So...whats for dinner?

I fleshed out the leftover egg fried rice with shiitake and red onion last night. Still can't say enough about the short grain brown rice. I'm going to place an order for the Carolina Gold in the next few weeks...when deliveries won't be impacted by temp or other weather. We actually had a dusting of snow yesterday, back to a night time low of 29 and snow flakes are flying but not sticking. Such a treat as most years, we see zero snow. God I miss winter. The 54 days this early made me quite despondent.

Tonight, I'll be making a BBQ chicken socca "pizza" of sorts.

Tonight is a beef stir fry. I didn’t have ginger or sesame seeds but it was still good.

I did minus, this is the recipe is used.

https://www.spendwithpennies.com/beef-stir-fry/

Hi all

It's my 10th year anniversary of my Breast cancer today, luckily I've been breast cancer free but unfortunately I got Bowel Cancer in 2015. I'm having my 3rd lot of chemo, since 2019, 56 rounds so far.

Sometimes my appetite isn't that good but hoping to get some inspiration on this thread. This week I've made apricot chicken, had lasagna and roast vegies and brought some Chinese takeaway.

It was nice to see that a couple of you remembered the Aussie girls.

Aussie - Congrats on 10 years out from BC but so sorry to hear about your bowel cancer. Many of us are still cooking regularly and several have changing diets so hope we can provide inspiration. Apricot chicken sounds interesting.

Thanks for the recipe Mae.

I think today will be Naan Pizzas after I get home from the dentist. Only a cleaning but yuck - I really don't care for dentist visits.

eric - you get me.

Grey & gloomy & damp & cold (for us). The high was only 44. Just could not get warm all day. I wanted the oven on longer so pizzas were deferred. I baked cod in lemon/pepper/dill w/melted butter & other spices. I baked it sealed so probably sort of poached. Delicious. Served with whole grain brown rice w/quinoa and left over sauteed asparagus.

We are in the middle of early voting (yeah, I know) and the damn phone doesn't stop ringing. Annoying since I voted a week ago.

Oh we could talk about Texas and voting - but yup, not in this thread. Thanks for your thoughts.

I feel guilty not making Lacey's or Jazzy's cod recipes since they are certainly both much healthier. But not guilty enough to give up the two brownies before bed every night. Geez - it was only an 8x8 pan I made last week, but that's lasting forever.

Oh my Eric - I think the rice dish sounded wonderful. My nephew is now Vegan. I don't have any trouble whipping up vegetarian dishes, but Vegan is another ball game. I'm at a loss w/o milk & eggs.

Thanks Wally. I just can't get interested in cooking w/o milk & butter & eggs & cheese.

My nephew's wife & his daughter are not even vegetarians. Usually when we go out & he has a salad or vegetables or fruit while his wife has the biggest steak she can find. On Sunday, we are all going to Govinda's at the Hare Krishna Temple. Sunday is one of their 3 'vegan only' days every week. His wife's parents, who are Chinese, are joining us but they prefer meat or fish or fowl dishes (think Peking Duck) to vegetables. It will be interesting to see what they think of the restaurant. I on the other hand know I will eat WAY too much of their delicious buffet selections.

Hubs and I collaborated on yesterday's dinner (more like late lunch). Sauteed mushrooms, broccoli, wild shrimp, Rogan Josh sauce, and basmati rice. Naan on the side. It was very tasty, and enough for 2 more meals.

DD is a "most of the time" vegan and does a lot of vegan baking. Red velvet cake (no icing, though) is one of her specialties.

The statin-VLDL-hyperglycemia-AI thing is all interconnected. AIs raise LDL & VLDL. Statins raise glucose. And another factor in hyperglycemia? High LDL & VLDL. Vicious cycle. As I continue to age I learn you can't fix one thing without breaking something else---lather, rinse, repeat. Pick your battles, prioritize risks. Nothing is perfect.

Wed. night we went out to early dinner at Big Jones, our local (almost-neighborhood) Carolina Low Country restaurant (multiple James Beard awards) for their Mardi Gras menu. Tried my best to "eat around" the carbs. We shared a Little Gem/blue cheee/pecan salad with champagne vinaigrette; the "Boucherie Board" (various charcuterie, pickles, benne seed crackers & crostini); "barbecue" shrimp (unlike the russet-brown-sauced NOLA version, these were giant prawns in a slightly smoky cream sauce. Worth the incredible messiness of peeling & eating them--the heads actually have as much yummy stuff as do crawfish heads. Shared a fried half chicken--I picked off half the coating from my chicken thigh. Bob had the white meat--the breast was too big for him to finish. And we split a side of Gullah greens (I carefully avoided the bits of torn cornbread). No dessert--I was still tasting the few swigs of my Hurricane (before I gave the rest to Bob).

