So...whats for dinner?

I have always had freakishly-high HDL (as did my mom). Because of my low Franmingham score, my late PCP wasn't going to put me on a statin until I told him my family's trainwreck of a cardiovascular history: dad had 3 MIs, the third of which killed him at 72, 21 years after the first two; mom had metabolic syndrome and died of "cor pulmonale:" congestive heart failure triggered by COPD, at 85; maternal grandfather & both grandmothers had multiple MIs--maternal died at 92 from her fourth one (or third stroke) and her first husband at 64 from his only one, a day after FDR died; paternal grandma had an MI at 61 and died of her second one at 66; and my mom's brother died at 49 of his first & only MI. I have outlived three out of four grandparents (paternal grandpa died at 36 of the 1918 "Spanish" flu). So me PCP put me on 5mg. of Crestor--and neither he nor Bob thought I should take CoQ10 unless I got myalgias. My weight mgmt. NP (who works in Skokie Hosp.'s Cardiology Dept.) decided that despite a normal a1c, my blood sugar was too high and caused by too-high LDL, so she doubled my Crestor to 10mg. I had to temporarily discotinue it while on Paxlovid, because the latter increases the blood levels of Crestor and was giving me thigh myalgias (a feature, not a bug). After a week I was allowed back on it at 10mg--despite research from Public Citizen alleging it lowers GFR (at 57, mine is just barely on the low side of borderline, which is why I was given only a half dose of Paxlovid). But my NP's cardiologist boss--whom I'll be seeing for my weigh-in--and Bob both think that's b.s.

Dinner tonight will be pan-seared sable, with a small Caprese (my basil plant is getting sparse) and either asparagus stir-fried with mushrooms or caulifower "lite" cacio e pepe (TJ's cheese seasoning) with shaved black truffle...or both. Eataly had a sale on black truffles, and they sent me two 1-ouncers instead of one. Can't eat scrambled eggs every day, now, can I?

Sandy, you certainly know your family history. I don't know much of mine. My dad didn't speak much about family and he lost most of his during the holocaust, so I am clueless on my genetics. The people I do know about and was told about...I am the first to get cancer...so history is interesting but not always telling. It was nice to read that you are doing well and that modern science has been able to extend your life further than history would lead you to expect. You go, girl!

We had a 4-1/2 hour power outage; I pulled out our butane stove and pulled some cans o stuff and heated it up for dinner. Power came on for an hour, then back off for another 1-1/2 hours. Hope it stays on till we get to bed. Needless to say, it is howling windy out there.

Tomorrow, I hope we can make the socca salmon-melt.

Sandy, you really have worked hard to learn about your family medical history. I’m not sure that I would ever have the energy to explore and sort out mine to that degree. What seems relevant to me for health purposes is that my mother’s family did have a cardiac and breast cancer history, and my father died from non-cancerous lung disease, very little medical history passed on from his family. While I follow a fairly healthy lifestyle, certainly with food choices, I tend to be rather fatalistic and figure I’ll do what I can not to rush my expiration date, but don’t really need to know about all of the as yet unknown familial pathologies that may or may not impact that date.

Last time I wrote, we were anticipating a long weekend with our little toddler DGD, who seems to have moved into pre-schooler mode since the last time she was here. A really nice experience for us to enjoy her being fully “trained” and being way more self-regulated, physically and emotionally than even a month ago. So much development occurs between 18 months and three years, which she will be at the end of May.

So we had fun baking cookies, corn bread (that I baked in my madeleine trays) and making eng muffin pizzas for one of her dinners. On the only non-freezing day we enjoyed going to the local tot lot, and the bonus there was that our commuter train went by in the distance. She always hears the train whistles/horn when we go for walks and has been dying to see it since her town does not have such a sound. I haven’t wanted to take her to the town center to see it pass since the whistle would be so loud and she has really acute hearing. So our park serendipity was perfect!

