Journal

2021 - Week 44 Cooking

We started talking in depth about Thanksgiving and what to do. I think I’ve got most of a plan figured out, but will probably need to decide for sure, before moving forward.

Iðunn continues to progress, She no longer hides when I’m in there on my bike. Earlier in the week, she escaped, saw another cat, and turn back around to run back in. Last night, she actually hid from us for a bit, in the dining room, before we got her back in her room. She has a vet appointment on Friday, so we can make sure she’s ok to officially introduce to the other cats.

2021 - Week 43 Cooking

It has been about 4 months since Freyja, passed. I am still struggling with the loss. In my recent therapy appointment it took a good chunk of my hour. However, it did feel like it was about time to open my heart again…to some extent. I thought about just letting Shannon pick a new kitty out, since I perhaps, wouldn’t feel as connected, but Shannon insisted that I participate, which is completely fair, and also probably good for me.

We saw a little girl, that was mislabeled on the outside, so we thought that she might be a small kitty like Freyja, but after seeing her, and finding out her name was Greysie. In reading through her medical records (rabies, etc), She started as Greyson, then on a gender reveal, Greysie, and after a bit of discussion, Iðunn (Idunn) in our home. Born of a feral mom, she's shy and hesitant, as we try to get her to more people friendly. So far, she started hiding in a small bookshelf, moved to under the bed. She's explored the room a bit, but is still a bit hesitant when we are in there. She’s explored the room a bit more, with Shannon’s nap today, apparently ending in a nose to nose touch, where she went back to her under-bed kingdom.

Máni was also semi-feral, but I think Iðunn is more shy, and perhaps a bit more on the feral side, as she has lost a bit of her ear at some point.

But the plan stands at

  1. Get her used to the room, which is quite a bit bigger then her area at the ARL

  2. Get her used to us.

  3. Introduce her to Loki and Máni.

  4. Let her free on the house.

After reading some fairly scary items, Iðunn, will be the first non front declawed cat in this house. We have provided her with a ton of different scratching items to see what she prefers (we made this decision years ago, but this is the first time it’s been put into practice). Both of us think this will probably end up being a fairly long process, but she seems to be showing progress, which is good.

This is also mid-fancy beer season. I’ve got two special beer release trips under my belt (Big Grove (a bit ago), Lua (today)) and a couple coming up (Toppling Goliath (tomorrow), and Big Grove (December)).

On the food front,

2021 - Week 37 Cooking Results

This week has been probably the busiest we’ve had in a while. Wednesday was disrupted by a task that was supposed to take 1.5 hours, taken just over 7 hours. Friday we had a nice movie night, just outside the Varsity, to watch Moonrise Kingdom. Saturday we went our separate ways, Shannon had a hair appointment and I went with Josh to meet with the Mattas to pick up some beer (special release + some others) in Iowa City (thankfully missing the worst of the football related traffic). Saturday night we were back outside the Varsity, for one of the premiere screenings of Storm Lake. We both enjoyed the covering of the reporting, the local interests, and the struggle to keep the paper above water. The after talk where Art Cullen mentioned the real idea put forth in the movie was the civic engagement. Which is something that is not present in a lot of places anymore. One thing that can be done is to donate to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation.

Spicy Carrot Sandwiches

Been a while. Fresh carrots from Grade A gardens. This may have added a bit of extra sweetness.

Thai style curried chicken fried rice

Delayed.

Thai style turkey sliders

I didn’t see ground turkey, but I saw chicken, so I went with that. I made things as directed, other then with chicken, and they were pretty good. I liked the quick pickled onions and cucumbers. Pretty good.

Brats

New pork breed, not sure I have an opinion yet.

2021 - Week 32 Cooking Results

I suppose I should’ve checked closely the schedule of plan for my colonoscopy prep. I could have worked on Monday, and other then having very specfic restricitons on what I could eat for breakfast, lunch and snack. Instead I took a mostly relaxing day, doing a handful of chores (breaking down a stash of boxes for recycling, shredding papers, etc) and just relaxing most of the day. The inherent problem with the instructions are because you are starting at 6:PM it means you’ll be staying up pretty late as it work through your system, and the instructions says get up and finish prep with the last liter of liquid 4 hours before the procedure. So I finally felt able to fall asleep around midnight, and was up at 3:15 to finish off prep. I did get in a nap before the procedure and got called in early since the appointment before mine called in to cancel.

As a note, the nurses helping the procedure were very relieved that I was already vaccinated and it was much easier for them to put the oxygen in my nose.

They found two polyps, which were benign.

We headed to the cheese shop, picked up some lunch and went home. I ate, then headed upstairs to sleep. Shannon woke me up around dinner time, and I was up a bit more, then slept overnight. Normally I get around 5-7 hours of sleep a night, and on Tuesday I got 12.5 hours.

