Monthly Archives: March 2014
Patient Rights Note
I lead a discussion on Twitter yesterday and learned that many people are unaware of their rights as a patient, and that some people avoid going to the doctor due to being put on a scale.
You have the right to refuse to be weighed at your doctor’s office.
You can also ask to be weighed without looking at the scale and ask not to know your weight.
Personally, because I am usually wearing heavier clothes, and I am required (for medical reasons) to weigh myself daily, I tell the medical assistant my weight. If they argue, I tell them they are making me uncomfortable, and they stop.
Generally, I am coming to see my doctor about an acute illness, not my weight. My doctor does not need to know my weight to order a blood test or many medications.
Times when your doctor may insist on a weight and you should probably comply:
- If you are at a hospital, about to have surgery or need antibiotics – proper weight = proper dose
- If you are at a hospital and are not eating or are on medications, they may want to weigh you daily to check effectiveness.
- If you are coming in to specifically talk about weight loss or gain.
- If you are coming in for a physical (although still, you can refuse, but I would suggest weighing yourself at home).
- If you have had weight loss surgery, you can expect to be weighed at each appointment before and after.
Your doctor can refuse treatment if you refuse to be weighed. You can fire your doctor. You can call your insurance, report your complaint and find a different doctor. You have rights, and I want you to know what they are.
Nurses: Remember it is our job to advocate for our patients. If a patient is not coming in for a weight related problem, we may not need to know their weight. Ask yourself if insisting on a weight is going to cause the patient stress.
Food Anxiety Chat
Today at 5 PM EST on Twitter, I will be hosting a chat on food anxiety and the different forms it takes. Please join! If you want to send questions anonymously, please email me questions to GrimalkinRN@gmail.com
We will be discussing what forms food anxiety takes, how it develops, how we cope, and what happens when we can’t cope.
Please share this post if you have a moment!
Demand Buzzfeed Retract Articles About Steenfox (Christine Fox) and Apologize!
Twitter user @SteenFox held a beautiful conversation among sexual assault survivors that was healing and loving. Before the conversation had even finished, Jessica Testa of Buzzfeed had quickly gotten foggy consent from some users, but not @SteenFox and created a salacious piece of clickbait to up Buzzfeed’s ad revenue. They they wrote an article defaming @SteenFox’s repeated requests to have her own tweets and images taken down, which is her legal right. Your tweets are your own intellectual material, per Twitter’s privacy rules.
Please sign this petition to demand Buzzfeed retract and apologize for their articles about SteenFox (Christine Fox). If you can, go a step further and block Buzzfeed’s quizzes and “news” from your Timeline. You won’t miss them. I promise.
Please, please, please share this post!
JoAnne’s Cold Killer Soup
Tonight, I’m having a Meniere’s attack – vertigo and nausea. I know part of the reason is that my sinuses are really inflamed. My husband has a terrible cold. I have a bad sinus headache. I decided to make a soup to try to make us feel better. Initially, I was just going to drink broth with spices, but then I decided to make it a meal, so I added edamame, spinach and veggies.
Serves 2. Prep time 20 minutes. Cook time 40 minutes.
Ingredients
1 bag shelled edamame
1 bag frozen spinach
6 baby bella mushrooms, chopped.
5-6 cloves of garlic
Olive Oil
4 tablespoons roughly chopped ginger (or more)
2 inches lemongrass, chopped and pressed
1 teaspoon (or to taste) cayenne pepper
2 teaspoons fresh basil
Salt and black pepper to taste.
1 quart chicken broth. (you can use vegetable broth and then it will be vegan)
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Directions
Heat olive oil in a soup pot. Add garlic, ginger, and lemongrass. Saute until fragrant.
Add chicken broth
Add Cayenne pepper. Add as much as you want. I know I put in at least a teaspoon, probably more.
Add basil.
Add black pepper.
Bring to a boil.
Once boiling, add edamame, spinach, and mushrooms. Bring to a boil.
Simmer for 20-30 minutes (I simmered until my husband got home from work).
This soup is HOT. It works really well to help you clear your sinuses, chest, and you feel a lot better after eating it.
Feel better!
On consent and sensitivity.
About 10 years ago, I was a staff writer for the Hyde Park Herald, a community weekly that paid in Trident Layers. One day, I was assigned a story on neighborhood chess players who’d been kicked out of a Borders bookstore for ruining the aesthetic, or something. I interviewed the store manager, who later claimed that I quoted her without permission.
