So...whats for dinner?

Sharon's dinner was the Jenny Craig stuff that is working for her weight loss. I baked a ham, fixed some green beans and a turned some fruit into something resembling a salad.

Just like yesterday, today was also a busy day. We did all sorts of chores except for laundry. The laundry was done Thursday and Friday. The chores aren't finished, but we're done with them... :-)

Chi, Sharon, being the nuclear engineer, especially liked Dieter's part.

Susan, refinishing the wood floors is a great gift. Wood floors are beautiful, especially right after they are refinished.

I kept thinking about that duck leg confit, and realized that's not what I was craving: ever since my trip to Italy I've been jonesing for cacio e pepe (Rome's native pasta dish). I came to the conclusion that every time I keep “eating around" my cravings with substitutes that just don't satisfy them, I end up eventually giving in to the cravings anyway. So I weighed out an ounce of dry spaghetti, cooked it up, and tossed it with olive oil, an ounce of Pecorino Romano (grated with a Microplane) and all the black pepper I could grind until the grinder was empty. Yum! I savored it, literally, one strand at a time. Now I can go another couple of months without cheating with pasta--it'd have driven me crazy till I gave in and ordered (and probably finished) a restaurant-sized portion.

Unfortunately, I overdid the grating part: the forearm tenderness I'd so carefully stroked away with MLD returned with a vengeance. My forearm skin feels like I'm ripping my blood vessels open or tearing every muscle beneath it--it's exquisitely painful to stretch the skin only slightly. I can feel little knots below the surface (which have pinpoint pain when I press), and the soreness runs all the way up the inside of my forearm from just below the wrist up to the biceps--with the most painful part just to the left of the crook of my R elbow. My bracelet, despite hanging loosely from my wrist, is making little divots in my skin, shaped like every link and charm. Hate to think I'm gonna have to wear compression every time I grate cheese, tamp espresso or even open a jar or bottle. Yet the doc and therapist say they can't see or measure it. It's like a toothache that disappears when you walk into the dentist's office, or that weird noise your car makes that stops when the mechanic turns on the engine. The thought of having to drop everything and kill yet another half-hour doing MLD is discouraging--I have a life to live and schedules I need to meet.

My L forearm muscles are sore, too--wonder if this is really fibromyalgia instead??? Or is it cording--with the actual “cords” concealed by fatty tissue? I do sometimes find little bruises a day or two later after the tightness resolves--exactly where the knots have been.

Sandy - I hear you about the swelling. I find the hardest part about intermittent LE (or imminent LE, as the case may be) is thinking about the darn sleeve when doing something supposedly normal like grating cheese. I raked up a few leaves last week - really only 10 or 12 pulls with the rake to get them out of a corner - and boom, swelling again. It really pisses me off that I can no longer knead bread or stir thick batter by hand. What scares me the most is that we're at risk for acceleration the rest of our lives.

ChiSandy, so sorry for your LE flareup, and accompanying symptoms. It seems so awful for that lurking condition to rear its head every time you perform a particular daily life activity...when you might not expect it....grating cheese!!?? Geesh! Does it resolve quickly, or do you have to see a therapist to help promote the drainage and calm thinfs down. Also sorry that it flared for you, Minus. I hope it resolves for you both soon. Hugs to all dealing with this....

Carrie, I found over the last couple of years that cutting waaaay back on pasta and potatoes really has helped in terms of a healthier diet....mainly because we replace those things with more veggies. I do hope that the trainer can help you with arm pain relief....tho that might be best addressed with an ortho consult and a good PT. Good luck! It was helpful for me to review with my orthopod which exercises will support my arm strength and which will further stress my rotator cuff tear. Sometimes trainers can give you exercises that assume you own a healthy body of a thirty year old...then you stress a vulnerable joint. I have learned to be careful....

hsant - put the protein powder in things like mash potatoes. He'll never know. My BFF's husband was only eating small containers of things - like applesauce or baby rice cereal. Much more expensive, but he didn't feel overwhelmed and give up. Great if he'll drink the Ensure. My dad would not.

