Category Archives: Food

Food, Gardening, Homestead

Reinsertion

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We’ve had the circus in town at the ranch: a few weeks of my sister, her toddler, and her three month old, in from Germany, staying here. That, naturally, brings in my other sister, her son, and HER toddler to the ranch on an almost daily basis, as everyone visits.  It’s a little insane.

Tuesday now, and the trio is off for the many-houred flights to get back across the ocean, the other trio is settling back into their usual routine, and the ranch is quiet again (except for the snoring of the big guy under my chair).

That should mean a return to my routine as well, but my routine has been, as we all know, shot to hell this year.

Saturday now – four days after I started typing this up, thanks to this or that, but mainly other, like heading to the hospital yesterday to actually walk into the medical records office because no one can find the fax we sent over a week ago for the records from this year to be sent to Mayo. It’s amazing in this day and age – and more amazing, considering the primary field I’m in – that records are still faxed hither and yon. Until there’s a unified, encrypted way to get records electronically from point a to point b, I guess we’re stuck with it.

Otherwise, this is how my spring/early summer life is going.

In previous years, I’d have been up to my elbows in cukes by Memorial Day, but that whole February incident really put me behind. The cukes, however, decided they didn’t give a rat’s ass when they were sown, just that they were.

The first to come in loaded are the gherkins. We don’t really do sweet pickles here – like, eat them out of the jar sort of deal – but we do go through a ton of sweet relish. So that’s what I do: a three day, lots of steps process to go from cuke to relish. That up there is the batch about to start the process (black pot). The silver pot next to it on the stove is sugar syrup I had made for the bees, and the far left is the canner.

The cukes destined for relish get two pickling salt brines, like this, the first one.

After the second saltwater brine:

A bit duller green, yes. How would you feel about 24 hours in saltwater? After this, they all get some poking to allow the first of the vinegar/sugar/spice mix to start infiltrating their tender, defenseless bodies, and into the hot pot they go. The spice bundle there is celery seed, pickling spice, whole allspice seeds, cinnamon sticks) and the color in the vinegar/sugar mix is turmeric.

For large batches like this, I use the bottom from one of the canners to lay over the cukes, because it’s the perfect size. A ziplock of water goes on that as the weight to keep the cukes submerged – you don’t want any air getting to them in this, they’ll get moldy and gross and be unsuitable for eating.

After a few more iterations of the vinegar/sugar soak, the cukes have lost a significant amount of volume, and the weight sits more deeply in the pot each time. This is the last one before they’re ready for the canning.

Then, the next tedious steps: chopping (by hand), filling jars, and topping off with the heated vinegar/sugar/spice mixture.

Final step after packing: processing in the canner – just a boiling water bath, as these are acidic enough to not require pressure canning.

And there you have it: relish. I’d guess this is why most people don’t make their own: it’s tedious, hard, hot work. It’s worth it to me, though, as everyone who can eat the stuff – not me, of course – likes it a lot.

 

Food, Gardening, Homestead

The ranch workout is good for what ails you

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Or, it may just be what ails you in the end afterward – sometimes, literally in the end, as your glutes are awakened by all the squatting, kneeling, and standing you do, over and over and over again.

Late yesterday, with some help from my sister, we got some weedblock down on one of the 50′ rows out back. We also confirmed something I already knew: I need a better solution for the side of the frames, which are bowing out from the pressure of the contained soil, even with bracing in place about every four feet. The issue with the bracing, I think, is that those are made of wood. My idea is to get some bracing on the outsides of the frames only, with rebar sunk at an angle toward the sides of the frames, and some conduit bent and fitted over that rebar. You can see the first test positioning of there here.

 

The reason we use raised beds in the first place is that digging down about a foot to a foot and a half runs into hardpan – that’s why nothing would grow when we first moved out here, or it would grow maybe twelve or eighteen inches before simply stopping: there was no way for the usual plants to punch through that, as they are not sturdy enough (and, there wasn’t a decent mix of nutrients in it, even if they could have, anyway). I’ve done a ton of rehabilitation on the property, and this is just another obstacle that will take patience and time. I’ll be testing a combination of daikon radish and alfalfa seed. Both of those can break through hard/compacted soil, and neither needs a ton of nutrients to do what they do. Besides breaking up the soil, they’re also ready-made compost, as I will simply be cutting them off at ground level and letting the roots die off underground – both the roots of the alfalfa and the radish (a root itself) will add nutrients to the soil so other things can go in those areas eventually.