Three days later, I was sacked. I was livid. I didn’t understand why the woman would lie. She never deferred to a corporate rep, nor did she state that she wanted anything off the record. It was just a story about chess players. What was the big deal? I didn’t consider that the woman might have wanted her identity hidden for reasons, and I didn’t care. I was out of a job, and over a story I didn’t even want. So I chalked it up to cowardice and started…
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250
I’ve been on steroids and sick since the beginning of February and it’s added 10 pounds to me. I am at my highest weight ever.
250 pounds. I’m going to have to buy some new, bigger clothes at this rate. I already bought scrub pants, but my bras are tight and everything is tight. I tell myself I can lose weight, but I really don’t think I can do it fast enough. I have an interview today and I’m just praying my jeans won’t be too small. I’ve been living in yoga pants since I got over 230.
I feel so ashamed of myself. I tell myself I couldn’t help getting bronchitis. I can’t help that I got pleurisy and I have tried to exercise but it’s also difficult to go out when I have asthma and it’s cold. I tell myself steroids make you gain weight, and I needed the steroids to breathe. This is all true.
But there’s another problem.
I have an eating disorder. I binge eat. I particularly binge eat when I lose any weight at all. Seeing the scale drop makes me want to eat. Seeing my clothes get looser makes me want to eat. I see a doctor about this but haven’t had much success with the anxiety that comes with weight loss.
I grew up very poor, and we didn’t always have food. My mother always praised us when we gained weight. She was probably relieved that we weren’t starving. We didn’t always have food when we were growing up. This lasted from the time we moved to Nashville, Tennessee, until the time she met my first step-father, Merritt, when I was about 7 or 8. After we met him, we were abused, we were hit and emotionally tormented, but we were fed.
We also had plenty of food in the Summer when I visited my grandparents. There were snacks and my grandparents always made sure we had plenty of them. I wasn’t hungry for most of my childhood, just a small part, but it has stuck with me.
I remember once, I was hungry and there wasn’t much food in the house. My mom was at work. I found a can of tuna and ate it. When she got home, she was furious. She said “that could have fed us for a week!”
Of course it couldn’t, but I remember that. I remember her yelling at me whenever I ate something that wasn’t specifically for mealtime. Snacks weren’t really something we had around the house, even after we were better off financially, and oh my God, I felt hungry all the time.
I won a scholarship to Germany my senior year of high school and it was the first time I really was offered enough to eat for a long period of time. I didn’t react appropriately. I started buying food at the local market and hiding it in my room. My host mother really didn’t understand and I know her feelings were hurt. But the sight of the food in my bedroom cupboard was comforting. I didn’t know it, but I had started to hoard food. I didn’t know it was a psychological condition at the time.
Then I got home. Shortly after arriving back in the States, my mother and step-father kicked me out. Then I really didn’t have enough food. I literally would count change to buy a can of soup or ravioli. When I got paid, I would go to the store and buy as much food as I could. I would buy so much food that I could barely make rent. The food hoarding got out of control. I put food on credit cards. I would buy and buy and buy food and not eat it. I’d stock my pantry and fridge and then go get fast food. None of it made sense.
When I moved to Colorado, I tried to change. Several times, I took my load of food to a food bank, only to buy another hoard with my next paycheck, putting myself at risk of homelessness again. I didn’t have a great job, but I had a job that paid enough for an apartment, bills, and a reasonable amount of food. But I had to have more. I had to have cans and cans and cans of food. To preserve the hoard, I’d still go to restaurants and get fast food, so I wouldn’t have to touch my hoard.
Eventually, I got into therapy, but I never really talked about food hoarding. As my anxiety lessened, I was able to give away food a little bit at a time and now while I do have more food on hand than my husband and I need, I don’t have so much food that I regularly throw it out. I have started making recipes out of the things I keep in the fridge. I keep food in the freezer, but I eat it. And when I went gluten free, I went through my cabinet and donated things I could no longer eat.
But what I can’t seem to do is stop eating. Whenever I lose any weight, I feel a compulsion to eat. I have to eat. I can’t not eat. I eat until my stomach hurts, and then as soon as the pain lets up, I eat some more.
I gave up soda, I gained weight because I replaced the soda with other food. I gave up gluten, I gained weight because I found lots of substitutes. Last year, I tried to become a vegetarian and gained weight so fast it was alarming.
My doctor doesn’t really get it. I used to take Wellbutrin and that was very helpful for appetite control. Then I started having hand tremors from Wellbutrin and I’m on a different medication for depression that is really not helping my anxiety. I honestly don’t know what to do. When I think about looking for a support group, I feel so embarrassed. When I think about dieting, I want to eat. When I think about exercising, I want to eat.
