So...whats for dinner?

MinusTwo

I had thick vegetable barley soup for lunch. I'll be enjoying Eric's dinner tonight - popcorn.

Bedo - so glad to see you back. The salt dough ornaments will be fun. Haven't made salt dough since my kiddo was little, but my Mother used to make it for us to play with every time we were sick. No such thing as Play Doh in those far off times.

eric95us

Tonight it was the last of the chicken & peanut sauce. Tomorrow I'm going to be in Sharon's classroom helping with robotics and I get home too late to do much cooking, so tomorrow will be the remainder of the salmon. I haven't decided what to do for Friday.

I did some trail running today; 4 miles in 45 minutes. The elevation gain gain of the trail route was 500 feet (150 meters) and I was really breathing hard. 35 years ago, I would run the same route in under 24 minutes and be able to carry on a conversation while doing it.

Age..sigh. :-)

ChiSandy

Whole-grain spaghetti primavera with truffle oil & Parmigiano-Reggiano.

Cherry-sw

queenmomcat, mine two) I tried many different and even tapenade and the best one so far was sundried tomatoes pesto. It has been a while I have checked IKEA's grocery store but before they had this pesto and we never got tired.

carolehalston, cooking brings normalcy into my life, I get to hang here with you, I wake up in the morning planning what we are going to eat or what do we need to buy from grocery store. So it is not only about chemo, mirror looks and blood work, there is enough of it already. I always liked to cook, well, since I got married, in the beginning I cooked something pretty unedible, have no idea how my husband and my stepson ate it but I learnt later. To cook with a glas of wine in weekend was my thing. No wine now though. But I am learning American cuisine, I am excited)

Eric, what this school would do without you? You drive the bus, you help at class room, you take care of Sharon. About running, I know, 5 km that my husband and I powerwalked in 40-45 min six months ago, now it takes me 1 h 20 min and uphil I am breathing that I can hardly see the road. I really hope it is going to change, I so miss my runs.

Checking my posts an extra time for grammar, it seems auto-correction changes the words even though I already did it. Several words in my yesterday post were changed to something Swedish.

My husband has a Christmas party at work so it will be me and the girls. Eldest and will eat the leftovers for lunch and then either cook the pelmeni-dumplings mom stuffed freezer with or will order sushi. Youngest does not eat sushi so her option will be either home-made dumplings or the dumplings from the sushi place.

Mom is flying home today, my dad's analyses came back with tremendously elevated PSA value, he is scheduledfor biopsy next week. It is all very frustrating.

Cherry

carolehalston

Mommyof2, did you finish your chemo? How are you getting along?

Eric, your lament about your running time sounds like boasting to me! LOL! When I walk on the treadmill at the gym, there are younger folks running up and down the line of treadmills. They don't even check their heartbeat rates like we older folks do. My claim to fame is that I sweat more than the average person.

I have a prospective buyer for my home gym which sits unused in our "gym." I advertised it on Craig's List. I'm hoping this couple want it. It's large and heavy and will have to be disassembled.

Tonight is the Woodworkers' Guild Christmas dinner at an event place. The buffet food is edible but not exciting. There is always a ham and a roast beef and the server gives the impression that he is taking the leftovers home and doesn't want to slice off any more than he's forced to do. Just for the heck of it, I ask for a 2nd paper-thin slice of beef.

Cherry, how did you get so familiar with Persian food? Did I mention that my dh and I visited Sweden years ago and stayed in the homes of two Swedish couples we met in the Caribbean on a sailing vacation? One couple in Gothenburg took us for a wonderful sail on their sailboat. We also enjoyed a canal cruise from Gothenburg to Stockholm and visited the factory that makes the Dalarna horses and also toured a glass factory and a couple of pottery factories. We brought home crystal and pottery and a wooden horse that we still value.

The other couple who lived in a town whose name I can't recall owned a brush factory.

