A Quote and Thanksgiving

I'm not much of one for quotes but sometimes things stand out, like this one from A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness:

"Marthe belonged to the sustenance school of crisis management", location 5379-5385, Kindle version.

I love that!! It stands out because I can relate. When a crisis comes along, if I'm not the primary sufferer then my job is to make sure everyone is fed. That doesn't mean I necessarily cook, sometimes I do, but sometimes I orchestrate things, like sending someone out for take out, or calling for the pizza. I also grocery shop; I'm really good at grocery shopping. Whatever it takes, I make sure there's food for everyone because if you're going through a stressful event you need to eat. (Just don't send me to pick up the take out; I HATE getting take out orders.)

Now here's a picture of a very special meal, our Thanksgiving dinner. It was delicious! I didn't cook all of it like my grandmother used to do, or even close to all of it, but I coordinated our efforts so no one person had to do too much yet we all contributed and had a fantastic meal. (And yes, those are my silly little white Corelle bowls, which I love, on the red stoneware. I never bought bowls to go with the plates so I had to make do! Well, at least the white and red look pretty together.)

It's Like Magic!!

I've written a couple of posts about having anemia. What a pain in the neck it's been!! I don't know how long my iron levels were low, but when the blood work came back the doctor said she didn't know how I was able to keep going. (I was really, really anemic.) It got really bad in the few months before I was diagnosed. One of the many difficult aspects had to do with my weight. After losing 40 pounds in 2007, I very successfully kept the weight off for a long time. Recently, hmmm, corresponding to the anemia, perhaps, I found that I would gain weight at the drop of a hat, and then I could NOT lose it again. It was so frustrating!! I kept resolving to cut back, to weigh and measure, to keep a food journal, to go to a nutritionist, to work out more, and NOTHING seemed to work. I failed at everything, especially increasing my work outs, because my body was SCREAMING at me that I needed something I wasn't giving it. I had no energy for work outs. I couldn't get a handle on my portions because my body wanted me to eat more because it was in search of iron. And the scale just kept creeping up. I slowly regained 25 pounds. Seriously discouraging.

But then I went to the doctor. I told her I had no energy and I couldn't lose weight. She said these magic words... "let's do a little digging", and sent me for blood work. I got my diagnosis. After some trial and error (including a round of hives, the worst itch I've ever known in my life, caused by the sulfa in the iron tablets I started out with) I found iron supplements I could handle.

After a few months on the supplements I went back for more blood tests to see how I'm doing and my iron levels have just managed to squeak over the line to normal- hooray!!! Guess what else is happening. No really, guess. Guess, guess!! OK, I'll tell you. I'm losing weight again!!! I'm walking more often and with more vigor. My appetite is more in line with a normal human being's. I can portion control with some success again. I mean, it's still a challenge, don't get me wrong, but it's a challenge I can handle. My body isn't screaming at me anymore!!

It's amazing to me that such a seemingly small thing as how much iron is in my body can make such a huge difference in how I look and feel. And iron, of all things! I've always thought the stereotype of someone anemic was a thin, pale person. Not so much! I'm definitely not pale (I have rosacea, I'm always a little red, and sometimes a lot red depending on the circumstances) and the anemia was making me absolutely hefty.

It's a lesson learned. My mom, a retired nurse, is always fussing that weight is much more than a calories in, calories out kind of deal. She says there must be more to it, and in this case I found that to be oh, so true. While my calories in were definitely too high, and my calories out were too low since I didn't have the energy to exercise properly, (I could barely get through my days at the worst of it) there were driving factors behind it. I had a nutrient deficiency so my body was driving me to eat in order to make up what I was missing. I had cravings (although not for dirt or ice or clay or anything, which I understand is common with anemia) and I felt like I was starving all the time. (I kind of went nuts for peanuts, actually. They have some iron in them, go figure.)

I think that's why a balanced diet is the best diet of all. In the absence of any other medical issues, if you are giving your body what it needs, not in terms of calories but in terms of all of the vitamins and minerals it has to have to function properly, then you should be able to maintain a healthy weight. Michael Pollen sums it up the best for me: "Eat food, mostly plants, not too much". Then, of course, he goes on to define FOOD, which means real stuff, not processed food product that you find in the supermarkets nowadays. If you eat empty calories you will be hungry and you will crave more food due to your body's attempts to get those nutrients, and you will gain weight, which will make it harder to move and burn calories, and so forth. So if you are having trouble with your weight even though you are doing everything you can, have some blood work done and hope for a wonderful doctor who listens to you and says "let's do a little digging".

New Recipe- Lentil, Carrot, and Kale Soup

DH is on a low iodine diet for a couple of weeks so he can undergo some screening tests. The diet is kind of a good thing, even though he's having fits for cheese, in that it shakes us out of our food rut for a little while. I've had to find new recipes that are completely devoid of any processed food that might contain iodized salt, plus no dairy and no egg yolks. He's also vegetarian, so no meat. We've gone totally whole foods!

