The Sandwich Life

I have moved!

I have moved my blogging to my business site. Time for a change after 14 years! The site is very much a work in progress but that's where you will find me!

SandwichLifeConsulting.com

Onward!

Random Notes, Some More Important Than Others

1. Well, damned if I didn't forget to announce the best news yesterday. My sister's surgeon's office called and the margins were all CLEAN and the one lymph node they took was fine. Best POSSIBLE news! She'll still have radiation but will then be DONE with it! Thanks for all the prayers and good wishes for this outcome!

2. Outdoor fire as the weather turned cool and the rain started last night.

3. Sometimes the salmon just comes out perfect. Cast iron pan with olive oil, skin side down til it's crispy, then turn for a minute or two. Salad greens with just olive oil and salt and the last of the duck fat potatoes. Pretty darn wonderful. The skin was shatteringly crisp, just like fish bacon. Ernie doesn't understand the pleasures of it so I get his too. 


4. My sweet pea with a stunning batch of chard from Farmer Greg.

 

5. Doesn't he look cute?

6. Bob of the day


7. And yes, we DID buy a 20 lb turkey even though it will only be four of us. Big turkeys taste better.

Onward

 

The Afternoon

Yesterday afternoon lasted about 48 hours. I kid you not. We left the house around 1:30. We got to the Cancer Center. There was a sign saying no visitors allowed but I just went in and nobody stopped me. Their Christmas decorations are up reminding me that it's almost been a year since this latest cancer adventure started. Ernie checked in and they sent him upstairs to get blood drawn from his port instead of where he usually goes. We found a spot in the waiting room. Random chairs are blocked off but everyone is still kinda close. Not sure what else they could do but it feels odd. Ernie went in and got his blood taken. Then we had about an hour and a half to wait. We decided to go for a drive rather than sitting in the waiting room all that time. Then someone came and called Ernie back though. They said he was supposed to get his injection then, rather than after the doctor appointment as usual. We shrugged, he went in, I went back to my chair. A minute later he was back. They'd made a mistake. Ok. We paid our dollar to get out of the parking garage and went and got an iced tea at the Dunkin Donuts drive-through, as Einstein's, with my favorite iced tea, was closed. We decided to drive around Crystal Lake Park. We meandered through, admiring all the changes they are making. Then we parked and I sipped my iced tea. Ernie turned the car off. Mistake. It wouldn't start. It was doing the weird totally dead thing that nobody can seem to figure out. We weren't totally panicked. Ernie could walk to his appointment, Owen was at home. But. Sigh. After a tense while, it started. We headed back to the cancer center and went back to the waiting room. Got called in and waited for Vasireddy. Wait for it. I LOVE THAT MAN. Ok. Ernie's numbers were all good. Yay. Then I asked Vasireddy to look at where Ernie's dinosaur claw had come off. His podiatrist just saw it on Tuesday but I DID not like the look of it. Vasireddy didn't either and gave Ernie antibiotics and said to keep an eye on it. We checked out and Ernie headed into the infusion suite while I headed back to the waiting room as they truly don't allow visitors in there. He was just getting an injection but it takes a while as they don't order it from the pharmacy until he is there in the infusion area. There was nobody left in the waiting room and the light was starting to get low outside. Finally, Ernie was done. We headed over to Cheese and Crackers to pick up the fish we ordered, then to Walgreen's to pick up the antibiotics, then to Schnuck's and then finally home. It was 5:30 and dark and I would have sworn we'd left the house a day or two ago.

Not a bad afternoon...but L.O.N.G.

We had a glass of wine, watched the news and then followed it with a Hallmark Christmas movie. Ate leftovers instead of cooking our fish.

Onward.

Oh, and here's the Bob of the Day.

Trains and Cats and Dinosaur Claws and Other Notes

1. Yesterday was just one of those days. As I've mentioned, chemo has turned Ernie's feet into weird dinosaur claws. The other day he asked for help trimming one of his claws and I looked at it in horror. I told him unfortunately I didn't have a tool that could possibly conquer that. Yesterday morning he woke me up...and for some reason, I was in a deep, deep sleep...and immediately put his foot in my face and asked me to help bandage his toe because the dinosaur claw had fallen off. I gotta tell you...perhaps it was just as well that I still had sleep in my eyes while I did it. The things you could never have imagined when you are young and just eyeing the cute boy behind the record store counter.

