Matzoh ball soup

Steve is Jewish; I am not. Early in our marriage, I decided to cook some of the things he grew up with though I drew a line at gefilte fish and beet borscht. I made him some matzoh balls and served them on a plate. I was then told these things are to be served in soup.

If I make turkey, I end up making broth for matzoh ball soup which was what happened this weekend. I filled a huge cauldron with freshly prepared broth seasoned with dill, sage, carrots, onions and celery with 3 recipes worth of matzoh balls and a half pound of egg noodles. Maya now is a fan of matzoh ball soup.

It was cold today yet calm and dry so off I went on my run. It does make me feel so much better about life. I was so, so lazy yesterday that I didn't even leave the house. My excuse was that I am nursing a cold but it is a very mild one. I did yet another photobook (one more to go before these silly groupon deals expire) and watched TV movies: Tortilla Soup (cute Mexican version of Eat, Drink, Man, Woman) and The Girl, a version of Hitchcock's obsession with Tippi Hendren.

Tonight: BC yoga and a dinner with a friend.

The Sandwich Dilemma

It will take two sandwiches to sate you as you are very hungry. You have two sandwiches: one especially tasty and the other so-so. Which do you eat first?

As hunger is the best seasoning ( I remember that Josh was so hungry that a dusty, limp race cake from a stranger's backpack was looking mighty good), perhaps the boring sandwich would taste better than it really is so eat that first.

Or if it's a choice between a vegetable and a sandwich, perhaps the  more nutritious yet not as tasty thing should be consumed first. Isn't this why desserts are served last?

Or if it is good wine versus mediocre wine, drink the good first. Maybe you will be too drunk to notice how mediocre the second wine is.

I read of this in an economist column recently in the WSJ. He extended the analogy to whether one should have children. Let's say you have a certain budget for food. You could have so-so food most of the time and then splurge or you could eat better than average food most of the time with no special meals. Which type of person would be most suited to raising children?

The first, in his opinion. Raising children can be boring, annoying, tiring and not always enjoyable. But then you have special moments that you can only experience raising children. These may be few and far between but it makes the whole experience worthwhile. If you expect a constant rate of happiness, then maybe raising kids isn't for you.

Who wears the dress best?

I didn't save many of Naomi's clothes. The few clothes I did save, I can't find. But in the garage, I had a box of clothes that I was saving for a friend who adopted 6 kids, 4 of them little girls. I sent her everything less than Size 4 but I have a had a few size 4 clothes left. Naomi is 3 in the picture on the left; Maya is a full year younger.

A lazy day. I will give my cold, a very mild one, a day to disappear before going out in the snow.

TV chemo

Naomi with blonde streaks. She is never happy with her red hair but  at least this is better than her attempts to dye her hair dark brown. Steve is trying out his new camera phone

I have been watched Parenthood with interest particularly the storyline about Kristina's breast cancer. I understand that it is not much of a story when someone has chemo and then experiences absolutely no side effects but her lying on the bathroom floor covered with vomit while her autistic son demands this and that seemed unrealistic. Outright vomiting is rare with all the new antinausea drugs though it is true that most patients feel queasy and somewhat crappy. Her vomitting is ameliorated by marijuana  not the first thing people would try. The biggest danger to chemo patients is infection due to their immune system being shut down This can be life threatening. I am afraid that patients about to start chemo will be unnecessarily scared by watching the last episode. The episode did get it right showing Kristina trying to do all the normal things for her family without considering that she needs to step back and maybe not volunteer to keep a high needs child for the weekend so his parents can party in Vegas. And where were all her family while she was reeling on the floor? It did address how upset she was that her selfish mom couldn't find any time for her and how much that hurt.

I assume the next episode will feature the hair loss. 

Cold, windy, dark and gray: why I hate November. We even had a dusting of snow. Still the wind died down somewhat so I could get a run in. No icy puddles could form in all that wind.

A change in the wind

The temperatures are quickly dropping; the winds are picking up. Our brief warm spell is broken. I got out and ran this morning before the conditions became too challenging.

Thanksgiving was its usual hectic self. The menu over the years has not changed much as the kids look forward to certain dishes. When the kids were little, I would serve this concoction, ambrosia, a mix of coconut, mandarin oranges, marshmallows and sour cream. I replaced this with a pear, cranberry chevre salad with a pear champagne vinaigrette. This was not well received though Josh's friend seemed to like it.
Josh made candied sweet potatoes; Shanna made pecan pie and mashed potatoes. The friend supplied some of the wine. Naomi did general kitchen chores such as peeling potatoes and ripping up bread for the stuffing. Maya tore up some bread too.

The rest of the menu:
Turkey and gravy with bread stuffing. The stuffing is a simple mix of celery, onions, butter, bread and spices. Addition of cornbread, nuts, dried cherries, dried cranberries, all tried in the past, meet with displeasure.

