The Doctor Reports: You Walk Like a Cinnamon Girl!

Cue up the Neil Young.....
"I wanta walk like a Cinnamon Girl
I could be happy for the rest of my life as a Cinnamon Girl
...da da da duh.
A dreamer of pictures I walk in the night....
Dodging the pine cones,
Chasing the moonlight,
A Cinnamon Girl!!!

It's not too surprising that thought occurred to me since I have an entire album of Neil Young songs covered by girl artists on my walking playlist and both the cover and original versions of the song came on tonight.

First, though, I started with Supermodel, which is very energetic, but a bit ironic since I'm not really trying to look like a supermodel and certainly not anorexic, but I would like to loose the last bit of pudge lurking around my waist line.

But, back to the title...
Since I'm of an age and under medication for a couple conditions, I had a 6 month follow up visit with my doctor this morning. Over the last year in particular I've been doing a fair amount of walking and lost some weight and the results are good and bad.

My blood pressure which was pretty good before is better. So is my cholesterol. My resting heart rate is much better, and my A1C is pretty good. So, overall, great!

But, when I asked about what I thought was a persistent bruise on the inside of my left leg, I got a little bit of a comeuppance :(

I have varicose veins (like my mother) and one of them evidently spilt some blood into my leg. What looks like a blood is the iron left after my body disposed of the rest. So, I'm stuck with it :(

There's a smaller spot on the front of my right leg, as well.

So, no Betty Grable gams for me....

More to the point, though, is that working on your feet for long hours (which I do now and have for many years) as well as lots of walking tends to cause varicose veins which could cause more bruising, so I should start wearing support or compression stockings. No fun!

My hun, helpfully, found me a pair from a hospital stay a couple years ago.

Now I've got to start wearing them....

I guess for work they'll be OK. But, it'll be hot this summer. And I'll have to ditch them for serious walking.

Which brings me back to my evening stroll.

I've been working every day for over 3 weeks, mostly because we are short handed and to provide continuity getting our little operation going. And so, most nights I've gotten home too worn out to do more than scarf a little chow and sack on the bed.

Tonight for a change I had some energy after enjoying hun's pulled pork for a sandwich.

So, I decided to swap my Aria's for New Balance and head out to the park.

I took it easy, but still got in a good walk and earned my four apples for the evening.

Then I washed my shirts and myself, paused to celebrate with a scoop of ice cream, and shared comments with my friends.

Now it's off to cut some Z's.

All the Best!!!

Barbecued Pork and Beans

Barbecued Pork and Beans

I've been enjoying this dish for the last few days and thought I'd share it with you. It's fairly easy (although I do it the hard way by cooking my own beans and roasting my own pork) and surprisingly good.

I started with slow roasted pork. I rubbed 2 pounds of pork loin or boneless pork chops with KC dry rub. Then placed it in a pan in a 275F oven and baked it for about 1 1/2 hours.

Roasted Pork

I cut medium thickness slices for serving, but suggest you let it chill it in the refrigerator and then slice it very thin.

I rinsed one pound of pinto beans several times and soaked them overnight. Then I dumped the water and covered with fresh water. I added 1 tsp each of garlic powder, onion powder, powdered cumin, and powdered red chile. Then, I heated the beans to a boil, reduced heat to simmer and cooked for about 3 hours. This makes a lot of beans!!! You can just drain and rinse 1-2 15 ounce cans of pinto beans instead.

I chopped about half an onion, heated 1 Tbsp of oil in a pot and sautéed the onions for about 5 minutes.

Saute the onions for 5 minutes

Then, I added about 1 pound of sliced pork and heated it for about 5 minutes.

Heat the pork with the onions.

 

Then add 1 1/2 cups of the cooked beans.

Beans added to pork

 

And add 1 cup of your favorite barbecue sauce. I like Stubb's original because it has a lot less sugar than most commercial brands.

Stir the pork and beans together

 

Then, heat to a boil and simmer for at least 30 minutes. (1-2 hours is better.) If you cook it longer, the pork softens and becomes more tender.

 

Serve and enjoy!

 







Good Looks to herald Spring

Like many of us, I can't afford much real shopping, so I have to settle for virtual shopping.

To practice and try to remember my French, I like to poke around in the French edition of the app for Elle magazine. A special treat is when they run one of their Shopping Guides (Le Guide Shopping!).

So, here are a few favorites from their recent guide on skirts to herald the start of spring.

For the Working Girl -- Ellie Saab

A casual look from Paul Joe

Jupe a pois Forever 21 

Jupe crayon a motifs geometriques Sinequanone

Jupe bordeaux effet cuir Zara

Jupe foret Leon Rose Magma

Sweet Potato Stir Fry with Chickpeas and Prunes

One of the joys of cooking is taking advantage of what's available to come up with something that is different and better.

My friend and I started with a recipe for braised eggplants by Antony Worrall Thompson, but our eggplant had gone bad.

So, we used a sweet potato instead, added a couple different vegetables (carrots and asparagus), and turned it into a stir fry.