2. I still think losing one's toenails, or dinosaur claws or whatever is just damned insulting. INSULTING! 

3. Eh. Leo came home with a big bill from the dentist's office and needs not only wisdom teeth removed, but also straightening as his wisdom teeth have moved things out of whack. Just what we need...orthodontia bills.

4. The COVID numbers are freaking me out. And the thought of not having people over on Thanksgiving and no Christmas party...it's all hard to fathom.

5. Here's one of Leo's pictures from his train photo trip last weekend. He said everybody in the group (it was a Trains Magazine thing) was great about wearing masks, etc, but that in some of the small Wisconsin towns they were in many people weren't wearing masks. Sigh.

6. That's about all I've got. Had a wonderful Zoom with my old friend Jeanne last night. It's affirming to reconnect with old friends and realize that you were spot on when you loved them the first time.

7. Oh, and here is the Bob of the Day:

Onward.

Monday Already?

It was a good weekend. Quiet of course, but overall good. Pretty peaceful except for a long, intense conversation with Owen about how hard it is to be hemmed in by so many forces both internal and external. We ended up talking some about Ernie's cancer and the weight of that on all of us. We often allude to it but we don't talk directly enough about it. Or maybe we do, but regardless it's good to have it forced on us all to openly acknowledge one in a while. Eventually, we reconvened, and watched a couple of really bad movies ate dinner, and laughed a lot.

Leo spent the weekend off on a train photo trip. We missed him. It's funny how different it seems when he's not here even though we aren't necessarily interacting all the time. He keeps reminding me that it will be like that all the time when he moves out and I remind him that he will be visiting me a lot more often than he thinks he will.

What else? Well, worked a bit, read a good bit, finished watching the Queen's Gambit, watched a few episodes of the Great British Menu and yearned for the days of My Kitchen Rules.  Watched a little David Olney because it's good for my heart.

 

Did some lazy cooking. I gotta say, Ernie seasoned this chicken perfectly....basil, tarragon, thyme....I'm not sure what else.

Watched a bunch of police cars chase a car into our alley in the middle of the night...one guy ran, one guy they got. 

Watched a Walter Salas-Humara live stream. I have to figure out how to get live streams onto my tv. Any advice?


And last but not least, this is how Bob spent the weekend.

The week to come? Ernie sees the podiatrist again because chemo has turned his feet into strange dinosaur-like creatures. I can't go with him for that one. I'm assuming I can still see the oncologist with him later in the week, although I know they're clamping down on visitors  at Carle so we shall see. Regular work stuff and hmmmm....gotta think of something else to fit in there. Maybe just a drive in the country.

Oh, and write me if you want to do a secret Santa gift kind of thing. I know they're silly but I like silly.

Onward.

Random Notes from the Sandwich Life

I gotta say, I'm finding this drizzly, dreary, rainy Saturday kind of delightful. I'm curled up in the media room with Ernie. He's watching some car restoration show, I'm reading a trashy novel and half watching. I've got a blanket over me and am feeling cozy.

Updates from the week:

The other night I got tired of everybody being grumpy and irritable so I got grumpy and irritable which somehow was interpreted as me overreacting. So I ate too much meatloaf by myself and went to bed. The meatloaf was pretty damn good. I broke off pieces and wrapped them in lettuce. I recommend it...not the getting grumpy part, but the meatloaf in lettuce part.

I had a meatloaf sandwich on some not bad gluten-free bread for breakfast the next morning. I came to a final determination after finishing that meatloaf sandwich. WAIT FOR IT: I prefer Hellman's to Duke's. Ernie doesn't agree but then again he doesn't like mayo as much as I do so his vote may not count.

The Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting, whom I'm doing some work for, put out a really good story this week. Go read it.

 

 

We're still trying to get the right amount of laxative into Hattie. Easier said than done. The other day she pooped in the fireplace and we were so thrilled she was pooping that we just let her. This is our life. Right now she is sitting on me making it quite hard to type. All typos courtesy Hattie.

Last but not least, last night we roasted a duck. I love duck but we rarely cook it. I used a simple Mark Bittman recipe. I'm not always the biggest fan of his recipes (I think they're poorly written....kinda the way I write recipes) but this one worked well.

