January 2009 Archives

Too much trip stuff going on right now -- making togas, tunics, and accessories. Getting medical kit together. I still haven't figured out all of what we want to wear there, and I need to do that tomorrow so we can spray it down with the mosquito stuff before we go. I need to call American and see if we have to check in for International (and show up 2 hours early) in Chicago or not. Then I need to call the car service place if we have to move up the pick up. Need to gather the animals and their accessories to take them to boarding. I have two spa appointments tomorrow, waxing at noon and mani/pedi at 5:15pm.

Remind me again why I procrastinate?

I think I got the original link from either Slashfood or SeriousEats, but there's a neat contest running on MarxFood.com -- you could win 1/4lb of Italian black truffles! Now, I've never had a truffle ever, but that didn't stop me from entering the contest :) I'd welcome a chance to share the wealth with foodie friends here and there. Go forth and submit your own entry!:

The temperatures rebounded somewhat this weekend, but I still did most of my nesting inside. Yesterday I made chicken parmesan, and did lots of laundry and cleaning. Today I did more laundry, made a bbq beef roast (like pulled pork, but pulled beef), macaroni and cheese, and homemade bread. I was surfing from W.C's ReTorte and found this yummy Buttermilk Honey bread at Rosa's Yummy Yums. I still had a ton of buttermilk leftover from the Jewel shopping trip, so I figured I could make my own rolls for the BBQ beef. It actually turned out very well -- I made it all into a large tray of about 30 rolls, and baked them for 20 minutes or so. They have the tang of the buttermilk or of a sourdough, but the softness of regular old yeast bread. Very pleasing and quick to come together (about 4 hours start to finish).

We did manage to go outside today to finish plowing out the sidewalks. One of our neighbors stopped and thanked us for plowing out their sidewalk last week -- go snowblower! It's nice when things are appreciated.

In other news, the chloroquine, aka the anti-malaria stuff went down relatively easy. It was about the same size as the prednisone but only slightly less nasty flavored. No side effects that I can tell, so that's a good thing. I just need to remember to pack them so we can take the next dose while we're in the Dominican Republic. I've started thinking about what we need to do to get ready and packed, but I think we'll be pretty well prepared.

I spent a little time thinking about how I'm going to construct the togas and tunics. Raglan sleeves seems like it will be more comfortable and will allow me to do the awesomeness with the sleeves and the cording. I know I'm slacking a bit, but I think I'll have time to work on them on Tuesday or Wednesday. Other than that, I'm trying to keep this week low-key.

There's been a lot of talk around these parts about real midwesterners, and chicago folks, and all of that. But let me tell you something. I did my 13 years in NH, and you know what? Waking up to -17 degrees is just BULLSHIT. Christ on a cross. Oh yeah, at a certain point, it just all feels cold. I mean, your lungs start to burn at 0; so -17 doesn't really feel any different, but seriously. What the fuck.

Now that we have that out of the way, today I had several errands to run downtown, not the least of which was finally getting my passport renewed and name change done. Surprisingly, this was a pretty simple process. I had all my paperwork in order and I was able to come back at 3:30 to pick up the finished passport (from a 1:30pm appointment). The only bad part was the walk in the cold, but it was only 3 blocks from the office, so it was manageable. My other mission was to get cording for our togas for the trip. God help me, I used a combination of yp.yahoo.com and yelp.com to find that there is a fabric store a block and a half from the office. Who knew? It was kind of odd -- very much a remnant vibe, but it also reminded me of big fabric shops in NYC. I found some beautiful green cording and bought the whole roll. The owner of the shop gave it to me for half price, which fits my budget! When I have some more time and some projects in mind, I'll have to go back and look closer at the fabrics. Definitely some deals to be had since most stuff was half off.

Subway was lunch; starbucks for a snack, and lots of walking in the frigidity. Oh, and did I mention that I went to the office wearing two pairs of pants, two shirts, and... SOCKS? I hate socks. I loathe socks. They freak me out and they make my feet itch. But when the weather is that which humans were not meant to survive, socks are warranted.

Tomorrow we start the anti-malaria pills, happy happy, joy joy.