I really can’t throw all of this blame on my mother. She was a single mom, and we were incredibly poor. My father didn’t pay child support until she managed to have it removed from his paycheck. But things happened when I was a child, and these things make me prone to hoarding food. I’ve managed to stop hoarding food in cabinets, but instead, I now hoard weight on my body.
If I can’t stop doing this, I’m going to get diabetes. I’m going to get joint issues, I’m going to get high blood pressure. I already have slightly elevated blood pressure. My asthma is getting worse. My clothes don’t fit. They are painful, and I really can’t afford to buy new ones right now.
This isn’t about accepting my body as fat and loving it. I don’t feel good at this weight. I feel awful.
I’m not asking people for solutions, I’m just getting this out, writing it down. I’m going to try to find help for my specific problem.
I don’t blame my mother for being hungry but I do blame my childhood for these habits I have now. I hope that by writing it down, admitting to the world I have a problem, I will be able to start changing my habits and my body.
I want to emphasize here: I do not want dieting advice. I do not want to hear about Paleo or veganism or anything like that. I have learned that restricting my diet triggers me to binge eat. I am going to work at exercising more and learning not to go eat when the scale goes down. That’s going to be my first step.
Thanks for listening.
Why I’m Not Your Ally
I support a lot of causes and I support a lot of people. I am uncomfortable with calling myself an “ally.” One reason is that I’m not particularly fond of labels and the other reason is what the world “ally” represents to me. When I think of allies, I think of the allies that grouped together to fight the Nazis in World War II. They were together for one particular cause, even if they had different forms of government and different opinions on different sociopolitical and economic issues.
The thing about the Allies, though, they were in the front lines. They were in the trenches. They were dying. Once they were in, they could not leave. They did not leave until the war was over and the last prisoner free.
Even the white people who aligned themselves with the Civil Rights movements were allies. They took beatings. They marched for miles, and some of them were murdered along with their Black comrades. They were true allies.
I have marched in protests. I have signed petition after petition. I have voted my conscious even when I knew my candidate would lose because they were, in my heart, the right candidate for the job. I have spoken up at the Supermarket, at the bank. I call my coworkers on racist behaviors and let my Black and Hispanic, and Indian coworkers know that I will back them up if they need it.
But when I write, when I speak out, people do not threaten me. People do not threaten my children. No one is trying to find out where I live and publish that information. When I talk about my struggle with depression, no one tries to contact my primary care doctor and send them my Twitter logs. I am generally unafraid of the police. All of these things come to me because I have white privilege. I am not straight, and I am not cis, but in not being vocal about my gender status, people assume I am. I am weak because I do not speak out about my status, but I am not ready for that battle.
I do speak out. I do speak up. When someone is being attacked on Twitter and asks for help, I join in. When someone is being discriminated against in public, I say something. If I see a mother struggling with groceries, I try to help pay. I donate what I can. But when I speak up, the tone of the conversation immediately changes. The person being racist changes their bearing. Now they are talking to a white person, and they are suddenly more respectful. If they are being a troll online, I can use the same derailing tactics they are using to get them away from the person they are trolling.
I’ve been called a race traitor, I’ve been called a N—– lover. None of that is anything near what people of color go through. No one has threatened my children. No one has threatened my life. No one has threatened my safety. Indeed, even on my most controversial, viral blog post, the most that happened was that people said I should quit my job. Even though my boss read the post, she never thought I should quit, and her opinion is all that matters in that situation.
So I am not your ally. I wish I could say I was. But the things I do are not sufficient for me to call myself your ally. I am your supporter. I will support you, with words, with money when I have it, with friendship if you need it, but I cannot be an ally. I cannot be on the front lines of the fight you are in. You cannot leave the fight you are in, but I can. White privilege affords me that opportunity. My efforts are not enough to call myself your ally. If there is another war, I will join you. I will put myself in 100% and I will not leave. And then I will be your ally.
45 Minute Chili with Vegan Option
Several people have asked for my super easy chili recipe, so here it is:
Ingredients (makes 4-6 servings)
1 pound ground beef
2 cans kidney beans (drained)
2 cans tomato sauce
5-6 cloves of garlic
2 jalepenos
2 green bell peppers
1 large red onion
Chili Powder
Cayenne Pepper
Salt and pepper
Optional:
Sour cream
Grated cheese
Directions:
Chop the vegetables and add to a large skillet or non-stick pot
Use caution when cutting the jalepenos. If you don’t want hot chili, remove the seeds.
Add ground beef. Season with salt, pepper, chili powder, and cayenne.