Unfortunately, while here, DGD was incubating a virus which seemed pretty mild, but took over us after she returned home. DH and I have been dealing with sore throats, headaches and congestion, and intermittently antigen testing to rule out Covid. Mine is taking a long time to resolve, and I suspect I’ll be heading into bronchitis if it stays true to my usual URI pattern. I had to reschedule my ONC appt, so will head into DF on March 8th.

So dinners here this week have been pretty easy for me. DH has ordered a few take out meals, and one day I did bake salmon coated with a Trader Joe’s lime/cilantro marinade. Easy and tasty. My big effort each night was to make us a big salad. But tonight I even skipped that while we ordered Thai soup, chicken satay and Pad Thai. No idea how meals will go tomorrow if this lingers.

Our NJ son’s family is coming up here next weekend for a white coat ceremony for my DDIL’s cousin in dental school, and I suggested they stay long enough to go to the Celtics/Nets game with us on Sunday. They are going…yay! So it will be fun to be with our 11yo grandson who is a growing basketball fan and player. We’ll have brunch with them before the game.

Sharing a pic of the salmon we had, and hoping that when I get a new phone that my pix will have a similar tone that Illimae’s pix have! I love how your food imageslook! 😉

BTW, I am impressed with all of the cook book culling and recipe organizing many of you are doing, and hope I can implement that behavior soon. And Carole, I certainly had more than just those two pieces of eggplant pizza!

We received our free Covid tests this week. Two small boxes with two tests per box. Neither dh nor I have been tested. It's good to have them while hoping they go unused.

The potato leek soup was/is delicious. I used a ham steak for the ham seasoning and did not dice it until after the soup was cooked and blended with my new stick blender. The recipe calls for no cream. The potatoes provide the creaminess. No doubt cream would add richness for those fortunate slim folks.

I bought a fennel bulb as an impulse buy and now will need to figure out how to use it in a menu.

DH is in charge of the kitchen for dinner. The beef roast thawed overnight and we have the traditional pot roast veggies on hand. His sister hated pot roast and we always think of her when we cook it.

Lacey, your exposure to a virus from your DGD reinforces my willingness to wear a mask when I shop. It's not just Covid that I would like to avoid but any illness. I hate not feeling good. I relax my caution in the gym when I participate in the senior exercise classes. Most of the oldies like myself are vaxed and I enjoy the interaction enough to take some risks.

It's an ugly day so far. Gray and gloomy. We've had some light rain, judging from the wetness of the patio and driveway.

I took a canvas tote of cookbooks to the Friends of the Library on Thursday and I felt like I was leaving them at a book graveyard. The situation looked dismal to me. The building is small, something they can afford, I would assume, and not attractive. It wasn't open to visitors but I got a glimpse of the jumble inside. I think I will gift the rest of the books to another charity. On the little porch was a table with free books and among them was a box of the Southern Living recipe books that someone on here mentioned. They were in good shape and apparently weren't desirable enough for anyone to purchase.

Carol - your description of the Friends of the Library made me sad. Especially the Southern Living books, of which I was a fan.

The potato leek soup recipe I use calls for buttermilk and is really delicious. Gives it a nice tang and creaminess too. If you're interested, this is a good and easy recipe for pork tenderloin and fennel.

https://www.realsimple.com/food-recipes/browse-all-recipes/sheet-pan-pork-with-fennel-and-apples

The genealogy talk is interesting because just yesterday I spent a fair amount of time researching some ancestry I'm always reluctant to start looking at it because I get sucked into days of following link after link (kind of like Pinterest lol) It's fascinating stuff

I bought several varieties of paczki from different places - chocolate, lemon (my fave) and Bavarian cream. They are no doubt going to go stale before they get eaten which is just as well because they are certainly not heart or any other kind of healthy food but they certainly are delicious .

Tonight I think will be grilled lamb chops, a baked sweet potato for me and something green - possibly asparagus . DH will turn his nose up at the lamb chops because he thinks he doesn't like lamb, then remark at how good they are. appens every time

Before Covid... I was all set to become a volunteer at the location that sorts all the books donated to the library from the entire City of Houston. Yup - - it's like a warehouse & not pretty. Maybe it's a good thing that Covid intervened. I can see myself coming home with half the things I'm sorting.

