Another Baby Step Forward!

You can read all about this in my Faith Journey With Jesus blog...I just want to tell you about it quickly and briefly now! I am excited about it. If you want details, check the other blog.
Today when I was cooking, which I always do sitting in a chair at the sink and stove, for the first time I had this sudden feeling of being tired of sitting there. So as I was cutting onions, I stood up, without really thinking about it, and finished cutting the onions standing there, leaning on the sink....but standing up! It wasn't until I was standing there that I really thought about what I was doing and how long it had been since I had stood at the sink to do any cooking. I even sit in the chair to run water until it is cold enough to fill my water bottle for drinking. So standing there to finish cutting the onions was fantastic!

By the way, I made my dahl today....but I tried making it a different way, basically from what I have been finding in the cooking videos, is my version of makhani dahl. It's good but really could use more spices. I think mine are not as strong as they were and I need new ones which I hope to get soon. Sorry, I didn't take a picture yet. Tomorrow morning after Daughter and I go shopping, we are planning on celebrating Mother's Day a bit late by making those gulab jamuns finally, and then I want to teach her how to make roti and puris. I hope Grandson will allow us that time without getting grumpy. At least we won't have to cook the dahl since it is already done. After sitting in the fridge all night, it will taste better tomorrow.

Just Rambling

Son came over last night and used my computer for internet access. He is looking into the details of starting a small business here in town and needed my internet to do that. He chose to come over just prior to my bedtime and ask if he could use the computer while I was sleeping. A little leary of agreeing to it, I let him. Got up this morning and everything looked fine. He turned off the lights and locked the door when he left as I had asked him to do. He left the computer on, but I remembered that I never told him to turn it off. No problem there. I worked this morning in the call center so didn't get to use the computer for my own personal use until afternoon. That's when I found it!! He deleted the history and cookies...I don't know what else, but maybe all the passwords too. LOL Not that I am not wondering what he looked at that he might think he needed to hide from me...I think I already can figure that one out. I just hope I can remember all my login information for all the sites I am signed up to just remember me. I know. I delete these things myself occassionally, so I do really know what most of the passwords are...at least I know what they are, just not necessarily which site they go to.

I took a short weekend break over the holiday from blogging and squidoo. I had to work at the call center both Saturday and Sunday, but since I was just going to be sitting here at home anyway, why not? Now I am back at it and my mind seems to have gotten stuck somewhere back before the weekend and I can't think of much to blog about. So what do I do when that happens? I go back to the www.wahm.com website and check out the new blog listings I find there as well as the new squidoo lenses. Then I go check out those blogs and see what they might be all about. It helps me think of things to write here. To tell you the truth, though, my mind is still pretty focused on the disappointment I am feeling over the video file conversion problem from my new camera. If my computer should crash before I get those videos adequately saved to CD or DVD, they will be lost except for picture only. What a shame that would be. Believe me I am praying for a soon solution as well as that my computer will not have any major issues before then. I am not expecting anything to go wrong, but you know how it is sometime when you can't back up your files the way you want or need to.

After the outing yesterday with Daughter and Grandson, today was another a-fib episode. This is getting more than a little annoying. Catch 22 is what it is called, isn't it? The more active I am, the more threat of the a-fib episodes which end up wiping me out for the next day...but at the same time, I need to increase my activity level, which I am doing gradually since I surely don't want to end up in a full permanent a-fib episode like last year. In just under 2 weeks Daughter and I will be heading back over to the doctor to find out his decision after getting the results of the monitor. (And we will hopefully be making our side trip to Taj Mahal this time.) Maybe the doctor will have a solution that will help. In the meantime, the fridge is filled with good healthy, lower calorie meal fixin's for me to work on that part of the health plan.

Have you ever had a good chef or tossed salad with grapefruit pieces in it? How about crushed strawberries? One of my cousins likes to bring the food whenever she comes to work on genealogy with me. She brought all the salad fixin's one day complete with grapefruit one time and strawberries the next. I am not a great experimenter with new tastes for the most part, but was feeling a bit brave both of those days. I now can't buy salad stuff without buying a grapefruit to add to it. I love it! Maybe if I remember when I make my salad tomorrow, I will take a picture of it to add here before I eat it all up. I am not a fan of grapefruit, but it is good for me, and since I like it on salad, it is a great way to get it into my diet.

Final topic of the evening: The Nintendo Wii and how it is now being used in nursing homes and assisted living facilities. Fascinating! But from what I know of the Wii, it makes a lot of sense that it would be useful as both physical therapy/rehabilitation, and as a social activity. I am going to have to explore this topic further and blog about it on my Activity Director blog soon. Myself, I am still very partial to the old Atari games. My kids and I wore two consoles out during their youth. The first Nintendo's and Play Stations, I have not enjoyed that much during the few times I have had the chance to play them. I am not fond of having to use arrow keys rather than the old traditional joy sticks. I am not that coordinated I guess. So, I am not sure how I would like the Wii system. But as I research this further, who knows? I may have to invest in one down the road just to add some more physical activity to my lifestyle that might not be so overwhelming to my system as to cause more a-fib episodes. Any thoughts?

Busy Fun Day

Just a quick health note...I was back in normal sinus rhythm last night just after midnight.