Back to the ranch workout, though. We pushed out some of the indeterminate tomatoes yesterday. The indeterminates are the ones that need trellising, so those go between the fence posts that line the frames in the back. The determinate tomatoes don’t need trellising, but most need staking, as they can get pretty heavy from the fruit that’s hanging off them. The determinates are mostly the early variety tomatoes (Oregon Spring, Early Girl, etc.), and the sauce/paste/salsa tomatoes (Paisano, Mariana, Fresh Salsa). The determinates will set fruit all about the same time, which is why they’re great for making giant batches spaghetti, ketchup, pizza sauces, salsa, tomato soup, or just squeezing for fresh tomato juice, among other thing. They can also just be thrown into the freezer after washing (and drying thoroughly), for use in anything that doesn’t need to have a sliced tomato in it to eat fresh – pretty much any of those same applications.

Baking, Food, Recipes

Saturday ramble

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After working in the gardens again today (more on that in another post), and now chilling out with a dinner of Tex-Mex rice and beans and a shake with weight gain powder to try to lift me back up above the 92-pound mark (a whopping 325 calories in just half a scoop, plus the calories in the tablespoon and a half of peanut butter I add to it), I was catching up on some cooking-related shows. I never really paid attention to some of these things before, but as time goes by, there are some things that are simply annoying.

Let’s go first with a segment on a show I’m watching now, about Cincinnati chili.  For those unaware, Cincinnati chili is spaghetti noodles topped with chili and cheese, usually cheddar. An owner of a place serving it in (of course) Cincinnati opines that nobody seems to know why it works, but it does. Well, I can tell him why: it’s basically spaghetti with meat sauce, duh. It’s just a little spicier than your average spaghetti, and the parm is swapped out for cheddar. This is not rocket science.

Another thing that makes me roll my eyes is the insistence that there is some kind of secret in a recipe. This can come with or without the old saw “I’d tell you but then I’d have to kill you.” nonsense. What’s the problem with telling people the ingredients in something? The thing that matters is not the ingredients themselves, it’s the amounts of each one that makes the difference. For instance, here is the list of ingredients in my barbecue sauce: salt, pepper, garlic powder, brown sugar, honey, white sugar, paprika, ground chipotle pepper, allspice, nutmeg, onion powder, apple cider vinegar, poultry seasoning, oregano, ground yellow mustard seed, ginger, liquid smoke, rum, cayenne, ketchup, ground cloves, ground lemon peel, worcestershire sauce, molasses, and ground orange peel.

Now, in theory, someone could experiment and get to the point where they could duplicate my bbq sauce, but it’s unlikely, just as it’s unlikely people could duplicate exactly whatever it is these people on these shows make, unless there are only three or so ingredients. Add to that the fact that most people are not going to take the time to do any of the experimenting to figure it out, and the recipes are perfectly safe. The only thing I think of when someone says this is that the person saying it has a need to make themselves feel important and possibly make themselves feel indispensable if only they know it, which makes no sense to me. After all, if they get hit by a bus or a meteor or fall into a sinkhole that goes to the center of the earth, how is the remaining staff supposed to carry on without knowing the super secret recipe that was only in that person’s head?

Another annoying thing is when the host of any of these shows shoves one bite of a dish into their face and does an instantaneous swoon over it as if it’s the best thing they ever ate. Bonus annoying points for anyone who drops their fork or spoon on the plate/bowl/whatever, as if they’ve lost their motor control because of the awesomeness of that one bite. It takes more than a nanosecond to derive the full taste of that bite, and not everything is the best thing they’ve ever eaten, nor worthy of a utensil drop. Ditto for diners who are eating something and do these things. They get additional points for hamming it up on tv.

Speaking of people having foodgasms over things: why do some of these people act like something they’re eating is something no one thought of before and it’s the best thing they’ve ever had (until they eat the next thing, which becomes the best thing they’ve ever had)? A woman on one of these shows was enthusing about bacon with mussels. “Who thinks of that?” she asks. Anyone who has ever had seafood, I’d think. Seafood often has a sweet taste,  and combining sweet and savory/salty is not new. Has she never heard of bacon-wrapped scallops or shrimp? Seafood chowder with bacon? Clams casino? Come on!

