Ready-to-go Egg Muffins

While many of my non-nursing peers are either studying for exams or done with their theses, I have only just begun my clinical practicum at a hospital.  My post-thesis ecstasy has since ebbed away, and in place of which is clinical depression (pun intended).  Even the word 'depression' fails to capture the myriad of negative emotions afflicting me whenever I am doing my practicum.       

Some patients with depression suffer from sleep deprivation due to insomnia, but sleep deprivation due to shift work is one major cause of depression in my case. 

Morning shifts are 0700 to 1500, afternoons are 1300 to 2100, and nights are 2100 to 0800.  Here is the catch, afternoon shifts usually end one hour later because you need to wait for your turn to hand over your cases to the night-shift nurse.  For my hospital, the ratio of night-shift nurses to patients in a Class-C ward is 2:32.  Worse thing is that the management doesn't seem to recognize the detrimental health effects of rostering nurses on afternoon-morning shift sequence.  And I live 75 minutes away from the hospital. 

I should be thankful that I wasn't scheduled for night shifts though.  Due to manpower crunch, the management has (insensitively) increased the number of consecutive night shifts from three to four.  Having done night shifts before, I tell you it is no joke to even do three night shifts in a row.  If you are lucky enough to be not fighting to save lives (when your patients decide to collapse on you), you are fighting against your own body to stay awake - and alert.  

So anyway, now that I am facing the perennial issue of sleep deprivation, making my own lunch to bring to work has become an enormous challenge.  When on morning shift, I wake up at 0430 and leave house at 0540 to catch the train that takes me to my workplace by 0645.  Why make your own lunch despite time constraint?  Well, simply because outside food no longer appeal to my palate (and fit my food beliefs) anymore.  One solution then is to prepare food beforehand and store it in the refrigerator.  These egg muffins are a perfect example.

Ready-to-go Egg Muffins

(Adapted from the Primal Palate)

Ingredients (makes 14-16)

• Cooking fat (I used ghee)
• 2 garlic cloves (minced)
• 2 red onions (diced)
• 1 broccoli (cut into small florets)
• 1 yellow zucchini (grated)
• Minced pork (according to carnivorous desire)
• 14 eggs (beaten)

Directions

1. Heat oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 15 minutes.
2. Heat cooking fat in the wok, and then add garlic and onions to stir-fry until they begin to brown.
3. Add and stir-fry broccoli and minced pork for 2 minutes to half-cook them.
4. Lastly add grated zucchini and continue to stir-fry vegetable and meat mixture for another 2 minutes.  The whole stir-frying process isn't long because you don't want to overcook them in the oven later.
5. Fill the muffin tray with the stir-fried vegetable and meat mixture (as shown in the picture above).
6. Pour in the eggs until they fill almost to the brim.
7. Place the muffin tray in the oven and bake for 20-30 minutes.
8. Cool the muffins for 5-10 minutes before taking them out of tray.

Verdict
I tried one...Great-tasting!  What else can I say?  I am planning to store them in the refrigerator and then pack them into a container before I go to work.  Of course, when it is time for meal break, I will then microwave the muffins before wolfing them down.  The muffins are very nutrient-dense, and also low in carbs which won't give me the insulin crash after eating a high-carbohydrate meal.  Moreover, the high protein level should keep me satiated until my shift ends. 

Additional notes
Feel free to explore and replace the vegetables and meat with other kinds of ingredients.  The only constant here is the eggs.

Overdue recipe 2: Cream of Mushroom Soup (creamless & flourless)

I am a big fan of creamy mushroom soup, and I count the Mushroom Stroganoff at Soup Spoon as one of my favourites for its chunky mushroom pieces.  However, I decided to make my own version on one of my thesis-churning days after I recently happened to know that the soup contained flour.  Frequently, flour, which I suppose in this case is all-purpose (AP) flour, is used surreptitiously to thicken soups.  And I don't like the idea that I am eating empty carbs in the form of nutrition-less white flour.  I am not trying to count calories here...Soup Spoon states that its mushroom soup has a caloric value of 275, and how much of it is derived from flour?  In addition, because AP flour is derived from wheat, gluten-intolerant or sensitive people would not be able to digest the soup very well.

What is the alternative to making a creamy mushroom soup without using flour?

Cream of Mushroom Soup (creamless & flourless)

(Adapted from Mushroom Bisque, The Earthbound Cook by Myra Goodman, p. 22)

Note: In this recipe, I am just going to give general instructions without exact amount of ingredients used.  This is because I cooked the soup a long time back during thesis-churning days, haha.

