Finally Friday!

The heat & humidity are normalized  for a change…just a gorgeous day here.  I attended a luncheon with my some of my sorority sisters. It was a Chinese buffet that many of them regularly visit for lunch & dinner…it was an hour’s drive for me so I rarely attend the lunches.  Although the food is tasty and fresh enough, I was disappointed that almost every bit of meat/fish on the buffet was deep-fried.  I ate a lot of wonton soup and a plate of veggies and a tiny piece of Szechuen chicken with some fresh fruit for dessert and green tea. Considering that I was charged only $6.97, I was still pleasantly surprised.  On the way home, I took a longer, slower route in the back roads to add to my photo collection of old weathered wooden barns, sheds and rail fences. I'd had a mammogram last week & was called back to the diagnostic imaging clinic for this morning at 9 am. They re-did my mammogram and also did an unscheduled ultrasound, then told me to go home and said that I would hear from my family doctor in a week or so.   Tonight at 5 pm, the phone rang and I instinctively knew immediately when it rang, what it was about.  After 21 years (in Oct) of being cancer-free from breast cancer, I now have a lump on the opposite side.  I await another phone call to confirm my consult appointment with a lady surgeon who specializes in breast surgery.  She is well-known here and highly-thought of. When I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1990, I was examined, had my first mammogram at 40, had my consultation appointment with the surgeon and had my first surgery, all within ten days. And now, within one week, I’ve had two mammograms, an ultrasound and am referred to a surgeon, hopefully to be seen ASAP.   At this point, I am feeling calm, unstressed and grounded. I will deal with this, one step at a  time, just like I did last time. I was looking at a photo of the original founders of the Niagara Breast Cancer Survivors Support Group taken when I had completed my surgeries and treatments in 1990-91. There were 25 of us in that group. This past winter, we met again and I took another photo of us all…there are now only nine of us left, all the rest have died of re-occurance. I have several orders for Mandala Wall Art already!  I do custom pieces, all original artwork. The customer gives me the basic colour scheme for the room and a topic that they wish to focus on while using the mandala to meditate. Friday will be spent researching the costs of making the art into posters and also getting them mounted and plaqued, wrapped & shipped.  Creating the art is very calming and grounding for me. How wonderful to make a few pennies on something I enjoy - playing with design and colour. Sending healing energy for love, comfort and courage to all who need it… Nancy B

Hi Nancy and my OFF family to coe:

Sorry to hear you have a lump. Here's hoping it's benign. Fingers crossed, Juliette's paws crossed and swinging chickens. We have a young woman here that has a rare form of ovarian cancer ... it is considered a pediatric cancer, and she is at the high end of it (she's 26). How strange, huh? Hope all will be OK for you, Nancy.

Not much happening here ... another night where the one guy insisted we wait for a late story and that made me late getting my section out. Same guy as Tuesday night. Otherwise, it was uneventful. Juliette is lying next to me on the recliner footrest as I watch the White Sox game (they won, 6-3).

Anyway, not much else going on. I'm off today. Strange schedule ... no money to do anything, so I guess I'll stay home. I was trying to find something different to do with ground beef, green peppers, onions and tomatoes ... not spaghetti sauce, not chili, just something else I haven't found the recipe for. Saw one recipe that might be OK. We'll see.

Anyway, I should go to bed ... I'm tired. Drugs are kicking in on me. Have a good day.

Eileen - try adding about 1/2 cup brown rice to your mixture.....I am able to eat it and not have issues. 

I can eat brown rice, and do. Just not sure what I'm going to do with what I have. Depends on how ambitious I get.

Mmmm, make Hamburger Bean Soup!  Start by cooking a pot of pintos (either dried or you could use canned, too) with some chopped onion, S&P, and a little chili powder.  Meanwhile, brown your ground beef with the chopped onion, green peppers, S&P, and I like to add some Worchestershire and some La. Hot Sauce for a little kick.  When meat is browned, add your canned tomatoes to the mixture.  Do NOT drain the grease.  Add the meat mixture to the cooking beans, bring to a boil, reduce heat, cover and simmer about an hour or so, or until beans are done.

What is S&P?

Already have the meat browned and the grease is drained ... and it's too hot for soup. Still not sure what I'm going to do. I might make taco salad. Lazy enough for it.

Didn't sleep well. Woke up at 7:30 a.m. to go to the bathroom, then couldn't go back to sleep ... back hurt and nothing worked on it, plus itchy scalp was giving me problems again (I have weird issues, don't I?).

SALT & PEPPER! 

Oh, how silly of me!  I've been reading so many business stories lately all I could think of was Standard and Poor's.

Eileen,

Do you like cabbage?  Because I have a good crockpot stuffed cabbage recipe and it's real easy and not really stuffed, but tastes like it. . .

1 lb. chopped meat (Turkey or Beef)
1 can of diced tomatoes
1 bell pepper (green or red) chopped
2 cups of shredded cabbage (green or red)
1 6 oz. can of tomato paste
1/2 cup of ketchup
1 medium onion
2 tbsp vinegar
1 tbsp worstershire sauce
1 cup Success (other) instant Brown Rice
Garlic and Pepper to suit taste (tspn each)

Directions

Take meat and onion (garlic if using fresh or powdered) and cook in a skillet, drain and put in the crockpot, mix paste, tomatos, ketchup together. Add cabbage and rice to meat in crockpot, stirring in the remaining ingredients, mix well, add water, cover and cook on low setting 4 to 5 hours, no longer. Makes 4 to 8 servings depending on how much you eat.
 

Not a big cabbage fan, and I'm looking to make something out of what I have in the house (cause I don't have any money to buy extra ingredients). I'll keep searching. Everything I've seen needs something I don't have.