Lacey - what is happening with your "rotator cuff"? I know you didn't select surgery for now.

Pressure cookers scare the c$#p out of me.

Lacey I am familiar with that area and your description of it did more for me than meditating could ever do-not that I meditate-but I was taken to another very peaceful place far away. Thank you.

Chi kiks and minus I hope that there are researchers working somewhere who will come up with something better and kick the c%^p out of lymphedema

Minus, I've also spent 1 1/2 years in Barrow, Ak -Northernmost settlement on the continent with an ocean front apt on the Arctic Ocean -have to fly in- on divided stints to make sure everyone, Inupiat Eskimos, has their mammos and women's health issues taken care of. Ironic. Polar bears, northern lights, - 40 weather and complete dark then complete light. I love travel, but have to work!

And Minus you impress me by your life in Texas and the fun you have I can only imagine, it sounds like such a different life from life in New England, I like to picture it.

Susan good luck on the house! Sounds like you have it under control.

I am not hungry. No dinner tonight. Maybe mussels in butter sauce later.

Sorry ladies, don't mean to intrude, just want to keep my anxious mind away from port placement tomorrow and chemo on friday. So on this very snowy evening, I thought a clear bowl of nourishing Watercress Chicken Consomme. Can't eat till noon tomorrow, hope this will hold me up

Kiks You are not intruding At All!

Best wishes and will be thinking of you for your port placement tomorrow. What time is it so I will know?

Take one thing at a time

Let us know so we can be there for step 2 on Friday.

Num Num Watercress Chicken Consomme

Thanks Heidi and Bedo. I am in CO and it will be at 7:30am.

Bedo, I will need everyone's help to get ideas for dinner during chemo especially if I develop that foggy brain. Sigh, I so love mussels too but was told that I should avoid seafood during chemotherapy? Well, it will be a long three months but it is only 3 months , one third of a pregnancy! I was so sick during the first 3 months too (nausea and migraines) and lost 10 lbs BUT I got through it.

Thank you for all the support.

Good Luck getting ported tomorrow, Kicks. And welcome. You are not intruding.

I did most (but not even close to all) of the cooking when Sharon (wife) was "doing chemo". About the only concession to chemo was our washing fruits and vegetables more carefully than normal.

Eric - Did Sharon go to the doc with the patch on her abdomen? Hope all is OK.

Sigh. Except for those who’ve chosen to make LE their life’s work, I find that male docs are clueless about LE and how common it actually is. (And even my LE specialist didn’t think I had it, but for the symptoms I described but he couldn’t observe. Thank heaven he decided to “fudge” and diagnose it--because as of tonight (@#$%^&ing pitting edema now) it’s probably Stage 1. Hope my therapist can figure out a way tomorrow to get more sessions covered.

Kiks, in your pocket for getting your port tomorrow.

WF got some really nice branzino in this morning, so I had the fish guy scale and filet one for me (I froze the bones & head for stock). I got a really pretty organic artichoke too. I sauteed some onion & cubanelle peppers (red & green) with a little minced garlic. Meanwhile, I salted & peppered the fish, put them on some parchment paper with some drops of olive oil. Topped them with fresh basil, thyme, rosemary, and tarragon leaves, then a quartered tomato and a squeeze of lemon. Folded and crimped the parchment, cut a few slits in the top, and nuked it on high for 90 seconds. (Yup, that's all it took). Topped the cooked filets with the pepper-onion mixture. And for crunch, I trimmed the artichoke and deep-fried it till the leaves were crispy but the heart was still tender, and sprinkled with a little Sicilian orange sea salt. Voila: carciofi alla Giudia, just like I had in Rome. No wine, just seltzer. No starch, no sugar. And with all the herbs from the fish (especially the tarragon & basil) the kitchen still smells great.