Saute until beef is thoroughly browned.
Add tomato sauce and kidney beans
Add more chili powder and cayenne pepper until you have achieved your desired level of heat.
Simmer covered for 15-20 minutes.
Serve with sour cream and grated cheese (optional). Also goes great with cornbread.
I have a vegan variant to this recipe. I use tempeh and add corn as an extra veggie.
If you use tempeh, chop it into small squares. Add grapeseed or another flavorless oil. Then add chili powder and saute until tempeh cubes are completely covered in chili powder. Then add vegetables and saute until onions are translucent. Follow the recipe from there.
I’ll post a picture of my chili the next time I make it, probably next week.
Help Lynx SainteMarie find their poetic voice!!!
My dear friend Lynx is trying to raise money to go to a poetry workshop for people of color in Canada. Transportation is already covered and they’ve received a $100 scholarship to help them attend.
The link to Lynx’s Gofund me is here
Created by Lynx Sainte-Marie on March 10, 2014
Hey everyone,
For those who don’t know me, I’m Lynx. I am a (gender)queer, black feminist, afrogoth poet and student of love. I run a little website that helps to showcase queer/trans, two-spirit and gender variant people of colour and Aboriginal folk as a way to give back to a broad community that is under-appreciated and mostly overlooked. I am also chronically ill and am working towards wellness and wholeness, both physically and emotionally. And here I am, after many years, once again starting a journey into the world of performance art and spoken word poetry. How amazing!
I stopped creating and performing for several years because of a number of reasons, including trauma (I am a survivor of abuse), the onset of my immune issues, Depression & Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Because of these issues, the impact of them I still live with, and because most of my money goes towards medicine, supplements and/or my part-time post-secondary studies, I don’t have much money for anything else. So the idea of going to a retreat or workshop that might further my creative potential and provide me with creative contacts is mostly a dream to me. So here I am, asking for your support.
I was reluctant to create a page like this and fundraise but some of my dear friends reminded me that there are folks out there who believe in my words and who would support my going to a poetry workshop to help with my journey of regaining my voice and love for the stage. So here I am, sharing my story in the hopes that you believe in me like they do 🙂
d’bi young anitafrika is a world-renowned dub poet and educator, offering education to poets and performance artists from all walks of life. The workshop she is offering is called “finding my poetic voice“ and it is through the watah school: womb arts healing. It would be an amazing and humbling experience to attend this interactive, interpersonal and healing workshop and such an honour to work with d’bi since she is my favourite Canadian performance artist. It would be an absolute dream for me to attend this workshop and learn as much as I can from her and my fellow workshop attendees.
The cost of the workshop is $700. Because of my situation, I was offered a $100 discount (Which would bring the fee down to $600) but because of “GoFundMe’s 5% per donation and WePay or PayPal’s 2.9% + $0.30 per donation“, I left it at $700. This money needs to be paid IN FULL by April 5th. Travel expenses will be covered by me and it helps that it is every week for six weeks so it won’t cost very much to take public transportation to Toronto.
Give what you can and ONLY what you can, however small, I appreciate it. This would be an amazing opportunity for me that I would remember for the rest of my life. I would love the chance to hone my skills as an artist with one of the greats! Once I am able to attend, I will document the journey as best as I can so that all can see my progress. How wonderful!
So much love for you all,
LSM
Please donate and if you can’t donate, please reblog to signal boost and spread the word. It’s so hard to find opportunities for enrichment as a writer, please think of Lynx and if you even have $5 to spare, send it their way!
The History of Breastfeeding Among Black Women – What White Nurses Need to Know
If you are a nurse, particularly a white nurse, working in postpartum or NICU and teaching new parents how to breastfeed, it is vital that you understand the history of breastfeeding among Black women. Up until late in the last century, Black women were still employed as wet nurses for White families. This robs a Black woman’s own child of nutrition. It also explains why many Black women have a negative connotation with breastfeeding. Rather than blindly push forward with lactation education, nurses need to work to further develop cultural competence and understand why Black women may choose not to breastfeed, and why their relatives may encourage them NOT to breastfeed.
Ultimately, breastfeeding should be the choice of the individual involved, not the choice of a nurse or family members surrounding the new parent.
@FeministaJones made a series of tweets regarding the history of breastfeeding and black women, as well as the history of how Black nurses were treated in homes. It is hard to read, but necessary to learn. I storified the tweets yesterday, but am also placing them here so that I can quickly point to them.
On Black Women and Breastfeeding
In her #WomensHistoryMonth discussion, @FeministaJones discusses the history of Black women and forced breastfeeding of White children in the United States, up to modern times, pinpointing reasons for low levels of support among Black men for breastfeeding among Black women today.