M0mmyof3

Still doing chemo. So far so good

Cherry-sw

carolehalston, I think you have mentioned your trip to Sweden, but the brush factory sort of startle me. Have you by any chance stayed in Bankeryd at Damberg's who used to own Anza AB? There are though a few more manufacturers ofbrushes in Bankeryd while Anza being the largest. I al just curious. I hope you liked Sweden. I used to be married to a native Iranian who immigrated to Sweden in 70-ies. His extensive family is here and they have large families) I got married when I was 21 and he was a widower with a ten-year-old boy. I have fried meatballs that bad I have no idea how they ate those, but I learnt. Since my ex' mom also lived in Stockholm, I used to visit, that woman had and still has the sweetest temper, she used to cook, I found it facinating, I was asking questions, she did not speak any English so I learnt how to cook Persian cuisine and learnt the language. I still maintain it even though we have divorced seventeen years ago, still cook Persian food and have Iranian friends and co-workers to talk to. Cherry

eric95us

Hi. Mommy. I hope the chemo is working perfectly and "being kind".

Carole, for my disaster response job, I have to pass the same test as the wild land fire fighters--walk (running is not allowed) 3 miles/4.8Km in less than 45 minutes while wearing a 45lb/20kg backpack. It is harder than it seems. I was at a national guard post getting tested and an older gentleman came up to ask if he could give it a try. We did it in 40 minutes. The older gentleman, an 80 year old retired US Army colonel, did it in 42 minutes.

Cherry, while attending university, cooking started out as a chore but that slowly changed. My college girlfriend had 3 roommates, while I lived alone, so she would usually end up studying at my place. This set us up to cook dinners, but neither of us really knew what we were doing in the kitchen. We didn't quite catch water on fire, but I'm sure we came close. My next door neighbors were elderly retired restaurant owners and they were very skilled chefs. With their help, my girlfriend and I learned enough that not only did we come to enjoy cooking together, but our friends would accept more than one dinner invitation. :-)

Tonight, neither Sharon nor I are hungry, so I don't know if we're even going to eat. Tomorrow I'm going to see if a skillet and a dutch oven partially filled with water will work as a panini press. I guess it's a "cooking meets engineering" thing. :-)

illimae

Tonight was leftover veggies with oven roasted butternut squash and a grilled turkey burger topped with provolone and avocado. Looks like I left th butternut in a little too long.

MinusTwo

Lunch was one slice of pizza in the Medical Center. Dinner was a goodly portion of herring marinated in sour cream right out of the jar. So I wouldn't eat the entire jar, I cut a bunch of Jarlsberg cheese into matchsticks and took it in the living room with my wine.

Tomorrow a friend and I are going back to the Indian buffet at the Hare Krishna temple. It's so cold for Houston that I only wanted big piles of spaghetti, but she's trying to lose more weight before her trip to Abu Dhabi for the holidays. 43 when I left the house this morning. Only 44 when I got home this afternoon. And nasty, blowing rain all day. At least we didn't have the sleet/snow flurries predicted before 9am So glad I got the plumarias dug up last week.

M0mmyof3

Looks like soup and sandwiches for tonight.

ChiSandy

Short day & early night for Bob, but snow is expected by 9pm. So going out to dinner, on foot--but not too far. Probably Ethiopian Diamond just down the block, especially since I have a mani appt. tomorrow so I don't mind turning my nails & cuticles yellow from using my hands to scoop up food with pieces of injera bread (actually more like a pancake).

MinusTwo

Snow - yup SNOW in Houston. Only 35 times since 1895. It was snowing light flakes when I went to bed but I never expected it to stick. There was at least an inch on the roof & fences & grass - and my poor roses & elephant ears & shrimp plants. It was gone by noon, but what a surprise. Indian lunch delicious. I really like the Tahini salad dressing and the Tamarind chutney.

eric95us

Snow? Is that the cold white stuff? :-)

Lacey12

Minus...I was thinking of you with the snow reports in Texas. That’s a blessing tho compared to the Cali fires. Spoke with my brother and SIL in Thousand Oaks last night. She seems to think that they are immune to having their house catch fire since they are in a neighborhood, not on a brush laden hill. I hope she's right, but it sure seems like neighborhoods have gone up in flames, too. Not very experienced with such fires, so what do I know!

Eric, will you be deployed for this latest natural disaster, or are you retired from all of your former duties?

I must try pesto on my salmon...sounds delicious.

Tonight we just had cheese and crackers after our walk and then big bowls of kale soup. It was quite enough.

