Journal

2021 - Week 29 Cooking Results

Hunh, looking back over time it appears I have had more feet problem then I thought. After a bit of waiting for pickup on Monday, I may have over used my right foot, causing a bit of inflammation. this was complicated by having to take Shannon to and from work, since her car was in the body shop to repair hail damage. As I was hobbling around, I watched my heart rate spike as I head upstairs, which tipped me over to actually make an appointment with my podiatrist. His only appointment was way up in Ankeny at 8:00 AM. A couple of x-rays and a quick consult later and I’m back at treating a “very inflamed” tendon and the actual bone spurs hiding around and behind it. The anti-inflamatory prescribed has me feeling mostly normal, where I can still feel where it is but, it’s no longer making me think about waiting longer to go up stairs to get more water or go to the bathroom, making it worth the pain or not. Back on the path to healing, I suppose. We did vaguely talk about surgical interventions, and perhaps the next go round this may be the thing to do.

This week, driving was a thing I reminded myself I actually liked. I enjoyed the trips to and from my wife’s work to drop her off. The nice cruise up to and back from Ankeny. Listening to music, windows down, a good mild but humid breeze (at least in the morning). The vast majority of my trips have been regular errands. Which, even if you vary the pathway, can be kind of a boring drive. The, while not new, but not recently driven pathways just felt nice to drive. Even with that in mind, I am still enjoying working from home. I have started to build a semi-separation, even though it is on this same desk, of work space at home.

Other then the call with the Allstate rep (lots of mis-hearing), the whole process went pretty smooth, dropped the car off on Monday, got it back Saturday, and looks like they got all the hail damage repaired, including the ones that made actual scratches. We paid our co-pay to the body shop, and I guess we’ll see how they hold up. It’ll be nice to be able to return to my normal morning routine.

Brats

Pulled out a set that had been partially used, cooked them up. I had mine with some beet kraut, which was pretty good. Later int he week I had smoked pickled beets on a sandwich from the Cheese Bar, and that was really good.

Pasta

Fridge and pantry cleaner pasta. Had a bit of Italian sausage leftover from a previous recipe, and some onions and pasta that I picked up along the way. With the herbs and spices that I had around, we came out with and ok pasta. Certainly not my best, but not to bad.

Bangers and Fingerling Potatoes

I had trouble finding bangers in the random collection of meats in the upstairs freezer bin, so I pulled out some blue cheese and bacon brats, and on discussions we had brats again (it was warming up outside), this time, since I don’t recall having them before, I had them with a simple swipe of mustard. I do need to figure out something to do with the potatoes though.

North African Tuna and Rice Salad

I didn’t have preserved lemons. I forgot to buy cilantro. My wife is not a fan of olives. Did I make it? I guess sort of? I did add more harissa. It was pretty good. Nice cold meal, with fine tuna. I had some leftovers so I added a bit of hot sauce and it was even better.

Hot sauce burgers, vaguely based on this

Delayed!

2021 - Week 28 Cooking Results

Endive, Soft Egg, Bacon

Jennie described a salad like this. I don’t think I got it right, but it was still pretty good.

Bangers and Fingerling Potatoes

Delayed!

Pork and Sugar Snap Pea Stir-Fry

I had some snap peas in my CSA share, and bought more at the farmers market and then put this together. I added probably double to triple of the chili garlic sauce, swapped the ginger for dried ginger. It ended up pretty good. I ate the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. Quite delicious. I even put the peanuts in it (which I normally wouldn’t do, since Shannon isn’t a fan).

Breakfast Burritos with Poblano, Beans, Corn, and Crispy Potatoes

Probably the most healthy of the set of these. Still pretty good. I upped the chili powder.

Hot Dogs

These turned into brats, since I couldn’t find the hot dogs I thought I had.

2021 - Week 27 Cooking Results

Hamburgers

I was planning to make this on the 4th, but it was still a bit icy, so We had it it for lunch on Monday. I started making shortly after I got the Bo Ssäm in the oven. Lucky George beef. Delicious lunch.

(local) All beef hot dogs

I got these on a whim from Ebersole Cattle company. They have been partnering with Blue Gate and Lost Lake to do a non-market pickup (though Ebersole and Lost Lake are still at the market). The hot dogs themselves are pretty good. We had them on the 4th for dinner.

