So...whats for dinner?

Yeah, they're making me log in each time too, and to add insult to injury I can't use the Touch ID on my MacBook Pro (the little "fingerprint" shakes repeatedly, like when you enter the wrong password so I have to enter the actual Admin password). Annoying!

Hi all! Glad to be back - I had a combo of site not working and a busy stretch, mixed with computer issues, and then my iphone had a catastrophic failure on 3/26! Have now figured out computer workarounds, and have a shiny new phone as of yesterday. When it rains...

Last night we had the dog's 15th birthday party with DD and her beau - the dog had prescription food with his meal prep addition of cooked carrots, peas, chicken and brown rice, and he had some dog cookies and Frosty Paws for dessert. The hoomans had grilled ribeyes, rice pilaf with pine nuts, mixed green salad with olives/chickpeas/grape tomatoes/goat cheese, and roasted broccoli and baby cauliflower. I got a small ice cream cake for dessert along with some gelato. I am not a fan of ice cream cake so I just had a scoop of the non-dairy gelato. It had more sugar than I should eat, but due to the phone fiasco I ate nothing until dinner, so I prob didn't exceed my sugar grams by much for the total day.

minus - I vote for toffee as protein, lol!

Tonight will be chicken enchiladas with almond flour tortillas, brown rice with some salsa mixed in, and a small salad.

Don't remember if I mentioned it but I found a new pasta - Caulipower frozen linguine - I love it! Cooks very fast and tastes fantastic. Doesn't seem to get that texture if you eat it as leftovers. The pasta also comes in a pappardelle style, but I have not tried it yet - it awaits in the freezer. I found a recipe for spicy thinly sliced flank steak to try with it, but I need to get some flank steak first!

carole - sweet of you to share your BOGO bread. I was so conditioned to clip baby food coupons even after my kids were done with baby food, so if I happened to be in line at the check out and saw someone with baby food I always gave them my coupons. I also share my Bed, Bath & Beyond coupons - with everyone in line, lol! I have 8 million of them and they accept expired ones.

eric - yay on the new digs!

chisandy - I am excited for the wedding!

Wallycat, I’d love the copycat recipe for Good Seasons! I rarely buy bottled salad dressing since we like the taste of “home made” better, but I’ve never been able to replicate the taste of their Zesty Italian. It also has sentimental value for me because my grandmother used to send us salad dressing mixes (among lots of other goodies) when we lived in Brazil. We couldn’t buy it there and my mom would save them for when we came home from boarding school during the breaks, so the taste brings back wonderful childhood memories of our family. I’ve always been fascinated by how our brains tie scents and tastes to our memories

She was told late afternoon yesterday, so it's still in the "don't know much" stage.

ET (evil twin) is a joke between us. We aren't related, but do have the same last name, birthday, eye and hair color, height, eyeglass prescription and health profile. She dragged me out of my funk after my fiancée died and we have been like brother-sister for 37 years....probably even closer than with our "real" siblings.

Thanks, Wallycat, I’m looking forward to trying the recipe. (I need to re-stock a few things first.)

Tonight was a tossed salad with left over sautéed chicken breast with a thyme and scallions. I deglazed the pan with some sweet vermouth. Normally I add a pat of butter too, but I saved the calories this time

Coming down to the wire wedding-wise. Dropped off the pants from my outfit to be hemmed. Got my mani today--couldn't do anything metallic or glittery because I had my semiannual abdominal MRI afterward; so I did an "American" no-chip, which is my usual pale pink with sheer off-white tips. Far subtler & more tasteful than the usual "French manicure." Bloodwork & melanoma MO tomorrow morning.

Breakfast was two Birch Benders frozem keto waffles with Lakanto maple-oid syrup. Then had to fast till the MRI. Got home and had a zero-carb piece of toasted "Hawaiian" bread with sugar-free marmalade. For dinner, I seared sea scallops and dolloped them with pesto; lemon-steamed asparagus with hollandaise; and for Bob, Seeds of Change Seven Grains. He also brought home (along with a handmade Lithuanian Easter egg from a patient) Lithuanian bacon buns. Trying one (after taking a starch-blocker). No breakfast tomorrow till I get back from the MO. Dinner tomorrow will be leftovers from Bob's drug-company steakhouse dinner out in OakBrook.

