Mine looks wonderfull, of course! Alas, my daughter spilled a little flour, which sifted between the cracks.
I immediately hit it with the vacuum, which, after some time, got up the little white line that was so very obvious....
I am lucky: my kids are teens. If I had a novice cook, thee WOULD be considerable spills and I would not be able to keep it looking nice!
And, it DOES look nice! But, flour shows up so terribly, and you cannot run a kitchen without flour!
Monday, June 25, 2012
Friday, June 22, 2012
Update on the no-work potatos!
I picked some potatos yesterday. I simply picked them off of the ground like they were pebbles.
These no-work potatos were the first ones that I had put in, and instead of burying the potatos I just covered them with newspaper. Well, we had a spell of bad weather this week and the paper shifted due to the wind, exposing the spuds. So, I picked the exposed potatos up.
Most of the potatos had a little green on them, but the spuds were tasty enough once I had removed all of the green area. Apparently the newspaper was not heavy enough to keep ALL of the light out! (For beginning potato growers, I will mention that if light hits a growing potato it will turn that spot green, and green spots on potatos are bitter).
I will DEFINATELY save some newspaper for next spring! Now that this method shows such promise, I believe that next year I will make an entire row of delicious potatos with newspaper over them! Though, I will make the layer of newspaper heavier. And, perhaps I will also lay in a supply of rocks to weigh the newspapers down as the wind in Kansas can be fierce!
Tonight I ate potato salad made with home grown potatos, eggs from my chickens, mayo, celery, relish, and a little salt. It was delicious!
These no-work potatos were the first ones that I had put in, and instead of burying the potatos I just covered them with newspaper. Well, we had a spell of bad weather this week and the paper shifted due to the wind, exposing the spuds. So, I picked the exposed potatos up.
Most of the potatos had a little green on them, but the spuds were tasty enough once I had removed all of the green area. Apparently the newspaper was not heavy enough to keep ALL of the light out! (For beginning potato growers, I will mention that if light hits a growing potato it will turn that spot green, and green spots on potatos are bitter).
I will DEFINATELY save some newspaper for next spring! Now that this method shows such promise, I believe that next year I will make an entire row of delicious potatos with newspaper over them! Though, I will make the layer of newspaper heavier. And, perhaps I will also lay in a supply of rocks to weigh the newspapers down as the wind in Kansas can be fierce!
Tonight I ate potato salad made with home grown potatos, eggs from my chickens, mayo, celery, relish, and a little salt. It was delicious!
All the neurologist offered was vitamins and a consultation with a sleep study specialist
Dissapointing!
On the good side, the folic acid and the vitamin B12 has me feeling better already, so apparently he was correct when he said that MS patients were often low on both.
On the good side, the folic acid and the vitamin B12 has me feeling better already, so apparently he was correct when he said that MS patients were often low on both.
Monday, June 18, 2012
I see my neurologist, tomorrow. It is a strangely depressing thought, that.
Perhaps because I want to ask him a few hard questions? I both hope that he can help and I am afraid that he cannot.
I stopped by the raised bed on the way to shut the chickens in tonight, and I pulled a baby carrot. It was only one bite's worth, but it made me feel better, somehow. A carrot from the works of my hands.... perhaps it makes me feel less helpless?
Perhaps because I want to ask him a few hard questions? I both hope that he can help and I am afraid that he cannot.
I stopped by the raised bed on the way to shut the chickens in tonight, and I pulled a baby carrot. It was only one bite's worth, but it made me feel better, somehow. A carrot from the works of my hands.... perhaps it makes me feel less helpless?
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Diabetic Diet made Easy
So, you just came home after being the diabetic diet. You have pamphlets, a book, booklets, and handouts to read. The trouble is, you are hungry NOW! And, you haven'thad a chance to read the book yet!
BTDT, got the T-shirt. Below is a down-and-dirty way to get started towards a healthy diabetic diet. It isn't very PRECISE, but it is pretty darned close!!!!!
LUNCH: Any thick, meaty sandwich will do, preferably with either a side salad or put lettuce and tomato on the sandwich. A peanut butter sandwich will also do. If you like, a few pieces of onion would be excellent!
And, while I am NOT talking about the subway footlong, as that is 2 sandwiches instead of one, the 6 inch Subway sandwiches fit nicely into the diet plan. If you are at home, a tuna fish sandwch or a peanut butter sandwich will do. Preferably with non-starchy vegetables like lettuce and celery.