So here’s a reminder, if you are recommended to do it, get your colonoscopy.

Bacon Arugula and Tomato

Fresh mozzarella, a loaf of Whole Grain Sourdough that had shown up that day, and some fresh tomatoes from Blue Gate. Topped with some bacon from Crooked Gap. Good things.

Sheet Pan Shrimp “Boil”

This was surprisingly quick to put together. I picked up some gulf shrimp, pulled out some breakfast sausage (Lucky George) and corn from the freezer, and used potatoes I had already bought. Then added some leftover onion. I upgraded my purchase of the spicy salt to a pouch, rather than the jars, since I go through it fast enough. I ended up getting two, to get the free shipping. I ladeled over a couple of dashes of the butter sauce. Delicious meal overall. For me, I would’ve perhaps added more potatoes, but maybe that’s just me with that butter sauce and the potatoes. Certainly something to make again.

Sheet Pan Shrimp “Boil”

Brats

Still a bit tired after work, even though the previous day I slept an astounding, for me, 12.5 hours of sleep. Easy to do, good things.

2021 - Week 27 Cooking

Since I have no particular desire to create an incentive for companies to have workers work on a holiday, I made an effort to get all the planning, shopping done on Saturday. This made for a busier then normal Saturday. Yesterday was a Blue Gate day, but I wanted a Wabi Sabi Shirt, so I headed down to the market, picked up a couple of things, got a Venezuela style Arepa from Arepa DSM (pretty good), headed to Daisy Chain coffee to hang out for a bit

I med a good dog named Yoda (white bulldog like), who was clearly interested in attention from a rotating set of people coming in and out of the shop (he got lovins from me a few times). It was nice to site back, sip a latte then a cold brew, while listening to the conversations of the people passing through.

Then I headed over to Peace Tree to pick up eggs and etc from the Blue Gate pickup and headed home, then to the Grocery store to finish out the trip.

Which led to a Sunday of sleeping in pretty late (8 hours and 4 minutes per my CPAP machine), which has made me feel better then I have in a while. Now I have two days of little responsibility outside of cooking (I did do some work today, but voluntarily, because after a 6 month back and forth, having a goal 10/11th accomplished feels good).

Freyja: 2011-2021

As I announced on some social media on 6/18:

Droplets and tears mix
Now she rides the rainbow bridge
Freyja returns home

I have been thinking about this for most of the time since we made the decision that it was time to let go, and it hits very hard. After George, who had a kidney full of crystals and a kidney that basically didn’t exist, and just a bad genetic draw in life, passed, a trio of cats came into the location that Shannon worked at the time. She was interested in one of them and wanted me to come in and see him. These were three cats that were a bit sickly that were being treated for the West Des Moines Animal Control. So I sat in a radiology room, with the trio. The cat who was renamed to Loki, was curious, friendly and playful, and the cat who was renamed to Freyja, was delightful and came over to me to claim me.

Freyja claims this person for her kingdom.

And when I said she claimed me, I mean it, she didn’t didn’t really leave me, until we had to put her back. When we visited again, she came back over to me. The third of the trio, ignored us both, so we brought Freyja and Loki home. After a bit of integration, Gracie, was not pleased to have these young and rambunctious kids around.

Freyja was still very attached to me, when she was a kitten she would fall asleep on my chest, as she grew up it ended up being sleeping on me or between my legs at night. Many nights, she would wake me up at around 2 or 3am to have me scratch her head.

She was a fearless little one as indicated by her being angry at the vacuum, and her late evening adventure.

A few years into her life, she suffered a seizure, and we took her to the emergency vet, and her gait was odd and eventually, she was brought back to a semi normal life.

Still very attached to the both of us, sleeping with myself or Shannon close by.

Later, she was clearly loosing weight, so we took her in, and she was having thyroid issues, along with some bad liver numbers. So we ended up giving her medication at first once a day, then twice a day. This was followed by the game of, “Freyja hides in new and inventive places”. This included multiple locations of under the bed, in side the bed support (a tare in the bottom of the bed support), many places around the house, behind things, in things, one of the most tricky ones was the washing machine

Freyja hides in the washing machine

We got into a pretty good groove and started being smarter about closing doors. But she was still our, mostly my, little girl. She let me hold her like a baby, often would settling in on my shoulder while I was on the computer, and over the last year, while I was working.

Freyja was a huge fan of vents during the winter time. Often spending a good chunk of the day absorbing most of the heat for a room.

