Livingthedreamwithdiana.com

Ok. This past week was not my best week.

Actually, it was crap.

The other day I stepped off the curb of a street I’ve stepped off hundreds of times, (please allow for a slight exaggeration on the number of step offs there), and I am fairly certain that I have, for the first time in my life, for some reason, broken a bone in my right foot. Let me tell you why I think that.

BECAUSE IT HURTS LIKE HELL.

The first evening, it hurt like a hot poker had been shoved into somewhere on the right exterior aspect of my right foot. I couldn’t even figure out if it had been shoved front to back, or vice versa. It really didn’t matter on day one.

Then, I got up to use the toilet.

BAD IDEA.

When I finally got back to bed, I kept trying to keep my left foot away from the right one, but NO. It was like having dental work done, and your tongue has to keep in constant contact with whatever is going on in your mouth.

There is point tenderness at the fifth metatarsal, (look it up), bruising is coming through in the same place, (it’s hard to see because my foot is swollen to the extreme), and the pain is making its way up my shin to about mid shin, sometimes, even, to my calf.

If we were in the States, I could go to a local ED, have an x-ray taken, be referred to an orthopedist, have a cast placed, and maybe even been the recipient of a cane. In the case of my thumb, probably a few stitches. I held pressure for about 45 minutes; as I’m now taking ASA 81mg daily, my clotting time is a bit longer than is normal for me. Ugh.

Here, I have no idea what to expect. I could possibly have gotten an x-ray taken without much trouble, but what follows?

So, for the past few days I have been hobbling, using my left foot for leverage, doing a lot of grunting, and groaning, and making the best of it. Ibuprofen is key. My foot is too swollen to fit my trainers, so my slippers have to do for awhile.

It has really put a crimp in my walking schedule, however. I’ve scheduled myself, on NOOM, to walk 4000 steps daily. Not like this.

For now, I am enjoying everything that NOOM is teaching me, allowing me to make competent choices, eating more food in a day, week, month than ever. I don’t mind plugging them as the information is freeing, life changing.

By the way, I’m down from 86kg to 81.9kg; the first time in at least two years. It is so much easier to move, to bend, to walk, (before the limp), to breathe. I will swear, to any of you reading this post, that I will never, ever, get that heavy again. You have my word on that. If you know anything about me, it is that I never promise anything, ever, to anyone. Period.

The other thing that happened was that I put something in the garbage bin, something inocuos, (no one cares, right?) and came up the a deep chunk cut into my left thumb.

I applied steady, heavy pressure for 10 minutes, checked it, pressure another 10 minutes, well read pressure, check, repeat for about 45 minutes until it finally stopped bleeding. Wore a bandaid for 2 days, and after 5 days, it was completely healed. (Eating healthy foods is a good thing. Taking an Aspirin a day makes the bleeding more difficult to control.)

Until next time, please, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: I did NOT break anything in my foot. As it turned out, now that I’m down a few pounds, the pain was caused by the swelling in my feet, and ankles due to sitting all day; not moving. The bruising was also due to the swelling. Now that I am down a bit more than 10 pounds, the swelling is almost completely gone, and I am able to walk around the apartment without pain, and am more active than I have been in quite some time. It will only get better from here. Sorry if

At its finest.

Who doesn’t like a well positioned, well secured, (more or less), toilet paper holder?

I do. So, I did.

We have had a roll of TP on the counter, just above where it is now, for the past 4 years!!! Arrrrgh.

So, the other day, after asking YKW to install, (again, x for the past month, though, to be honest, he has been soooo busy with other things), I decided that I could, then did do it myself.

Is it perfect? Heck no, ‘cuz I’m not perfect. I just wanted the damned thing off the counter, and where it belonged.

When I used the toilet, (can I say the word toilet without it seeming to be something evil?), I find that it is not exactly where I wanted it. Too bad; so sad.

It is where it is, and there is where it will be, until I can’t stand it there anymore. Then, it will be moved, probably an inch, or two, to the left. I wanted to put it on the surface facing the toilet, but the opening is to the right, and that wouldn’t work. Damn.

For now, it is where it is, and it is farrrr better than on the counter. I’m trying to clean things up around here, with all of this renewed, (new) energy. It had to change.

On another note altogether, I have put the Aeonium Kiwi to “rest” on the far right side of the planter box. The summer is the “off” season for them, so they have gone dormant. I am able to keep a close watch on them as I water, or spritz, the other plants close to it, so it’s all good.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: NOOM is going incredibly well.