Finally, can we please get rid of the “the secret ingredient is love” or “it’s made with love” or any of the other “love” stuff. We get it, you don’t want to share your so-called “secret ingredient” (see above), or you think saying it’s “made with love” makes you special in some way. Anyone who really does enjoy cooking, and moreover enjoys cooking for other people, is doing the same thing you are.

Deep breath. On we go. I have brioche dough rising, and after it’s doubled, I’ll stick it in the fridge for shaping, proofing, and baking tomorrow. Later today: bananas foster banana bread. Yes, it’s all made with love.

Food

The next experiment

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I’ve always wanted to make sourdough bread with a starter I’ve made. When I could eat bread, I loved the tangy/acidic taste and chewiness of a good sourdough loaf and the fact that I was literally eating a piece of history via the piece of the mother starter in the loaf.

But I’ve never actually made a starter and nursed it and then used it to make any of the breads I’ve made, from rolls to focaccia to pizza dough or anything else in my repertoire. I decided to change that and tonight made two different starters: one with all purpose flour, and one with whole wheat. Tomorrow, I’ll feed both of them, then again the next day, and so on until I’ve a five day old mother of each, to be fed at intervals so they can be used to make something tasty for others to eat.

No pics of the first day starter, because really it’s just a small ball of wet dough at this point. I’ll begin tomorrow at the first feeding of the dough to document some of it in photos.

Gonna be some delicioso stuff baking at the ranch!

Cancer, Food, Gardening, Homestead

Stinger

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Strawberry planting day at the ranch. Instead of black plastic, we use plastic flowerpots with the bottoms cut off. These go into the soil, with about two inches clear above the soil line. They are filled with soil to that two inch mark, and the strawberries go in. As they grow, we will train them over the rim. This will keep various insect type critters from going after the berries as easily as they would were the berries growing directly on the soil. It also helps with soil rot damage to the berries from the rain/watering then drying cycles we go through.

While Mom handled those, yours truly did another weeding run. When I am well, I can spend hours weeding if the gardens call for it (and right now they do) but at this moment, I pull enough weeds to fill one yard waste bag (basically, just a trash bag, but thinner), as that’s about as much as I can manage. Today I went after thistles that came up to my hip, with tons of puffball seeds just waiting to break loose and bury themselves in other areas of the garden. The simplest way to deal with seeding thistle: gently bend the stem with the puffballs – very, very gently, so as to not knock the puffballs yourself – and then use pruners to snip the stem about six inches or so under the puffballs. If the stem has already branched, snip six inches or so under the branch. Once snipped, gently – very gently – shove the clipped stem puffball first into a bag. Repeat as necessary. Once the puffballs are gone, snip the plant into manageable pieces and bag those, then pull the remainder of the plant up by the root.

In one area where I was pulling thistle, I encountered some stinging nettle. I reached for it before I realized what I was going for, and luckily, I did not grab a whole handful of it. The only stings I got were on my left index finger and the pad of my right hand. Yes, I weed bare-handed. I find that I just can’t grasp the weeds and pull them entirely, with their roots, out of the soil. For nettle, though, I made an exception, got my gloves, and pulled the giant thing out. Nettle spreads by rhizomes it sends out, so the actual root area can take some work to get to, as you have to work through the outer areas of the thing before you can pull the rest of it out and get the root. While stinging nettle does have some medicinal use, we do not grow it intentionally here, just as we do not grow purslane, which was the weed of the year when we first put in the gardens. This time around, the weeds of the year appear to be thistle and hawkweed, neither of which we want hanging around. There are masses of them, and I’m considering hiring some day labor to get all the weeding done, as there is no way I’ll be able to get it all done so my  plants can be put out.

Switching gears: those of you who stumbled across this here blog because of searches for oral cancer and/or tube feeding and/or medical things: welcome! A tip for those feeding via PEG, if you’re like me and have to do it slowly: when feeding the rather thick usual formula using the gravity drip method by  syringe, once you’ve poured some formula in, pour in some water as well. The water will help dilute the formula and prevent the formula from gumming up the tube opening (and the syringe opening).