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If were going to talk about #WomensHistoryMonth, can we tell all of the stories, please?
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#WomensHistoryMonth Black Nannies after Civil War … http://b-womeninamericanhistory19.blogspot.com/2012/08/the-african-american-nanny-in-early.html … You’re welcome. pic.twitter.com/WRM1BP91iI -
Check out the link in that last tweet. Jarring images of the history of Black women as caretakers of White children
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“Recent study, 54% of black mothers breast-fed their infants from birth, compared with 74% of white mothers and 80% of Hispanic mothers”
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One has to wonder where the suffrage movement would have gone without Black nannies at home raising their children while they marched…
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RT @followmissbliss: @FeministaJones And for those who still don’t get it, there’s this… pic.twitter.com/qO7uSheBaW #WomensHistoryMonth -
@FeministaJones breast feeding my son was a trigger 4 my grandmother. I couldn’t figure out why she was so upset but now.. that pic #tears
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As well you should RT @thetrudz: @FeministaJones I feel…rage.
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The only acceptable feeling when shown images like those, IMO, is rage.
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Maybe I can spark enough rage to incite a revolution…
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When I discussed the idea that Black women, esp in the 60s and 70s were largely anti-breastfeeding bc of being forced to nurse White babies
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People suggested I was too militant and talking crazy but… I’m right.
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There was, on the part of many Black women, an outright rejection of breastfeeding bc of what it meant to them historically.
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Racism kept many of us from giving our children the nourishment they needed from us. Let that wash over you.
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We were forced to give milk produced for our own children to the children of our owners, forced to neglect the needs of our babies
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Then we were blamed when our babies got sick or died and called “bad mothers”.
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The connection btwn Black American women and breastfeeding has not always been positive and BF advocates have to know this.
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So when I see WW, esp, coming down on BW for not breastfeeding, I cringe… it’s clear they’re not employing culture competence
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I say barely half of Black women breastfeed, after several tweets talking about why (including historical violence) and then…
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When BW were working and out of the home 16+ hours a day or barely allowed to go home to their children at all, how were they to nurse?
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BW had few choices but to NOT breastfeed and supplement their babies’ diets with whatever was available.
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And yet… BW have been perpetually vilified as being “bad mothers” when they’ve been forced into these conditions
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@FeministaJones So would their relationships with their children, esp. from having to nurse & nurture White children at expense of their own
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Re: #LRT, but BW were called “bad mothers”! Without acknowledging how much mother-child connection was sacrificed for work
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Only in the last 20 years or so have we seen a significant cultural shift among Black women to nurse their own children, thankfully.
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Because, real talk…? Sistas in the 50s, 60s, and 70s weren’t nursing, in large part bc they worked so hard and so long away from home.
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And the stigma of BFing was “thats for them White babies”, which we can see how it came from resentment of forced nursing of White babies
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@FeministaJones I see that as yet another form of economic violence. Formula isn’t free but we couldnt nurse cuz we had to work so much.
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Let your mind wrap around one woman demanding that another woman take the milk she is producing for HER own baby and give it to hers
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Breastfeeding, in the mid-late 20th century, was somewhat of a privilege for those who could afford to be around their babies
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How can we demonize economically disadvantaged women for NOT breastfeeding at a time before pumping, packaging, etc?
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That was passed down through generations and only in the last one, w/advances in BF support tools, are we seeing more BW embrace BFing
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My mother and all of her sisters formula fed. No one breastfed. My mom asked “What formula you plan on using?”
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Cultural competence means not assuming a new Black mom is automatically taking the “Duh of course I’m breastfeeding” approach
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It means understanding that our historical connection to breastfeeding is one of oppression, violence, and denial of “womanhood”
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“From 2000–2008, the percentage of women who initiated breastfeeding went up from 47.4% to 58.9% for blacks” http://www.cdc.gov/breastfeeding/resources/breastfeeding-trends.htm …
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Like I said, this is a relatively new cultural shift and it’s important to unpack and respect the negative connections to BFing
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@FeministaJones My aunt was a “wet nurse” in the 80s in the south. When people act like this stuff is archaic…it’s not.
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@FeministaJones That’s why I am always so wary of white women organizing and educating BW on BFing. They gotta do the knowledge!
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Not just for Black women, for Black men as well. So yeah… we gotta unpack this stuff.
