Day 7 - A Little Nausea Does Solve The Whole Processed Foods Problem

OK, for the record, I am a total and complete wimp when it comes to blood, injuries, hospitals, doctors--anything in the "something isn't working correctly" category. I once had to flee a large luncheon (climbing over several older men in the process) because the speaker was discussing eye diseases and even brought slides to show. I stop people from describing their surgeries in detail because I will either throw up or pass out, and both are a real conversation stopper.

So, taking care of a cat who looks like this:
and trying to help him break down the scar tissue enough to be able to move his ankle out of this positionis keeping me pretty thoroughly nauseous--the upside of which is that I don't care what we fix for meals as I might not be able to get them down anyway. Not that we've been eating only questionable food so far--we've actually had steak twice and I've fixed pollo en feo mole verde (which translates loosely as "chicken in ugly green sauce"), but a few meals have been more of a graze than a meal--nuts, cabbage, carrot sticks, and cheese or homemade bread. Remarkably good for us and everything, but not likely to show up in Food and Wine magazine anytime in the near future.

Tomorrow Theo will spend the day in physical therapy, which is a bit of a relief. Today he has rotated between sleeping, licking his leg, doing our little hallway walks as assigned (which probably isn't helping anything as he hops on 3 legs the entire time, but they said to do it so we're doing it) and crying/growling/hissing when he moves his leg too much. As they didn't send home sedatives for either of us, I'm all for having someone else look after him for a day. I think he whines more out of frustration than actual pain, but it's really dreadful either way--especially as I can't make it better.

After today, it was time to use up one of my "cheats:"

Butterscotch mudslide

4 oz Kahlua
4 oz Irish cream
4 oz butterscotch liqueur
Ice (enough to make drink slightly thick)

1. Blend all together. Enjoy.

Theo could have probably used one as well, but he's been on a lot of drugs lately and it seems best not to encourage the habit.

Theo's Cast Came Off Today!!!

On purpose this time--he wasn't pulling another Houdini. The bones have healed, but there's a lot of scar tissue around the joint so right now he can't bend his ankle. You realize what that means, of course..........

Kitty Water Aerobics

His first session is on Thursday. They have promised to allow me to film this. I don't know, could our lives get any weirder?

Day 5 - I Have Just Created The World's Ugliest Sandwich

This is what I served for lunch today:
Yep, it was that color of green. Don't worry--I won't be opening a restaurant anytime in the near future.

It STARTED as an attempt to make a sandwich spread using some of the tomatoes I dried last summer. I rehydrated them and put them in the food processor with a few cloves of garlic. Now, when it's going to be cooked one can get away with using more garlic than is strictly called for. When it isn't going to be cooked "a few cloves" of garlic can clear one's sinuses for at least a week. So, I decided to add a few things to the garlic mixture to sort of even it out. Olives, spinach, carrots (which was a bad idea as they never really got thoroughly shredded and were just odd crunchy bites), onions, parsley....I think there were a few other items, but you get the idea. It was still overpowering, so I thawed out some turkey left over from Christmas dinner, and rather than try to guess whether or not the spread would overpower the turkey in the sandwich after all was said & done, I threw the turkey into the food processor as well. The turkey gave the already atrocious looking goop a new and relatively unappetizing texture, but it did mellow the garlic. And once it was spread on homemade bread and a little extra sharp cheddar was added, it was surprisingly good.

I doubt I'll ever be able to recreate this at any future date, but really, how many times in your life would you want to be presented with a sandwich that looked like that?

Two "Cheats" A Week

As last night was the end of the first week of the Year of No Processed Foods--albeit a short week--we celebrated with premixed pina coladas. As we've already had hot cereal 3 out of 4 mornings this year already, our "cheats" might actually be more like bribery. Not that hot cereal isn't good for us--it's 10 different grains roughly ground--but it always unnerves me when I see what happens to it if the bowls aren't rinsed out immediately. The spackle-like substance it turns into always makes me wonder about my insides. Does it do that in there? Am I spackling my small intestine?

Today's lunch is another experiment--garbanzo beans cooked in pumpkin puree, canned tomatoes, and allowable chicken stock with brown rice and diced green chiles. Obviously, I am totally making it up as I go, but when you start your day eating spackle, the culinary bar is set very, very low.......

I Just Had To Share This One

I get a lot of people visiting this blog looking for ways to cope with hostile or malicious ex wives--as well as some strange, unrelated searches that my blog happens to stumble into (i.e., Canadian Female Impersonators), but I had a hit today from the following search words:

is it appropriate to buy the wife and ex wife the same gift?

I can't believe there is someone foolish enough to even ask that question. So, short answer: NO. Long answer: as someone dealing with an ex wife who is still SO obsessed about her ex husband that she not only follows my blog two YEARS after Andy & I got married and more than 5 YEARS after their divorce, she's crazy enough to send printouts from my blog to our attorney to document how crazy and obsessed she is, I cannot imagine a single instance when it would be even vaguely appropriate to give your ex wife a gift, much less the same one you are giving your current wife. As our crazy ex would do well to finally realize, when marriages end, they are over. Finished. The other person may indeed care NOTHING about you after divorce. In fact, that's highly likely. Even if children are involved, caring about the child does not translate into caring about the ex.

No wonder so many second marriages fail. Buying them the same gift, indeed. That would be the fast track to divorce.

THE CAST COMES OFF ON TUESDAY!!!

If you think time is passing too quickly, try living with a cat in a cast for 6 weeks.

The Year of No Processed Foods - Day One

Forget December 21st--today is the longest day of the year. Today we are 365 days away from packaged and processed foods. I shall dream of Diet Pepsi tonight.

For breakfast we had toast (with real butter) and coffee. Lunch had to be a bit creative as I have been on a bit of a kitchen strike since the 3 Christmas soirees we hosted--which includes no trips to the grocery store. Andy had made rye bread in the bread machine overnight, so I split a chicken breast, cooked it with some onion, then broke out some of my green tomato chutney and a tiny bit of extra sharp cheddar cheese, and piled everything on toasted rye bread. For a desperation scrounge, it was a really good sandwich if I do say so myself. Which worked out well as I did not have a back-up plan as I usually try to do when I'm experimenting wildly. I briefly flirted with the idea of trying to incorporate some pumpkin puree in there somewhere, but thought better of it. We'll save that sort of thing when it's been a month or two without soda or pretzels and we're starting to have hallucinations.....