(My dog Einstein grabbing a nap in the background.)

Once that run completes, pour about 20 ml or so of water down the tube as a mild flush to get any formula residue out of the tube opening. That way, the next round in about 10-15 minutes won’t encounter any blockages when you pour it down. This also helps keep your fluid uptake up, which will be better for you and keep the doctors happy. I run formula at a rate of 20-30 ml plus water every 15 minutes. One can of the formula I use is 237 ml, so it takes about two hours to complete a feed session with formula for me. In good sessions when I don’t feel like I’m going to burst or throw up (dry heaves, really), I can press that interval down to about five minutes or so.When the feeding session is complete, flush the tube with more water.

Another tip for those stuck with a PEG who have, or had oral cancer, and have to undergo radiation to the head and neck: keep eating and drinking by mouth if at all possible – even if it takes pain meds to do it – and do exercises to keep your mouth opening as wide as possible. Eating and drinking keeps the muscles working and helps deal with the inevitable scar tissue buildup, and also helps keep your gallbladder happy, by giving it something to do.  Since I didn’t, when I went back to eating by mouth after nine months on the tube, my gallbladder had basically turned into a bag of stones, and the pain from it trying to do anything was excruciating, ultimately resulting in another surgery to have it removed. The mouth opening exercises are as simple as continuing to open your mouth as wide as you can and holding it for ten seconds, doing five to ten reps of that, four or five times a day. Trismus is a horrible consequence of radiation therapy, and you don’t want to wind up with a seriously limited opening like I have, at about 13 mm. If you’re already past all the treatment, and you are dealing with trismus, do stretching exercises every day. In both cases, working with multiple sets every day instead of one set once a day seems to be better, based on the various papers I’ve read. Most utility treatment recommendations involve tongue depressors, but I have used a Therabite previously. Unfortunately, I have not been diligent in using it over the years. Since my unexpected hospital stay, however, I’m getting myself in order on that, and I’m now using it while I feed. I am aiming for five sessions a day, with ten reps per session, holding my mouth open for seven seconds each time. It can be painful, but the benefits far outweigh something that can be dealt with  by taking Advil/Tylenol or pain meds. There are other things you can do to make an effort to prevent trismus or help with it if you have developed it. A tip for Therabite use: once the pads are on the mouthpiece, I slip a sandwich bag over them when using it. That way, I avoid the necessity of changing the pads often due to slobber/drool/mucous all over them. Teeth in or teeth out? That’s up to you. Since my opening is so limited, I have to use it with teeth out, as I can’t fit it in my mouth when wearing them.

Time for another feed. Be well, peeps, and I’ll catch you next time.

Cancer, Food, Gardening, Homestead, Recipes

Saturday ramble

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Typing this up after a long day at the ranch, with Julie & Julia playing in the background. I love this movie, in both parts: Amy Adams does a great job as a foodie stuck in a soul-sucking job, cooking her way through a classic, and Meryl Streep is, well, Meryl Streep, nailing Julia Child. I read the original blog, and the movie is not half bad at reflecting it. The lobster scene (Julie) is hysterical.

Most of the long day was consumed by actual work work. For some reason, although weekends are generally slack, there were a ton (relatively speaking) of people popping up with issues that needed to be resolved. Such is life – after all, it isn’t as if I’m well enough to be spending an entire day in the gardens and with the bees, working on all the things that need to be done. But! I did manage one bag of pulled weeds, so that’s a start.

I had thought I’d go back out and do another, but my abs and my back put the kibosh on that idea.

Yesterday, one of the buttons that secures the feeding tube fell out of my lap when I stood up. This is not a huge deal, as they have to be snipped  off anyway (and I have an appointment with the GI dude next month to do just that).

The sutures connect the button to the flat part of the tube apparatus on the outside and on the inside, to another button holding the balloon. There are four buttons, or there were: this one I found, and when I did, I realized another one had also come off by its own, but I’ve no idea where that one landed. What happens to the inside button? What usually happens to stuff inside your stomach that the stomach acids are unable to digest? Yep. But I’m not digging around for them on the other end. I’m going to trust that the body knows what it’s doing. At least most of the time.

Someone asked about the tzatziki sauce I made the weekend after escaping the hospital.