She and I both liked it, so we thought we’d share it with you.

The chickpeas are a good source of protein and fiber, which you also get from the other veggies.

The chopped prunes add a bit of sweetness without pushing up the glycemic index too far, so it works for diabetics like my friend. Quinoa has twice the protein of long grain rice, so it is a good accompaniment.

For a truly meatless Monday dish, use vegetable broth. We used chicken broth because it's what we had.

Here is the result:

Ingredients:

1 cup dry chickpeas or 1 15-ounce can of chickpeas, drained and rinsed

1 medium sweet potato, peeled and sliced

1 + 1 Tbsp vegetable oil

1 Tbsp grated fresh ginger

1 Tbsp finely chopped garlic

1 medium onion, peeled and coarsely chopped

1 large carrot, peeled or scraped and sliced diagonally

4 oz asparagus, cut into 2 inch pieces

1 stalk celery, chopped

1 Tbsp sesame oil

1 Tbsp light soy sauce

1/3 cup vegetable or chicken broth

3-4 oz pitted prunes, cut in half, then chopped into smaller pieces

2 tsp cornstarch, mixed to a paste with ¼ cup water

Directions:

1.       If using dry chickpeas, soak them overnight in 3-4 cups water. Then heat to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer for 3 hours or until they are tender, but not mushy.

2.       Toss the sweet potato slices in 1 Tbsp vegetable oil in a shallow baking pan or cookie sheet and spread in a single layer under a preheated broiler. Broil for about 10-15 minutes, turning and shaking occasionally, until they start brown and soften.

3.       Heat the other Tbsp vegetable oil in a large wok over medium-high heat and add the ginger, garlic, and chopped onions and cook for 2 minutes, stirring often. Add the carrot slices and stir-fry for another 3 minutes.

4.       Add the sweet potato slices, chickpeas, asparagus, and celery and stir-fry for another 3 minutes.

5.       Add the sesame oil, soy sauce, chicken broth, and prunes and bring to a boil.

6.       Reduce heat and simmer for 2-3 minutes.  Separate the vegetables in the middle of the wok, add the cornstarch and stir into the broth to thicken.

7.        Serve by itself or over cooked rice or quinoa.

Scene Stealing Shoes

A good pair of shoes or boots can add extra kick ;) to your outfit.

My current favorites are my Naturalizer Aria strap boots (no longer available)

They're warm for the cold winter days (or just plain windy), and quite comfortable for walking.

I can tuck my jeggings inside to show off the straps, or hide them inside my boot cut jeans.

For a little change of pace, I thought I'd share this slide show of famous shoes from the movies.

Scene Stealing Shoes

There are even some thigh boots (or higher) in the mix.

Which ones are your favorite?

And, Catherine Deneuve is still Belle!

Have a nice day!

I'm looking forward to my spring break!

Italian Eggplant Bake with Mozzarella

Not Ready For Prime Time, But Still Tastes Good

This recipe illustrates the creative process as I begin to develop a recipe.

I was looking for a recipe to use some eggplant (and other vegetables I had bought), so I went on line for inspiration.

I often go to the Allrecipes.com site, although like all recipe sharing sites, there's a lot to sift through to find something that's close to what you're looking for. In this case, I picked a recipe for Briam (Greek Mixed Vegetables in Tomato Sauce) as a starting point. It made lots more than my friend and I could eat (2 potatoes + 2 eggplant + 3 zucchini + 3 green bell peppers + 2 cups okra !!!). It also called for a fresh tomato sauce blended from 4 tomatoes and some spices and olive oil. I decided to cut way down on the vegetables, use a can of Hunt's fire roasted diced tomatoes with garlic (any canned diced tomatoes will probably work), and top it with grated mozzarella cheese (mostly because I had some in the refrigerator).

So, this is what I came up with. The instructions are revised a little bit from what I actually did to, hopefully, give a little better result. (We liked the taste, but there was too much liquid. Also, it would be nice if the cheese were lightly toasted to be a little bit browner.)

Ingredients
2 Tbsp Olive oil
1 tsp minced garlic
1 cup chopped onion
1 tsp dried basil
2 tsp dried oregano, crumbled (grind it between the palms of your hands)
2 carrots, sliced diagonally
1/2 eggplant, sliced then cut into quarters or sixth's
1 zucchini, sliced
1 red bell pepper, cut into chunks
1 14 1/2 oz can diced tomatoes
1 cup shredded mozzarella

Method
1. Preheat oven to 350F. Cut the vegetables, separate the onions in one bowl, the carrots in a second bowl and set aside the rest in a third bowl.

2. Heat the olive oil, garlic and onions in a 2 quart Corning Ware pan over medium-high heat until they start to sizzle. Add the basil and oregano and sauté for 1 minute.