Currently I'm re-reading The Scarlett Letter. It's been 60 years since I first read that. Lunch discussion included Shirley Jackson's The Lottery. My 40 year old niece is reading Dune for the first time and determined to read all 6 books in a row. Sorry to carry on. I know this is the dinner thread & not the book thread.

So..... vegan buffet. Food was excellent as usual, and plentiful. The regular desserts were vegan banana cake & chocolate pudding. We ordered the special "vegan cheescake" this time. O my - it was truly wonderful. Large slice for $1.00 extra. My niece-in-law's Chinese parents brought me a bouquet of flowers - just because. I hadn't seen them since we met in San Francisco in 2019. They both read a lot, but in Chinese. And of course speak both Mandarin & Cantonese. Even the 6 year old is being raised bi-lingual. I took French in High School and spent a fair amount of time not having a clue what we were talking about.

My plans for dinner have changed, again. This time it is because the co-op had some amazing looking black cod (sable fish) and it was actually nearly affordable, LOL. I'm trying a new marinade for it and will serve corn and broccoli with it. The socca-salmon thingie gets pushed out another day or two.

Editing to add: OMG on the marinade. I didn't follow the recipe exactly but WOW. And how beautiful a foil for the fatty sablefish.

Illimae, it was a wow for us, but it may not be for everyone. It worked very well to offset the oily fish. I used hon-mirin instead of agave syrup and I upped the ginger and garlic.

https://www.healthyseasonalrecipes.com/ginger-lime...

I also did not drain it from the marinade and just cooked all of it. Made a nice sauce, of sorts.

Illimae, do you make your ranch dressing from scratch? If yes, please share. Drool on that picture.

I have zero family history, because I was adopted. It has been frustrating with the medical questions - I wish I had a dollar for every time I have been asked about it at various doctor visits, I would not be rich, but would have some extra dollars, lol! I have had DNA tested by both Ancestry and 23andMe - both for medical/ancestral info, but also to see if I can find birth family. I did not do this until my adoptive parents had passed away because I didn't want them to feel any sort of way about a search. My adoptive brother looked while the parents were alive and I could tell they understood, but their feelings were a little hurt - they were complicated people... I have found no close relatives, but have discovered a number of second cousins (share great grandparents) but I really need my original birth certificate and the non-identifying background from Los Angeles County before I contact anyone. I have about one million fourth cousins, lol! I need to work on getting my documents, but think I may need to get that original BC in person, to show my adoption papers with the original and corrected names before they will give me the original certificate with the actual birth info. I was told, when I was an adult - by my adoptive parents, that I am German/English (that part was mostly accurate - I am also French and Irish, but 100% western European, which is somewhat unusual) and that I have two older sisters, which I believe are half-sisters. I have no illusions about finding parents, I am pretty sure they are gone now. I did do family trees for my DH, ran into the same thing as illimae - could only go back a couple of generations for my FIL's side because they emigrated from Poland too recently and all the records are there - with phonetic spellings or are in Polish, many in churches. If you don't know where to look it is hard to start. DH's cousin actually went to Poland, had help, and still couldn't make sense of it. MIL's side - different story - long history in PA, back to pre-Revolutionary War, with excellent record keeping because of the Quakers in that area. They wrote EVERYTHING down. I did a tree for my adoptive parents as well, which I could take back to England and Ireland at the beginning of the 1600's, but several other family members did most of that legwork for me previously.

carole - that was me with the SL annual cookbooks - I just kept the two for the years my kids were born. I have had success donating to thrift shops - people who like old cookbooks seem to shop there and the beneficiary organizations get the profit. Win-win.

