Announcing my new culinary philosophy:

It's founded on a triad of ancient but previously underappreciated cookery principles: (a) laziness (b) short stature and (c) wrong ingredients. Here's how it works:

Step 1. Take your toddler or small child to the grocery store/farmer's market. Decide that you really cannot be arsed to try and plan the next week's meals in any kind of coherent, nutritious way. Also it occurs to you that maybe if you just let the toddler choose the vegetables, (s)he will be marginally more cooperative when it comes to actually eating them.

Step 2. Arrive at the produce section. Tell your toddler/small child they can have WHATEVER THEY WANT in this section, as long as it fits in the bag/cart/basket and as long as you do not already have quantities of whatever it is already turning fuzzy and grey in the fridge/fruit bowl at home.  Minimal parental input is the key to keeping this part exciting, both for the toddler/small child and for you.

Step 3. Note that they will be limited to what they can reach (see the crucial part about short stature), so they won't be able to buy several pounds of out-of-season chanterelle mushrooms at $49.99/lb, for instance, or any of the other gourmet spendy things that tend to be kept on upper shelves.

Step 4. Take it all home and let it sit in the fridge for a couple of days while you have the flu and can't get it together to do anything more exciting than soup-tin-opening, toast-making, tea-brewing, and self-pity.

Step 5. Open the fridge and ask yourself what on God's green earth are you going to do with: a bunch of lacinato kale, a kabocha squash, a red cabbage the size of your head, 23 carrots, one onion, three zucchini, and a cucumber. Hurrah for the internet!

Step 6. Find a recipe for which you have about two thirds of the ingredients, and replace the remaining third with other stuff that needs to be finished anyway (no lemon juice? how about a glassworth of prosecco that has been going flat for the last month! No flax oil? how about some sesame oil that is definitely older than your child? No almonds to toast? Let's find out at what temperature pistachios will set off the smoke alarm! Etc.) Incompetence and a sense of adventure are very important at this step.

Step 7. Bon appetit! I had a completely delicious salad tonight for dinner which I would have paid CASH MONEY for in a restaurant, had I had any inkling how delicious roast kabocha, kale, red cabbage, flat prosecco, grapefruit juice, slightly burnt pistachios, crunched up seed crackers, sesame oil, rice wine vinegar, cucumber, and a few raisins could be. Next time I might even save some for the small child...

My favourite ICD-9 codes

In honour of the recentish publication of the ICD-10 manual of medical diagnosis codes, here is a random assortment of truly delightful ICD-9 codes, with thanks to several friends and colleagues who contributed discoveries of their own. (The best part about it is how difficult it can sometimes be to find the code for something straightforward, like shoulder pain, which is listed somewhat obscurely as "pain in joint - shoulder".) Anyway. Happy 2014 to everyone.

V45.75 - Acquired absence of genitals
993.0 - Airplane ear

291.5 - Alcoholic jealousy

365.83 - Aqueous misdirection

293.889 - Alice in Wonderland syndrome
704.2 - Bamboo hair
278.2 - Beery baby syndrome
030.3 - Borderline leprosy
133.8 - Cheese itch

V49.89 - Condition influencing health, not elsewhere classified 

V19.7 - Consanguinity (it's a medical condition to be related to someone?)

788.37 - Continuous leakage

061 - Dandy fever

874.9 - Decapitation

307.52 - Depraved appetite 

074.1 - Devil's grip

110.3 - Dhobie's itch (I have no idea what this is, but it sounds horrible)

104.0 - Dichuchwa (ditto)

307.52 - Dirt-eating child
360.29 Disorganized globe

759.4 Double monster
388.41 Double disharmonic hearing
785.3 - Dullness
085.0 - Dum-dum fever

078.82 - Epidemic vomiting
E884.4 (but please note that EACH of these has its own subcode) - Fall from...
   ...bed
   ...building
   ...chair
   ...cliff
   ...commode
   ...furniture not elsewhere classified
   ...ladder
  ...playground equipment
   ...rollerskates
   ...scaffolding
   ...skis
   ...slipping
   ...snowboard
   ...passenger train
   ...wheelchair
You can also fall into or on things, viz: Fall...
   ...into hole
   ...into other hole (I love this)
   ...into storm drain
   ...into well
   ...on escalator
   ...on level not elsewhere classified
   ...on level (pushed)
   ...on level (tripped)
   ...on sidewalk curb
   ...on stair or step not elsewhere classified
  ...striking object
   ...striking sharp object
and in case you can't find your specific fall on the list, there is always "Fall Not Otherwise Specified."
638.6 Failed attempted abortion with soap embolism
990 Radioactive fallout
309.0 Fanatic personality
E914. Foreign body entering eye
E915 Foreign body entering other orifice
300.20 Fear
317 Feeble-minded
681.01 Felon
253.4 Fertile eunuch
491.1 Fetid bronchitis
E891.3 Fire in building
E892 Fire not in building
302.84 Flagellantism
798.9 Found dead
009.2 Gay bowel syndrome
102.3 Ghoul hand
098.2 Gleet (??!)
381.20 Glue ear syndrome
783.6 Gluttony
592.9 Gravel
704.3 Grayness of hair
985.1 Haff disease (as in, "I em seek. I haff disease")
935.2 Hairball in stomach
Hairless woman syndrome
529.3 Hairy black tongue
065.1 Omsk hemorrhagic fever
652.65 Hidden penis
E902.0 High altitude residency
E805.5 Hit by rolling stock
E805 Hit by train- employee
E805.2 Hit by train - pedestrian
E805.1 Hit by train - passenger
E805.3 Hit by train - ped cyclist
E805.8 Hit by train - person not elsewhere classified
756.89 Hood
301.51 Hospital addiction syndrome
994.2 Hunger
300.11 Hysterical deafness or blindness
285.9 - Impoverished blood
798.1 Instantaneous death
046.72 - Fatal familial insomnia
309.89 - Homesickness
300.13 - Hysterical dream state
607.89 - Induratio penis plastic
504 - Monday morning dyspnea
085.1 - Oriental sore
528.5- Painful lips
691.0 Psoriasiform napkin eruption
298.2 - Reactive confusion
529.5 - Scrotal tongue
333.91 - Stiff man syndrome
579.3 - Tachyalimentation (eating too fast...)
757.4 - Wooly hair, woolly