3. Add the carrots, stir and sauté for 2 minutes.

4. Add the rest of the fresh vegetables and sauté for another 2 minutes.

Saute vegetables with olive oil and spices

 



5. Add the can of diced tomatoes, heat to a boil and boil for about 2-3 minutes to reduce most of the liquid.

Simmer vegetables to reduce liquid

 

6. Put the pan in the oven and bake the vegetables for 10 minutes.

 

Sprinkle the mozzarella over the partly baked vegetables

 

7. Return the pan to the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes, until the cheese is melted and lightly browned.

Eggplant bake with melted cheese

 

8. Serve and enjoy. Sprinkle with parmesan if you like. The recipe makes about 8 servings as a side dish.

 

We both thought it tasted good, but had too much liquid, so I've revised the method a little bit. Now I need to eat the results (which won't be hard) and test the new method.

 

Happy cooking!

 











Osage County Chicken Soup

 

Osage County Chicken Soup



 

 

House in Barnsdall

I'm looking forward to the upcoming movie,  August: Osage County, because I grew up in Osage County and lived in two of the towns used for the filming, Pawhuska and Barnsdall. The film is based on the stage play which is set in 2007, long after my family had moved away.

The house above is my grandparents' house in Barnsdall. I have a lot of memories of this house. Many of them involve cooking. We lived in Barnsdall for less than a year in the house below in Figure 2,  before we moved to Pawhuska, which is only 15 miles away. So, many weekends we would take off Friday night after Dad got home from work and drive the winding route to spend the weekend in Barnsdall before returning to Pawhuska on Sunday night.



House on Main Street in Barnsdall

This is the house we rented before buying a house in Pawhuska. The summer we were there, the back yard was full of locusts and you couldn’t step anywhere without crunching them under foot. There was a small grocery store across the street that we would sometimes shop at.

One of the dishes we cooked fairly often was chicken noodle soup. Since my sons are both fighting off colds right now, I decided to make a pot of chicken soup for us to share. We bought a package of chicken leg quarters on sale this morning. These were big because the package was over 4 pounds total! I put them in a tall stock pot and covered them with water (about 6 quarts) and set them to simmer all day. I added salt, pepper, garlic and onion powders, celery seed and bay leaves. In the afternoon, we removed the chicken and trimmed and shredded the meat, giving us about 28 ounces or almost 2 pounds. I chopped up our remaining celery (about 4-6 stalks), a medium yellow onion, and 4 carrots. I added the chicken and vegetables, heated the soup back up to a boil, and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. Then, I cooked some whole grain noodles for 7 minutes and we enjoyed the soup with a few Ancient Grains crackers from Costco.

The result was fairly similar to what we would have helped my grandmother make, except that she made egg noodle dough for us to roll out on the kitchen counter and slice into noodles with a table knife. Her version probably had a lot more salt and, of course, we ate it with Nabisco Premium saltine crackers.

 

Figure 3 Chicken House with Welding Shop garage in background

These Barnsdall pictures were taken in 1982. Most of the buildings aren’t there anymore. But, the chicken house still is, along with the support pipes for the clothes lines that hung in the back yard.

Grandma and Grandpa raised chickens in the 1930’s, but stopped before 1941 when they moved to Kansas to work as a riveter and welder in the Boeing factory in Wichita. The space in front of the chicken house was fenced off and used as a pig pen. I don’t remember pigs or chickens being there, but we would sometimes run around into the pig pen when we were playing games in the yard.

Recipe

• 4 Chicken leg quarters or 1 whole chicken (at least 4 pounds)
• Water
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp ground pepper
• 1 Tbsp garlic powder
• 1 Tbsp onion powder
• 1 Tbsp celery seed
• 4 Bay leaves
• 1 onion, chopped
• 4-6 stalks celery, chopped
• 4 carrots, chopped

1.     Place chicken in a large stock pot and cover with water (about 6 quarts). Heat over medium heat to boiling, then quickly reduce heat to medium-low and simmer for 2-6 hours. Don’t let it boil rapidly or the broth will be cloudy.

2.       Remove the chicken from the broth (I used a large slotted spoon to fish it out), let it cool slightly, and shred or chop the meat.

 

Shredded chicken

3.       Add the vegetables to the broth. Add additional seasoning if desired.

 

Chicken Broth with celery and onions

Grandma taught me to slice the carrots into sticks and then cut them into little pieces to add to the soup. The larger parts of the carrots I cut into 8 sticks. The thinner parts I just quartered.

 

Carrot sticks before chopping

 

Chopping carrots

 

 Chicken Broth with carrots added

 

Chicken Soup !!!

 

 Blackberries to nibble while making soup

Actually, I associate blackberries with Grandma and Grandpa Harstine’s farm in Ohio. We used to hike to the far back end of the pasture one day on vacation to pick blackberries.

In front of where I was standing in Figure 3, the ground sloped slightly down toward Bird Creek and Grandpa Kingsbury used to raise red and black raspberries along the slope. So, I might have plucked a few off the bush before picking out the onions to take back. However, blackberries were on sale when we went shopping for onions, so I had to tough it out and munch on blackberries.

Chicken Noodle Soup with cracker