I really don’t think I can get enough pizza in my life.

I’ve tried, but to no avail.

This past week I made a pizza using a recipe from Rachel Cooks With Love, on YT. I believe it’s about 2 years old, but works, just the same. The crust was delicious, the sauce was amazing, the results were great.

Here are a few things I learned during this deliciousness.

We both agreed that I had put waaay too much ground beef, (no pork to hand) on it; Rachel used Italian sausage, I had to use beef.

Use the cheese grater on its side. Really. Try it, if you haven’t already. Look at what happens.

It all gathers on the other side of the grater, and collects. Then, all you have to do is topple it onto the pizza, quesadilla, spaghetti, etc., and go from there. Nothing extra to clean. Win-win.

Since I had put too much burger on it, which had dried out a bit, when it came to reheating a piece, I knocked off most of the meat, mixed powdered onion, garlic, basil, and oregano into a 1/4(ish) cup of Kirkland Marinara Sauce, as you can see. I spread that on the aforementioned slice, added a significant amount of shredded Mozzarella, or Cheddar, cheese to the top, and reheated it in the Smart Oven at 400ºF for 6 minutes.

The results were even better than the slice originally. Fortunately, I have vacuum sealed several pieces, and frozen them for future enjoyment.

At the rate I am reheating them for YKW, however, I will be able to try making another pizza in the very near future. I can’t wait. Each one is unique, usually good tasting, but different.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

The best thing happened recently.

My SIL, Mayra, helped me get access to 2 of our credit card accounts that currently do not accept international phone numbers.

I sent the companies requests to send security codes, we used her cell phone number, and they did, they sent her the codes.

We now have access to these accounts, which I haven’t had for well over 6 months, or more. I can now make changes to payments needing to be made, or I can make additional payments if I want to.

Finally.

Thank you Mayra.

That’s all for today. Just wanted to share my joy. It’s an awful thing when you can’t have access to such important accounts.

How did this happen? I got a new iPhone, and iPad, all within 6 months of each other, and didn’t have the information backed up, or some such nonsense. I got the iPad first, so I still had access on my phone. Then, when I got the new phone, my prior phone had been so damaged that I was unable to transfer any info to the new one. Meaning no access to either account. Bummer.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

I cannot tell you how tired I am of our current shower heads.

Well, I can, but I won’t.

We bought a “rain shower” head for the shared bathroom we used over at Ivan’s cousins house, when we lived there, during our renovation, and had, already, one in each of the two bathrooms we use here, in our apartment.

I am sick of them.

There, I said it. I never thought I would, but they are driving me out of my mind. As I no longer have the stress of working all day at my former career, I am in no need of any more relaxation than I currently have. What I need, nay, want, is for a nice, semi-hard spray of water to get the job of showering done.

It takes forever for the gentle pitter patter of “rain fall” to rinse what little hair I have, or to rinse the soap off of the large framework I currently have for a body.

I am not one to use a lot of water in anything I do, so to take so long for a shower is maddening. I want to rinse, soap up, hair, and body, rinse off, squeegee the shower walls, and floor, and get out, and dry off. Done, and done.

Now, with the minimal purchase of a new shower head, I will be able to do just that. Of course, it was delivered about 45 minutes after my shower this morning. I could have predicted that. Ivan, however, got to use it, and said it was “fine”. That tells me absolutely nothing, but, that too could have been predicted.

I’ll have to wait, and judge for myself tomorrow morning. Am eager with anticipation. Maybe I can find some way to work up a sweat, and try it later today. Hahahahaha! That was laughable.

Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: the new shower head, above, is exactly what I have wanted for forever. It is amazing. The force of the streams of water is perfect. It lets me rinse off, stop the water, wash my hair, rinse, stop the water, soap up, rinse, stop the water. I am in, and out in less than 10 minutes. I will say that it does use more water, but less time. Maybe that will even out over time. Or, I could shower weekly instead of daily. Always a thought. JK.

I did. I broke down, and bought a new nightgown. Finally.

I bought the gown I wear to bed about 5 years ago from the Vermont Country Store; one of my favorite online stores in the US. Fortunately, they don’t ship to Mexico.

I have worn the poor thing out. It is the same structured cotton as a tee shirt, and has worn just as well. I have worn out the elbows, in particular, that, and the back of the neck. That’s where I grab it to pull it over my head on my way to the shower. I’ve had to sew it up, there, at least twice; now, I’m just going to leave the hole.

