Hearing, Dougherty’s, Killer T-Cells, Fresh Corn.

I finally got to see the new office of our doctor, from what Matt said I was expecting a much bigger place, not that large after all. Mainly we went for an audio check up. We were about due for that anyway. Turns out our hearing is slightly impaired due to our ages, but nothing major although we would do less well in crowds. If we were often in public situations we might need hearing assistance, but when we are predominantly at home, nothing necessary at the moment. I enquired and they showed me a current hearing aid, boy are they ever tiny, completely disappear into the ear. The audiologist’s assistant was wearing one as a demo and one could hardly see it. Odd how much on a par our hearing is as a couple.

On our way home from the doctors I spotted a truck selling fresh corn so we stopped and I bought myself a couple – Matt prefers his cooked on the barbecue but of course we don’t have one. I ate them for supper and they were delicious. I hope the truck is there again for a while, I will be going back if he is there. They were really sweet although I have never had corn as sweet as once when I was in NC on vacation and there was a type called How Sweet it Is, it surely was. If you are local and interested, the truck was on the corner of King and River.

By the way, I don’t know if you saw, the Dougherty brothers and sister were finally caught. They were found in Colorado and were chased by the  cops;  firing their guns back at the cop cars they finally wrecked their car, the two boys were caught quickly but the girl ran off firing an AK47 at the cops. If you are interested click on the Dougherty Gang to read more about them.

An optimistic report in the fight against cancer. Researchers have done a small test, three people, with T-cells, basically they remove  some cells from your body, change them to killer cells and then reintroduce them to your system. They had trouble getting funding to try this out, but managed to raise enough for this small trial and as the results were so spectacular they feel they may be able to raise more money to do extensive testing. Read more here at Killer T-Cells.

I like healthy vegetable stews like this one below and will certainly try it, maybe later in the year though.

Chickpea, Lentil and Vegetable Stew

By Dana Treat
WebMD Recipe from Foodily.com

Adapted from Bon Appétit recipe

I served this with brown rice but it is also good with white rice (I would use basmati) and also with steamed quinoa. If you are going to make this ahead of time, wait to add the spinach until you reheat it so it retains the lovely green color.

Ingredients

Olive Oil
1 large onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, minced
3 tbsp. tomato paste
2 tsp. ground coriander
1 tsp. caraway seeds
½ tsp. cayenne pepper
2 cups light vegetable broth
2 cups water
1 cup dried lentils
1 15-oz. can chickpeas, rinsed and drained
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced ¼-inch thick
1 cup frozen lima beans or edamame
½ cup chopped parsley
10 oz. fresh baby spinach
lemon wedges for garnish and seasoning

Instructions

Heat a Dutch oven over medium heat. Add just enough olive oil to coat the bottom and then add the onions. Cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally, then add the garlic. Cook another 3 minutes. Add the tomato paste and all the spices; stir 1 minute. Stir in broth, water, and lentils. Increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Reduce heat, cover, and simmer until lentils are almost tender, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes.

Add chickpeas, carrots, lima beans, and half the parsley. Cover; simmer until carrots are very tender, about 20 minutes. This dish can be made one day ahead of time. Cover and chill. Bring to a simmer before continuing. Refrigerate remaining parsley for garnish.

Stir spinach into stew in batches until wilted. Season with salt and pepper. Ladle into bowls with rice. Garnish each bowl with remaining parsley and serve with lemon wedges.

Total Servings: 4

Nutritional Information Per Serving

Calories: 342.8
Carbohydrates: 61.1 g
Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
Fat: 2.5 g
Saturated Fat: 0.4 g
Fibre: 24.6 g
Sodium: 313.1 mg
Protein: 22.3 g

