Recovering on a Liquid and Soft Diet

Thank you to all who said prayers or well wishes on my behalf. I so appreciate it.

Monday was rough, Tuesday was rough, but today I'm doing better. I'm wiped out, but my pain is now under control. I hope to feel better and better with each passing day.

Liquid and soft diets are challenging enough. Liquid and soft diets when you're lactose intolerant and feeling poorly adds a new level to the challenge. Fortunately, this is not new to me. The last surgery and the extraction before that required a liquid/soft diet for several days post-procedure. I'm actually now really getting this down.

On Sunday afternoon, I made myself a quart of pureed broccoli-cheddar soup and a pint and a half of vanilla non-dairy pudding. Vanilla pudding can be combined with pureed pumpkin and spices for a pumpkin pudding (boosting the nutritional value of the pudding) or served with a teaspoon of cocoa powder for a small cup of chocolate pudding or eaten just as vanilla pudding.

I also took containers of applesauce, crabapple sauce, and pureed pumpkin from the freezer to thaw. In addition to stirring pumpkin into vanilla pudding, it can be mixed with applesauce with a pinch of cinnamon. 

When I wanted a bit of bread with my pureed soup, I diced a slice into small dices and stirred them into a watered down version of the soup to soften the bread. Bread this soft becomes a bread-y mush, maybe not appealing under normal circumstances, but very welcome when on a no-chew diet.

And of course I've been able to eat mashed potatoes, mashed ripe bananas, and mashed ripe avocado, plus various smoothies.

By thinking ahead about my meals, I was prepared and ready to feed myself in the early days after the surgery. I knew what I'd have for each meal and snack for a couple of days. For these first three days I'm sticking to liquids and other non-chew foods. Tomorrow I'll be able to introduce foods like scrambled eggs and soft bread. Meat is still something of a challenge.

This is pureed chicken and vegetable soup.

To address that challenge, this afternoon I made a pot of chicken and vegetable soup, using a diced half-breast of chicken, some onion, celery, garlic, carrots, and seasonings in water. When the vegetables were fully cooked, I added a small handful of broken whole wheat pasta to cook in the liquid. Once the noodles were soft, I pureed the entire batch in a pitcher blender. This tastes better than it looks like it would. I'll be having pureed chicken-vegetable soup for a few meals in the next two days.

Chicken purees more easily than beef. The fibers are less stringy and tough in chicken than in beef. So I find it to be a good first meat to use in my "liquid" meals. It still will leave a small amount of texture if simply using a regular pitcher blender, but those bits are easily swallowed as is, and will digest easily. After surgery or an injury, protein is essential for repair. I'm glad to be at a point now to be able to add some meat to my days' meals.

There are some difficult aspects to subsisting on a liquid or soft foods diet, like boredom, wanting to chew something, missing favorite foods. But I'm trying to look on the bright side, that this is just part of the process to getting a healthy mouth back. Soon enough I'll be eating pizza and burgers with the rest of the family once again.

Hi friends,

I don't normally post on a weekend, but Monday will be a hard day for me. I have the last of my dental surgeries on Monday morning (say a prayer for me, please). I dropped off my consent papers yesterday. I'll be sedated, but awake enough to answer questions or respond to the doctor as needed. I hate sedation of any kind, it makes me feel out of my head, and I really, really don't like that feeling. I'm also scared of the after pain. I think I'm just worn out by pain in general. The anxiety this week has been eating me alive. It will be good to have this behind me.

I won't be posting Monday afternoon, as would be my normal routine. But I hope to get back to posting sometime in the week, at the very least to let you all know I'm doing fine. I also want to respond to your comments from this past week. I haven't forgotten, just been sidetracked.

One of my daughters got suddenly very sick this week. She'd been substitute teaching for 3 weeks, then just woke up so very sick the other morning. It's not Covid, but she was quite sick. She's improving now, thankfully. But it's been a rough few days. On top of caring for her, I've had to be extra careful myself not to catch anything, as that would have postponed my surgery by another month. Too much anxiety right now. Things will improve later in the week, I am confident of that.

Anyway, I hope your weekend has been beautiful and wish you a wonderful start to the week!

Be back very soon,

Lili

Finding a Work-Around For My "Lazy" Sourdough Starter

I've been working on my sourdough starter for the past month. It had been sitting in the fridge for a couple of years untouched. When I pulled it out of the fridge, it took several attempts to get a good rise on a loaf of bread. 

Our house is so chilly in winter that the starter just could not get itself revved up. Perhaps a little mid-winter laziness is affecting the starter.  