I’ve got a new gown coming sometime next week. Looking forward to it. Here is a photo of the right elbow of my worn out gown.

Why are pockets in a nightgown so important, you may be wondering? Because, with my NOOM app, my steps are counted by my Apple products; my cell phone, or watch. I don’t always think to put my watch on first thing in the morning, but almost always grab my phone. In my pocket it goes.

Now, if my new slippers would just get here I’d be ecstatic!!!

I am looking forward to the change in design, and color. Until then, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

So far, 2 of the 3 products are good to go, with the 3rd being on the fence.

You may remember the laundry sheets, of which I bought 2 gazillion? That’s the one on the fence. I say that only because I washed a load of hand towels from the kitchen, and forgot to use OxyClean™. Duh! They weren’t as clean as I’d have liked. I use it in every load except that one. Needless to say, I was not impressed with their ability to get the laundry clean.

The towels will be washed again in appropriate manner, but it will be awhile. I have washed 2 more loads, but being darker clothing, I can’t really see whether they are clean, or not. You know something? I really don’t care if I can see it. They look fine, and were hung up to dry, so what’s not to like? I think I’ll give the sheets a 7 out of 10 at this typing, mostly for the smell, and the convenience. I’ll update if that changes one way, or the other. Thank me later.

Some of you may recognize, or remember your mom using this to chop veggies in the kitchen while you were growing up. When you punch the handle down, the blade chops whatever is in the cup, or, if you remove the cap you can see on the bottom of the cup, what’s on the counter; then the blade rotates a bit. The more you chop, the more the blade rotates, the finer the end results will be.

I had a hard time getting started with this, I suspect because the instructions that come with it are in some Asian language, Chinese, Japanese, who knows? Certainly not I. As I recall, there were 2, or 3 photos that kind of showed you how to keep the blade guard, the red part, from falling off every time you open the damned thing, but I couldn’t figure it out. I set it aside for a bit as I washed the dishes, then came back to it, and kind of figured it out.

Not really. I fumble with it but use it whenever I can so I don’t forget how to use it. The blade is supposed to “lock” into the cup, for whatever reason is beyond me. It does lock in with the blade engaged, but won’t fit into the cup this way. WTH?

The blade is very sharp, so it’s worth the aggravation to use it, and carefully clean it. It chops up small pieces of veg nicely, though mine absolutely hates carrots. I forced it into submission, and won. An 8 for this, only because of the terrible directions. Some of us need more instruction than others. Buy accordingly. 😉

And, last, but certainly not least, is the humble garlic mincer thingy.

This gets a 9 from me because it will mince 3 medium cloves of garlic after turning the assembled thing about 8-12 times, back, and forth. I don’t rotate the top 360º- I hold on to the top, and bottom, one hand on each, then do the b/f motion about a dozen, or so times. You need to. Make sure, though, that the teeth are fairly close to each other in order to do this. By the end, most everything is nicely minced. So it takes a dozen times; I couldn’t care less. It saves me from spending too much time cutting the damn things with my knife, risking life, and fingers in the process. That is the one thing I really hate cutting.

That’s it for product reviews for this post. I hope I was able to help some. If not, don’t tell me.

Until next we meet, have a wonderful 4th of July; stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Post script: I will say that since I remembered to use the OxyClean, I have used 2-3 sheets in each load, and the laundry is almost as clean as when I used the Arm & Hammer laundry detergent. You decide.

It’s about time, I think.

It was more than a year ago that I made the last batch of Kombucha. Oh the shame!!

I am going to show you what 1 year of “Mothers” looks like. I think you will be as amazed as I was. Here goes.

Each of the 4 pieces you see in the photo above, the 2 smallest are 1” thick, and the 2 larger pieces are easily 2 1/2” thick.

After making the newest batch of ”buch”, I couldn’t keep all of the mothers alive, having to discard some into the organic bin. I did keep the largest piece, cutting it into 4 chunks, and putting it into the hotel for mothers. (Similar to the Hotel California.)

Here is the final batch of “buch”; alongside is the hotel with the chunks of Mother. The tea in the hotel is fresh from the final batch, and will be changed, or added to with each new batch of Kombucha.

The Mothers are floating in a new bath of strong tea, and sugar. What’s not to enjoy about that?

That’s it until next time. The Kombucha is well liked on NOOM, so much so that homemade Kombucha has only 16 calories for 100ml. Yay!!! It’s because all of the sugar is digested by the mother, giving off its waste as CO2, and the fermenting process is begun.