And here’s where I’ve been reexamining what her health was like. There were many times where she would have an odd head shake and other behaviors which we just thought were distinct to her, but now I am thinking they are probably short seizures or auras. And maybe she’s just been living with this for a long time, and we just didn’t recognize it as what it was. That just hurts me. I didn’t recognize the need in my little girl and while they don’t communicate their issues, and I’m in no way trained to recognize these things, there is still that nugget of pain of failing her.

We thought she had another mid-ear infection, as she had a few and her balance was a bit off, like it can be, but we scheduled an appointment for the first available appointment at her normal vet practice (though the less then close location) for Friday June 18th. She was doing ok, and eating well Thursday morning, and Thursday night she was a bit. odd, so we held her and cuddled here, and just kept an eye on her. We were thinking once we got her treated with an antibiotic, she’d be fine. We both had Friday off, and that morning, she was even odder in her behavior, and we were planning to take her in at the 8:AM opening time of the vet clinic, to just get her under vet care. I went up to shower while Shannon was holding her, and after I got out of the shower, Shannon experienced Freyja going through a full seizure, including letting her bladder go. On the advice of the local vet, we took her to an emergency vet. She siezed again after we passed her off to the vets and staff there, they started giving her fluids, an anti-seizure medication, an x-ray. And we found out that this was causing pressure on her heart, there was a risk if they gave fluids to quickly, it might cause pressure on the brain, and after relaying the words of the Vet to Shannon, and Shannon knowing that the odds of any sort of life after this was very low, we made the call to let her go.

I drove home to get Shannon and came back to the vet and said our good byes, witnessed another aura (pre-seizure) behavior, which made me start re-thinking everything. We held her while she left consciousness and passed.

Mani has looked for her a bit, at least we assume so,. Loki seems to be doing ok.

We are very grateful for the outpouring of support from friends and family.

2021 - Week 23 Cooking Results

Penne with Arrabbiata Sauce

So I had a delicate balance here. I wasn’t sure where to start, and I wanted to avoid getting the heat to be too much for Shannon. So without guidance, I had to guess. And it really wasn’t as spicy as I wanted (that gentle space on the edge of Shannon’s tolerance. 


Also, Fresh Iowa strawberries and whipped cream.

Lamb Brats

Option presented by Ethan, at Crooked Gap, it has the spices of a brat and the taste of lamb. Quite good.

Charred Red Pepper and White Bean Salad

I assumed this would require me to turn the oven on, and on a particular, perhaps the broiler, so when it was quite hot out, I said, nah. But apparently, it did not. So I guess I’ll try again next week.

Spiced Beef Pitas

So I trimmed this down a bit, Pretty much just did the spiced beef. I served it with naan, instead of pita, cause that’s what I had. We were in a rush, cause, for some reason, we were running late. Combo of me picking up Shannon a bit late, find out out to pick up our CSA share, and Shannon working until 5. We did get Shannon’s car detailed that day, and they did a fantastic job. It’s really to bad we live close to very large trees that drop pollen all the time.

Slow-Cooker Citrus-Braised Chicken Tacos

I started getting things ready after running downtown to pick up from Blue Gate, stopping at Daisy Chain Coffee to get a bit of a pick me up. It was pretty easy to prep the parts ready for cooking in the crock pot. I wanted to add a bit of heat, so I added a bit of Momofuku spicy salt, and some chipotle powder. I set it for 5 hours on low, then ran off to the store to get some cream, and sour cream.

I then spent a good chunk of that time working with Shannon to hang some window treatments. some black out curtains for our bedroom and a translucent set for the new windows in the living room. I used my handy drill and followed the directions. I even had Shannon do one because my left hand is dumb. I watched a quick video on hanging stuff on plaster. Things are looking pretty good.

After taking a break, listening to a bit of music, medicating the cats, I got to work finishing off dinner. I cooked off a lot of the liquid, while prepping a lot of the other things, spilled a bit, added a bit of salt.

All and all, a pretty good meal, without a ton of effort.

I did, however, use the last of the Cheese Bar Batch 1 Hot Sauce, which is sad, but now I’ll get to head into batch 2.

Also, Iowa strawberries and whipped cream, cause ‘tis the short season for it.

The story of the speakers

I worked my second or third summer of beta testing children’s educational software. This was the summer that the company was bought out and there were bonuses on the line for a timely completion of the next version. The same summer where they paid a contracting company to pay me (policy form the purchasing company).

After the goal was met, It was, the most money to that point that I had ever had in my possession (outside of the short period of time where school loans showed up and disappeared from my account). So I went out and bought Polk Audio set of speakers. A CS350 center channel, two RT5s as rear speakers, and two RT20s as fronts.

I imagined that I was an audiophile at some point, perhaps going to be very impressed by a friend’s father’s Carver speakers, so I wanted something nicer then average and could show that but not getting into the silly range of audio equipment.