One of his favorite things to eat on the low iodine diet (this is his second round) is homemade salsa- yum. I found no salt organic corn chips for him and so he'll make huge batches of his salsa, then we all pig out on it. Salads, stir fries, and roasted veggie packets are also yummy.

Today we tried a new recipe from Deliciously Organic for Lentil, Carrot, and Kale Soup with Creme Fraiche and Dill, only we altered it a bit. (DH and I made it together.) First of all DH halved it- it serves 8 to 10!! Even halving it made a lot of stew. (It was more stew-y than soup-y.) DH also made a batch of rice to serve with it, and we left out the creme fraiche and dill. (He can't have the creme fraiche since it's a dairy product. We would have liked the dill, we just forgot it.) We also used a vegetarian, no salt bouillon cube to make the broth instead of the chicken stock called for in the recipe, and substituted olive oil for the butter. We also left off the wine, and DH meant to put in a splash of a fancy vinegar instead, but we both forgot. We used an immersion blender instead of a regular blender, and some of the kale was blended up by mistake, but kale blends nicely so that was OK. (I started throwing the kale in the pot then remembered it was supposed to go in AFTER the blender step, drat it all.) Oh, and kosher salt instead of sea salt, since kosher salt doesn't have iodine in it and sea salt does.

The next time we'll make it with A LOT MORE CARROTS!!! My family LOVES carrots so we should've put more in the recipe today. DH also fussed about the lemon, but the rest of us liked it. (He doesn't generally like citrus in cooked foods- it's a thing with him.)

The consensus? 4 out of 5 of us want it added to our regular menu rotation. As for the 5th, he wouldn't even try it; he made a hamburger. (But that's typical- we don't let it bother us.)

Advice to a Beginning Cook

Someone asked for cooking advice on Facebook today. The person is a beginning cook and wanted help with finding recipes, cook book recommendations, etc. A few people recommended Alton Brown; here's what I had to say, and it was long enough that I decided to post it here:

I love Alton Brown too but I think he's probably too complicated for a beginner. (I bought one of his cookbooks but wound up donating it to the library- the recipes were way too hard/time consuming and I have decent cooking skills. I've learned a LOT from watching "Good Eats", though!) The old classics- Betty Crocker, for instance, would probably be better, or Taste of Home magazines, which I believe are fairly basic. You can also check out cook books from the library to see which ones you like without having to buy them right away. It's disheartening to spend money on a cook book then find out the recipes don't work for you for whatever reason.

Plus remember the old adage- practice, practice, practice. The more you cook, the better you'll get.

Also- when trying a recipe for the first time follow it to the letter. After that feel free to experiment and change things up, mix up the seasonings, make substitutions. Don't try that with baking, though- you have to be more precise with following the recipe when you bake, especially when it comes to proportions of one ingredient to another. Look for the websites where you can plug in the items you want to cook with, then it generates a list of recipes for you. There's also MyRecipes.com and AllRecipes.com. Cooking Light magazine and Southern Living both link to... myrecipes.com, I think, and their recipes are fantastic.

Cooking magazines are wonderful- I have a bit of an addiction to them! Finally- focus on the style of cooking you want to pursue- if you want healthy recipes, then Cooking Light or Eating Well would be fantastic, for instance. Vegetarian, then go for Vegetarian Times, etc. Then there's all the cooking shows out there- I actually prefer good old PBS for cooking shows. Julia Child re-runs and Martha Stewart's current show, along with America's Test Kitchen. Even if they are making things too complicated for where you are right now, you'll still learn techniques that will help you out in the long run. And don't forget about Pinterest!! There are about a bazillion recipes on there. Good luck!!!

Summer Summary

I wrote about my summers not too long ago, how they all seem to take on themes. I like it best when the theme is TRAVEL, but not much of that happened this summer. What did happen was lots and lots of doctor visits to try and figure out why I'm so drained all the time, more than just the fibromyalgia can explain. My instincts, that there was something more going on, turned out to be accurate- I have anemia. The big question is figuring out why I'm anemic, and the big task is to get my iron levels back up, which has proven trickier than anticipated since I found out that I'm allergic to sulfa, which is what ALL of the prescription iron tablets are mixed with. It's been a lot of tests and a lot of appointments and a lot of phone calls to various medical offices and a lot of label reading to find OTC supplements without sulfa, but yet with enough mgs of iron to make a difference without taking 10 pills a day. There's still more to go, too- another test to check for internal bleeding, a few more tests to see if my iron levels are improving, and tests to follow up on the tests that revealed some minor issues that need to be watched. And a few weeks of physical therapy for my sore knee at the beginning of summer, which actually didn't help much. (Maybe if I did the follow up exercises...)

