I took a nap after supper last night (meatloaf: I achieved my mum’s recipe, perfectly)—and slept from about 5:30 to 9:00 then got out of the chair and went to bed, and slept until 6:30 this morning, took the trash to the curb, went back to bed and slept til 7:30.
I’m better today. But not much writing got done yesterday. I did bake the meatloaf and clean up the kitchen…really clean it. But today my eyes are starting to water, and I’m going to take some Allertec and hope today is more energetic than yesterday.
My allergies usually have the opposite effect because my sinuses become the consistency of Jello. Unless I trank myself mightily with Nyquil or some such, I can’t sleep because I can’t breathe without snoring that shakes the rafters. Then there’s the itchy, puffy eyes. Luckily my allergies only achieve those levels a couple of times a year, and I have prescription drugs to help me cope. I know whereof you speak, and you have my sympathies.
Visine Allergy eyedrops are my friend. Otherwise tears keep falling down my face.
While waiting on supper, I was poking around on YouTube and found mention of something called a “poke bowl.” (Póké, sort of like Pokémon.) While the one video didn’t tell me anything about it, apparently, this is a traditional(?) Hawaiian thing that is recently hitting the food scene here on the mainland US. It looks to be a combo of veggies and a bit of meat, but not exactly a salad. I will now be looking it up on YouTube to find out more about what the heck this is. The brief picture shown was the size of a small salad bowl or close, as a one-dish meal, and it may be a one-pot recipe. Chondrite, I can’t say y’all have been holding out. More like, the mainlander tourists have been ignoring it. The video claimed it is a healthy new alternative that will be becoming very popular starting this year. So, off to find out what it is.
Hmm, I still haven’t located where the mailboxes are here. I’m expecting something in the mail, and it may be sitting there in the box. 🙂
I’m likely going to do a chicken stir-fry for the weekend, though about the only thing Asian about it will be the soy sauce. My pantry contents and spices are stuck somewhere in my storage space, alas. But I have enough to do a decent stir-fry that will taste good, if maybe more bland and American than it should be.
Also, I had to do a double take when I saw a video title for, “How to Make Dutch Babies,” which seems to be (from the cover photo) something like sponge cake or ladyfingers. Ah, I am fairly sure Dutch babies are made the old-fashioned way, hahah, with or without a visit from the stork. (Say, is that stork just an English-speaking folklore thing, or is he in the rest of Europe?) Good luck and good wishes to any Dutch folks busy, ah, making babies, for a happy, healthy baby and mom and dad. But calling a food item, a kind of dessert cake(?) a Dutch baby? Uh, weird. :-/ — Dutch chocolate, however, hurray! 😀
The “Dutch Babies” that I’m familiar with are a type of rich apple pancake, baked in a cast iron pan. They will puff up because of the eggs in the batter, and the apples usually create their own glaze because of the cinnamon-brown sugar-butter mixture that they’re coated with.
Aha, thanks, Kafryn.
I viewed several vids on poke bowl recipes. Nearly all were for ahi tuna plus a set of ingredients with a few slight variations. Wow, several ingredients, some veggie and fish chopping, a couple of hours to marinate, and sushi rice, and you’ve got what looks like a super flavorful, mostly simple, and very healthy dish. There were Hawaiian, Japanese, Korean, and Thai elements shown, and most big city grocery stores or Asian markets should have all the ingredients and spices needed. I’m unsure of the hot/spicy heat level I’d prefer. I’ve never had sushi or raw fish. But this marinates and the citrus, rice wine vinegar, and salt and so on in the marinate does a curing process. as long as you’re careful, it should be fine. And gosh, it looked good in any of the recipes shown. It’ll have to wait until I can get all the supplies together and get brave/industrious and try it. Or I can look up a restaurant in town and try it. I’m impressed, though. That looks super tasty and fresh and pretty simple, once you have the hang of it. there were variants that include avocado, or kimchi, or spicier versions. It looked like it would be a natural fit for the food culture here. They suggested taro root chips or wonton chips, but hmm, tortilla chips might work too. (I got the impression that was a non-traditional modern garnish.)
Hmm, apple pancakes or crèpes, that sounds good too. I’ll find the video again.