It’s a very simple sauce, and one that could go with almost anything, not just gyros or other Greek food. A combination of cucumbers, greek yogurt, lemon, garlic, dill, and a bit of salt and pepper – that’s it!

Here’s your ingredient list:

One cucumber, seeded, finely diced and drained. A cup of plain Greek yogurt. Two teaspoons of lemon juice (plus a little zest, if you like). Two tablespoons of fresh dill, chopped, OR two teaspoons of dried, chopped or powdered dill. Two cloves of garlic, or a bit more if you love a good garlicky sauce (I used four). Salt and pepper to taste.

Mix all ingredients together except the salt and pepper very well. Salt and pepper to taste. Toss it into the fridge to chill out for a bit, then  slather it on stuff you’re eating. Simple!

Meanwhile, late this afternoon, Mom whipped up a pan of shepherd’s pie, which was lovely, and guess who ate a bit?

Delicious. And yes, that is a toddler-sized bowl. Got a problem with it?

Moving on, one of the interesting things about having a feeding tube is gas bubbles. Now, we all know that usually gas bubbles escape out one end or the other, one end at times perhaps creating a bit of social awkwardness. With the tube, sometimes the gas bubbles want to escape where the tube enters the abdomen. And they do, in fact, escape, with a second or two of intense pain as the bubble works its way through the very small, almost invisible gap between tube and skin. This does not mean the fitting is leaking even with the gas is getting out through that tiny space. A little bit of schmutz does build up around the perimeter of the tube, but that, while kind of gross, is easy enough to clean off. The escaping gas is something I’ve taken to mean that my stomach is somewhat empty and ready for another feeding. At this time of night, will be formula. It’s also time for meds.

 

Now, I don’t take all of these all the time, nor all at the same time of the ones I have to take on certain schedules except for the first round in the morning. I never imagined, ever, that I would be the one in the family with a drawer full of meds, but here we are, two cancers, one gallbladder removal, one neck surgery, and one extended pneumonia-created hospital stay later. The cans there on the right are the formula that I pour down the tube, one can per feeding. The mortar and pestle is for grinding the tablets into powder so they can be mixed with water and swallowed – or, in my current situation, poured through the tube. The benadryl is to help keep the mucositis and the sinus drainage to a dull roar and from choking me with goo in my throat. This is your life after cancer, surgery, chemo, and radiation. I’d recommend not having it.

With that, I’ll wrap up this entry and get myself set up for a feeding. It sounds simple, but it’s rather involved, and the actual feeding takes almost two hours. I’ll take a picture once I’m set up this evening so you can see what a life on this side of food is like.

 

Cancer, Food, Homestead, Life in general

Tubing

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Alas, this is not about floating leisurely on a tube at a place like Wakulla Springs (something you should do if you have the chance).

After that last post, and after the surgery to take care of my neck – they took some lymph and tissue samples to biopsy as they drained it, and those tests were negative, yay! – I wasn’t feeling too well. In fact, I’d not been feeling 100% prior to the surgery, but went ahead with it anyway as it had been so long getting it address, and I didn’t want to change any infection running up anywhere else. What I’ve noticed, though, is that I still have a lump there just below my jaw. Something to discuss with them when I finally get my stitches out next week.

Why the vast delay in getting the stitches removed? On the 13th of February, I was having issues catching my breath, and I was having sharp pains in my chest when taking deep breaths. To me, based on experience, that meant one thing: pneumonia. Since I was having some breathing issues, it was off to the ER – a shiny new facility one of the hospitals had built down in our area.

I figured they would take a chest xray (they did) see some opaqueness (yes), give me a breathing treatment (yes), then throw some antibiotics at me and tell me goodbye (no).

Because I’d had the surgery on my neck at another hospital, they decided the way to go would be to transfer me over to the ER of that hospital. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with the proposition, as the other hospital is in the inner city and is a teaching hospital. There’s nothing wrong with either of those things, but that generally means very busy and understaffed. But away I went, transported over to the other hospital.

I arrived at 9:44 PM in the ER at that hospital on the 13th. At about 3 AM on the 14th, they put me in another ER area, a holding pen of sorts for people who are to be admitted to the hospital, and where people wait for a room. My sister waited with me. And waited. And waited. Finally, she had to leave to take my nephew to school and take care of the soul eating baby, since her hubby had to go to work. So I waited alone, and my mom came up after sunrise to wait. And wait. Somewhere between noon and 1PM, they finally moved me into a room, where I would stay for over a week.