And then there's DH. He's also had some medical issues this summer, including physical therapy. We got to work out together for a couple of appointments; it was almost like a date!! Good times, good times.

So it's been a medically themed summer; that's my least favorite. :( But I'm perking along taking my over the counter iron supplements, and boosting the iron in my diet since the OTCs aren't quite strong enough. I gave up being vegetarian for now; if I can get my iron levels up to where they should be I'll cut back on meat again. I still don't eat meat every day, mind you, but I will buy a steak from Whole Foods, level 4 on their animal welfare rating program, once or twice a week. I'm also eating... gulp... chicken liver. Chicken liver is about the most iron rich food you can eat, so eat it I am. It's palatable, shall we say, when it's made up as chopped liver with lots of hard boiled egg and sauteed onion. I eat it on matzoh crackers with some tomato to top it off, and it's not too horrible. Oh, almost forgot, OJ on the side since citrus helps with iron absorption.

I bought a new cast iron skillet too, and I'm trying to cook in that as often as possible. Which actually isn't very often since DH usually cooks the meals that require a skillet and he doesn't like it, but I've cooked the chicken livers in it.

With all the iron I've felt a little better so I've gone out a few times to ride my bike to try to get more exercise. I love riding my bike- it always makes me feel like a kid again. That and a 15 minute daily walk for the dogs is the extent of my exercise program, but it's better than nothing. I still get so wiped out I can barely move, especially at the end of a busy day, and the day after a busy day. I cut back on most of the activities for the kids for the summer, but now that the school year has started again that's picking right up.

I hate giving in to it, but sometimes I have to. Back in May/June, when I first really started feeling poorly, I was blaming it on fibro flare ups but they were so much worse and much more frequent than usual. It really started affecting my friendships because I was always making excuses for why I couldn't do things, or why I was late, or unprepared, or whatever, since I was always too wiped out to do things properly. It's gotten to where I hate for friends to ask me how I am, because I don't know what to say. Do I lie and say I'm fine, when I'm really not? Does anyone actually want to hear it if I do tell them I feel like crap? Or do I brush it off with "I'm hanging in there", or something equally non-committal? Or just go ahead and go with the socially gracious option and lie, saying "I'm fine"? Or am I completely over thinking this? (Yeah, probably that last thing.) ;)

Blech- even I don't want to read this post, but it's how my summer went so I'm journaling about it for posterity. Here's hoping it's the last "medical summer" for a long, long time!!

Happy 50th- Here's Your Colonoscopy!

Oh yeah, I'm going there. Because we have to talk about these things. I had my first colonoscopy (hopefully the last, at least for a while) yesterday, and since it's so important to have it when your doctor wants you to, I'm going to tell you all about it. First of all, it's not that bad. Even the prep, which I was dreading, wasn't horrible for the most part. When the gastroenterologist said she wanted to schedule me for one, she handed me some paperwork with directions for how to get ready. I gave them a glance then set them aside until a couple of days before, which was mistake number one. There are some medications that you have to stop taking a full week prior to the test! There are some others, like NSAIDS and iron pills, that you have to stop taking 5 days prior, but I was already only 2 days out and had taken an Aleve AND my iron pill the day before- ooops! I called, thinking WHEW, I can reschedule, but no such luck. They said it would be OK just make sure to tell the nurse and not to take anymore.

You also have to watch what you eat several days before the test- no roughage, things like nuts, salad, popcorn, and so forth. Then there's the medicine to really clean things out the day before- some pills and a powder (both over the counter) you have to mix with 64 ounces of liquid, either water, Gatorade, or Crystal Lite. 64 ounces!! That's the hard part. The powder had no discernible flavor whatsoever when I mixed it with Gatorade; as far as I could tell it dissolved completely. Mixing it with Gatorade, however, was my second mistake. See, 64 ounces is a LOT of liquid, and you have to drink it all within a two hour period. The first glass went down, no problem. Same for the second and third, but after that, not so much. Let me tell you, for someone who strictly drinks water, that Gatorade gets cloyingly sweet after that third glass. I couldn't do it! I just physically could not drink down the last quarter or so of that Gatorade. Trying to get it down was the worst part, because my body was reacting to the medicine and trying to get everything back OUT. Everything in me was saying "NO MORE INPUT, NO MORE INPUT"!!!!! I figured I would be able to drink more down as soon as at least a little was back out, but I just gave up, because once, umm, "output" commenced it was pretty obvious I didn't need any more of the medicine. Blech. I was sick to my stomach and going through the worst of the "output" for about an hour, maybe an hour and a half total, then I was fine. (As long as I stayed near the bathroom!) I couldn't take anything else sweet, though- all those popsicles and jello and Italian ice that I bought- the kids had a party because I wasn't going anywhere near it.