Carole, I got a kick out of your second slice of beef “act out”. LOL

This afternoon during our walk through town we stopped at the Masons’ Christmas Tree sale and selected a small tree along with a wreath. DH returned after our walk with the car to pick up both....if we were to own a wagon, we could have been very up country-like and wheeled our purchases home those few miles! So tomorrow we will decorate a bit, and I will edit our holiday letter, and will then make a meal for my next door neighbor who will be returning home from surgery on Sunday. I decided to make kale soup, crusty bread, mac and cheese (mainly for their ten year old sons), salad, and brownies for dessert. Nothing special...but good for a wintery day meal.

Bedo, nice to hear from you....I am guesssing that you are enjoying grandparenting now

Mommy of two, glad to hear that your chemo is being gentle on you.

Have a nice weekend everyone!

illimae

I’m doing crockpot shredded chicken tacos for tonight, last night was Chinese delivery because I didn’t want to cook. The snow was awesome! This is a pic of the playground in my neighborhood yesterday, it was beautiful.

eric95us

I'm on call this month, so it's possible. But I think it unlikely that I would be sent to California.

I'm hope I just didn't jinx things. :-)

MinusTwo

Illimae - thanks for posting the great picture. Much better that what I shot in my back yard.

Dinner tonight with my SIL at the Raven Grill before a Mercury Baroque concert featuring the Corelli Christmas Concerto and several selections from Bach & Mozart. My favorite meal at this restaurant is the rainbow trout, but with this cold weather I may order their delicious pot roast - heavy on the wine and served in a deep bowl. Many downtown venues are still closed after Hurricane Harvey including the home of Houston Grand Opera and the Houston Ballet. This concert hall won't open again until next fall. Tonight's concert has been moved to Rice University - always a lovely place to visit with the winding pathways and pervasive oak trees.

MinusTwo

Sandy: read a restaurant review in "The Week" for Nico Osteria in Chicago about all the things that have changed in the 4 years they've been open. I'm enamoured with the description of the halibut: "Among the mains, the veal breast and langoustine might be the most intriguing dish, pulling off an unlikely protein paring with the help of seared apples. But the halibut entree is even better - 'a masterpiece of subtle flavors' produced by poaching a great piece of fish in the equivalent of a white Negroni cocktail." That's surely an old fashioned drink!!

eric95us

I've seen snow at the house I was living....twice in my lifetime. Age 7 and 18. The first time was 8 or so inches and the 2nd time was about 2 inches (according to my grandmother's diary). Our dog, Gus, a Norwegian Elkhound, was about 4 years old when I was 7. I remember him excitedly running, jumping and rolling around in the snow.

I fixed the Volvo today. The problem was a failing pulley that is supposed to keep the engine timing belt tight. We were lucky. Had the pulley completely failed, the engine would have been damaged beyond repair. All is good now and I shouldn't have to worry for another 70,000 miles/110,000km. By then I would likely need to overhaul the engine. The weather was pleasant--68F/20C--and it is actually a pretty easy thing to complete.

I made my dutch oven and a grill-pan into a panini press. The combination looks strange on the stove, but it worked quite nicely. I had to fill the dutch oven about 1/4 full of water to get it to press enough. I used thousand-lsland salad dressing, thin slices of Swiss cheese, thin slices of turkey and some spinach (it's what I had) with my sourdough bread. Best of all, it only took about 15 minutes to make, cook and serve.

Lacey, I'm just retired from Verizon....I'm still doing the other 2 jobs, but they are intermittent jobs. With the savings we have, the financial advisor said we could have retired five years ago....after hearing that, I could not justify spending 3 hours a day in the car. Had they allowed telecommuting, I would likely still be there because the job was interesting. They had layoffs on November 17 and after just getting back from military leave, I likely would not have been laid off, so if nothing else, I probably saved someone else from getting "the axe".

ChiSandy

Awoke to 1/2" of snow--what's amazing is that thus far in 2017, Chicago has seen less snow than Houston, Mobile, San Antonio, Birmingham or Jackson, MS.

eric95us

I made enough sourdough today to make 4 loaves of bread. One goes in the cabinet and is for Sharon's lunch sandwiches, one goes in the freezer for use later in the week and two are going over to a friend.