Ingredients

• Cooking fat (I used butter)
• Garlic cloves (minced)
• Red onion (diced)
• 4-5 varieties of diced mushrooms, including crimini, shiitake, enoki types (I must tell you, I went the easy way of buying this huge value packet of mushrooms for steamboat purposes from NTUC supermarket, haha!)
• Vegetable broth*
• Arrowroot starch
• Italian seasoning (optional)
• Dried thyme (to garnish)
• Ground black pepper (to taste)
• Sea salt/nama shoyu (to taste)

Directions

1. Melt butter in a large saucepan over medium heat.
2. Add garlic and onion to stir-fry for about 3-5 minutes.
3. Add mushrooms (and Italian seasoning) and saute them until they start to soften and ooze out water, which takes about 5-7 minutes.
4. Add vegetable broth and let the mushrooms simmer away for about 10 minutes.  At this point, you may choose to reduce heat to avoid uncontrolled drying of the liquid.
5. Remove heat and let mushrooms sit to cool for about 5 minutes.
6. Transfer them to a high-speed blender.
7. Add arrowroot starch.  (You don't really have to add much of the starch, say about 2-3 tbsp at most, to thicken the soup because when you blend the mushrooms, the soup is naturally thickened.)
8. Blend the mushrooms and arrowroot starch mixture till it takes on a coarse pureed consistency.  Unless you want a baby-feed like consistency, please go ahead and blend away.
9. Transfer the soup to a bowl, add ground black pepper and salt to taste, and garnish with dried thyme before ready to serve.

Additional notes

• I am still a novice when it comes to playing with temperate herbs like thyme, rosemary, basil and stuff like that.  I used Italian seasoning for the sake of experiment and I think the variety of herbs in the seasoning added some complexity to the mushroom taste.  In the original recipe, the author used dried thyme to saute with the mushrooms.
• I think packaged vegetable broth is not common in mainstream supermarkets.  I bought mine from Cold Storage for about 7 SGD at about 950 ml.  Quite expensive.  You can choose to use vegetable stocks, but I discourage it because I don't like the food additives, especially MSG, inside such stocks.  For economical purposes, you can make your own vegetable broth or bone broth and store it in the refrigerator for future use.  
• Vegetable broth - Dump any kind of vegetables you like into a large pot and boil them for about 3-5 hours to extract the vegetable essence.  Some ideas are carrots, sweet potatoes, leeks, onions, celeries, cabbage etc.
• Bone broth - If you are a big fan of traditional Chinese meat broths, this should not be too surprising for you.  Just grab generous amounts of soup bones and boil them to extract the marrow. 

Overdue recipe 1: Stewed Pork Belly in Sweet Onion and Apple Gravy

I think this post is the most defining one for my blog.  I am no longer vegetarian/vegan or some strict herbivore anymore.  I find it embarrassing to explain myself, but I believe I have to.  You see, I can no longer stomach fruits and vegetables - literally.  Anything with fibre bloats me up like a balloon, and the only things that I can safely eat are meat, meat, meat...and small amounts of cooked dark greens.  Pretty depressing in the beginning.  Especially on one occasion when I had to buy and cut a whole chicken body to make a chicken stew.  I felt sad over the fact I had to give up my beloved veggies and make meat my life.  But I am adjusting well, the biggest challenge being how to cook meat dishes with so little experience.  And I should add that I feel better knowing my boyfriend is rather pleased with the fact I have started cooking meat because that means he would get to eat meat when he comes back to Singapore.  

So I now present to you one of my first meat experiments during the two weeks when I had been away from blogging and focusing on my thesis (which I submitted yesterday).

Stewed Pork Belly in Sweet Onion and Apple Gravy

(It was a successful self-experimental recipe, at least IMHO.)

Ingredients

• Pork belly
• Yellow onion
• Red apple
• Ghee (or replace with other cooking fat)
• Goji berries
• Salt to taste (I used a tsp of nama shoyu)

Directions

1. Heat ghee in cooking pan.
2. Stir-fry yellow onion and red apple at medium heat for about 5 minutes till the apple starts to soften.  Don't use too high heat as the purpose is to draw out some water from the onion and apple which contains their sweet essence.
3. Add pork belly and stir-fry with the rest for about 3 minutes.
4. Add some water and let the ingredients simmer for about 15-20 minutes with the cooking pan covered.
5. Garnish with Goji berries (or add them in the last 3 minutes before turning off heat) and serve.

Verdict
As you can see, I did not use any sweeteners or other condiments (except for a little nama shoyu).  Yellow onion was used because I find it sweeter and less onion-y than red onion.  Thus it potentiates the sweetness of the red apple used.  When it comes to cooking fatty meat, I find that simmering is a good method to soften the meat and melt its fat to produce a richer tasting gravy.  I know many of you are afraid of saturated animal fat.  But having done my personal reading, I find that it is not harmful at all, and should be part of an (omnivorous) healthy diet.  The bad thing about Singapore is that I haven't found a place that sells non-factory-farmed pigs.  Sad, isn't it?