DINNER: Meat the size of one or two decks of cards, either a potato or a grain product the size of a small womans fist, and salad.
You might be worried about the amount of salad dressing you can use, but until you have read the materials don't! This is close enough to get you started!
Milk or sugar-free iced tea to drink: I keep a pitcher of tea in the fridge.
BREAKFAST: An egg and a piece of toast will do if you are as small as I am. Or, 2 eggs and a piece of toast if you are larger than 5'2", which I am NOT!
SNACKS: Eat at LEAST 3 snacks a day: I sometimes eat 4 when I am active. An easy snack is a fistfull of saltine crackers. I eat 5 crackers but I am short. OR, a whole graham cracker. OR, a piece of fruit (A half a banana counts as a piece of fruit). Pretzels. Or Jerky or cheese or nuts. Or, leftovers. When I wanted another piece of chicken or whatever at a meal but it was not on my diet I used to set it aside for my next snack. It made it easier to stay on my diet!
Snacks are important and the diet will NOT work unless you eat your snacks! The body of a diabetic person does not slowly absorb nutrients, it dumps everything into your blood stream all at once, which makes your blood sugar go up too high, but then it drops too low and you run on empty long before your next meal. Don't run out of gas: eat your SNACKS! If your intake of food (fuel) is slow and steady, your blood sugar will even out.
YOUR REWARD FOR FOLLOWING YOUR DIET!
You will no longer feel tired and a little stupid after eating. We all have lives to live, and it is a torment to feel like taking a nap just when your full attention is needed! That kind of fatigue happens when your blood sugar is bouncing up and down! You will feel better once you are stable.
Your blood pressure will go down. Mine went WAAY down and I went off of my blood pressure pills, with my doctors approval, for 10-odd years. I am back on them now but then I am much older than I was.
You will not be nearly as hungry. Aside from a few STRONG bursts of appetite at the very beginning, I am far less hungry. I sit down with an appetite, yes, but I no longer feel like I am shaking with hunger at mealtime. And, if I get hungry too soon, I tide myself over until dinner with a couple of crackers. And, because you *ARE* less hungry, you will loose weight.
This is not intended to be the entire diabetic diet, this is just to get you started. It is INTENDED to help you, when you are in the middle of the literature, to decide what's for dinner tonight!
You will need a scale to weigh things for a few months to check your portion size, and to check your memory for portion size now and then.
Now that my blood sugar is stable, I no longer feel like somethng the cat vomited up. It is worth following the diet just for that!
Live long and prosper!
Terri
BTDT, got the T-shirt. Below is a down-and-dirty way to get started towards a healthy diabetic diet. It isn't very PRECISE, but it is pretty darned close!!!!!
LUNCH: Any thick, meaty sandwich will do, preferably with either a side salad or put lettuce and tomato on the sandwich. A peanut butter sandwich will also do. If you like, a few pieces of onion would be excellent!
And, while I am NOT talking about the subway footlong, as that is 2 sandwiches instead of one, the 6 inch Subway sandwiches fit nicely into the diet plan. If you are at home, a tuna fish sandwch or a peanut butter sandwich will do. Preferably with non-starchy vegetables like lettuce and celery.
DINNER: Meat the size of one or two decks of cards, either a potato or a grain product the size of a small womans fist, and salad.
You might be worried about the amount of salad dressing you can use, but until you have read the materials don't! This is close enough to get you started!
Milk or sugar-free iced tea to drink: I keep a pitcher of tea in the fridge.
BREAKFAST: An egg and a piece of toast will do if you are as small as I am. Or, 2 eggs and a piece of toast if you are larger than 5'2", which I am NOT!
SNACKS: Eat at LEAST 3 snacks a day: I sometimes eat 4 when I am active. An easy snack is a fistfull of saltine crackers. I eat 5 crackers but I am short. OR, a whole graham cracker. OR, a piece of fruit (A half a banana counts as a piece of fruit). Pretzels. Or Jerky or cheese or nuts. Or, leftovers. When I wanted another piece of chicken or whatever at a meal but it was not on my diet I used to set it aside for my next snack. It made it easier to stay on my diet!
Snacks are important and the diet will NOT work unless you eat your snacks! The body of a diabetic person does not slowly absorb nutrients, it dumps everything into your blood stream all at once, which makes your blood sugar go up too high, but then it drops too low and you run on empty long before your next meal. Don't run out of gas: eat your SNACKS! If your intake of food (fuel) is slow and steady, your blood sugar will even out.