Gyspy, the yellow lab dog is doing her very best to to try to lick the white stuff off of my blue-jeans. :-)

ChiSandy

Leftover takeout Chinese last night, a panino (Serrano ham, provolone, tricolor peppers and fresh rosemary on ciabatta) for brunch. Probably have hot & sour soup again tonight, since it's really good for a scratchy throat. (A college friend who's a professional choral singer--her choir has won Grammies and Dove gospel awards--taught me that). I have some char siu & veggies left over, plus half a rotisserie chicken and some snow peas in the fridge. Might also make fried rice.

MinusTwo

Eric - wish I lived in your neighborhood.

Sandy - sorry about your throat & cold.

Dinner last night was such major confusion that I forgot I wanted the Pot Roast & automatically ordered the Rainbow Trout. Too many people at the table in a crowded restaurant all trying to talk at once and no one was listening to anyone, if they could hear in the first place. The baby was crying. My SIL was in a foul mood & blaming all of us for everything. So I think the trout was delicious, but it was such a contentious & confused evening that I really don't remember eating - except the 5 or 6 or 9 pieces of the delicious homemade Rosemary Garlic bread. The good news was the trout came with French Green Lentils, and that turned out to be the only thing the 2 year old would eat. She picked them up one at a time, so was too busy to keep crying.

My young neighbor is going to Boston for Christmas. That made me miss Boston & Lacey & Susan even more. He is just in his 30s and plans to go snowboarding w/friends. He showed me his board this afternoon. I prefer warm weather & would rather surf - that is if I still indulged in such activities.

ChiSandy

A 2-yr-old who likes French lentils? Sounds like a budding foodie--I'd encourage that.

eric95us

I agree with ChiSandy. :-)

Wow

Cherry-sw

Vegetarian borsch on Saturday, the best result when I cook it in a 5l pot, I do not know why. This time I used Jerusalem artichoke instead of potatoes and it has this taste of sunflower oil. Yesterday the eldest did chili con carne, which here is basically groundedmeat, fried onions, canned tomatoes and canned beans. She did used Chili con carne spice I ordered online when I ordered my gumbo file but she did not added much because she did not wanted it to get too hot, then the youngest wouldn't eat it. Today we were going to have leftovers and DH was preparing a chili con carne lunch box to have it at work tomorrow. He works downtown and would go and happily eat lunches out but all his co-workers are women who complain about how pricy it is to eat out and they all are coming with their lunch boxes and he therefore brings his own too because otherwise he would have go and eat alone. So he did prepared his box when the eldest DD came home with her boyfriend, went through the fridge, cooked pelmeni for herself and fed DH's box to the boyfriend who was munching banana chocolate-chip peanut-butter cookies while waiting for his food. As I believe I have already mentioned he is 1,94 cm tall and I constantly feel we have to feed him because of his size. So DH will take borsch for lunch with him instead, even better, much healthier option.

The cookies are da bomb though, I add crushed walnuts and instead of chocolate chips I take a 200 gr dark block for baking that I cut into pieces with a knife so when you eat it later this chocolate just melts in your mouth. Seriously it might be a good business idea for someone who is interested because they do not sell this cookie type here and they contain no butter, no sugar, well, chocolate and honey, but if you instead of chocolate add raisins, more nuts and dried cranberries you will have an oatmeal in a baked form.

I bought harricote verts today and intend to cook Persian dish called loubie polo that can be quite tricky if you do not have Persian rice that is so different, much better, from regular basmati you get at grocery store. I will give it a try though.

Cherry

eric95us

My daughter, when she was on her high school's swimming team.....any leftovers in the refrigerator were gone within 30 minutes of her getting home.. :-)

Cherry-sw

Eric, so far I remember myself my dad’s dinners were all about leftovers. When parents got home from work and dinner was ready he always insisted on the anything that was left from the day before was warmed up and put on the table so he could eat it up and then later he ate a little of what we all were having. At that time he was not taking any lunches with him, he ate at the factory’s cantine with all other managers and he always complained that their way of cooking caused him stomach problems but still continued eating there.

Cherry

ChiSandy

Cherry, did you mean 1,94 meters tall instead? From your profile, your tumor was over 1 cm.