Shopping, Bowling, Surgery,

Matt went to do his Wednesday shop on Thursday morning. He said the store was in a mess so couldn't find most of the things he wanted. There weren't even any bananas in the store. We went in on our way home from bowling to get everything left out. One thing I did want was frozen Yorkshire Puddings as I am planning a roast beef for Saturday. We were both running around the store looking for them and finally were directed to the bakery. I then remembered, that's where I found them last time. Although I had forgotten. They used to be somewhere else in the store. Can't have roast beef without Yorkshire pud after all and these days I am way too lazy to make it myself. Mind you my mother reckoned I made lousy Yorkshire puds. Mine were too crispy which is how I personally like them, but......

League bowled on Wednesday and didn't bowl very well. Bowled again on Thursday and had a couple of excellent games. Typical when it doesn't matter. Matt is having another bad week and is a tad down about it. Not knowing if and when I will have to stop bowling for an operation or something, I decided to save this game for a bowl ahead. Which reminds me, I checked that the surgeon has had my referral. His office has but he is on vacation, naturally! The secretary said depending on the seriousness he was working on 2 months at the moment. With any luck, he will consider my blocked carotid a reasonably urgent case.

I love the recipes I get from Mushrooms Canada. Here is the latest one.

Ginger Wasabi Pickled Mushrooms 

by Family Feedbag

Yield: Two 500 mL (2 cup) jars 

Make these pickled mushrooms in a ginger wasabi brine ahead of time, letting the flavours mingle before eating. Use them to add a touch of drama to an appetizer table or Sunday brunch.

Ingredients

1 ½ lb (675 g) white mushrooms
2 bird’s eye chili peppers
2 bay leaves
1 tsp (5 mL) yellow mustard seeds
1 ¼ cups (300 mL) unseasoned rice vinegar
¼ cup (60 mL) soy sauce
1 tsp (5 mL) sesame oil
1 tsp (5 mL) wasabi powder
1 tsp (5 mL) grated fresh ginger

Method
1. Rinse the mushrooms well under cool running water. Leave the small ones whole, chopping the larger ones into bite-size pieces.
2. Bring a large saucepan of water to a boil over high heat. Add the mushrooms and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally Drain (you can keep the mushroom water for making soups or noodle dishes).
3. Meantime, in each of two 500 mL (2 cup) jars, add 1 bay leaf, 1 bird’s eye chili and ½ tsp (2 mL) mustard seeds (if you’d prefer, you can combine the ingredients in one 1 L (4 cup) jar or a medium mixing bowl instead). Distribute the mushrooms equally into the jars.
4. In a small mixing bowl, whisk together the rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, wasabi and ginger. Pour over the mushrooms.
5. Cover and refrigerate for up to 1 week.

Have a great day
 

Report

I’m not sure this will be much of a blog, but for all those who wished me well and were thinking of me today, I got back home around 6:45 p.m. having left home at 5:30 p.m. If you aren’t really interested in my hospital day, just skip this blog.

As you will guess we were at the hospital in good time and in fact they took me along to the operating room early as well.  One nurse brought out a form for me to check what I had written, I told her she was joking I had left my glasses behind and had no idea what was written on the paper so she read it to me and asked me to verify my signature. After squinting really hard I finally figured it could be mine!!! The anaesthetist, by the way, had the coldest hands of anyone I have ever known.

Back in recovery by around 10, I was all done, but my back was killing me and I had to put up with it. I had to lie flat. With some slight changes plus some Tylenol 3, which helped a bit but not a great deal, that was it until 2 when I was allowed to get up and go to the bathroom. First time since 7:30, I just couldn’t perform flat on my back. Anyway, getting up helped my back. 

Later in the afternoon it was pointed out to me that it was snowing, didn’t realise there was a window across the other side of the day surgery. Boy was it coming down. Matt was supposed to pick me up at 5 and got there about 6. The roads were un-funny. Traffic was really creeping along. I was worried when Matt was so late because anything could have happened. Took us an age to get home again. Really had quite a lot of snow. Monday the forecast is for summerlike weather Matt tells me.

Finally did get home and had supper, every time I move I have to press hard on the insertion site. This year they were unable to put in a plug so it took 6 hours to ensure that the bleeding had properly stopped, actually I did start bleeding again earlier in the day so I was delayed leaving the hospital.

My thanks to everyone for their well wishes. In my 6 or 7 hours sitting doing nothing, I wished I had you all with me to chat. I didn’t take a book as last time I was something of a zombie all day. Not this time, had lots of wakeful hours.

I am now supposed to rest for 2-3 days. At least I can use my laptop or read.

Hope you have a great weekend.

That Green Stuff, Costco, Surgery, Bowling.

I said we were going to the doctor’s on Monday (for a change) we then went to Barrie’s Asparagus where Tim called me over to see the beginning process for making asparagus flour. I could have cried, pounds and pounds of fresh asparagus being chopped up with a shovel. I ate a couple of spears before they could go in the mix. In fact the flour, which I mentioned last year, is then used for all kinds of foods including asparagus flavoured pasta and asparagus tortilla chips to name a couple. If you are interested you can got to my blog written in June last year. He said the asparagus he was chopping that day would be flour that night. Pretty fast process I guess. I asked if he had any pix and he said there would be a video on Facebook. If you are a member of Facebook you can see the video on their Facebook page. I was actually hoping for a still.