YOUR REWARD FOR FOLLOWING YOUR DIET!
You will no longer feel tired and a little stupid after eating. We all have lives to live, and it is a torment to feel like taking a nap just when your full attention is needed! That kind of fatigue happens when your blood sugar is bouncing up and down! You will feel better once you are stable.
Your blood pressure will go down. Mine went WAAY down and I went off of my blood pressure pills, with my doctors approval, for 10-odd years. I am back on them now but then I am much older than I was.
You will not be nearly as hungry. Aside from a few STRONG bursts of appetite at the very beginning, I am far less hungry. I sit down with an appetite, yes, but I no longer feel like I am shaking with hunger at mealtime. And, if I get hungry too soon, I tide myself over until dinner with a couple of crackers. And, because you *ARE* less hungry, you will loose weight.
This is not intended to be the entire diabetic diet, this is just to get you started. It is INTENDED to help you, when you are in the middle of the literature, to decide what's for dinner tonight!
You will need a scale to weigh things for a few months to check your portion size, and to check your memory for portion size now and then.
Now that my blood sugar is stable, I no longer feel like somethng the cat vomited up. It is worth following the diet just for that!
Live long and prosper!
Terri
Monday, June 4, 2012
Pets are Good for Depression!
I did better today: I was busy but I was working in a tidy living room. The kids even vacuumed.
While I was not bouncy and happy today, I was not depressed either until this evening, and then it set in.
So, I gave my litle dog a rawhide bone at the same time I gave him his dinner! Oh, the DECISIONS he had to make! Whether to leave his food unattended and chew his bone-and we have 3 cats for him to be suspicious of- or whether to put off the pleasure of chewing his rawhide bone in order to eat his dinner!
Silly dog!
First he picked up his new toy and walked into the living room with me. Then he went back to his dinner, set the bone down, ate the dinner and took his bone back to the living room and he took it under the furniture. Where he hid it.
He must be too full of dinner to want to chew it this moment, but he WILL get back to it, LOL!
An update on my weed-free vegetable bed.
There is rather more grass than I expected, as the wind brings in some seeds. Just because you use weed free medium does not make it weed-free for ever. Still, I am VERY pleased with it! A casual pull of just a little grass whenever I harvest greens is enough to keep the weeds under control. The vegetable leaves are now touching each other, and so the grass seedlngs are gettng very little light. The vegetables are simply out-competing the grass and weeds.
The carrots are just starting to get thicker roots, which is a little later than when they are planted in our good clay soil but the plants are healthy and they will get there. I only got a few beets from all the seeds I scattered but those beets look VERY good! I would pull them to cook beets if had more of them: as it is I am getting HUGE beet leaves to add to my salads! I would rather enjoy weeks of big leaves than one meal of beet roots! I have let the lettuce go to seed so that I will get volenteer lettuce this fall, and the green onions are the star attraction of the garden at this time. They really are good, and every onion set appears to have taken.
The days wll be getting longer soon, and so the onions will soon bulb up. I doubt they will get very big, as right now they are still just an excellent size for green onions. No matter. If they get big I will make onion rings to DIE for, and if they are small I will cut them up for stir-fries. Both are good.
My chicks are now little red hens, and they might start laying the first of July. And, right on cue, my kids have stopped eating eggs! That is the thing with kids: first they cannot get enough of a food and then they do not want any for MONTHS! I had thought that that would stop because both of them have stopped growing, but apparently not!
Chckens are very good for a handicaped homesteader. They produce every day, and everything is light and easy to carry. They only need 5 minutes of care a day.
I get the kids to carry in the big feed sacks. Older folk with no kids simply ask for it to be placed in the car for them. Then, when they get home, they open the bag while it is still in the car and they unload it one small bucket full at a time. Since 4 chickens only need one bag of feed a month, a small flock of layers are not much work, and 4 hens will give almost 4 dozen eggs a month, if they are well-bred birds.
I had started a few patches of alfalfa to give high-protien snacks for the hens, and now I am glad that they are spaced out! Something-possibly slugs- has eaten half of the alfalfa patches! There are some bare patches and there are a few skeletenized leaves, and I have lot half of the alfalfa.
The other half, however, is strong and so I might plant more before it gets hot. Maybe. We will see!
While I was not bouncy and happy today, I was not depressed either until this evening, and then it set in.