After a couple of screw ups (no, I don't want an appointment at the Miami passport office), I got the appointment rescheduled for Friday at 1:30pm. Just as well as it appears we're expecting another blizzard on Wednesday, wheee!

Physically: achy, not hungry, semi-sleepy. No puking since yesterday morning, and my stomach has settled down somewhat. Current drugs: imodium, gas-x, and tylenol. Food consumed yesterday: protein shake, and half a pb&j sammich.

Well, it's not been a fun 24 hours. Richard and I both have been smacked down by a nasty nasty case of food poisoning. Leslie thinks it might be a virus though -- her friend Jay had similar symptoms and then she came down with it as well this weekend, and they shared no food commonalities.

I think I'm going to move the passport appointment to Thursday or Friday to give me a little more time to recover.

Wheeee! We woke up to a fair amount of snow this morning. By the time we went out to clear some of it, we had about 7 inches. 45 minutes of a joint effort of shoveling (me) and snowthrowing (Richard), we had the driveway cleared, the sidewalks in front of 4 neighbors' places cleared, and the storm drain properly dug out and a clear path to it from our driveway.

Cooking today consisted of: blueberry pancakes and bacon; beef tenderloin, cheesy mashed potatoes, corn and green beans; and a whipping cream pound cake. I was just on a mission to use things up today, which is how the pound cake came about. I was cleaning through the fridge and found an expired yet unopened bottle of heavy cream. I did a little research on various sites, and came up with Elvis's favorite pound cake. This had the added bonus of using some of the cake flour that I bought for some reason last month, yay! As for the cake, the only modification I made was to add a LOT of my homebrew vanilla. And the verdict? It's an okay cake. The extra eggs in the formula are very noticeable in the texture of the cake. It didn't really have that much else going for it. Definitely edible, but not something I'd set out to make again. Also, beware of making this cake in a two piece tube pan. I thought the batter was thick enough to set before leaking through the edge, but alas, the smoke alarm said differently. I cut the cake up into individual slices, bagged them, and froze them. I also froze two quarts of baked beans that I made last night.

In other news, the shots hurt :) It's great that we got them, but there's lingering soreness in the tetanus vaccinated arm (as the nurse told us there would be). The experience wasn't bad at all. The needles were nice and sharp and short, but they're still shots and they still suck. We got a ton of information on how to minimize risks. The major disease to avoid is Dengue, which apparently is epidemic in the Dominican Republic, and has no vaccine. So, slather up the mosquito repellent 24/7, don't drink any tap water, no ice, no fresh produce, no undercooked anything, and no dairy that's not verified pasturized.

I made the appointment to get my passport done on Wednesday, and that's the last hurdle.

Yesterday was a busy day. I started out the morning researching what we need for the trip to the Dominican Republic. As it turns out, the State Department and the CDC report that the Dominican Republic is actually pretty high on the disease prevalence front. Recommended vaccines are: Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B; Typhoid; Diphtheria, Pertussis and Tetanus; and anti-malarials. After calling Aetna, and multiple doctors, I finally found a place that does "travel medicine", filled out their form, and got an appointment set up for me and Richard for today at 2:15 pm. The only glitch was that I needed to get written approval from Dr. Temkin to get my vaccines since I'm in treatment for cancer. Thursdays Dr. Temkin isn't in the office, so I left a message with her assistant and emailed her. After stressing all night thinking maybe Dr. Temkin would veto the trip because it's so pestilent, I got a call back this morning from her assistant and sorted everything out, and I'm cleared to go get shots, yay! Or maybe that's boo, because I really do hate shots, but I guess shots are better than the diseases I could pick up.

Yesterday afternoon, we went to get Richard's hair cut, and I ran around the strip mall trying to get stuff mailed, and going to Walgreens to get new passport pictures taken and to pick up the blood pressure monitor that I'd been eying online. Lots of running around for me, and it felt good! I also picked up a bunch of sunscreen, Purell wipes, and travel medicines.