The rest, as they say, is just amazing flavor. After the second fermentation, that is.

Until next we meet, stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

Herbs. I can’t keep them fresh on the counter, or in the fridge, and I can’t grow them very well.

But I’m going to try. Well, the growing of them anyway. Hopefully, with the Lord’s help, I can do it this time.

To get started, I have some small soil disc’s from a starter kit I bought who know when, and I have some seeds. I also have a few grow lights, small ones, not like the big set up I had in the US. These are small, portable, and set to a timer, which comes on at 7am, and off at 7pm.

Right now, I have one grow light shining on what’s left of my Aeonium Kiwi. I have done a bit more research on the Kiwi, and have found that it drops its petals, or whatever they’re called, in the Spring, and Summer, to start its regrowth in late Summer, early Fall. Well Hell. Wish I’d known that before I got all wacko about the leaves all dropping off when they first arrived. Sheesh.

Back to the herbs. I will be planting Albahaca, (Basil), Cilantro, Eneldo, (Dill), Epazote, Oregano, Salvia (Sage), and Tomillo, (Thyme). Those are the herbs I use most in cooking, but never seem to have to hand when I need them.

I buy them fresh, in the grocery store, but rarely have everything I need to use them in dishes. I didn’t list Romero, (Rosemary), because that is really hard to start from seed, so I’m not sure if I’m even going to try it. Would love to have it scenting the living room, but I’m fast becoming a wuss. We’ll see; that, and Lavadura, (Lavender).

Basil, for example. I would love to make a pesto but never have the pine nuts when I need them. I have Parmesano Reggiano, olive oil, salt, and basil, but no nuts. It’s always something.

Epazote. It’s not an herb that most people are familiar with, but in Mexican cuisine it’s quite common. It has an acrid smell, like a horrible lighter fluid, or strange chemical, but delivers an incredible difference to foods cooked with it; especially when used fresh. In black beans, while they’re boiling, a sprig of this gives the beans a wonderful flavor that is definitely missed if not used.

Now, with NOOM, they are teaching me to actually plan ahead, plan the meals I want to make for the next few days, and shop accordingly. It seems like such a simple thing to do, but it has taken me all of these years to be disciplined enough to actually do it.

The seeds are all here, except for the Sage, at the time I’m typing this, but they will be here this weekend. After they are all here, it will be a matter of gumption. Until then

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.

I made the Sopa de Col con Pollo today, (Cabbage with chicken soup).

It is amazingly good. I had to add quite a few things to it for it to have any flavor that we would enjoy, and I wrote down all of the things I added.

Originally, it had only cabbage, obviously, onion, garlic, carrots, celery, and tomato sauce. Boring.

I added quite a bit of sautéed mushrooms, spinach, epazote, oregano, marjoram, and fennel, and it has taken it to an entirely different level. Fortunately I made a large batch, so we will be able to eat it for another day, or so. While the newly arrived tomatoes are maturing, we will eat this soup, or at least I will. Then I will freeze some, and make another different soup with some of the tomatoes. I’ll let you know.

I might take a photo of this soup, not sure. I’m not sure it would be that appealing to you folks, but the taste, as I said is fantastic. A great start to cooking delicious, and healthy foods.

Normally, for us, because I have never been a very adventurous cook, we have eaten anything that will fit in a tortilla. Seriously. I can heat up a mean can of soup, but could never get a homemade soup to have any flavor. Now, I’m learning how to do just that; make food that tastes good, and is good for us. Amazing what fresh veg can do for a meal.

My weight is slowly, and surely going down. Each morning I get up, go to the bathroom, then weigh myself; now without trepidation. I actually look forward to it, as every morning, for the past few mornings, it is a welcome sight. The numbers keep going down, down, and down. Yay!

I also have to tell you that I am rarely hungry, and know that I can eat anything I want to at any time. When I have a little hint of hunger after any meal, I can go to the kitchen, and get an apple, or blueberries with yogurt, and not have to have potato chips with dip. Quite freeing I must say. The choices have become endless.

That’s all I have to tell you about my progress. Soon I will tell you about the herb garden I’m going to start. It’s so different planting things here, in containers, without direct sunlight than when we were in Iowa, with an entire backyard full of sun, and space. But I am determined to try. I believe, once they are established, I will take them upstairs, to the rooftop, and check on them every day. Hopefully, Liz, and I will be able to cook with fresh herbs in the not too distant future. Until then

Stay happy, healthy, and safe. Wash, cover, and protect yourselves.