In the meantime, because I had mentioned I had dysphagia (that’s difficulty in swallowing) and because they decided, after taking their own xrays, that yes, I had pneumonia, they put me on a clear liquids diet. And that’s when things went downhill.

I’d not really been eating well before the neck surgery, because I’d not been feeling well. I’m sure everyone knows how that is: you don’t feel entirely well, so you don’t really feel like eating or you have no appetite, or both. I’d already lost a couple more pounds that I couldn’t afford to lose from before the neck surgery to that point.

We pointed out, multiple times, that I’d not eaten anything substantial for almost a week, and that the “clear liquids” diet was not necessary, since I could actually eat. The menu I really needed would have been what they term “soft mechanical” – that is, softer foods designed for people with dentures, but actual food. Didn’t happen. They insisted on tray after tray of crap I could not eat and i one case, could not even identify. Typical tray: apple juice, pudding (too thick for me to eat), jello (difficult to eat when you can’t really move your tongue because you’re missing half of it and missing a lot of the base muscle on that side), and broth. Plus, a Boost in a range of horrific flavors: peach, strawberry, mixed berries. The peach was the grossest of them, and all had “natural and artificial flavors”, which is simply bizarre: those items are all available, even when you’re manufacturing on a huge scale. The broth was generally just a chicken bouillon cube in hot water, which is also disgusting to me. On one of the days, the broth/soup was a gray, almost slimy batch of something that was impossible to identify. I even had my mom take a smell of it, and she bravely took a tiny taste of it, and she could not identify it either. Then, some sorbet showed up on the tray, a departure from the other items, and something I could eat a bit of. However, when the ingredient list starts off with water, sugar, corn syrup, and you have mucositis, as I do, this leads to the high sugar content coating your mouth with a film that takes multiple rinses to get out.

Short version: I ate virtually nothing off the trays. That means day after day of not eating anything. They had me on the usual saline/glucose drip, but I was worried that I was basically starving to death in a hospital.

On the third day, the gastro folks came up to talk to me about inserting a feeding tube. As I thought I would be getting out of there fairly soon, and returning to be able to eat now that they’d been pumping me full of antibiotics to fight the pneumonia (and I felt much better in that regard), I declined. But I continued to feel very weak because of the not eating situation. So, after getting a a good look at myself in the mirror one morning and realizing I was looking like those poor folks who were rounded up and starved in concentration camps (not a specious comparison: I had my mom take a picture of my back, and I had bones prominently displaying instead of being covered by even a small amount of flesh) I changed my mind, as it seemed the only way to be able to get a decent amount of calories into me since I wasn’t eating off the trays.

On Friday the 17th, I had the tube placed. PAIN! I was also dealing with constant nausea and periodic heaving – dry heaving, as obviously there was nothing in my gut to bring up. Routine doses of anti-emetics helped, but didn’t always damp down the random heaving, and the undercurrent of nausea was always with me. On Saturday, they hooked up a bag of formula to the IV stand, and hooked me up for continuous feeding from it. As I’d not eaten anything in forever, the feeding began at 10ml per hour and works up to 50ml per hour. I still felt weak, but I could walk around, even though it left me drained.

Finally, on the 22nd, I was cleared to be discharged. The first order of business was a shower, and when I weighed myself before that shower, the scale read 92 pounds. I am eating by mouth once more (hooray!) but also using the tube to dump cans of formula in so I can get more calories in to help add some weight and more importantly help with the energy issue. Spring is already here, and there are tons of things that need to be done here at the ranch. As I continue to recover and am able to eat a normal amount of calories in a day, I’ll be able to have the feeding tube removed to get that annoyance out of the way. I am terribly behind on the schedule I had mapped out for the season, but being here, and even being behind, is far better than the alternative, if you know what I mean.