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#WomensHistoryMonth The story of the Negro Nurse (an oft-overlooked figure in American history) http://docsouth.unc.edu/fpn/negnurse/negnurse.html …
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“It’s a small indignity [..] no white person at the South ever thinks of addressing any negro man or woman as Mr., or Mrs., or Miss”
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” It is a favorite practice of young white sports about town–and they are not always young, either–to stop some colored nurse +
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” inquire the name of the “sweet little baby,” talk baby talk to the child, fondle it, kiss it, make love to it, etc., etc.+
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“and in nine of ten cases every such white man will wind up by making love to the colored nurse and seeking an appointment with her.”
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So remember when I said that not standing up to defend Black women is a behavior learned and socialized into BM?
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And how, historically, when Blk men stood up to defend Blk women, they faced violence, imprisonment, or death?
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If every time you tried to defend a Black women, you were on the receiving end of violence, what might you do, eventually? Stop.
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“If their fathers, brothers, or husbands seek to redress their wrongs the guiltless negroes will be severely punished, if not killed” Oh
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When I hear “Black women ain’t worth it…” talk, at the end, I hear the unspoken laments abt the repercussion for making us “worth it”
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It gets passed on… it’s self-preservation…it has to be unlearned
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If we loop Black men into the BF discussion, we have to ask how many are supportive of BFing and the economic implications for them
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We have to think about how maternity leave affects Blk families where the men are struggling to find work. That’s loss of wages…
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And if women feel they have to hurry and get back to work, they might not opt for BFing if formula feeding is easier.
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Reading the nurse narrative, I wouldn’t be surprised if BFing was a trigger for Blk men back then too, in light of the WM “advances”
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I wonder if any BM discouraged BW from BFing bc it reminded them of maybe what their own moms went thru as wet nurses for WW
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Hard to think of breastfeeding as violence against women, but for Black women in America, the history shows it has been.
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!! RT @Alivada: @FeministaJones keeps periods at bay too …in an era pre bc …so if partner was wet nurse, couldn’t parent themselves
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If BW were forced to keep lactating for wet nurse purposes, the impact on their own fertility/reproduction would likely be great.
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So that’s my #WomensHistoryMonth chat for the weekend.
This is what silencing looks like
I didn’t celebrate International Women’s Day. I didn’t feel I had the right to. I’ve known for a while that maybe I’m not allowed to call myself a feminist because of the way feminism isn’t really much about real equality (justice), or hasn’t been for quite some time even though I’ve always believed it was my calling in life, to be a professional feminist, to ‘be the change I want to see’. The movement is so fractured and ugly, there is no solidarity and as I’ve said before, what are we without it?
I am trying to understand where I’ve gone wrong and coming up with a blank. It is my belief that I trust survivors, no exceptions. I stand by that belief, I put it into practice. Of all my feminist principles, believing survivors of patriarchal violence (entitlement that is positively encouraged by society as opposed to other forms…
View original post 874 more words
Magic Chicken Vegetable Soup
Not your grandma’s chicken soup. I make this soup when my husband or I aren’t feeling well. It’s easy to make, and fast. Yes, you can roast a chicken and make broth but this soup is for days when you don’t really feel like doing much. Before I was gluten free, I would add Grandma’s Frozen Egg Noodles, and it was delicious.
I pair the soup with Against the Grain’s baguettes and make garlic/basil butter for the bread. Delicious.
Ingredients
1 pound chicken, chopped into small pieces
2 green bell peppers
1 bulb garlic, peeled and chopped
1 red onion
Bag of frozen veggies (peas, carrots, corn)
Celery
6 small red potatos
Olive oil
Ginger root
Lemongrass stalk
Rosemary
Thyme
Sage
Directions
Heat olive oil in a pan or pot. Add garlic, onion and bell pepper. Saute chicken until thoroughly cooked.
Chop ginger root into small pieces. Cut up lemongrass stalk and grind lemongrass. Add to chicken.
Add rosemary, sage, and thyme. I use fresh herbs but dried will also work well.
When chicken is cooked, add chicken broth. I use 2 quarts. Add potatos. Simmer 30-45 minutes.
Add salt and pepper to taste.
Luck
I feel like this is me and @LynxSainteMarie. We were always going to be friends, the internet just gave us a way to do so.
A Fitness and Diet Post
Over the last year, I’ve gained about 50 pounds due to developing painful tumors between my toes and steroid treatment for them. Prior to that, I’d lost 30 pounds with diet and exercise, but the tumors were so painful, all I could really manage was work.
My husband has also been gaining weight. I’m putting down our weight loss and exercise plan here because I want to keep it simple and document what we are doing.
1) Exercise 3-4 times a week, at least twice in the gym with weights.