Bo Ssäm

So this was delicious. I used the last of the spicy seasoned salt and it was relatively easy to put together and lent itself well to a lazy July 5th. Occasionally getting up to baste or re-sauce from time to time. Savory, sweet, spicy, and with the sauce a bit acidic. I served them on buns and they were delicious. I ate leftovers for days afterward, mostly on sandwiches, but the second to last day in a nacho, and the last day, just by itself. Good stuff. I’ll have to make this again, but I’ll have to order more Spicy Seasoning.

Hearty Green Salad with Spicy Peanut Chicken

I riffed this a bit. Made the barely picked Serranos and shallots, made the sauce, but used spinach instead of watercress, skipped the mango, and other modifications. All in all quite good. Probably better had I found all the ingredients and followed it more closely. Though I’m not sure I’ve seen a mango around here.

Breakfast Burritos with Chorizo and Crispy Potatoes

Another not good for you, but delicious meal. I reduced the time on the tots by a bit, and got them nice and crisp, without overcooking them. Relatively quick, and good.

Chicken Parmesan Meatballs

I gave Shannon a choice, and this sounded a bit heavy to her, so I ended up making chicken burgers (salt, smoked paprika, ground chicken) and fresh from Grade A Gardens, sweet corn, with buns from a bakery in Ankeny. I used the Lola’s spicy seasoning on 2/3 of my corn cob halves. Quite good. I’ll have to save the meatballs for a time when it’s a bit less hot and humid out.

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).

2021 - Week 26 Cooking Results

Bangers, Potatoes & garlic scapes

New potatoes from Grade A, cleaned chopped, garlic scapes too, tossed with a bit of olive oil and savory salt, put on a tray with the bangers and baked for a bit. I did think of this while wondering at the market. I’m made several iterations of this before, but the scapes are a new thing in the mix. Pretty good.

Bourbon Chicken

Sou you have a 750ml bottle of Cedar Ridge Bourbon, which is just over half full, and what’s the best way to get a couple of tablespoons out? Why pour yourself a glass. This is how you get a bit tipsy on a Tuesday. Pretty easy to put together, and pretty good (that may be the second glass of bourbon speaking though).

Breakfast Burritos with Bacon and Crispy Potatoes

Since there are only two of us, I halved the recipe and I should’ve paid closer attention to that since it didn’t cool the pan as much as probably expected, so that things were a bit over done, at least the potatoes. Flipping them at 3 minutes instead of 4, was not soon enough, and there may have been a bit of an over cook on them. Even though, it was pretty good, though clearly not a good for you meal. Other then maybe the process of defrosting the tater tots, I suppose I could’ve done this without that much thought, but that’s not generally the point.

Pasta Frittata with Sausage and Hot Peppers

I am having trouble remembering if I followed step 3, specifically if I added salt to the angel hair pasta, because that is my only complaint about this recipe. It could be that I forgot, which is entirely possible, or there wasn’t enough to make the noodles taste…not under salted. Anyways the fried angel hair pasta made for a pretty and crispy crust, without to much effort. If I forgot to salt it, that would be why it was a bit under salted. I’ll have to make this again (also have 10oz of angel hair pasta left). Maybe more peppers? I also didn’t follow the directions on flipping the frittata, and spilled a bit of oil. I’ll do that next time.

Pork Hot Dogs

Good as always.

2021 - Week 25 Cooking Results

I did not feel that inspired to cook anything this week, at least planning wise, so a bunch of easy things on the docket, completed without much effort or thought. I have still be beating myself and dwelling on Freyja. I am not spiraling, like I sometimes do. But it it is not great. Today, Saturday, I still talked about her in the present tense, but I also talked about her in the past tense.

I started a new batch of elderflower syrup, though it’ll be much weaker in the floral notes as I’m using 30 grams of flowers, as opposed to last year where I used ~90 grams.

~30 grams of elderflowers

Ham, egg and English muffin

Fried ham (gift from work), eggs (I kind of messed these up, didn’t use enough oil in the regular pan), cheese and a toasted English muffin. Good things.

Salad with chicken

Baked off some chicken thighs, put them in the fridge to cool them down a bit then chopped them up for some local greens, topped with some not so local things.

Brats

Good to eat.

Tuna with soy sauce

Yellowfin tuna, marinated for about 5 minutes in some soy sauce, seared, and served with salad.

Veggie Pot Pies

These are from Domestic Bones, they were quite good. It looks like they have some other things, both at the coop and apparently for end of the month delivery at Peace Tree, with some other flavors of hand pies. I do still love me some hand pies form Tami’s tarts, though.

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.