One really, very good thing that happened somewhere in the midst if the terrible month that was February, however, is something clicking over in my brain that woke up my love of food and cooking. For many years now, I’ve cooked for a ton of people, but not been able to eat my own cooking. Between the mucositis, trismus (inability to open my mouth very wide), xerostomia (dry mouth; extreme in my case due to getting blasted in the face by radiation, and also the reason I eventually lost all my teeth), and the fact that the bottom denture  loses its grip fast when I eat because of the missing pieces there in m mouth, it’s been terribly difficult to eat real food.

But my brain started nattering at me that there should be ways around that, and I believe this to be the case: I am now putting together selections of things to cook that will serve other people but also myself. At this moment, there are chicken thighs in a greek marinade I whipped up at 4 AM this morning in my fridge. Tomorrow, those will be lunch, and even if I am not able to each a lot of a piece, I will eat what I can of it. It my be messy. It may be painful due to the trismus. It may be tiring, as I’m not used to chewing. In the end, it will be worth it, though, so I will persevere and continue to chip away at the wall that has separated me from the foods I love for over a decade now. I may not be able to “eat” a specific piece of food – a halo orange, for instance, I cannot chew and swallow the segments of. What I can do is work to get them into my mouth and chew on them to extract the juice and some pulp, leaving behind the dry segment that (right now) goes into the trash – when I recover, those will go to the compost heap. If that’s what it takes to get through this, then that’s what I will be doing.

So there you have it peeps: February, in a nutshell, was a month where time basically stood still and is best forgotten. When I finally get the feeding tube removed, forgetting it will be much easier and I will be able to move along with Mother Nature as she defines our lives.

Food, Homestead, Weather

It was a dark and stormy night

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Nah, it wasn’t. That was  late Friday night into Saturday morning. Saturday’s low was forecast to be 27F; we wound up with 26.7F officially by my weather station. This morning just before 1 AM I headed out to make the rounds to open the taps to keep water flowing in the pipes and keep the motor at the well turning on and off to fill the aerator tank as the taps drained some of the water out. I also covered the well bladder, as you’re not supposed to allow it to freeze. It was very windy, but I crated a cover over the wellhead, bladder, and motor, to trap the little heat given off by the motor as it cycled on and off throughout the remainder of the morning. And then: bedtime, finally.

This morning, I headed back out into the still frigid (for us) cold as the temp had ticked up to around 34F. While I don’t particularly like the freezing weather, I do love the patterns of ice formed by water from the taps and also the standing water from the big rain, which had sheeted into thin layers on the plastic we’re using to solarize some of the frames and keep the weeds down.

There would be some images here, but once again, my satellite ISP is croaking, as if the signals between the dish and the satellite are being hampered by the freeze. They’ve been tolerable enough, but as of the first of the year, they have descended into a pit of suck. Images to come in this space…

 

Tonight was much different than last night. This evening, the temp fell off a cliff after 7PM, so I went out and got the taps running, recovered the wellhead with the things that had blown off in the very cold wind blowing around, and took a few pictures of the broccoli plants starting to frost over. Those are on the other camera, rather than my phone camera, so I’ll have to unload those.

By 7:30, it was already 30F and as I type this, it is 27F. On the upside, I will get to go to bed earlier tonight (maybe) than last night/this morning. I’m working on a cup of tea – Sleepytime Echinacea Complete, which I highly recommend. Even though Celestial Seasoning’s original Sleepytime tea holds a place in my heart, I’ve decided this one is even better. Their Cinnamon Apple Spice tea is also fantastic, if you’re a tea person. No, they’re not paying me to say this – they could if they liked, though, or they could stock me up on the Sleepytime Complete, which no one around here seems to sell and which I have to order online. I just saw on their page they have a Caramel Apple Dream tea, too! Note to self: track it down to try it. Ditto for the Watermelon Lime Zinger. That looks interesting, and I do like some of their other zinger teas. I bet it would be a good on ice (even though I prefer my flavored/caffeine free teas hot versus cold). I did also try their Tension Tamer tea – there’s a lot of stress in my life at the moment, after all – but one of the ingredients and my decidedly annoying as hell guts did not get along, so I’m shipping that off to my little bro.

Food, Gardening, Homestead, Sports

AIC

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That stands for Ass In Chair, and is the hallmark of people telling you how to get things done (like writing). Like anything else, it can also be used as a shorthand way of a way to get things done. Obviously, you can’t improve your batting by having your ass in a chair, but the equivalent – spending time in the cage on a regular basis – is true. Likewise, you can’t keep your gardens in shape if you’re sitting on your ass, but again, the equivalent – get out there on some kind of schedule and do the weeding or the pruning or whatever else needs to be done – is true.