After Barrie’s we dropped in at Costco, bought the place and left. Well it does seem like it, we haven’t been there for ages and our freezer was empty. We bumped into a friend and whilst I was chatting Matt carried on shopping. He picked up some fillet steaks and a man proceeded to tell him how much cheaper it was to buy a whole fillet at $99 a piece. Fine if you happen to have $99 extra. We spent enough money as it was buying various cuts of beef, chicken breasts with and without, salmon steaks, etc. etc. Adding another $100 to that wasn’t needed thank you. I do like the meat at Costco, it may not be as inexpensive as we can get in our local supermarket, but it is wonderful quality. If I had the money I could spend a lot more, but sadly I don’t. Maybe we shouldn’t have stopped buying lottery tickets !!! We ate a couple of the salmon steaks on Tuesday night, they were delicious. Very good salmon. A friend buys sides of salmon there and the two or three I have shared have been excellent.

Bowling yesterday, me, not Matt of course. I had one very good game, one lousy game and one not bad, so I guess I can’t complain. In the summer league we have team points etc. which makes it a bit more fun, somewhat competitive.

Today, whilst you are reading this, Matt is in the local hospital having his Kyphoplasty so I don’t know where I will be. He has to be there at 11:30 a.m. in case they can do it earlier than scheduled if things go quickly. Great if that happens. The surgeon’s secretary said so far they are not that busy today so here’s hoping. Whether I stay or not will depend on the availability of a parking spot not too far from the main doors.

For a change, a nice creamy dessert.

Cream Cheese Almond Bars

Contributed to Cooking.com By: Cheryl, 24 bars

I originally bought some of these at a bake sale (minus the toasted almonds) and couldn't rest until I found a recipe that emulated the total deliciousness I found that day!
INGREDIENTS

Crust:

1 c. butter

1/2 c. powdered sugar

2 c. flour

Filling:

8 oz. Cream cheese, softened

1/2 c. sugar

2 eggs

1 tsp. Almond extract

Frosting:

1 1/2 c. powdered sugar

1 1/2 T. Milk

1/4 c. butter, softened

1 tsp. Almond extract

1/2 c. Toasted, sliced almonds

DIRECTIONS

Crust: Cut butter into dry ingredients and pat into 9 x 13 pan. Bake at 350 for 20 - 25 minutes.

Filling: Mix sugar and cream cheese with mixer until well creamed. Beat in Eggs and almond extract until fluffy. Pour over crust while still hot. Bake at 350 for 15 - 20 minutes. Cool completely.

Frosting: Cream sugar and butter, add milk and almond extract, mix well. Spread evenly on baked, cooled filling. Sprinkle toasted almonds on top.

Have a great day

Movie, Angioplasty, Stupid Question.

I downloaded Billy Elliot from iTunes (rental) as our granddaughter recently took part in the show. Of course what I actually saw was not the musical, so I will have to wait and see that later. Bearing in mind the progress of the film, I can’t imagine it as a musical – the background is of striking miners in the UK and consequently a fair amount of poverty plus a conviction on the part of most of the cast that if you wanted to be a ballet dancer you must be gay and all real boys should want to do was box, play soccer, wrestle or something, certainly not dance. I am not perfectly sure I hadn’t seen the movie before, but if so it was quite a while back. I was a tad disappointed at the end when Billy was shown at the Haymarket Theatre in London, I would have liked to have seen more of that performance. The musical is on in Toronto at the moment, hopefully it will be staged in Kitchener’s Centre in the Square and I can go see it.

I finally heard from the vascular surgeon yesterday, it is only 7 months since I saw him, bloody ridiculous, but Guelph Hospital only allows 4 angioplasties a month for vascular problems. Alright for them, but what about those of us who can hardly walk. I feel sorry for some people who have even more problems than I do not least of which are open sores which won’t heal. I don’t understand leaving the problem (blockages in the vascular system) until it gets to that stage. However, the upshot is, I am definitely scheduled for June 15 at 8 a.m. As a friend commented on Facebook, I might be able to walk along the beach when I go down to NC in September.

I heard a silly thing on GMA today, it was a father/grandfather being interviewed in a witness box. The lawyer asked if he had smelled an odour coming from the car, he replied yes. The lawyer then asked “was it the odour of a decaying human corpse?” How the heck would he, or anyone else, know? Have most of us ever smelled such a thing? I certainly haven’t so I wouldn’t have a clue if and when I did. Luckily when I worked in a funeral home, where you might encounter that odour now and again, I had lost my sense of smell, but for most people they would never come across such a smell. Stupid. I understand it is a very powerful odour, but if you had never encountered it before, how could you possibly know what it was?

Tonight we are going to a friend’s home for dinner so obviously I have no idea what we will be eating. Makes a nice change though, I sometimes think deciding what to eat is much harder than making it.

This side dish from Kraft looked appealing to me and is relatively simple to do. Vitamin C (obtainable in peppers) is also very good for the skin.

Zesty Grilled Veggies

Kraft Kitchens

8 servings

4 zucchini (1-1/2 lb.), cut diagonally into 1/2-inch-thick slices

3 each red and yellow peppers (1-3/4 lb.), cut into 1/2-inch-wide strips

1/4 cup KRAFT Zesty Italian Dressing

1/4 cup KRAFT Grated Parmesan Cheese

HEAT grill to medium heat.

PLACE vegetables in grill basket.

GRILL 10 min. or until crisp-tender, turning occasionally. Place in large bowl.

ADD dressing; toss to coat. Sprinkle with cheese.

Kraft Kitchens Tips

How to Grill Without a Grill Basket

Cover grill grate with large sheet of heavy-duty foil before heating grill as directed. Spread vegetables onto foil. Grill as directed, stirring occasionally.

How to Buy Peppers

Look for peppers with very bright colors and a firm thick flesh. Refrigerate unwashed peppers in a plastic bag for up to 2 weeks.

Have a great weekend