I may not have had the loudest speakers on my floor but I sure had the best sounding. So I had them through college. After college while I lived in Ames, when I moved to Windsor heights and finally where I live now.

At some point one of the speakers in the RT20 blew, I got it fixed, and a couple years later it blew again. And it became something I didn’t care as much about.

So it sat, occasionally a topic on conversation, such as “when are you going to get this fixed” eventually to “when are you going to get rid of these”. I eventually donated the equipment to Goodwill, then the CS350 and the RT5s.

I wanted to find a good home for the RT20s, asked others, and a couple of days before we had agreed that they would go on the curb for whomever, as a final ask they went to a friend that I hadn’t thought to ask. So hopefully they’ll find a new life.

Farewell, first big thing I bought that I really wanted.

2021 - Week 19 Cooking Results

We both took Friday off, we had planned to meet my parents at a state park in between Cedar Rapids and Des Moines, but it looked like it might rain, so we just met them in Cedar Rapids instead. Mom served a nice meal, and we chatted for several hours. Afterwards, I dropped off a bottle of whiskey that I had bought on behalf of Nathan and a beer, and ended up dining out (post CDC change) with the Matta family. Though we were in a very loud section of the restaurant it was nice to spend time, joke, chat, and just be with people.

Pasta Alla Zozzona

Interesting process to get a wonderful flavor. I quite enjoyed this pasta. I ended up using puréed whole tomatoes, because I don’t think I’ve ever seen “passata”…anywhere. This’ll have to get made again.

I did have to make an adjustment cause I though i had red pepper flakes, but I did not, so I used a bit of jalapeño powder. I’ll need to make a list for all spice.

Spicy Orecchiette With Tuna, Peas, and Lemon Recipe

I made the effort to get a spendy jar of tuna. This was fantastic, but was it so fantastic that it was worth 3 times the price of the tuna, I normally buy? Perhaps. Comes together pretty quickly, and surprisingly enough, the cats only noticed when we started eating dinner. Red pepper flakes substitution applied on this as well.

Ground Turkey and Peppers

A bit of a long day, surprise end of day work, so I didn’t feel cooking, so, Delayed!

Soy Braised Chicken with Sweet Potatoes and Steamed Rice (if I can find Sweet Potatoes)

We went out to the Cheese Bar, and ate there, So Delayed until today.

Taco Salad

Went with just beans, instead of beans and chorizo. Good things.

2021 - Week 18 Cooking Results

We, as a couple, went out for the first time with the purpose of meeting another person. We met up with Dave & Jo at Blank Park Zoo and their Wild Lights Festival. Starting at 7:PM and heading on, we were looking forward to it. The weather going into the weekend seemed like it would be pleasant, however it took a damp chilly turn. Even so, we wondered about, looked at the light displays, saw a few animals that were out and about on a cold chilly night. The goats were hiding under the over hang, except one that was under the steps, who we watched walk up, walk over the bridge and headed down on the other side to the over hang. It was a nice display and it would’ve been nicer had the weather not gotten damp (cold would’ve been fine). It was nice. We talked about our next game night (probably 2-3 weeks after Dave’s second dose). I’ve been practicing being places (a time out meeting people, spending extra time at places I go to, that sort of thing).

Turkey Burger With Sriracha Mayo

Hunh. I t appears as if Serious eats has chosen to break links from their old version to the new one. I would figure they’d leave redirects around for a bit. They redirected enough to keep it to the right category (turkey), but I can’t imagine how many links are now broken-ish. Odd choice.

Anyway, these came out pretty well, I only vaguely paid attention to the recipe, as I sometimes do. Keeping the mayo, and the burger close to the guidelines, and skipping the scallions. Good, shortened and tightened up a bit.

Chicken with Penne

So uh... Perhaps tex-mex would be better. I couldn’t bring myself to put “Mexican” (style or no) as the actually title. I think perhaps a better title would be Cheesy Smokey Spicy Pasta. Anyways, I doubled or so the chipotle, corn, cheese. It was ok I added some Lola’s Fine Hot Sauce, which I think added quite a bit to it. Other than that, i twas a bit meh.

Pasta Alla Zozzona

Delayed!

Ramp and Sausage Risotto

I asked Shannon if she wanted Risotto the night I made it, and she jokingly said, “I guess” then we both laughed. I’m a fan of this recipe. I used a bit more ramps then called for, but it was good. I would’ve gotten more ramps this weekend, but the idea of working from 11:PM to 1:AM (accommodating someone else’s schedule) then waking up for the market, didn’t sound like fun to me, so not so much.

Ramp and Sausage Risotto