CJ, my sympathies. During the furious pack-and-move, I had an allergy and fatigue attack and my sinuses went crazy for about three days before settling down. I went through a box of Kleenex in that short space and had to cancel a lunch outing with new friends because of it. Glug indeed. Hope you get plenty of rest and feel fine after. Sometimes downtime is good for reassessing and recharging the creative energy.
A poke bowl is poke over top of cooked rice, the Hawaiian answer to sashimi. Poke is diced raw fresh fish with various seasonings like seaweed, green onions, shoyu, chili peppers, and other additives. Some kinds are ‘fishier’, shall we say, than others; it’s an acquired taste.
Could’ve sworn I’d posted a reply last night, but I must not have clicked the right button. Or the ethernet ate it.
Hmm, so, are there “internet gremlins” that eat packets? Or do they land in some pocket universe with all those missing socks from the dryer? Or a lost-and-found department on some off ramp from the information superhighway? Inquiring minds want to know! 😀
After viewing several YouTube videos on ahi tuna poke bowls, I think I could copy down ingredients and a recipe and do that. I’ve never tried sushi or raw fish, but I get that the trick is as fresh fish as possible and marinate properly for a couple of hours in the sauce, which includes both rice wine vinegar and citrus (lime or orange or lemon) among several other things, and salt, which help cure and prep the fish. These looked really tasty. I’d likely hold back on the hot and spicy, but otherwise, it looked great and not hard, once you get the hang of it. Just lots of chopping, a list of ingredients, prep and place, then assembly, marinate, and wow.
With the lime or lemon juice, it sounds like you are describing ceviche rather than poke, with the acidity ‘cooking’ the fish. We eat both around here, but poke doesn’t include more than a few drops of anything that will change the consistency of the fish.
When our old cat, Rocky, was on his last legs, we got a small quantity of shoyu poke every week and hid his pills in a bite of the fish. It was almost the only thing we could coax him to eat.
The recipes I was seeing did not use much citrus juice, like a squeeze or two of lime, lemon, or orange and some grated zest from the peel. They were describing mostly mainland or adapted versions of poke bowls, I *think*. If you search for poke bowl on Youube, you’ll come up with the same first couple of pages of hits that I did last night.
My local Krogers should have nearly all the ingredients they listed, with the possible exception of limu or other seaweed. Unsure if/how to sub Japanese dried seaweed, which I did find before my local store remodeled and changed (and constantly move around) their stock. Pretty sure, though, I can get sushi or sashimi grade tuna from their butcher Dept. Houston has plenty of folks who are used to Asian and Latin American cooking, and we are lucky to get great fresh seafood, thanks to being so near the coast.
Almost all the ingredients were either fresh and raw, or could be bought prepared (sauce or spices, for instance). So chopping and prep and marinate looked simple, just amassing all the ingredients and a bit of effort.
If poke is already that popular in California, I’d expect I can hunt up local restaurants that prepare it, maybe even for takeout. But the videos showed it’s something you can do at home, so…. 🙂
BCS, I don’t know about the rest of Europe, but in the Netherlands traditionally the stork did bring the babies. The ‘cabbage patch’ fiction isn’t one I heard around here, but historically storks were common around here in summer, catching frogs in the pastures and building nests on wagon wheels mounted on poles or on barns or church spires; they were considered good luck. They migrate from Africa each year, and have been in a decline for a long time when more industrial-style farming took over from the old-style dairyfarming (including an earlier first hay-mowing and more homogeneous highly productive and fertilised grass culture instead of the original varied grass & flower meadows, with much more diverse small wildlife).
The last decade or so they are making a slow comeback in a few areas, where protected nesting sites have been set up.
There’s one of those near an aunt of mine, which I’ve visited, and they are rather majestic birds when you see them perched on a street light or stepping through a meadow when you near her village.
Their place in the meadows has been almost entirely taken over by big blue herons, who are much faster (and sharper-beaked) both hunting fishes or frogs and much better flyers.
The conservator explained that storks really need a high place to start from, and really good thermals to keep going, not just to be able to make the distance to Africa in their migrations, but also just to get the lift to be able to soar to their hunting meadows and back to their nests, as they are too heavy and aren’t strong enough to flap-fly for long distances. So too much bad weather impairs their ability to forage, and competing with the big blue herons increases the difficulty, making them vulnerable as a species.