So, I gave my litle dog a rawhide bone at the same time I gave him his dinner! Oh, the DECISIONS he had to make! Whether to leave his food unattended and chew his bone-and we have 3 cats for him to be suspicious of- or whether to put off the pleasure of chewing his rawhide bone in order to eat his dinner!
Silly dog!
First he picked up his new toy and walked into the living room with me. Then he went back to his dinner, set the bone down, ate the dinner and took his bone back to the living room and he took it under the furniture. Where he hid it.
He must be too full of dinner to want to chew it this moment, but he WILL get back to it, LOL!
An update on my weed-free vegetable bed.
There is rather more grass than I expected, as the wind brings in some seeds. Just because you use weed free medium does not make it weed-free for ever. Still, I am VERY pleased with it! A casual pull of just a little grass whenever I harvest greens is enough to keep the weeds under control. The vegetable leaves are now touching each other, and so the grass seedlngs are gettng very little light. The vegetables are simply out-competing the grass and weeds.
The carrots are just starting to get thicker roots, which is a little later than when they are planted in our good clay soil but the plants are healthy and they will get there. I only got a few beets from all the seeds I scattered but those beets look VERY good! I would pull them to cook beets if had more of them: as it is I am getting HUGE beet leaves to add to my salads! I would rather enjoy weeks of big leaves than one meal of beet roots! I have let the lettuce go to seed so that I will get volenteer lettuce this fall, and the green onions are the star attraction of the garden at this time. They really are good, and every onion set appears to have taken.
The days wll be getting longer soon, and so the onions will soon bulb up. I doubt they will get very big, as right now they are still just an excellent size for green onions. No matter. If they get big I will make onion rings to DIE for, and if they are small I will cut them up for stir-fries. Both are good.
My chicks are now little red hens, and they might start laying the first of July. And, right on cue, my kids have stopped eating eggs! That is the thing with kids: first they cannot get enough of a food and then they do not want any for MONTHS! I had thought that that would stop because both of them have stopped growing, but apparently not!
Chckens are very good for a handicaped homesteader. They produce every day, and everything is light and easy to carry. They only need 5 minutes of care a day.
I get the kids to carry in the big feed sacks. Older folk with no kids simply ask for it to be placed in the car for them. Then, when they get home, they open the bag while it is still in the car and they unload it one small bucket full at a time. Since 4 chickens only need one bag of feed a month, a small flock of layers are not much work, and 4 hens will give almost 4 dozen eggs a month, if they are well-bred birds.
I had started a few patches of alfalfa to give high-protien snacks for the hens, and now I am glad that they are spaced out! Something-possibly slugs- has eaten half of the alfalfa patches! There are some bare patches and there are a few skeletenized leaves, and I have lot half of the alfalfa.
The other half, however, is strong and so I might plant more before it gets hot. Maybe. We will see!
Saturday, June 2, 2012
I feel stupid, lately, and lethargic. It is the MS doing it.
To rev me up a bit I went out to mow on the riding mower. I always feel good after I have enjoyed the sun and fresh air!
I got half of the front lawn mowed and the mower quit on me! I suspect the fuel filter and so does my husband. He says it cannot be cleaned, it will have to be replaced. So I guess it is out until Monday at the earliest.
Tomorrow is Sunday, and I think that I will stay home from church and have the kids pick up the clutter. It ALSO lifts my mood when the kids have taken care of all of their stuff and vacuumed as well! And, yes, some of it is my stuff as well, so we will all be working. I think an hour of work should do it.
The MS DOES cause depression at times, but a tidy place to sit helps me to beat the blues. And, I have a library book and the makings for popcorn and ice tea. All of these things are remedies for depression, and I have found that it works on MS depression as well.
Good night!
I got half of the front lawn mowed and the mower quit on me! I suspect the fuel filter and so does my husband. He says it cannot be cleaned, it will have to be replaced. So I guess it is out until Monday at the earliest.
Tomorrow is Sunday, and I think that I will stay home from church and have the kids pick up the clutter. It ALSO lifts my mood when the kids have taken care of all of their stuff and vacuumed as well! And, yes, some of it is my stuff as well, so we will all be working. I think an hour of work should do it.
The MS DOES cause depression at times, but a tidy place to sit helps me to beat the blues. And, I have a library book and the makings for popcorn and ice tea. All of these things are remedies for depression, and I have found that it works on MS depression as well.
Good night!
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