Spring Cleaning

So what happens when you stick a soap pump into the dishwasher when it still has a little teeny bit of Palmolive in the bottom of it?

The floors get really, really clean.

Herbed Roasted Potatoes

One of my favorites alongside a steak for three reasons: 1. you don't have to worry with fixing a baked potato, 2. it's healthier than all the stuff traditionally put into a baked potato, 3. you eat the skin, which contains most of a potato's vitamins and minerals. (Mike doesn't eat skin on a baked potato, while I'll eat the whole thing.)

I found the initial idea for this dish on the side of a bag of potatoes when we first married. Since then it's evolved to include what's in my herb garden, which is good as I've lost that recipe anyway.

You can use garlic in oil and dry herbs if you don't have fresh, but fresh is definitely better. In the winter, I'll do this dish with fresh garlic and dry rosemary only, leaving out the other herbs. Remember that there's a difference between fresh and dry herbs - the more dry they are, the more potent!

4-5 medium potatoes, scrubbed and chopped (enough to fill a 9x9 Pyrex dish)
1/3 cup olive oil
1/2 Tablespoon salt, or less to taste
1/2 Tablespoon freshly ground pepper
5 cloves garlic, chopped
1 Tablespoon chopped fresh rosemary
1/2 Tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
1/2 Tablespoon chopped fresh parsley

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Place potatoes in the Pyrex dish.
3. In a measuring cup, combine oil, seasonings, and herbs, and mix thoroughly.
4. Pour oil mixture over potatoes, being careful to cover evenly.
5. Roast uncovered in hot oven for about 30 minutes, turning and checking every 10 minutes.
6. If they cook too fast (as in, if your main dish isn't ready yet), cool the oven down to 375 degrees and continue to cook until brown and soft.
7. Serves 4-6

Fried Rice

This is my go-to dish when we have some leftover meat such as chicken, steak, or pork. It's especially good when the meat has been grilled, but roasted, smoked, or braised is good too, as long as it's already been cooked. It serves 8-12, so I guess you'll have leftovers of leftovers, but it's more creative than chicken sandwiches for a week!

All of these ingredients except for the oil, soy sauce, and Minute Rice are optional; mix it up and make it your own. I've even put a bag of frozen yellow corn kernels in it - Mike likes it that way, but Mom says it's totally unrealistic and goes against the grain of Chinese fried rice. But I'm not sold on how Chinese English peas are.

1/4 cup olive or salad oil
1 bag frozen yellow, green, and red peppers and onion
1 bunch scallions, chopped
3 cups Minute Rice
2 cups chicken broth
1 can mushrooms
1 can sliced water chestnuts
1/4 to 1/2 cup soy sauce, to taste (Docta Peppa-yum yum!)
16 ounce bag frozen peas
4 eggs, scrambled dry
Leftover meat, roughly chopped in bite-sized pieces.

1. Heat oil in a large heavy skillet or wok and add frozen peppers and onion and scallions. Cook for about 3-4 minutes, until peppers are thawed and soft.
2. Add Minute Rice and cook for 5 more minutes, stirring occasionally.
3. Add broth, mushrooms, water chestnuts, and soy sauce.
4. Cover and simmer for about 15 minutes, until the liquid cooks down.
5. Add eggs, meat, and frozen peas for the last 4-5 minutes: the peas will cook, but they should stay whole and firm.
6. Add more broth or soy sauce if necessary according to taste to keep dish moist.

Edamame

I've heard that the Japanese language does not have a word or phrase for "hot flash" because women simply do not have them. This is largely contributed to eating soy, tofu, fish, and the other healthy stuff the Japanese eat.

I might never order edamame in a restaurant again. It's as easy as boiling the beans for 5-6 minutes and sprinkling some kosher salt over them!

Yep, that's steam rising. Oh so delicious.

To Teach Someone to Read

Yesterday was a big day! Mike received recognition for a good job done at work, and as always, I'm so proud of him I could bust a gut. Of course I've always known he's great at his job, but it's nice when somebody at work tells him so.