Last night I also went on my first real grocery shopping trip in probably a year or so. We've been doing peapod for so long I'd forgotten how much brick and mortar grocery shopping could be ;) The good news is that it wasn't at all physically tiring. The bad news is that I have never seen so much horrendous produce and things on the cusp of expiration. Jewel's celery was all floppy and brown, and I ended up paying 3.29 for a deli container of celery sticks in water, which apparently keeps them from going brown and limp. The rest of the produce was pretty hideous, so I gave up on that. Then there was the buttermilk, expiration date: 1/9/09, and the tortillas, expiration date 1/9/09. Yeah. Pass! I ended up getting slightly different items, like a half gallon of buttermilk instead of the quart, etc. Also, Jewel does not have bacon ends. If there's one thing wrong with the Chicago area, it's this persistent lack of bacon ends. Whatever happened to "hog butcher to the world"?

Anyway, I was stockpiling in preparation for this massive snow storm that I thought was going to dump 8 inches on us. Except I had just caught the tail end of the weather report, and that was of course for the Wisconsin border, up to 8 inches. I'd decided it would be a good time to make a big batch of baked beans and some Boston brown bread with the new giant bean pot. I'll get that going today after we get back from the doctor's. I also want to make a large batch of chili to freeze and continue working through the stuff in the fridge and turning it into amazingness.

Tomorrow is officially two weeks before the trip, so I need to call the passport office and make an appointment to get my passport renewed at the agency downtown in Chicago. After that, we're all set to go. I just need to make us awesome togas and figure out how I'm going to pack everything :)

Today we had an appointment with Dr. Cohen, the fertility specialist. Excellent meeting overall. He laid out our options, and will work with Dr. Temkin to coordinate everything. And we'll still hope for a miracle of complete reversal of the endo cancer with the Megace treatment. If so, we'd go full speed into getting me knocked up once the Megace course is over in mid-March. If not, we'll harvest eggs and make embryos to freeze. Considering how far we've come from the initial oncologist meeting with Dr. Shithead, I'm quite pleased with the direction we're going in.

Since the doctor's office was half a mile from the office, we decided to go in and hang out for the day. It was absolutely awesome seeing everyone again. I was in the office last at the end of September, and I was deep in the throes of anemia then, so this was hopefully as triumphant for everyone else as it was for me. I really do feel excellent, and I have a lot of hope (and pragmatism) about all of this. Jordan and Daniel took Richard and me out to a lovely lunch at Pazzo's -- I highly recommend the apple and walnut spinach salad. Catching up with everyone was heartwarming to say the least. Being surrounded by such love and positive energy was a real treat -- I just wish the office was closer to home :)

For the first time in days, I've not cooked anything at all! It was a busy and long day, and it was nice to come home to leftovers. Tomorrow there might be more cooking, but I need to inventory what's going on in the fridge and pantry first.

The only other exciting news comes from the tech conference that we're attending in the Dominican Republic. Each year they have a stupid/offensive costume party,(pajama party, pirates and wenches) but this year's theme is... toga party! Having taken Latin for 5 years, and having been a member of the Junior Classical League, if there is one thing I know, it is how to make some freaking awesome togas. I'm sure that Richard and I won't win prizes, as the example that was proffered by the organizers was Animal House, but we will have awesome togas that are fairly authentic. I'm a little bit bigger on actually sewing things together rather than the artful tying that the Romans were fond of, but I have a lot more fun if I'm not worrying about my toga coming undone :)

Did you know that it takes 20 minutes of stirring over a medium flame to bring a pot of tapioca pudding to a boil? Definitely worth the effort, especially since it's relatively healthy and low sugar compared to a lot of other dessert products, and it uses up the milk that was expiring today.

Cooked more today, breakfast lunch and dinner. We went to Costco to pick up Richard's glasses. I showed much restraint and only got milk, butter, protein shakes, and a ton of the Talking Rain Sparkling Ice that I just loved drinking in Redmond. Unfortunately they don't have quite the flavor that I fell in love with there, but it's still good stuff. If only they'd sell cases of Mintwater and I'd be in heaven. The butter at Costco is a phenomenal deal compared to Peapod. I can get 4 pounds of butter at Costco for the price of 1 pound via Peapod. Butter freezes well so why not.