Still, it’s been good to see their numbers slowly increasing in the past decade or so.
Telling young kids fairy-stories about storks doesn’t make much sense to them if they’ve never seen a stork, which makes me wonder: are there real black-and-white storks with red beaks in America?
I can’t see them migrating across an ocean, with their limited ability to soar without sunshine and good thermals, so how do they get there? A separate population? Migrating to South or Middle America?
Hmm, I don’t know about stork migrations here. I’m pretty sure we do have native storks, though. I would expect it would be easier for them to fly (or get blown off course) from Africa to South America, and then make it up through Central America and the Caribbean to the Gulf Coast and Atlantic coast and the Pacific coast. However, for all I know, it may be possible for them to make it from Northern Africa and the Mediterranean across the Atlantic. I don’t know if they’d make the hops from the British Isles and, say, Iceland, over to Greenland and down the Atlantic coast, but I’d suppose if they get that far north, they could.
Where I am, we have Gulf Coast fauna and then inland Coastal Plains fauna, so we get a mix of subtropical and temperate animals and animals down from the midwestern plains. Farther west are the Southwestern Desert fauna and to our north, you’d get more midwestern fauna, and east, you get both temperate woodland and marsh/bayou fauna.
Houston is located nearly along the Gulf Coast and in the Coastal Plains area of Texas. The city is in what was (still is) bayou country, and quite flat. (There’s a historical painting of early Harrisburg before Houston was really started, which was done to publicize it for settlement and development. The painting was done by someone who hadn’t really seen the area in person, and therefore boasts hills and so forth that were never there. Our Hill Country is a bit further northwest and north and inland, between here and Austin.
We have native herons and pelicans and a host of other bird life, hawks, eagles, owls, mockingbirds, blue jays, hummingbirds, all sorts of wonderful birds. I’m not a birdwatcher, so I don’t know the particulars. Our coastal area has a very diverse range of animals and plants and fungi, but yes, the rise of modern farming and industrial / commercial development and housing have all made severe hits on wildlife populations. People are making efforts to revitalize, naturalize, and diversify wildlife habitat areas to restore them, but it takes much time and commitment, over decades. Additionally, things like summer droughts and the tropical storm and hurricane cycles bring big changes each summer and winter to native wildlife areas, grasslands and marshes, forests, and so on. But those are natural processes that the biosphere ecology adjusts to, eventually.
Texas also has typical North American animals: coyotes, skunks, wolves, some bears are possible, several species of deer, bobcats, cougars, rodents of many kinds, raccoons (including in the city, they are very clever and hardy), all sorts of animals. Ah, this includes opossums (the North American kinds), armadillos, and so on, turkeys, many other creatures I’m not thinking to name, that are native here and not European, or American cousins of European fauna, including those brought from Europe that then naturalized here. Yes, there are horses, lots of them, and longhorn cattle along with other Old World cattle. (The longhorns arose from European cattle gone stray, then wild herds.) Yes, there are buffalo (American bison), which are (I think) still endangered and undergoing conservation, as well as interbreeding with cattle to produce hybrids (“beefaloes”). Ah, I forgot the Texas Horny Toad, which is its own thing, and the TCU mascot.
Texas is so large that we have multiple climate and ecological / biome areas, and thus, lots of different lifeforms.
Our folklore tends to be a mix of European traditions from the 1600’s and 1700’s, blended with local innovations from the settlers, and maybe a few things borrowed from Native American folklore, though that tended to stay separate. So we get things like our version of the stork and cabbage patch for where babies come from, for instance. Most Americans (me included) don’t know which countries those old folk traditions came from, and we think of them as American, even though they were modified from their European origins. That goes for food too. Bu then we have things that were started here among colonists and settlers, who invented their own stories and foods and folkways, for things they found here.
This reminds me, I haven’t seen the Vlasic pickles stork in their ads in a long time. I must be missing him, or they retired him.
And let’s not forget how coconuts migrate. They’re carried by swallows…now, the debate remains, African or European swallow, and what is the air speed velocity ratio of a fully laden swallow? (Again, African or European?)
