Salad to the rescue

Basically since vacation, we have been surviving on easy meals...I know, I know...but things keep coming up and I'm tired or I can't think or I don't get to the grocery store....so then I rummage through the pantry, the freezer or our stash in the basement. I can't even remember what we've been eating. Spaghetti maybe? Some crabcakes? I don't know...but today I've taken the first step towards recovery. I had a salad. I went to the store last night, bought some produce and today I made a salad for lunch. It wasn't as torturous as I thought it would be, just not as satisfying as maybe a steak bomb sandwich--which I did have the other night on a hot, fresh roll from the oven with A-1 and white barbecue sauce smothered in peppers and onions!!--anyway, I put some smoked ham and smoked turkey on top of the lettuce with a finely slicedgreen apple, sliced onions and chopped cukes. I forgot to add the craisins, I'm sure I'll remember tomorrow...yeah, I know, prolly not! The road will be bumpy, this I know, for my hunger tells me so...

Appetite lost...

Something very strange is happening. I have lost my appetite. True my daughter will be going in for surgery in 2 days, that might have something to do with it....but I don't feel stressed or worried, I feel "at peace", no anxiety, no apprehensions...but just no appetite. It's as if I've down shifted into low gear and I just want to stay in the slow lane. Maybe I am stressed, worried, not "at peace", anxious and apprehensive but don't realize it. Maybe I just don't feel like eating...that doesn't seem normal. It could be I am consumed by the week and my responsibilities...but I'm finding little enjoyment in my great past time...I guess if this is the new "me" I'm ok with it, that'll make each pound a little easier to shed.

MammaHulk

Yes, I do have a strange sense of humor. So if you read the previous post you'll understand how my humor works. I wrote about how I love Pico de Galo. A kind of "salsa"...so I thought it to be fitting to write my post in Spanish. If you want to know what it says, visit your favorite online translator, copy/paste then translate. It won't be exact to what I had written but it should be close enough.

Things are still up in the air with my youngest, just waiting to get an appointment at the ENT's office. If the call doesn't come soon, my MammaClaws will come out, my flesh will turn green and I will have muscles protruding from parts of my body that I never knew had muscles, I'll also need to buy a new outfit due to the ripping and tearing...

el pico de Galo es mi amigo

Pico de Galo...SI!! Adoro pico de galo! ¡Agregué algún pico de Galo a una cacerola caliente y agrieté un huevo sobre ello, que hizo el mejor huevo frito que yo jamás he tenido! Agregué unas pocas tiras de tocino y puse el todo en un panecillo inglés. ¡Fue tan muy bueno!

¡Delo un trata, usted lo puede querer tanto hice!

let me deviate from the subject...

I know this blog is conversations to myself about cooking and my love for food and pictures but I'd like to go a little off-subject. Yesterday, while visiting a friend at a nursing home, I noticed my youngest had a very large lump on her throat. The friend, who had been a nurse for 48 years, took a look at the lump and agreed that wasn't entirely normal. So I did my best to keep my cool and not go into a mommypanicattack and decided we'd go home and quietly call the doctors office. When we arrived for the appointment we were greeted by a very nice nurse practitioner. My first thought was "oh great" a N.P!! I want a doctor!!! However, she put a very worried and scared 5 year old at ease and said that she was going to bring in the on call doctor. So now the 5 year old and the 34 year old were at ease. After a few minutes of hearing the two "discuss" things down the hall, the doctor walked in with a very large medical journal opened to a certain page with a certain drawing of a child's head and many different labels pointing to various regions on the child's head and neck. The first thing he said was that if it is what he thinks it is, everything is all right. Phew! However, I was waiting for the punchline...whenever anything like that is said, there's gotta be more to it. The basics of it is he thinks she has a thyroglossal duct cyst. The only way for it be gone is to remove it surgically. There it was, the punch....my 5 yr old going in for surgery. So, that's where we are right now. We have to bring her to an ENT to have further tests to confirm his diagnosis. He thought we were ok, bringing her home, since she wasn't in any pain, no fever, no redness which means no sign of infection. If these things get infected, its pretty much a nightmare. So, we'll do our best to keep an eye on things and see what this week will bring. My little one is very scared about any type of needles, surgery, etc...so we're trying to make this as "painless" as possible. Trying to make the experience as "fun" as we can. Things like this happen, I suppose, when you least expect it. All you can do is just roll with the punches and do your best to take each and every step.

Extra! Extra! Pathetic Atrocity Surprises Family!

Sitting ominously on the counter I saw my means to an end. I had to feed my family. But what to make? My mind was blank. Quietly sitting there was 2 lbs of ground Angus beef. The clock was ticking and nothing was coming to mind. It seems I had become bored with all the usual suspects. Spaghetti, nope...sloppy joes, nope....meatloaf, nope....hamburgers, nope....

Having nothing in mind, I plopped the meat into the dutch oven and started searing it. Dumped some spices in then put the cover on. Wandering about, I opened the pantry door. There staring back at me was a very large can of baked beans. Closing the door, I couldn't bring myself to put baked beans in with the meat....or could I??? Opening the pantry door, in somewhat disgust with myself, I grabbed the beans. What to eat with it? Bread. I know, pathetic, isn't it? However, I must say, yesterday was Wednesday. And the person dropping off the boy I babysit after school was late at the drop off site. So we got home 15 min later than usual. Why is Wed such a big deal in the equation in all of this? We have Midweek church service on Wed nights. We leave for church by 6:45 which means we have to have all schoolwork and piano practicing done, be cleaned up, dressed and presentable then fed before we leave. That 15 min is priceless on a Wed night! I usually try to do an "easy" meal on Wed nights b/c of those things. However this Wed night, I wasn't very prepared. So After I added the beans, I thought "What am I doing? I just ruined all this meat." I grabbed some barbecue sauce, garlic, mustard and ketchup then added the appropriate amounts to taste. What came of it was a tomato-less chili. I toasted the bread and scooped a spoonful on top...My husbands had a piece of melted cheese on the toast. I sheepishly handed each plate to each person, thoroughly embarrassed by decision to make such an atrocity. Before I knew it, I heard hmmm...then a mmmm....everybody liked it!! Go figure!

Its all in the details...

Why do the exact same dishes made by the same recipe taste different? Some have speculated that its the cookware, the humidity, the oils from the hands of the cook, the natural aromas of the kitchen. At a glance, a meal can be simple. I suppose when each of us cooks, we do things just a little bit different without realizing it. At a glance it all looks the same, but if you were to go into the nitty gritty details of the cooking you'd see minute changes that have a huge impact on taste. Its sort of like looking at a hand, at a glance you see the fingers, the palm, how the hand connects to the arm, and you may even see the fingernails. However, as you get closer you begin to see nooks and crevasses and wrinkles, pores and ultimately each individual finger print. I think that's how our cooking is, we each have our own cooking print, unique to our own. So no matter how many times I try to make porkum pup like my mother in law, its not gonna happen. I'll just have to be happy with the way I make it and try to convince her to have us over for supper on a regular basis! When you cook, think about your cookingprint and how its unique to you and you alone...