Easy Roast Duck
By Mark Bittman

• YIELD2  to 4 servings
• TIME 1 hour

INGREDIENTS

• 1 4- to 5-pound duck
•  Freshly ground black pepper
• ¼ cup soy sauce, more or less

 

PREPARATION

1. Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Remove giblets and neck from duck cavity and discard or reserve for another use. Cut off excess fat from duck cavity.
2. Place duck, breast side down (wings up), on a rack in a roasting pan; add water to come just below the rack. Sprinkle duck with pepper and brush with a little soy sauce.
3. Roast 30 minutes, undisturbed. Prick the back all over with point of a sharp knife, then flip bird onto its back. Sprinkle with pepper and brush with soy sauce again. Add a little more water to the pan if the juices are spattering (carefully--you don't want to get water on the duck).
4. Roast 20 minutes, then prick the breast all over , and brush with soy sauce. Roast 10 minutes; brush with soy sauce. Roast 5 or 10 minutes more if necessary, or until duck is a glorious brown all over and an instant-read thermometer inserted into the thigh measures at least 155 degrees. Let rest 5 minutes before carving and serving.

Tip

• There are four challenges to roasting a duck by the simple method given here. The first is spattering. All that fat can make a mess of your oven. But the solution is simple: keep a thin layer of water in the roasting pan. The fat drips into it and stays there. (You'll need a rack to elevate the duck, but you should be using one for a crisp bird anyway.) The second challenge is to achieve a uniformly brown color. I cheat a little bit here and brush the roasting duck with soy sauce, which works like a charm. The third challenge lies in the carving; a duck is a little more complicated than a chicken. The best way is to cut on either side of the rib cage to remove the two breast halves, then cut the legs off the carcass. The rest is for picking. Finally, there's the basic challenge of having enough to go around, for a roast duck can easily be finished by two people. If you want to serve four, roast two, or plan on a lot of side dishes.

I went with the suggestion in the notes that several people had mentioned, and instead of using water in the pan, I layered it with potatoes. Well, the suggestions were layers of potatoes, onions and carrots but I didn't have carrots and had no onions. There weren't enough potatoes for the bottom of the pan so I added half a cabbage in there. 

The vegetables turned out luscious but I'd probably stick to just potatoes next time so the green vegetable could be something sharper. The duck turned out to be wonderful however. I was worried I'd overcooked it but it was pretty damn perfect. The meat was moist and flavorful, and while the skin wasn't crispy, it was well rendered. It was also incredibly simple and quick AND I've got leftover duck fat potatoes and roast duck in the refrigerator!

Onward.

My sister sounded good when I talked to her just now. Thanks again for all the kind wishes and prayers. I know it meant a great deal to Debbie as it did us. Now, onward to healing, and then down the road, radiation.

I'm a little sad that the weather has cooled off. I think we spent more time in our yard in the last week or so than we did all summer. The last few nights Ernie has gone in before me and I have just sat in the dark watching the lights in the house and listening to bits of conversation flitter out of the windows. It's comforting.

And it was one of my favorite nights last night, it was lamb chop night. With some rice, Swiss chard and yellow pepper.

Onward.

Monday + Sister + Pepperoni

I'm sitting in the living room working. I'm listening to Ernie and Owen bustling about the kitchen making pizza. Well, I think Owen is primarily the bustler, Ernie is advising. It smells enticing and it's so nice just to hear the ups and downs and murmurs of them talking to each other, music in the background.

The sun is going in and out. It looks as though this might be the nicest day we'll have for a bit so I need to move my office to the front yard soon.

Our beloved Ann and Bob came over yesterday afternoon and we sat in the yard and talked and talked and listened and chatted and just were together. They brought a bottle of champagne so we toasted the future.

Today, my mind is on my sister Debbie. She gets the radium seed implanted and a COVID test today to prepare for tomorrow's surgery. I wish I could be there.

Fucking cancer.

There are a lot of circles in our lives and I must say they have worn me out in the past week but I am holding on and so grateful for my friends and beloved family. All of you.

We're all with you, Debbie. ❤️

 

And yes, Rascal likes pepperoni. Are we surprised?

Very Random Notes

1. I have a headache, which is unusual for me. Is it just the roller coaster of the week having its way with me? I don't know. 

2. When we heard the news that the election had finally been called yesterday it was such an incredible relief. Ernie ran out and got a bottle of champagne and we hunkered down and watched the news.