Last night I baked an individual "evol" brand keto pizza: crust made of cauliflower & chicken breast. Followed the box directions to the letter, but the crust never got crisp. I did add chopped tricolor peppers, mushrooms & basil. I checked the labels on CauliPower products--all that tapioca starch made them too carby. (If I'm gonna have more carbs than I should, they'd better be worth it).

still can't ever get to "my favorites" once out of 10 tries. When I can get to 'active topics', I can search for the dinner thread. But it doesn't come up on the last post so I have to back track a page or so, and that doesn't always work. WAY too much trouble.

Eric - yes, I too am sorry about Evil Twin. Hope there's a good treatment plan coming. Nance - glad you're rehab is moving forward. I finished 6 weeks with a new LEPT. It's amazing that the cording is gone after 6 years. I always kept the breast & truncal lympnadema swelling under control but couldn't get a grip on the cording.

Dinner was my leftover sandwich from the med center today. A 3-4" high California Club - turkey, bacon, avocado, tomato, lettuce on 7 grain bread, However I still have to cook the chicken breasts I thawed Tuesday or throw them away, so Laurie's salsa chicken is in the oven. That will be leftovers on Saturday, since tomorrow I'm going to to lunch with a friend who REALLY needs to get out of the house. Trying to take care of a husband with lots of different medical issues can be the pits, especially when he starts drinking martinis before 7am!!!

eric - I am so sorry about the diagnosis for ET. Please keep us posted as info comes. I feel how you're feeling - two of my close friends, both I've known for decades, have been diagnosed with different cancers in the last six months. It sucks. Big time.

carole - I love, love, love muffaletta sandwiches. I had hoped to get one from the historic Central Grocery as we drove past NOLA in Sept, but the timing was not right - too late in the day. I did research on my phone as we got closer and found a deli that had a good one, but now the name of that spot has escaped me. I picked a whole one, cut in quarters, and we had half of it for dinner once we arrived back in the FL panhandle for the night. We had the rest for dinner the next night after we got home - convenient since we had no fresh food having been gone for three weeks. In a sacrilege my DH had me scrape the olive salad off his. I put it on mine, lol!

minus - I wish you were not having such a hard time with the site, that is a pain. I can see my favorites, and other than the obvious visual changes, my only acute complaint is that I don't stay signed in throughout the day.

Last night was GF minestrone soup and roast beef sammies on Carbonaut GF bread. DH was late getting home and was really tired - so it was fast and easy. Hopefully tonight he can get out earlier - he is acting director this week and next, so he is covering all of his own briefings/meetings, as well as those his boss usually goes to. Pretty sure he is counting the days until retirement, and it is still 21 months away, lol! DH's older sister had her last day yesterday as a nurse for a PS who does recon for breast cancer patients.

Wallycat, no it is not a bike - it is a recumbent elliptical they also called a cross trainer. I’ve used a recumbent bike for years for knee therapy We’ll see how it does with the elliptical The nurse said that the goal for me was 30 minutes on the elliptical I admire her optimism

Also what is NAC?

Central Grocery is a must stop every NOLA trip. I love that place. Special, the bread and olive salad are the best parts lol.

Minus - FWIW, I have more trouble signing in and finding my favorites on my phone than on the computer I still hate the looks of it

Dinner is the Parmesan crusted grouper from the clubhouse restaurant again. It was delicious last time

NAC =

N-Acetyl Cysteine

It used to be Rx only for tylenol overdoses (to spare the liver). These days, it is a supplement you can buy on line and depending on how well stocked, local grocery stores/drugstores.

Wallycat, you seem very "medical savvy" like Sandy. I thought of you recently while I was reading a recipe book about Indian cooking. The fried vegetables are floured with chickpea flour. I read this book a few years back when I first bought it and marveled then at the amount of oil and ghee in the ingredients of recipes. I happened to chat with a young woman in India on a Customer Service call. I mentioned to her that I was reading about Indian food. She said, "You wouldn't like it. It's greasy." Her tone indicated she wasn't a fan either.

Our friend Susan owned this same recipe book. I'm keeping it for whatever reason.

On the subject of Central Grocery, I saw their olive salad in the quart size at my nearest Rouses supermarket. It was $15. Rouses own brand was $8. I didn't buy either. I like it but my body does not do well with salty.

Dinner last night was a shared grilled ribeye and a shared baked potato.