Tried the Clemmy’s vanilla bean s.f. ice cream. Kind of sicky-sweet, like diabetic syrup, but I found that with a little ground decaf espresso sprinkled on top, it was pretty good. And the texture wasn’t bad--much better than the no-sugar-added vegan Almond Dream version. By accident, I also found that a little of that ground decaf makes sugar-free chocolate syrup taste less cloying.

Funny you should mention mussels. They’re part of our family lore:

When Gordy was a toddler, at about 15 mos. he suddenly developed a case of the “toddler finickies” (natch, it had to happen when we were on vacation in S.F., 2000 mi. from his pediatrician). We never knew from meal to meal what he’d eat or how much of it and as the weeks went by we became rather paranoid about his not getting enough protein and possibly failure to thrive. One night, Bob had to go to Lens Crafters in Skokie and we were there very late--too late to accede to Gordy’s desire for “Showbiz Pizza” (Chuck E. Cheese w/o the giant anthropomorphic rat). The only thing open was Don’s Fishmarket across the street. While we were waiting for the main course, we noticed with alarm that he was starting to nod off. Desperate to get some protein into him, Bob began singing “Molly Malone” (“...cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o”) and I chimed in on harmony to keep him awake as we began feeding him steamed mussels. Whether it was the serenade or the fact he liked the mussels, that seemed to do the trick. But from then on, he began insisting on going to seafood restaurants so he could eat mussels--and he demanded we sing “Molly Malone” (aka “Live-ohhhhhh!!!”) while he fished them out of the shells with his chubby little fingers and wolfed them down. But one day we found ourselves in an Italian restaurant on Sheepshead Bay in Brooklyn. “Waiter,” he said,”Gordy want mussels!” The waiter apologized and said there weren’t any on the menu. “But we do have clams or oysters, young man.” Gordy looked at us quizzically. We realized that oysters would probably be easier to find all over the country, whereas clams were definitely an East Coast thing. “It’s okay,” Bob assured him, “Oysters are like mussels, only bigger, cold and with really interesting shells.” From then on, Gordy became an oyster fiend as well (by age 10 he could easily hoover up a dozen and a half, absolutely plain). At four he accompanied us to Arnaud’s in New Orleans. He ordered oysters. They arrived as a sampler of Creole mollusks’ greatest hits: oysters Rockefeller, Iberville and Arnaud. He called the waiter over. “Waiter,” he said, “there’s something wrong with these oysters--they’re warm and they have stuff on them.” For the first time in Arnaud’s history, they agreed to serve a platter of naked, cold oysters. (They’re now on the menu).

Aloha Minus Please send us some sunshine and warm temps!

Kiks1 Welcome and good luck w the port placement. It is well worth the minor surgery to have that port and save your veins.

Last nights grilled chicken was amazing (I think I just have missed using the grill and that wonderful taste) So tonight we will do the leftovers with a side salad.

Moon totally hoping that snowstorm misses you. "knocking on wood" we have not had a drop of snow yet this winter. Praying for the rest of Feb and March to be kind to us. Tomorrow will be 60 deg here!

minus, wishing you safe travels and a wonderful trip!

Lacey, you had me with sunny side up eggs. I love breakfast for dinner. Your dish is obviously fancier than that And sounds delicious. Starch + cast iron isn't a fun clean up, but nice that your DH took on that task.

Kiks, you are in my thoughts, and hope your surgery today was easy breezy.

Tonight is Salmon with an orange ginger glaze, and mashed potatoes for my dad.

Per Bedo's inspiration,I'm steaming mussels and little neck clams in sauvignon blanc, garlic, tomatoes and seafood stock for me.

Redheaded, positive thoughts and prayers to you and your father. I take care of my dad, and while it's not as intense as what you are obviously going thru, I can sympathize and relate.

minus - travel safely!

red - eeesh - I understand what you are dealing with - it is so hard.  Sending you strength!

kiks - welcome!  This is an awesome group!

I made stuffed shells with spinach and chicken sausage last night - think it will be for dinner again tonight!  I have two SILS coming Thurs-Sun so will be cooking a lot, need to take a break where I can - got another fill today and am a bit uncomfy, but will be OK.