And so it is in the tech world. Yesterday, after a disaster of an update by a vendor, I basically spent 20 hours with my ass in my chair, fixing things that the update had crapped on. It also meant I missed out on visit time with my sister and the kidlets, and also that I missed some of the cleanup things that she and my mom were doing – although, to be honest, the former is always a lot more fun than the latter.

Today, and for the next couple of days, “winter” is among us. Tonight’s low is forecast for 27F, which for us likely means a few degrees colder at least. Tomorrow’s forecast  isn’t much better. But to demonstrate how weird our winter is, Tuesday will see us climbing right back up the thermometer, to the mid-upper 70s.

The peppers and tomatoes bought it in the last freeze, which left the broccoli and cauliflower as the last survivors. I did the fourth and final harvest from those as the temperature dropped, and in the coming days will pull all the dead/spent plants for the compost pile and turn my attention to getting some things done in the rows so they will be ready for the first transplants or seeding as we move into the beginning of the main season this year.

Earlier today, I covered the surviving hives to help keep some warmth in them as we go through our cold snap. Those will remain in place until next week when we’re back to milder weather.

Now that my ISP has finally gotten itself together and allowed the upload of that pic there (after six tries), my picks for the weekend wild card playoff games.  I had picked Houston over Oakland, and had this crap ISP allowed me to finish this in a timely manner, that would have been in place before the game ended. Houston did win. Tonight’s game, Lions at the Seahawks, I’ve picked the Seahawks. For tomorrow’s games, I’m taking the Steelers over the Dolphins (although I’d like for Miami to pull off that upset), and the Packers over the Giants (duh).

For Monday night’s national championship game, my pick is Alabama over Clemson.

And now, time for another cup of tea – decaf alas.

Stay well, folks.

Cancer, Cats, dogs, chickens, and other critters, Food, Life in general

Focus

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Things that happen out in the country, if you happen to live there: sometimes, your satellite ISP sucks. After sending a rather blistering note to them night before last, amazingly, things have been much better on the uplink side than they had been. Since everything for my actual work was taking so very long to get done during that little episode, I’ve missed a day on this. But I’m not going to beat myself up about it (“You can’t even keep posting for three days in a row, loser!”), I’m just going to accept that some things are beyond my control and rely on other people Getting Shit Done. Now that those other people have, I can move along here.

I also had a doctor visit yesterday – a new gastro doc, since my regular doc’s rather large practice and my insurance company are on the outs and have been for almost a year. Much as I love my doc, the fees for self-pay at a specialist’s office are incredible. That means setting up with a new one to deal with what has the classic symptoms of pancreatitis, with no one willing to actually say so. Which I suppose is fine: even if they’re not willing to make a 100% diagnosis on it, we’re still changing my diet anyway to help with the flareups – since I have no gallbladder, it just makes everything worse.

What that means, eating-wise, is lots of low-fat/no-fat foods, more vegetables, less dairy, way less caffeine (sniffle), and various meds for when the flareups hit. I had one in November that landed me in the ER, and another in December. For the latter, I just went back to my primary care doctor, who is a peach, and he gave me scrips for the same meds the ER doc did. While this whole thing is not something I can control 100%, I am taking the steps to minimize any instances, because I have to tell you, the pain is excruciating, the vomiting is copious, and it’s an all around nightmare. In my case, the vomiting meant dry heaves, and in that first round, I started heaving and could not stop until the ER folks got me hooked up to an IV with both fluids and some amtiemetics (read: stop puking/nausea meds). I would recommend, as I’ve done with this whole cancer business, that you avoid it if at all possible. I also managed to lost somewhere between 15 and 17 pounds in the past two months thanks to that. The doctors are frowning on that part, and I’m having trouble taking in enough calories in any given day – nothing new, but bad in this case – to keep the scale hovering between 100 and 103. It’s a work in progress.

To close this out for the day, and to end on a better note, there’s nothing like a dog to show you unfettered worship and love.

Until tomorrow, peeps: keep being awesome. Or, if you’re not awesome yet, keep working on it.