Nancy, I LOVE recumbent ellipticals (the one at the inpatient rehab centers and the outpatient Athletico) is NuStep4000. Takes up a whole room but it's so easy on the feet and knees. (I like the computerized rower at the gym, but haven't gone back in there since the pandemic started).

My MRI was uneventful--except when the tech hit my inner-elbow vein it was a "gusher!" Didn't think to ask to take NAC afterward--just drink water like crazy to flush the contrast out of my system. When I went for my bloodwork the next day, that vein was still "blown," so they had to use the back of my hand, with a pediatric butterfly needle & catheter. Very painful, and since the needle & cath are so tiny it took forever to get enough blood for the tests.

Results are back: MRI & chest film both stable and negative for anything other than the arthritic changes in my neck, slighly curved aorta (matching my scoliosis), and a fibroid in my uterus. Tell me something I don't know. UA is fine--trace of ketones; but my primary admonished me that though it would be slightly worrisome for most patients, for me "trace" is not enough--it shows I've been carb-cheating, because had I been a good girl dietarily, there would actually have been a numerically measurable titer of ketones. TSH and CBC were fine--so there must be another explanation for why I'm always feeling so chilled (but my MO says he feels chilled too despite having a normal thyroid and no anemia--welcome to my 70s, I guess). CMP fine except my semi-fasting (I had an espresso) glucose was 120, lowest it's been in a couple of years but still too high. PCP & MO say it's fine in light of an a1c of 5.4; cardiologist says that could explain both the weight gain & carb cravings. If it doesn't come down by the end of this month, when I see my breast MO, we may explore metformin or at least the induction phase of Atkins as a kickstarter. As I said, my other docs are unworried. And once I stop letrozole (as my breast MO will likely let me do), my glucose, weight & lipids may go down--I might be able to halve or even stop the statin too. All are agreed I needn't get a lipid panel or a1c done till this summer.

Back to dinner. Thurs. night Bob brought me home an entire cowboy ribeye--blood rare because he knew I'd have to reheat it. I cut off a 3-oz. hunk, reheated it in foil and it was a perfect mid-rare. (Had a Caesar salad earlier that evening). I will have another hunk tonight (Bob won't be home in time for dinner), with lemon-steamed asparagus and maybe seared broccolini. (Or a salade Lyonnaise, now that I was able to find frisee).

Last night we went to Regalia with our friends who'd owned Cellars (he was the exec. chef, too). The joint was jumping, with everyone in the neighborhood who could afford it there. Most of them were Cellars regulars who kept stopping by our table. Started with a tiny piece of the housemade foccaccia with cannelini bean dip. Next was ahi tuna carpaccio with jalapenos, followed by a Mediterranean salad shared with the table. As my entree I had the special appetizer of tenderized grilled calamari "steak" with a baby arugula & cherry tomato salad. No dessert except for the complimentary shots of limoncello.

I notice lately that when I stick to my diet at dinner out, I end up carb-cheating late at night. Bad Sandy.

Carole, of all my Indian cookbooks, THAT book is my favorite. I sometimes tweak the recipes, but most of those are not greasy and very authentic tasting.

Tonight will be an asparagus frittata. Leftovers tomorrow.

Monica, so sorry about your DS. Hope it's less aggressive than laryngeal cancer. Did they do a tonsillectomy before irradiating his throat? My son is 37, in the same age-no-man's-land--they still aren't recommending Gardasil for anyone past their 20s--by the time they recommended it for boys he was already over 30.

Lunch (too late to be brunch) was avocado toast (homemade guac is SO much better than the packaged stuff) topped with a fried double-yolk egg. Snack was nuts & herring. Dinner was the last of the cowboy ribeye (sure gave my floss picks a workout afterward) with sesame snap peas and shiitakes sauteed in dry marsala, butter, shallots, parsley and the steak juices.

Carole, I swear we are living parallel lives. Saturday we had baby back ribs and our DH bbq sauce preferences are the same. I also favor the vinegar based sauces but always have both on hand And last night we had pasta primavera. Tell me what you’re having tomorrow night so I know what to fix tonight lol!

Sandy, yes the elliptical is a NuStep but I don’t know what number. I like that it gives a pretty good arm workout too.

We got our boosters boosted yesterday. No effects except a slightly sore arm and I was somewhat fatigued yesterday. We did some gardening as it was a beautiful day and I hung the hummingbird feeders for the first time. Looking forward to their arrival.

Monica, I’m sorry it’s been so rough on your family this year. Hoping for the best for your son.