Have a great day

How Odd, Gold Medal

Suddenly my YouTube requests have come through, about a week or so since I asked them to post to my blog. Weird. We were delighted to hear this morning that Carol Hunyh of Canada had won a gold medal in wrestling - at long last. Canadian athletes have been doing well for themselves, but not well enough for the Olympics. Several Canadian records have been broken, but unfortunately it doesn't count. Matt keeps reminding me that although we are a vast country, we actually don't have that many people in it. Another young lady got a bronze in wrestling today too, so everyone at home is very excited. I discovered this morning that all the medals in Beijing have a piece of jade on them, each piece being different of course. Canada also got a silver in the two men rowing competition. Picture from CBC.ca Needless to say, I watched Michael Phelps win his seventh medal last night in the Butterfly. He won it by a fingernail, literally. 1/100th of a second. This morning I am glued to the TV as I want to see the 100 metre dash which is getting quite exciting. I watched several of the heats last night so would like to watch the final. Looks like the Jamaicans are going to win toppling records left right and centre. When Matt was shopping, he couldn't find any ripe tomatoes, they were all quite green. Fine for cooking but not for salads. So yesterday morning he went to the farm and got some, theirs still aren't great as they lost so many in a hail storm. However, he also bought me some corn. I had a couple of cobs last night, were they sweet, absolutely delicious. Yum, yum, yum. I have two more cobs, but the day after they won't be quite as delicious. If only I could still get locally grown asparagus I would be in total heaven. I am also in the middle of boiling oranges for my Turkish Orange Cake which I will be making later on today. It has the advantage of being gluten free and my friend's kid, who will be here for dinner tomorrow, is not allowed gluten at the moment. He doesn't have celiac disease luckily. I posted the recipe once before, November 24, 2007. I have two, one without chocolate and another from Nigella Lawson which does have chocolate. I haven't, surprisingly, tried that one. Nigella's Chocolate Orange Cake Serves: 8 or more (its quite heavy) picture from My Recipes.com Source: Nigella Lawson 1 large or 2 small, thin-skinned oranges 6 eggs 1 heaped tsp baking powder 50 g cocoa 200 g ground almonds 250 g caster sugar Half tsp bicarbonate of soda Put the whole orange in a pan with cold water, bring to the boil and cook for 2 hours, or until soft. Drain. When cool, halve the orange and remove big pips. Pulp everything in a food processor. Preheat oven to gas mark 4 (180c). Add the eggs, baking powder, sugar, bicarbonate, almonds and cocoa to the orange in the processor. Run until you have a cohesive cake mixture. Alternatively, chop the fruit finely by hand and add the eggs one by one, alternating with spoons of almonds and cocoa, then the oranges. (Tip: Have another bowl prepared to put the mixture into, unless you have a professional size food processor) Pour and scrape into a buttered, 20 cm springform cake tin and bake for 1 hour. Have a great weekend.

Automatic Phrases, Produce and Magic

I mentioned on Saturday that this is a holiday weekend, Civic Holiday. However, it could be any holiday or no holiday at all, it makes absolutely no difference to us other than that stores and banks which are normally open might be closed . Therefore I get a little irritated (comes with old age you know) when people ask me if I have plans for the holiday, or did I have a nice holiday. They don't think; I am always on holiday these days. I might get very bored with being retired, but I am still "on holiday" to all intents and purposes. Even my doc asked me if I had plans for the weekend and I know she knows we are retired. Not that we ever did things for the long weekends anyway, too many other people are out and about and we are not good with crowds. We always took our vacations in the spring or fall (autumn to you Europeans). Admittedly we might leave home on Labour Day weekend to take advantage of the extra day for our two week trip, or something similar but we generally avoided destinations to which everyone else went. From 1980 on it was usually North Carolina we headed to anyway as we had a mobile home in which to spend our vacations. Sunday we went to a farm especially for tomatoes, they didn't have any due to the bad storm a week ago, all damaged by hail apparently. I did buy myself some corn though and then ate it for lunch, it was gorgeous. Two cobs, 3 minutes in the microwave wrapped in grease proof or waxed paper. Roll each cob in the butter and.... heaven. There is nothing to beat corn fresh out of the field, cooked and eaten within hours. Marilyn mentioned it being ripened on the roof when she lived in South Africa, I have never eaten it that way, but you sure would have to go a long way to beat my lunch. I finished my Rules of Deception and have now started a new series of books by Katherine Kerr, the first being Dagger Spell. You may recall I got a book from the library the other day and discovered it was actually the last book in a long series. I took it back and got the first two books which begin the series. I have been reading a conversation with Glenda Larke (Tropic Temper, this page) about the different types of magic used. I admit it is something I hadn't really thought about, but authors come up with the most incredibly diverse ways of giving their characters power. This book talks of dweomer which Wikipedia tells me is and old English word for witchcraft which derived from an old Norse word meaning dwarf talk. I recently read a book where they called it geas, but that is really not the same thing - well from the original definition of being a compulsion or prohibition. Glenda has used two different forms of magic in her trilogies The Isles of Glory and The Mirage Makers and is apparently using another form of magic for her upcoming trilogy The Time of Random Rain. We had something different, to us, for supper last night. Fried ravioli. Matt came across the recipe on Rachael Ray's TV programme. In fact when researching on the net I discovered quite a few recipes for it, but we had never tried it before. I don't have a proper recipe, but it is good and can be served as an appetizer or as a main course. Fried Ravioli 1 jar roasted red peppers Tomatoes, chopped, we used a small can Chili flakes Garlic Salt and Pepper 1 packet fresh ravioli (we had cheese & spinach) 1 egg breadcrumbs Parmesan Cheese First make a sauce - basically a Marinara. Matt whizzed the first 5 ingredients in the blender and then put the results in a saucepan to heat. He then dipped the ravioli in beaten egg and then the breadcrumbs into which the cheese had already been mixed. He fried them in a little olive oil until they were golden and served them with the sauce on top. For an appetizer, you can serve the sauce as a dipping medium. If you want, you can make your own ravioli which would have a more noticeable filling, but we just bought the fresh from the grocery store. You could serve these with a side salad. Have a great day.