2) Smaller portion sizes with more vegetables. Vegetarian/vegan meals 3-4 nights a week.
3) Better snacking. Rice cakes and almond butter. Veggies and Hummus. Veggies and salsa
4) Less alcohol. If we want more than one beer or glass of wine an evening, we have to walk to a bar.
5) If we want a splurge meal, we go to the gym, walk or bike to it.
6) Take a 30 minutes walk after dinner every night.
Most of my plan is activity oriented. I’m getting really good at planning meals as well. I wanted to put this down because I don’t believe in diet fads, but I know where John and I could be doing better to lose weight.
Along with this, I am working to be more accepting of my body. I’m never going to be a size 8 again, but I can get stronger and more comfortable in my skin. I am still in much better shape than when I started exercising 2 years ago. That’s really important. I also need to be accepting that I have Meniere’s Disease, which causes me vertigo, so I cannot always exercise, and I should not make myself feel guilty about it. This diet and fitness plan is not just about changing my body, but about accepting my body.
A Day in the Life Of
Tonight, I’m just going to write about my day and things that are going in my life. I don’t often share these things with my public blog but I really feel like it tonight.
Backstory: last Monday I was in the ER with chest pain from pleurisy. Tuesday Comcast jacked up our cable rates and we cancelled cable because we’ve been spending too much time on the couch. We wanted to exercise more, read more, talk more, and actually be present in each others company. It’s been such a good week.
It starts at Saturday evening, 5 PM. That’s when I woke up, had dinner and went to work. I had a good shift at work, REALLY nice patients, worked with a new grad I like, and got off on time. I came home and slept for 4 hours.
After I got up, my husband John and I went to the gym. We worked out. On the way home we stopped at Vitamin Cottage and I got the ingredients for the awesome dinner I made Sunday night. We came home, I worked on my homework for Community Health (I’m in college to get my Bachelor’s of Nursing Science, I have an Associate’s Degree), made that kick ass (like really) dinner.
Last night, I didn’t sleep. Maybe I slept an hour, but I just couldn’t fall asleep. This isn’t new for me. I see a doctor who specializes in sleep disorders and it is not unusual for me to go several nights without good sleep. The last month has been particularly hard because I had bronchitis and now I have pleurisy. It’s extremely painful. I’m on prednisone, a steroids, which has been keeping me awake at night.
This morning, I got up with John after a sleepless night. I think I slept about an hour. I was in a lot of pain. A LOT. Our automatic cat box, the Cat Genie (which is normally awesome) malfunctioned and smelled. Smells keep me awake, but John had a long work day ahead so I didn’t want to wake him up. Also, I didn’t realize the extent to which it had malfunctioned. We heard the engine start moaning a week ago, so we had the new Cat Genie ready to go, thank goodness.
I couldn’t sleep so I got up and made John breakfast while he made me coffee. He said it was an awesome start to his week. John left for work. He works part-time in office, part-time from home, which is a great arrangement because he works about 60 miles from home. My husband sold his house and drives that commute so that I can live near my hospital. I’ve never met anyone so supportive of my career and life goals.
After John left, I cleaned. I stripped the Master and Guest bedrooms, mopped the wooden floors upstairs, cleaned the guest and Master baths, and did a ton of laundry. My sister is coming to visit in a couple of weeks, so I want everything really, REALLY clean. While in the guest bath, I saw the Cat Genie wasn’t working properly, so I sent John a text to tell him we needed to work on it tonight.
Then I called my doctor’s office and was seen. They gave me a prescription for percocet to take at night. I can manage the pain during the day with tylenol, but at night, the pain is so nagging I just can’t sleep. I still had not slept. I went to the grocery store. I got home, put the Master bedroom back together, flipped the laundry again, and finally started feeling like I could sleep, so I took a 2 hour nap.
I had physical therapy this evening. He’s been working on my severe plantar fasciitis, which is getting better. He also did dry needling, on my back and shoulders. All of the coughing has really thrown my back out of whack. My PT helped me stretch my body back into place and I’m feeling much better.
I got home, and after last night’s fancy dinner, just made some gluten free chicken nuggets and steamed broccoli. After dinner, per my weight loss plan, we went for a 2 mile walk. It’s a beautiful night in Denver, not too cold, and we had a nice walk. We made plans to get a puppy by the end of the month.
So here I am, very little sleep, in a good mood, but in pain, heading towards delirium.
When we got home, we decided to tackle the Cat Genie because if the odor is too much, the cats like to pee on the couch. We do not want the cats to pee on the couch.