Last night we had the Big Jones leftovers. Tonight I made myself a Caprese over arugula, followed by four hot wings and celery sticks. Before I could carb-cheat, I got stuck online and then on the phone with SW Airlines. We decided that our original flight would get us to NOLA during rush hour and to the hotel no earlier than 7 pm--our BFFs were flying out of Midway at zero-dark-thirty and would be nodding off in their gumbo by the time we'd sit down to dinner. So I went online to see if we could get a flight that would get us to the hotel about 4, which is check-in time. To my shock there was a banner atop my itinerary page: "There was a problem with your flights; see revised ones below." I was horrified to see our new flight wouldn't even be landing till 9:45 pm! And our new flight home wouldn't get into MDW till nearly 1 am. Mind you, we weren't even notified: I found out only because I logged in to change to an earlier flight than our original (booked in Nov.).

So I booked new flights (not happy about leaving MDW at 8:50am, but it beats our friends' 5:45am)--but the confirmation page then listed our original ones as well for our itinerary. Decided to call--and was on hold for over an hour. The agent said there were systemwide spring schedule changes made today (hence the insane phone wait times), and we were in the queue to be notified by e-mail & text tomorrow. Good thing we caught it early. Not crazy about not having nonstops, but at least we can stay on the plane in San Antonio and avoid luggage snafus.

Carol, has your DH tried taking coQ10 along with a statin? That should alleviate some of the side effects of statins.

As an aside, some studies show that too low a cholesterol can increase mortality risk. In some people, the more they try to reduce it, the more the body fights to make it...it is necessary for our bodies. I think Sandy hit it right...at some point, we have to choose how we die (not her words, but ....)...if we are lucky, we can make choices that give us the best outcomes for the longest times. Those of us on this board realize, sometimes, it isn't up to us at all.

I think tonight I will make a socca topped with salmon salad, a-la-tuna melt, but salmon. Maybe a side salad or some steamed spinach.

Eggs are fine. Eating cholesterol does not raise lipid levels: dietary cholesterol is not the same as serum cholesterol. If the former seems to correlate with elevated lipid levels, it's probably because many cholesterol-rich foods (all of them animal proteins) are high in saturated fat. And even that is beginning to be decoupled from lipid levels. Interestingly, consumption of simple carbs (sugars, refined starches/grains & white potatoes) is now thought to raise trigyceride levels (one of the "bad cholesterols"). Egg yolks contain saturated fat--but they also contain iron & vitamin A. Egg whites provide just protein & texture (especially volume & airiness when whipped).

To further upset the applecart, successful lowering of "bad lipid" levels doesn't necessarily lower the risk of arterial plaques causing heart attacks & strokes. It's a very complicated calculus involving genetics (familial hypercholesterolemia, for which Repatha was developed), hypertension, high blood glucose (thickens the blood), atrial fibrillation (causing blood to pool in the heart & coronary arteries and less effectively be pumped throughout the body--as well as form clots), and the major culprit: inflammation. Inflammation causes release of cytokines like the stress hormones epinephrine & cortisol--which irritate the arterial walls and cause otherwise "stable" arterial plaques (which narrow the inside, aka lumen, of the arteries like scale in plumbing pipes) to become "friable," breaking off and adhering to clots that cause ischemic (vessel-blockage) heart attacks & strokes. That's why Type 2 diabetes (even prediabetes) causes heart disease as often as (or more often than) it does kidney disease or retinopathy.

For breakfast, I nuked a Trader Joe's "eggwich:" TJ's knockoff of the no-carb Jimmy Dean version of an Egg McMuffin (or sausage/egg biscuit). It's two flat round mini-omelettes instead of a biscuit or English muffin, filled with a turkey sausage patty and a slice of American cheese. When nuked, the cheese tends to ooze out the sides and stick to the damp paper towel in which you're instructed to wrap the sandwich. So I discarded the paper towel (American cheese is blah anyway); removed the bottom "bun," inserted an "ultra-thin" slice of Swiss and replaced the bottom. To make it firmer and more like an English muffin, I then briefly seared each side in a skillet coated with olive oil.

Bob will be working late tonight (biweekly hospital hell weekend), so I'm defrosting the remaining half of an 8-oz. sablefish fillet to pan-sear. Will steam or sear asparagus and dress them with Hollandaise--either the remainder of the open jar of Reese's in my fridge, or the far easier-to-heat shelf-stable Melissa's. Bernard Potier brand seems to be unavailable online, but my local Jewel supermarket has the identical packets of Melissa's. Trying not to have even a low-net-carb starch for the next couple of weeks (except one or even a half of one pačzki on Fat Tuesday) before my weigh-in (which will be a disaster). My longer-term goal will be to lose enough weight before the wedding to not have to wear a minimizer bra or compression camisole under my dress. Waist-cinching is not in the cards--I have a LOT of waist to cinch (the belly fat and the panniculus--the hanging "apron" of lower-ab skin & fat from my C-section in 1984). I want to enjoy the wedding, not wince in pain from my innards being squashed.

I certainly saw enough patients with "perfect" cholesterol who had had a heart attack and patients with horrible lipid profiles that (as long as I worked there) had no heart issues. My triglycerides are elevated--for women, that is more telling than a high LDL, which I also have. My HDL is very high...but of course, now I am reading that some HDL profiles are actually as damaging and bad as LDL. And yes, do drugs cause other problems? Do we wait it out and hope our lipids won't kill us? There is so much new info that the things we were taught seem outdated. My ratio is good so (knock wood) no doc has suggested statins yet; I can kick that can down the road, LOL.