More to do and cook tomorrow.

Soooo, this morning I woke up with an overwhelming urge to reorganize the freezer downstairs. I grabbed Richard's super fleece gloves and went downstairs on a mission. I found one of my old plastic bins fits perfectly on the top shelf, so now the packs of chicken breasts are all contained on the top shelf, yay! I also binned the fruits on a separate shelf, and have the veggies beside them (though I ran out of bins). Another shelf has packaged foods like lean cuisines on it and some random stuff, and the bottom basket has some other items that I need to go through. I didn't want to leave the freezer open too long at one stretch though because of frost build up. I did find some more bone-in chicken breasts, so those will be easy pressure cook meals, lots of boneless skinless chicken breast, lots of veggies and fruits. I threw out some stuff that we just didn't like -- Skinny Cow fudge bars, I'm looking at you -- and gave everything a bit more order.

It's a gray and rainy day, which beats a gray and snowy day, but it's still low on the motivation scale. We'll see what happens.

As in the winter air, which is sucking the moisture from my skin. I definitely need to get back into a skincare regime. This weekend I used some of the Sugar Plum Fairy scrub pretty much head to toe and it did exactly nothing on the dry skin (though I did smell oddly of candy flavored lipgloss for 2 days). I'm woefully behind on exfoliating, so I'm going to work on one region a day, hah!

We're expecting the treadmill to be delivered today; so, I was up early to make sure that we didn't miss that 10am to 2pm window! It's noon, and no sign of them, of course. But I used the morning to make myself a decent breakfast and to make some not-so-decent oatmeal scotchies cookies. I made a task list of things I want to clean out/make/get out of the fridge before Monday; after the treadmill is delivered, I can get started on that stuff.

Yesterday I used the pressure cooker for the first time, and it did a very nice job. I cooked 4 chicken breasts on the bone that were lurking in the freezer. I added lots of veggies and herbs to make a nice broth with the breasts, then fired up the cooker. Start to finish from chopping veggies to throw in the pot to being able to open the lid was about 45 minutes. Not bad at all. The chicken was done well, the broth was fabulous, and I made two meals out of the meat. I definitely wouldn't recommend it to every one, but since I already bought it, I do think that I'll use it. Next I'll try one of those corned beef slabs that have been taunting me in the freezer. Those should be wonderful in the pressure cooker (not that I've ever had corned beef, but don't ask).

In other kitchen related news, I've decided to retire my waring bar blender. It looks gorgeous but it absolutely sucks ass. It couldn't blend CAESAR SALAD DRESSING. That's where I draw the line. So, the waring will go to the basement to await some unsuspecting fool, and the vitamix will finally be unpacked and take its rightful place on the counter. Then I'll be able to make some smoothies etc with the fruit in the freezer downstairs. Homemade healthier Jamba Juices, yum!

I'm doing well with the exercising already, just doing my old standby of marching in place for 30 minutes a day is a good warm up to the treadmill. Eventually I'll do a longer workout on the treadmill, but a varied step work out with the marching in place stuff. All of the Christmas/parents are here weight is off, and I'm down to my low again, yay! I'm watching what I eat and I'm generally trying to be good. I think doing the lots of small meals thing is helping. I have a stash of low carb, high protein shakes, and I ordered some of the "cookie diet" Smart for Life stuff because it was on sale at Costco. I looked at the full plan, and there's no way I'm going to follow their plan... 800 calories a day? Completely unhealthy and a recipe for disaster. But, integrating the high fiber, glycemically balanced cookies in as snacks in an otherwise balanced diet seems like a good plan. We'll see how bad the stuff tastes :)

Other than that I just need to prep for the appointment on Wednesday, and make sure we have everything in order for the Dominican Republic trip in a few weeks. It's bizarre to think that we'll be leaving in 3 weeks for the tropics. I still have to make an appointment to get my passport in person, and I need to get new passport photos taken, and a bunch of other stuff. I still think I'll be bored for the trip, but bored and warm and sunny beats the pants off bored and stuck at home looking at snow and gray Chicago.