesthood to propitiate a narcissistic deity. That ' s what he demands: kill animals and burn them. If you do different rituals to propitiate other gods, he ' ll have you murdered en masse by other tribes. If your hereditary priests kill enough animals and burn them, he ' ll be good to them. That ' s the theology.3 When the seventh month came and the Israel...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 26, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Ode to a Smoked Trout Lyonnaise
Moving to Philly and being retired means I get to visit Valley Green as often as I want. So, last week I met Susan for lunch at Brunos and a post-prandial walk along Forbidden Drive. There, we encountered a battalion of rubber-booted fisherman standing in the stream and parade of pickups and cars following a small tanker truck along the path.
Yes folks, it was trout-stocking day on the Wissahickon.
Which got me remembering the time Lou caught some gorgeous trout in the Loyalsock River, which we brined and smoked on the Weber in the back yard at our cottage. Gotta’ get Lou back up to the mountains this ...
Source: The Blog That Ate Manhattan - April 21, 2023 Category: Primary Care Authors: Margaret Polaneczky, MD Tags: Fish Salads bacon lyonnaise salade Smoked trout Valley Green Wissahickon Source Type: blogs
Gelatin-Based Surgical Sealant for Rapid Sealing Inside the Body
Researchers at the Terasaki Institute for Biomedical Innovation in Los Angeles have developed a gelatin-based surgical sealant. The sealant is thermoresponsive, meaning that it will rapidly form a semi-solid bolus when it reaches body temperature. It is also bioadhesive, adhering to slippery, wet surfaces in the body with relative ease. The researchers achieved this by incorporating caffeic acid, a substance that is naturally found in coffee and olive oil, into the gelatin gel, which helped to increase the adhesive strength of the formulation.
Sealing incisions within the body can be challenging. The slippe...
Source: Medgadget - April 3, 2023 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Conn Hastings Tags: Materials Surgery Source Type: blogs
Sunday Sermonette: Getting real
We ' re at the point where the story in Chronicles and the Deuteronomistic history have emerged from the mists of myth into a basis in historical reality. The failed siege of Jerusalem by Sennacherib is established history. The story is also told in Kings, but it ' s a completely different recounting of very similar events, which is more evidence that this really happened, in other words at least two different people wrote an account of the same events. (The Chronicler is evidently drawing on, or copying from, a lost source.) Historians aren ' t convinced that a plague was the reason for Sennacherib ' s defeat, but otherwi...
Source: Stayin' Alive - April 2, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
Wednesday Bible Study: The priests clean up
Basically, Chapter 31 is about how the people donate immense amounts of loot to the priests, which is of course a good thing in the eyes of the Lord. As usual, the Chronicler is also very interested in lists of names and genealogies, which would seem to be of no interest whatsoever a century or more later when he actually wrote this but we all have our obsessions. BTW the Asherah poles mentioned in the first verse are shrines to a goddess who, according to an account I recently read, scholars believe was originally Yahweh ' s wife or consort. So this history of going back and forth with putting up the Asherah poles an...
Source: Stayin' Alive - March 29, 2023 Category: American Health Source Type: blogs