wally - I have a decent Ranch dressing recipe. Funny story - it is from a military wives' cookbook from one of our squadrons. The recipe was submitted by a woman whose husband thanked her at their farewell as they moved to another base for getting up before flights, which were sometimes at 3am, and making him a full-on breakfast. You could hear the audible groan from the wives who didn't do that - which was all the rest of us, lol! Here goes: 1c. buttermilk, 1 c. mayo, 1 t. onion powder, 1 t. garlic powder, 1 t. dried parsley, 1/2 t. salt, 1/4 t. dried thyme, 1/8 t. pepper. Whisk together, and chill for a bit before using to allow the dried herbs to soften. I often add more herbs, garlic, and pepper, and alternatively, you can cut the ingredients in half if you don't need that much dressing, or modify the spice amounts. I like the body of this dressing - it is thick enough to coat the salad ingredients, but not gloopy. You could also add some sour cream and less mayo but I think the ratio of even liquid and creamy is good. Keeps well in the fridge - I usually make it in a mason jar.

auntie - I did a couple of all-nighters doing the family trees - it was hard to tear myself away!

wally - I just found buttermilk powder in the grocery store recently - I found the flavor similar, little less tang, but if you mixed according to the package it was too thin. I will experiment and report back, as I don't usually have buttermilk on hand either. I used to be able to find small containers of it, but don't see them anymore. You could try just using sour cream and mayo. The Pioneer Woman Ranch Dressing recipe uses a one part mayo to half part sour cream ratio, with the same basic herbs/spices. You could thin with milk or half and half, if needed. DD has a recipe for a salad she had in AZ at a restaurant that calls for another buttermilk based dressing, it is the Citizen Public House Chopped Salad, so I used to try to time it right and make both to use up the buttermilk. Alternatively, you could bake with the leftover part? It is good for cakes and cornbread. Here is that recipe for anyone who has heard of this particular salad, or who likes these ingredients! I am not a salmon girl - smoked or otherwise, so it is not my fave.

The Original Chopped Salad - A Bountiful Kitchen

Special - I NEVER have buttermilk on hand and usually mix mayo & sour cream for dressings.. Funny, my Mother used to love to drink buttermilk. Uck. But I'm going to look for powdered buttermilk. Please do report on your experiments.

TB90 - thanks for the work around.

I ate the last of the meatloaf as a sandwich on Pumpernickel. Delicious with lots of mayo. Tonight I'll either warm up the leftover asparagus or the leftover zucchini. I was going to add the asparagus to an omelette but I'm just not that hungry.

The sun was actually out all day. What a relief after the days & days of grey & damp. Even the cold doesn't feel as bad with the sun shining.

Mae - forgot to thank you for the Beef Stir fry recipe. I'll probably change to pork or chicken, but looking forward to trying it.

Today was a very late lunch of a walleye sandwich from Culver’s. Consequently, dinner was a chefs salad with what vegs remained in the refrigerator. It was quite filling. Included in the salad were some free range eggs that DH picked up at the store. The yolks are bright orange - much more so than the pasture raised eggs that I usually get. I’m quite enamored with them. Even the free range chickens I raised myself didn’t produce yolks like this. Don’t know what those chickens are finding to eat outon that range

I’ve had good success freezing buttermilk in 1 cup containers. The taste is the same and much preferable to me than the substitutes. I don’t even care much for the powder.

Hi Wallycat, are you drowning in port townsend? I have a water moat around my roses bushes here in Renton. Kinda like the pineapple express.

Wow! I get busy and don't connect for a while and I come back to a totally different site. Tonight was roasted carrots with lemon zest, smashed little potatoes and steak with a teaspoon of pomegranate molasses. I love having these simple sheet pan dinners. Last night was smoked paprika salmon, rice pilaf and TJ sweet peas.

I bought some farro on Saturday. I've had it in a restaurant and liked it. Does anyone have any recipe suggestions?

I'm trying more whole grains to help me feel full and keep losing weight. (I've still got about 25 pounds to go, and Tamoxifen is not helping.

I wish the font were darker and slightly bigger.