Luckily DH took pity on me and made me some broth by throwing a bunch of veggies (carrots, onions, and celery braised in olive oil) in a pot with half a bouillon cube and a bunch of water then cooking it to death. He didn't even add salt since he figured the Gatorade had me salted up enough, and he was right! I strained the broth, then, since I could see the olive oil floating on the surface, I put it through my de-fatting cup. (The directions said clear liquids, so this helped make it as clear as possible.) That was really soothing, but just a little bit went a long way.

As for things I did right, I kept my schedule light and finished up really early the day before the procedure, then nothing on the calendar for afterwards. I was able to eat breakfast the day before so an early doctor's appointment (at an office close to home) was OK. After breakfast it was all liquids so I knew I would be really shaky and wouldn't have the energy to do much, and that's pretty much how it happened, but I wasn't as physically uncomfortable as I thought I would be. The clear liquids (especially that broth) kept me going just fine, especially since I didn't have anything much I was trying to get done. Having some movies and a good book on standby helped keep me distracted as well.

On to the actual procedure. It was absolutely no sweat; I breezed right through it. They gave me an IV in the prep area, then I had to wait just a bit to go back to where they were going to actually do the procedure. (I had an endoscopy too- they looked in both ends!) They had me turn onto my left side and strapped a weird mouth guard in to keep my mouth open for the endoscopy, and put the oxygen tube thing in my nose. (The kind everyone has in those TV hospital dramas- it tickles.) Right after that, the nurse said "OK, you're going to sleep now", and that was that. The next thing I was back in the prep area and roused up enough for the nurse to see I was awake. She brought me an apple juice then things got fuzzy again for a bit, then I was more alert and she told me I could get dressed, then DH came back and they sent me home. I didn't get sick from the sedation at all, which I was worried about since I've seen DH get sick after his surgeries- apparently they don't sedate you as heavily for this as they do for an actual surgery, so I felt fine coming out of it. I was still a little woozy the rest of the day; they don't let you drive or go back to work for the next 12 hours.

The best part- as soon as it was over I could eat!! I had crackers waiting for me in DH's back pack- another good idea. I also had some lollipops which helped my scratchy throat, but one was enough because, yeah, sugar; still not over the Gatorade.

So there you have it- my colonoscopy de-briefing. This is not meant as a substitute for medical advice by any means, and is specific to my experience, especially since hospitals may have different prep directions. But if anything is helpful for anyone else facing their first colonoscopy, then yeah! Feel free to ask questions- I told DH I should do an "AMA" (ask me anything) on Reddit but he said they can run like 6 hours long, so no. But you really can AMA about the procedure; if my experiences can help you get through your own colonoscopy then I'm a happy girl.

PS: And yes, I just turned 50. I had the procedure both because it's recommended when you turn 50 and because I seem to be rather anemic these days, and the doctors are trying to figure out why. The colonoscopy and endoscopy results were perfect, so they have to look elsewhere for the problem. I may get to swallow a camera!!

Book Review: Skinny Dip by Carl Hiaasen

Ackkk!!! One of my favorite bloggers (hi Kathy!) read my blog and left a comment, on probably one of the lamest posts ever!!! So now I have to redeem myself with something wonderous and witty and amusing to read.... and I got nothing. But I have been reading a lot of novels lately, and the book I just finished is "Skinny Dip" by Carl Hiaasen, one of my favorite authors, so I'll give you a review. Carl also brought us "Hoot", for the youngsters, that was made into a movie my kids watched about a bazillion times over on DVD. He's a Florida author and many (if not all, I haven't researched it) of his books are set here, so as a Florida native myself, (3 generations back on my daddy's side) it's fun to recognize the settings.

This one starts out on a cruise ship that docks at Port Everglades in Broward County, with a murder. Or at least an attempted one, so it's a mystery. I'm not usually a fan of mysteries but I make exceptions when they are also funny and/or quirky, like this one. It's very "Tell Tale Heart" but with a lot of twists and turns, because it's a novel and not a short story, and well, not much remorse on the part of the murderer, except that he... oops, no spoilers! And the humor- Carl Hiaasen cracks me up! He amazes me with how he looks at things, and how he can take so many different threads and weave them all together, wrapping everything up at the end.

The characters are all interesting- the likable ones and even some of the initially not so likeable ones are all, well, likeable, and the bad guys are really slimy. Joey (the intended murder victim) and her husband Chaz are the main characters. Chaz is the bad guy who gets caught up in the "Gaslight"-like scenario cooked up by Joey, who wants revenge and closure. There's a whole ensemble of additional characters to follow including a hermit, a corrupt farmer, a good cop who just wants to move back home to the frigid north, an estranged mistress, a New Zealand sheep farmer, and the bumbling bodyguard/hit man with the heart of gold.

I thoroughly enjoyed this one; if you're looking for a fun read, give it a go!