Show, Produce and Mennonite Farms

Thoroughly enjoyed A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. It started off a bit slow after the opening number, Comedy Tonight; you can't go wrong with that. It gradually got funnier and funnier. I am very glad I went to see it. My friends picked me up and we had a pretty good run to Drayton although when they dropped me at the theatre, they had a bit of trouble parking. We weren't sitting together as I had booked way after their tickets were bought. I could see them, so I wasn't that far away. Once again I bought 50/50 draw tickets and didn't win. Nothing unusual about that. They have made a few changes to the Drayton Festival Theatre since last I was there. Not sure where the orchestra actually is any more, but you can see them on a TV screen at the base of the balcony, not that I bothered to look. On the way back, we stopped at a farm produce stall and I bought some cherries, blueberries, tomatoes and a couple of stalks of corn (Matt doesn't eat it). The corn were rather small and when I ate them later they turned out to be a lot smaller than I realised. Oh well, they tasted good. Will get some more when we are out shopping. I have always wanted to eat corn until I got sick of it, unfortunately, unlike asparagus, it isn't a slimming food. I have probably mentioned that some of the best corn I ever ate was on a visit to North Carolina about 6 years ago. The corn was called "How Sweet it Is" and was absolutely delicious. I wish I could get some more, but I have never found it since, either there or up here. I only got to eat two pieces of that because Matt was rushing me off somewhere else. Probably just as well, it was soooooo good. Blueberries are really good for you as well as tasting good. Matt likes them on his cereal, but I would rather eat them loose. The cherries I bought are pretty good too, haven't yet tried the tomatoes. One thing that really impressed me on our way to Drayton today was how well cared for the farm buildings were. You frequently see somewhat dilapidated barns, but not today. I am assuming they are mostly Mennonite farms, but they were a delight to look at. My assumption came from the fact that we saw Mennonite buggies all over the place and the farm where we shopped was definitely Mennonite. Farming is not supposed to be a profitable endeavour any more, but these farms certainly looked prosperous. Maybe because, as I understand it, Mennonites don't spend their money on all the gadgets and fripperies the rest of us buy. Just not having to buy gasoline must help a bundle in this day and age. I don't know how much it costs to keep horses of course, but I bet its not as much as keeping a car. To me they are a fascinating people and I have a lot of admiration for their way of life. This morning there was a report on the huge profits made by gasoline companies, way up in the billions. We poor souls are being stiffed at the pumps with gas prices rising higher and higher followed, of course, by food prices and anything else you want to buy. One expert assured us, when explaining all the figures, that gas companies make less per dollar than companies such as MacDonalds???? The main focus of the report this morning was how much gas companies are spending on alternate fuels, Exxon spends the most being a little more than 2% of their profits. 2% ain't too darned much and the other companies spend even less. It was pointed out that even a small percentage of the profits is quite a lot of money, maybe, but more would help. A price cut at the pumps would be nice too. I know they have a responsibility to their share holders, but presumably their shareholders buy gas and food etc. too. I guess I should produce a Mennonite recipe, but I don't have any that I know areauthentic. However, I have seen a reference to Dirt Cake a few times lately and thought I would share my recipe for it. I have made this several times for families with kids having a special party, I used to buy a plastic truck or something similar in which to serve it. This recipe makes a heck of a lot of cake. I actually got it from a neighbour in North Carolina so I have no idea where it originally came from. As for any Europeans, I don't know if you even have Oreo cookies - they are a chocolate cookie with cream in the middle and one of the most popular cookies you can think of over here. You can serve the cake in a (clean) flower pot with edible flowers planted in it, or the gummy worms (same consistency as jelly babies) all over it. Be creative. Dirtcake 1/2 stick butter, softened 8 oz pkg cream cheese 1 c confectioner's sugar 3-1/2 c milk 2 pkg (7 oz total) instant vanilla or chocolate pudding 12 oz whipped topping - thawed 2 pkg (40 oz total) Oreo cookies crushed to dirt consistency in processer Cream butter, cheese and sugar. In separate bowl mix milk, pudding and whipped topping. Combine mixtures. Put 1/3 of crushed cookies in bottom of plastic sand pail, flower pot or kid's wheelbarrow (about 2 qt capacity). Add half of pudding mixture, top with layer of cookies then remaining pudding cover with final layer of cookies on top. Decorate with gummie worms, plastic greens or flowers. Serve with a plastic shovel or spade. Have a great day.