And I was officially inducted into the Walter Leake Chapter of the DAR. I totally Obama'd the oath, saying "I will" at the wrong times and stumbling over myself. But I'm excited about being the youngest member and keeping those traditions alive, and I'm looking forward to getting more involved. This year I'm chairing our Good Citizenship scholarships with Clinton High, Forest Hill, and Mt. Salus, and I think it's a selfish project for me as much as it is volunteering. I've been so discouraged with behavior of kids lately. Kids these days. (Sitting on the front porch in a rocking chair, with my trusty cane next to me.)

Anyway, there's also a program in which I teach an illiterate adult how to read. That really excites and scares me at the same time. The idea of teaching somebody to read! Wow! What a gift to give! But at the same time, yikes. Um, how do you do it? Do they give a curriculum? What if I can't do it? It's something to think about. Have you ever done it or know anything about it?

This afternoon my sweet neighbor, her mom, and her three little girls came over to our house for a quick visit. It was just loverly. Mike's working a little late tonight, but then we're having supper at Walker's. He's on call this weekend, so he'll have Monday off!

So that's about it. We're pretty boring, but I suppose that's preferrable to the alternative.

Photo courtesy of the Mississippi Daughters of the American Revolution.

Flowers at Twilight

Here We Go Again

Mike asked me to marry him on July 11, 2006. Mom was diagnosed with B cell, abdominal, non-operable, non-hodgkins lymphoma on August 6th of the same year. It's classified officially as stage 4, but just barely, as only little spots of cancer were present in her marrow. So we call it stage 3 1/2. Later in 2006, she underwent nine weeks of chemotherapy - cytoxin, vincristine, and rituxin - but the lymphoma didn't budge.

So her oncologist decided that we would wait to pour more toxins into Mom until the cancer was once again on the move. Cancer reacts to chemo when the cells are dividing, so a slow-moving cancer like Mom's doesn't react as well as fast-growing cancers do. So Mom would do scans every 3-6 months to see what was going on, and so far, so good.

Pessimists see a glass as half-empty. Optimists see a glass as half-full. I see a glass with something in it.

On one hand, yay! No chemotherapy! On the other hand, Mom still has something in her that's not suppposed to be there. It's kind of a catch-22.

Around March of last year, Mom developed a spot on her right cheek. After visiting three dermatologists (and asking each one of them to biopsy it, which they wouldn't), she was finally referred to a plastic surgeon to remove what all the doctors thought was a subaceous cyst. Yep, it was a manifestation of the lymphoma. We went straight to her oncologist, who was rather frustrated that she didn't get to take a stab (no pun intended) at it, but we figured it was a one-time deal. It was gone, and now we just had to deal with the scar that was left.

Last week another spot came up on Mom's face. It's just above her left temple. She happened to have a follow-up appointment with one of her surgeons on Tuesday, but he said that we can't remove this new spot surgically: it's too big and in a spot on her face that doesn't have much fat. We went to Mom's oncologist on Wednesday morning. Her scans all show a stable status: the lymphoma in her body hasn't moved. But Dr. Shumaker believes that Mom's symptoms are enough to consider treatment as opposed to maintaining the status quo.

Dr. Shumaker put Mom on Keflex, an antibiotic, Tagamet, a histamine 2 blocker, and Benadryl as needed when she breaks out in hives on her arms and legs (this happens about once a week). She also upped Mom's Lexapro because Mom and her oncologist have a suspicion that maybe the stress from tax season leads to these nodes popping up on her face. I'm not convinced of that but hey, at least she'll be happy about what's going on!

So we're going to wait the 6 weeks until tax season is over and have a follow-up on April 20th. If the spot is still there, we'll have it biopsied. If it turns out to be lymphoma, we'll start on a systemic chemotherapy for reoccurrent lymphoma, even though Mom's cancer has always just sat there and hasn't really occurred again.

Her last chemo was relatively easy - one day every three weeks. If we do go in for this new chemo, it'll be more involved - five mornings every three weeks, depending on her cell counts. Again, on one hand, yay! She may get rid of the lymphoma! On the other hand, boo. Chemo.