Today was a good day overall. Worked this morning, had a relaxing afternoon, then went to pick up my granddaughters for their weekend with their dad. I haven't done that for awhile and it was nice to get to do that. It also gave me a chance to play with my new camera. I got some pictures and two really nice videos. The first video they thought I was just taking pictures and they were really hamming it up. Then I got them talking about things and it was really neat. Of course, they are 5 and 6 going on 30, like all little girls their age. They mentally rearranged my house while we were driving home, trying to make room for a play room for themselves instead of having their toy box in a corner of the living room. The youngest loves to clean and do all the cooking and laundry kinds of things. She even told me she got a real cooking set for Christmas so she can help cook at home. The older one loves getting attention but is bashful when she wants to be. I don't get to see these two as much as I do the other two and when I do, it is always fun. They asked if they can come spend the night with me so I need to figure out a good time for that. I am sure they will wear me out! But it will be fun.
Tonight I spent the evening getting the pictures and videos off my camera and onto the computer, emailed a few pictures, and tried to email the videos, but that didn't work. So I made a cd of all the pictures and videos of the grandkids and can just give or mail the cd when I get the chance. After that I spent the rest of the evening playing with YouTube videos and music. I really enjoy YouTube and all the good oldies music they have on there. I was enjoying myself so much I almost forgot about the blogs! Maybe I am not so addicted to blogging as I thought!

Anyone out there want to lose weight and exercise with me? We can make a progress blog if I get enough replies.

Cooking Catastrophies

As I was conversing via email with one of my friends from a neighboring town, we were discussing various baked items that use yeast. It got me telling her about my single attempt at making homemade bread oh maybe 26 years ago. Then I told her about the one and only time I tried to make homemade noodles and what happened to them. That got me thinking about adding some topics about my various cooking catastrophies (typing that word is a catastrophy). That is something I would like to explore here in the next few days or so. But I suppose you now are curious about the bread and noodles? Well, the bread was supposed to be whole wheat. I followed the recipe the best I knew how. The dough rose the way it was supposed to. But when the bread was finished, even though it tasted okay, the texture was not good...it was the heaviest loaf of bread I had ever seen. In fact, I had visions of Ellie May Clampett and her dinner rolls that were like rocks. My bread reminded me of a brick. And the noodles, well, I spent the day mixing and making these noodles according to the recipe I had at that time. Yes they were egg noodles. I rolled them out, cut them, left them to dry and did my best to keep the flies off of them while they dried. Later in the evening I got the chicken and broth ready. I was so proud of my noodles. They looked fine. But when I dropped them into the broth--there was not a noodle to be found. They completely disintegrated right there in the pot. I haven't tried to make either bread or noodles since. Homemade bread for me comes from the store freezer section in a bag of frozen bread dough. Noodles come from the store also. However, I have been getting the idea to try noodles again maybe this spring or summer. I have watched them made first hand by experts during a cooking activity at my last Activity Director job. Theirs turned out great so if I follow what they did.....it just might work. Whatdaya think?

Indian Cooking Lessons

Two years ago today my former mother in law passed away. I hadn't seen much of her before that after 1998, but I still love her. We didn't always get along well, but we tried. You see, we came from two different cultures, two different parts of the world, and two different generations as well. We had language barriers. We had religious differences. But we had lots in common as well. For example, we both loved her son. And we both loved our family. And we loved eating! Mummy was the one who really taught me how to make Indian food. No matter how much I try I have never been able to duplicate the taste of the food she cooked. I ate Indian food from a lot of different cooks, but I can't say that any of them were any better than Mummy's cooking. I still love Indian food and for the most part, it is my favorite kind of food. There is an Indian restaurant I like to go to when I get the chance, but even there, the food is not as good as what Mummy cooked. I will blame it on the language barriers that keeps me from cooking as well as she did. (NOT--I just couldn't get the hang of getting the spices combined properly.)
When my husband and I first got married and I tried to make Indian curry for him, it usually turned out okay, but this odd shade of olive green. Then I started collecting Indian cookbooks, which helped somewhat and gave me ideas about other things to cook. Our first apartment had a small size stove right next to a wall and when we left that apartment, we also left a yellow/green steam stain on the wall where I cooked my curries. It wasn't until Mummy came to live with us temporarily that I found out how to make my curries the proper color of brown. And it was such a simple thing. She taught me a lot of little simple things that helped me get my feeble attempts at cooking to turn out a lot better. I will never be able to compete with Indian women who have been cooking this way since they were young, but I can make a pretty good substitute when there is nothing else close enough to call a curry.
I really love Indian breads. I can make those pretty well when I have the opportunity. To do a good job I need lots of counter space and I don't have that luxury at this time. One of my favorite memories is watching Mummy making her Roti (Chapatti). She gave me one of her special rolling pins and later her round bread board she used to roll her round Roti's on. I never could use that board. But watching her fascinated me. Her hands moved so quickly as she would roll the dough, then turn the board, then roll again, then turn the board again, all to make her Roti as perfectly round as possible. Next, she would put the bread in the dry skillet, which was not a skillet as we know it. She would fry the bread on one side, spinning it around in the pan with her fingers, then when she knew it was done enough on one side, she would pick it up, again with her fingers, and flip it over and spin it until finished. One day she told me that she placed the finished Roti properly on the serving plate (covered with foil so as to wrap the Roti later) so that the first side cooked was on top. The reasoning she gave was that the first side cooked was nicer looking than the other side and should always be placed on top to make the serving plate look better. Also, the breads needed to be placed on top of each other evenly so as to make it more pleasing to the eye. Shoot, I couldn't even get my Roti to be round the right way. I remember the first ones I made looked like footballs. But, I could make mine puff up like they were supposed to do while cooking. And forget using my fingers to do the frying. I used a spatula.
I still have that rolling pin, round bread board, and even the frying pan. The handle disappeared from the frying pan years ago while we all still lived together. I can't even remember the proper name of the pan. But I remember cooking with Mummy and that is something I will never forget.
Someday soon I hope to put some of the good recipes I learned from Mummy here in this blog. Until then, and until next time....