3. Bob also checked the news.

4. Later Ernie and I sat in the sun and tried to decompress.

5. Tomorrow my sister gets the radium seed implanted for her cancer surgery. Tuesday is her surgery. I had the days wrong when I mentioned it earlier. I wish I could be there. Such strange times.

6. My only other news of note is that we're trying to find the sweet spot in which Hattie has enough laxative but not too much. As of yet, this has been a challenge. Sigh.

Onward.

 

Random Notes from the Sandwich Life

Friday. What a week. Yesterday I let myself wallow in worry and grief. Today, as I told Ernie, I am rising like a Phoenix. Phoenix Cynthia.

Just a few pictures for you today.

 

Ebay isn't the wild west it was in its early days, but you can still find a hell of a bargain at times. $30. Amoy. Flow Blue. 1840's+

 

Owen and Trinity, back from a trip to the Indianapolis Zoo. Notice in the drawing that Owen is holding Rascal and Trinity has her cat, Dasher, at her feet.

For some reason, Bob's paws seemed to be floating in the air. I don't know if Ernie is some kind of force field, or what...

 

My poor little shaved Hattie. Don't let her fool you. That girl is TOUGH.

oh, and a few more from their trip

Onward.

Here we are

Well.

Here we are.

I feel mentally worn out today.

I talked to my sister, Debbie, yesterday.

Her surgery is on Monday.

I so wish I could be there.

I will be on her shoulder though, as our Mom would say whenever we had something hard to do.

I worry.

Later, the four of us all went and voted. ALL four of us. It's hard to accept that I have two adult sons. They didn't even put up a fight when I requested photo documentation. I think I have worn them down. Aren't they the most beautiful things in the whole wide world?

We came back home and we sat and talked, all hanging out together in the living room. Those times are getting more scarce as they both lead their own lives more and more. Ernie took off to go to the store and then the three of us just sat and kept talking. Talked about being sad and frustrated and the future. I tried to just soak up the moment. Leo took off for a dentist appointment only to return because his temperature was one degree too high. I think it was merely from him sitting in a hot car waiting for them to let him in but can't fault them a bit and am glad they are so careful. 

So.

Well.

Here we are.

As much as I knew there would be no quick return on the election, a tiny bit of me hoped for it. Hoped that I would not have to accept that half the country truly is content with where we are and who we seem to be.

Onward.

A whatsit day with lobster risotto

You know you made a good dinner the night before when you start talking about it in the morning.

Friday felt like Saturday so I don't know what yesterday was but it turned out quite nice for a whatsit kind of day. I had a fair amount of work to do so curled up and laptopped it until mid-afternoon. Then I took the lobster shells out of the refrigerator. I set Ernie to coaxing the last bit of lobster out of the knuckles, etc and broke up the shells and tossed them in a stockpot with some olive oil. After the house started smelling lobstery I cut up the last beautiful tomatoes that Ginna had given us, along with a cup or two of white wine, and added that before topping it all off with a pitcher of water and a few dashes of salt. We set the bits of leftover lobster back in the frig and let the stock start simmering.

I had thought it was cold outside but it turned out that in the sun it was absolutely luscious. We sat like two little cats and soaked it up. I read, he crossworded, we both sipped a bit of wine. It was heavenly. When the sun got too low we quickly got cold so headed in. And then, well, I can't begin to tell you how wonderful it is to have a husband that will watch Hallmark Christmas movies in October with you. We take a drink every time they say cocoa.

Eventually, it was time to strain the broth...and oh, that BROTH. It was positively magical. We put some arborio rice in a pan and toasted that bit before we began slowly stirring in the lobster broth, ladle by ladleful. We'd take turns stirring while the other person found a video on YouTube to watch. We ended with these two.

When the risotto seemed to be the right texture, creamy with the teensiest bit of bite to it, we stirred in some parmesan...not tons because I didn't want it to overwhelm, and then some green peas. We spooned it onto our Flow Blue plates and topped it with the leftover lobster and some tiny halved sweet little cherry tomatoes. 

No, we didn't light the candles and sit at the dining room table, instead we curled up in front of the TV with the end of our Hallmark movie and we positively swooned with pleasure. It. Was. Perfect. Ernie thinks it may have beaten the actual lobster dinner. I can't go that far but it was one of the best meals we have cooked in eons.

Onward.