Hahahah! But how does the parrot enter into it? Hey, Schrödinger’s Parrot; he’s indeterminately undead….
I will maintain that the airspeed of the swallow could depend on checking his coconuts.
Wait, that somehow didn’t sound as intended! :facepalm:
I don’t know about the airspeed, but are his running lights and landing gear in good order? 😀
When I’m exposed to something that irritates my sinuses (e.g., smoke), irrigating them right away with a saline nasal spray or a warm saline solution (instead of a netty pot, I use a 60-cc syringe) *sometimes* helps. Sometimes it does nothing other than get everything wet!
Regardless, I hope the meds work, and that you feel better soon!
Doing better the last couple of days.
CJ, from last night, I either didn’t click the submit button properly, or else WP may have diverted a reply to the filter queue, or eaten it. No huge loss if it didn’t make it, but I’d thought I pressed submit reply as routine.
Nothing in the spam trap.
I don’t ever remember seeing storks as a kid, but we had one of the largest Great Blue Heron rookeries in New England in the back yard. What a racket! They make the most horrendous noises! LOL
Hey! We now have the option to edit our comments? Like that! It never fails I find something wrong just after I hit ‘send’
Took me a while to remember my log in information, but I think I retrieved my identity successfully. Hopefully this will post correctly.
CJ, I too am suffering with Pacific Northwest allergies; this has been a very strange Spring, weather wise. It seems too wet and cold for the pines to be pollinating already, but that is what I am feeling the last couple of days.
Here, west of Portland, the only things I really notice in bloom are some pink flowering “ornamental” cherries. Neither my “wild” nor red sour/pie cherries, nor apples have even begun leafing out. One of my maples is “blooming”, but it’s not particularly noticable. It’s very slow this year. I should have pruned my roses a month ago, but I barely got my apples done, and it’s still not too late if the weather will cooperate. Such a change from ’14-’16! La Niña is taking her revenge.
CJ, does the nasal spray work for you? My VA PA has been trying to get me on it for years but I hate, abhor, vilify, dig my heels in, and otherwise flatly refuse to use it as two nose surgeries have made me extremely unwilling to squirt stuff up my nose. But, it’s supposed to be great for allergies and that 6 is greater than one thing. . .
Also saline irrigation is supposed to “toughen” your nasal tissue and make you less prone to allergies.
Your not having Shejicon makes me feel a little better about not being able to go this year. Maybe next year, if you have it, I can come up with the $$$ to make it. I have a dream . . .
Maybe just as well? I’ve read that “they” can have a “rebound effect” when one tries to stop using them. No information on which formulations though. I use them as sparingly as possible myself.
I use the prescription fluticasone spray variant, not the OTC stuff. We had a terrible season 2 years ago where I may as well have stuffed corks up my nostrils and had done with it; that’s when I started using the nasal spray. It worked like a charm, but the past several months I’ve been trying to wean myself off of it, just to see if I can get by without. Two snorts down to one, then going without intermittently. I only rarely have to go back up to full dosage; since it’s not something to which one can build up an immunity, I don’t feel badly about that.
I can’t use that one, told the doc the nasal spray was giving me a bloody nose so whats he do? Convinces me its probably the propellant or bla bla bla and 6 months later gives me the same med as an asthma inhaler. Lo and behold, I end up with a rip-roaring good case of laryngitis. Yeah, no, its the propellant… NOT…
Learned my lesson about reading the possible side effects on that one…
Now I just live on allergy pills 24/7/365.
Yep. That fluticasone gives me nose bleeds too.
This morning is truly awful. My ears are stuffing up—this is usually indicative of pollen.
Do not begrudge the trees sex – otherwise there would not be little trees.
Indeed,the rascals.
I don’t mind the tree sex but they need to get a hotel room. My NOSE is not a hotel room.
Well, I woke up dizzy as a hoot owl, in the vernacular. Ears were absolutely a mess. A decongestant fixed it nicely. But by noon, when the decongestant wore off—the dizziness was back. My poor ears. I don’t want to live on decongestant all spring!
Interesting. Not the epithet I have heard regarding owls, hooting or otherwise. The one I’m familiar with is “hooter than a drunk owl.” I take pains to ensure no one has occasion to point that finger of speech at me . . .