We took it apart and John assembled the shiny new one. This left scrubbing the old one (we want to save it for parts) to me. I scrubbed and scrubbed. IT WAS A LOT OF CAT SHIT. There was SO much. Finally, the worst happened. A washer, still covered in poo, flew off and hit me in the face. I came close to losing my dinner, but I’m not a nurse for nothing. I scrubbed my face with antimicrobial dish soap and kept going.
On the way back upstairs, I stopped and poured John a whiskey and myself a glass of wine. We finished assembling the new cat box and watched it’s inaugural run while toasting each other’s awesomeness.
My house smells SO good now.
Getting rid of cable TV has been the best thing we could have done for our marriage. I was watching way too much TV when I could have been out doing things. I wasn’t exercising. At night, we weren’t talking, just watching MSNBC or Aljazeera. When the news wasn’t on, we were watching shows we didn’t really like because nothing else was on. We weren’t talking. We ate every night in front of the TV.
Then Comcast raised our rate by $50 and we had a serious discussion about it. John and I have been cutting our expenses by turning down the thermostat, planning meals and eating at home, planning shopping trips, etc. No way was I going to see money I’d been saving to donate to heat Pine Ridge Reservation and Keep Marissa Alexander out of jail go to Comcast. So we got rid of it.
It’s only been a week, but I feel like I got my husband back. Sitting there in the bathroom, watching the robot do it’s thing, drinking wine with my geeky husband, it felt so good. Like when we were first married. We were such a team. We are that way again.
Tomorrow night, we’re going to have a gym date and workout, then go out for burgers afterward. It’s going to be awesome.
I’m so relieved to have my husband back. Also, very relieved my mouth was closed when that shit covered projectile aimed for my face.
Good night, world.
Sauteed Salad with Honey Ginger Balsamic Vinagrette with Gluten Free Garlic Bread (Vegetarian)
Without the garlic bread (for which I used Against the Grain’s Gluten Free French Loaf and butter), this meal is vegan. I’m cutting out dairy but didn’t want to throw away half a loaf of awesome bread.
So vegetarian and gluten free. Vegan if you have vegan bread. You can use olive oil, garlic and basil to make a nice topping for garlic bread. Broil on high for about 3-5 minutes, watching closely for your kitchen to catch on fire. Such is the life of someone who doesn’t broil very often. BUT I DID NOT BURN MY BREAD TODAY.
Sauteed Salad with Honey Ginger Balsamic Vinagrette (Vegan)
You will need:
Salad (I used a mesclun salad, but any base will do)
Cold veggies – any you like, I used carrots, celery, radishes, cherry tomatoes, cumber and an avocado
Veggies for sauteeing: I used snap peas, baby bella mushrooms, a yellow bell pepper, and an orange bell pepper. This would also be great with asparagus.
Extra firm Tofu
Ginger root
Balsamic Vinagrette
Honey
3 cloves Crushed Garlic
Olive Oil
Salt and Pepper to taste
Optional: Daiya “cheese”
……………………………………………………………
In a tofu press, press the tofu until as much water as possible has been drained. Then pour in a small bit of olive oil and 2-3 tablespoons of balsamic vinaigrette. Marinate for at least an hour.
Wash your salad and vegetables thoroughly. Chop veggies, setting cold veggies in one bowl and hot veggies in another bowl. Set out plates with your base salad and the cold veggies so you have them ready for later.
Chop about 1 tablespoon of ginger root into very small pieces (or grind).
Crush or grind at least 3 cloves garlic.
In a large skillet, heat olive oil, several tablespoons of balsamic vinaigrette, and 2-3 tablespoons of honey. When water begins to evaporate from vinegar, add garlic and ginger root. Cook until fragrant. Add hot vegetables.
While the ginger and garlic are cooking, take out tofu and cut into small squares. Toss squares with remaining marinade. Add to oil/vinaigrette mixture. Cook for 1-2 minutes, until squares are thoroughly saturated. Add veggies to be sauteed. Saute veggies until tender and fragrant.
Add hot veggie/tofu mixture to salad, making sure to pour any extra oil/vinaigrette mixture onto salads. Salt and pepper to taste.
The daiya cheese tasted good, but honestly the salad didn’t need it. I won’t add it when I make it again, but I will add asparagus.
This salad was unexpectedly satisfying and flavorful. The honey and balsamic vinegar compliment one another nicely, and the olive oil & avocado are healthy fats. This meal is high in fiber and nutrients. It is NOT a cheap salad to make unfortunately, but it is delicious. I will be making this salad for a future episode of #cookingwithjoanne on Twitter.
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