Cauliflower au gratin. This didn't make it to the table. It was placed in the oven to keep warm then forgotten about until today along with a second dish of yams.

Sparkling cranberry and cherry juice. No one eats cranberry sauce here and not everyone is a drinker.

Crescent rolls from a can: This task I set Naomi to do as she somehow polished off 5 cans of these during our trip. But she said it was impossible as there were no perforations for her to use. Steve had bought the kind that is used for not separating. The end result was none of the rolls were the same size or shape. The little kids didn't care. Danny refers to these as 'special bread'.

Green bean casserole:  Who doesn't have this? I had numerous reminders..make sure that you...To class it up a bit, I used portabella mushroom soup. Sadly I cooked the top onions too long. Too many dishes for me to keep track of.

Ginger pear crisp from fresh, tasty pears. I thought this turned out especially well but maybe two desserts were too much. No pumpkin pie, a disappointment to some of the crowd. Steve and I don't eat it and we have to deal with the left overs. All those candied yams should be similar enough.

Missing giblets: What happened to them? I performed a disgusting body cavity search for them. As I have no more animals to feed them to, I would have thrown them away anyway.

So lots of leftovers. Lots of running around on my part. I tried to squeeze a bike ride in before I had to do my slicing and dicing chores to get that turkey in such that it would be done by 3. Our dining room is too small for all the adults that now make up our family and we were down one. Tessa and Maya sat on laps. The boys had one of their three Thanksgiving meals already and were happy to be some place else. Next year, Shanna will have a house and have dinner.

But I think we all enjoyed being together, which is a blessing. I do love it that all my kids live so close and I can watch the babies grow up. Tessa especially is changing at least in the tricks she can do. She happily was passed from lap to lap yesterday during dinner.

The Box Office

Tuesday funny:
While the C-5 was turning over its engines, a female crewman gave the

G.I.s on board the usual information regarding seat belts, emergency exits, etc.

Finally, she said, 'Now sit back and enjoy your trip while your captain, Judith Campbell, and crew
take you safely to Afghanistan '

An old Master Sergeant sitting in the eighth row thought to himself,
'Did I hear her right? Is the captain a woman? '

When the attendant came by he said 'Did I understand you right? Is the captain a woman?'
'Yes,'! said the attendant, 'In fact, this entire crew is female.' 

'My God,' he said, 'I wish I had two double scotch and sodas. I don't know what to think
with only women up there in the cockpit.'

'That's another thing, Sergeant,' said the crew member, 'We No Longer Call It The Cockpit'
'It's The Box Office.'

What if? what if? What if?

This cycled through my brain for the past few days but particularly last night. In the affected breast is a hard round mass approximately the size of a cue ball or maybe just a little bit smaller. Is is getting bigger? Could something be hiding underneath it? Are these shooting pains in my chest and ribs 'something' other than random misfirings of radiation damaged nerves?

On the mammogram today, this mass took up a good quarter of what remains of my breast. But compared to last year's scan, it pretty much looks the same though it took a few painful (and costly since my insurance doesn't cover diagnostic scans until a high level is reached) to get the correct angle in which the two scans could be directly compared. I have a giant seroma that still has not shrunk. Harmless but by film, looks like something scary (by ultrasound, it looks harmless).

Good news. I have now graduated to a screening mammogram (paid for) versus the diagnostic one.

I took the earliest appointment possible so I wouldn't have to deal with 'back-ups'. I had an appointment later with my oncologist. I look healthy. No signs of anything worrisome. Good.

The mammogram looks for only regional recurrences; it is up to me to report indications of distal recurrences. The chances of either are becoming much, much smaller though I am still vulnerable to new primaries.

I later received a flu shot in the infusion area. Bad memories there. I found a former colleague there translating for her father, the patient.

The night before I left for CA, there was a loud knock on the door. As I was alone, I was a bit scared but it turns out the book on Triple Negative cancer that I helped edit was sent to me. Within, this blog was mentioned. Maybe the incensed reader who made a very negative comment about this blog 2 weeks ago got on from that book. In which case, I am sorry that this entire blog isn't about cancer. Read the first year when I first was dealing with it instead of this once a year scare.

Surviving Triple-Negative  Breast Cancer: Hope, Treatment, and Recovery
by Patricia Prijatel
Anyone who is first diagnosed with TNBC should read this. Pat is a journalism professor and former TNBC patient. Although she does not have a scientific background, she carefully reviews all the current literature concerning TNBC. Her blog is Positives about Negatives, the title chosen to defuse the extreme negative tone that the popular press and even the medical literature take with their dismal, poor prognosis, deadly, difficult to treat descriptions of this disease which unnecessarily scare the newly diagnosed.