Having just endured the annual ordeal of the blooming of the Bradford pears, I can offer you my heartfelt sympathy.
Have you got the air purifiers going again, at least in the bedrooms? I find it easy to forget to turn them on after I haven’t needed them for a while….
If they’re not helping as much as they used to, you might need to replace one or more of the filters, depending on the model and how much it’s been used.
Mine was really in need of cleaning, so I have cleaned it. I need to put the filter in and turn it on, yes, I do!
I use an electronic filter (Oreck) which only has to be washed, not replaced: it’s not as efficient as one of the super fine actual mesh filters, but it works pretty well.
I have two seedless mulberry trees in my front yard. They don’t fruit out, but they still send enough pollen over my yard that my cars and sidewalk become a light green as if they were living plants producing chlorophyll! Several members of my family are allergic to it. It’s a rough two weeks. But, the shade more than makes up for it.
Yep—we curse the red hawthorne in the back yard—but it provides flowers that look like Maxfield Parish branches, arching branches covered in tiny pink rosettes, on a 20 foot tree; shade in summer, and toward fall, it’s covered in red berries. Its beauty and utility save it when we have to sweep up the shells of the buds, the discarded blossoms, the twigs, the leaf-fall, and, toward spring (now), a rain of near-grape-sized red berries that squish and get tracked into the house. This is a tree that’s messy in all seasons, particularly over concrete instead of yard, but it doesn’t TOUCH the messiness of the huge evergreens that shed, literally, a bushel or more cones each, cones which absolutely defy decomposition: they get everywhere, especially when shed from the top of a 40 foot tree. Nature, ah, nature. If it weren’t so beautiful and shady—but it is. And we just keep sweeping and raking.
I was worried after a visit with my primary care doctor that I might have had rheumatoid arthritis. She did a check of my joints and felt that I was much too young to have such an advanced case of arthritis, especially the deformation of the various finger joints. So, a blood test, X-rays, and a referral to a rheumatologist. Saw him yesterday, and he doesn’t believe it’s RA, but a rather advanced and painful version of osteoarthritis, although there are symptoms in some of the joints of what “could be” RA, especially the little fingers. So, he’s doing another series of blood tests (6 vials yesterday), and put me on Plaquenil (which was originally used for malaria). Depending on whether I develop any adverse reactions to the Plaquenil, and if it isn’t effective in treating the pain, he plans to add Cymbalta to the mix. Last year, I was down to a B12 tablet, my Nexium, and iron supplement. Now, I’m on a very-low dose statin, a medicine to slow down my heart rate, a hefty dose of Naproxen in the morning and a smaller OTC dose at night, and we’ve added Tylenol Arthritis, and the Plaquenil (twice daily), plus the diclofenac sodium gel applied 4 times daily. I’m wondering how many of these are fighting each other. Back when I was taking gabapentin, sertraline, carbadopa/levadopa, I had severe restless legs syndrome. Once I got titrated off those medications, the RLS was greatly reduced. I’m concerned enough about the side effects of the Plaquenil without additional interactions, but the doctor had a complete list of every medication and supplement that I’m taking, and no red flags were raised. Nice having my primary and specialty medical people in the same building and looking at the same medical record. Which reminds me, on Saturday, I get to apply for Medicare Parts A & B. My current health insurance, TRICARE, will shift to supplemental in July when my Medicare starts up, and my Part D is already covered by TRICARE, so I anticipate an increase in my TRICARE premiums, but I don’t know what the Medicare Part B premiums will be, yet.
Medicare Part B is currently about $110 a month – at least that’s what they’re taking from me.
One of the best professionals to have a look at your doses including OTCs is your pharmacist. And of course ask the docs, with a complete list, including herbals, etc.
The docs can call it up on their computers, look right down the list. Same for the pharmacy. My health record is all electronic, and everything is accessible by the right people – physicians and pharmacists. Whenever I see one of the doctors, they go over the list of medications I’m taking, and I also tell them about supplements. I don’t take many, other than the biotin, Vitamin B12, and the iron, and will probably start on the Vitamin D, so the list is easy to remember.