Finally, about a little over a week ago, I stumbled upon something that helped boost my dough's rising ability. I doubled the amount of starter I used in each batch of bread. To do so, I also had to reduce the water called for in the recipe. The bonus is by using so much starter in each loaf, I didn't have discard starter to try and use up.

My starter is still not what I'd call robust. It doesn't overflow the jar after feedings. It just bubbles.  That could be due to room temperature this time of year in our house. But I did find a way to make it work.

I had to get the starter back in good shape so I could store it in the fridge again for a couple of weeks. This coming Monday I have the last of my dental procedures. I may or may not remember to feed a starter for a couple of days. 

This is the same starter I made in 2020 when I ran out of yeast. It takes some work to get a starter going from scratch (just flour and water). I wanted to keep this one alive for future batches. So I wanted it back in the fridge where it can remain dormant and not need feeding.

It never ceases to amaze me how sourdough bread can rise without added yeast. They are simply a combination of starter, water, flour, salt, and sugar -- nothing else.

For the next couple of weeks, we'll eat yeasted bread. I can make 3 loaves at a time, and it's softer and easier for me to chew while my mouth heals.

How Do You Make Your Meatloaf?

Meatloaf is one of those great meat-based, budget entrees. It uses some of the cheaper cuts of meat and can be stretched with fillers like grains and veggies/aromatics. One pound of ground meat can be stretched to feed 5 or 6 people. While many of us use ground beef, ground game meat or farmed poultry or pork can also be used. Some recipes call for a mix of ground pork and ground beef in the same loaf. Vegetarian recipes might not be exactly "meat"loaf, but a bean-based loaf is also a possibility. My point? Meatloaf is budget-friendly and versatile.

As I was preparing a meatloaf for my family last night, I was thinking about all of the variations that folks do when making their meatloaves. My mother always used a slice or two of bread soaked in milk added to onions, herbs, salt and pepper, an egg, and ground beef. She spread the top of the meatloaf with ketchup before baking, and the loaf was baked in a bread pan.

My own meatloaf is a bit more basic. I soak a torn slice of bread in water, add diced onion and minced garlic, plus whatever herbs sound good (usually thyme, oregano, and rosemary) with the ground beef. If I feel like adding a bit of vegetable to the loaf, I add a spoonful of tomato paste or pumpkin puree to the mixture. Overall, my own meatloaf is pretty basic -- no egg, no glaze or topping. But it does taste meaty, and that's what I like. I bake mine formed into a loaf on a baking sheet with raised edges. I like how the sides get a bit crispy as well as the top when baked on a sheet. I sometimes make a gravy with the drippings and lots of aromatics. This is particularly tasty when I serve mashed potatoes on the side. Mmmm -- meatloaf and potatoes covered in gravy.

So, how about you? What do you add to your meatloaf? Do you add oats, bread crumbs, cracker crumbs, or other grains? Do you use an egg in your loaf? What flavorings do you use? And do you like to spread the top with a glaze of some sort, like ketchup? Do you bake yours in a bread pan (loaf-shaped) or do you form it on a baking sheet? Do you ever make a gravy with the drippings? And why do you choose what you do?

I like hearing how others do basic things like making meatloaf, as I sometimes get ideas and inspiration to try something different. Share in the comments how you make your meatloaf?

Where Does Goodwill Stuff Go if It Doesn't Sell in the Stores?

I've talked about this before, but I wanted to bring it up again this week. 

If you're not aware (from another country, maybe), Goodwill Thrift stores sell donated clothing and household goods. They receive so much merchandise every week that they can't possibly keep up in sales to match the volume of what is donated.

The stores color-code the price tags to indicate when donations were put out to sell and routinely cull the oldest-coded, unsold merchandise, to be sold at a steep discount elsewhere. All of this stuff goes to Goodwill Outlet stores.

As you can imagine, a lot of junk winds up in the outlet. But also, a lot of good stuff slips through without being sold in the main stores and ends up in the Outlet.

Instead of repricing each of these many, many items (which the labor to do so would drive up the price to the consumer), the Outlet sells everything except furniture by weight, with shoes, electronics, and hard goods less per pound and textiles slightly more. Clothing/textiles at our Goodwill Outlet is currently $1.79 per pound. The individual Outlet stores set their own price per pound, but the price per pound for all items ranges between $1 and $2 per pound across the country.

In case you haven't figure this out yet, buying high-value, but very lightweight items can be a steal. In 2019, I found a Calvin Klein summer dress that was lightweight. It was in excellent condition -- no stains, holes, or obvious wear. The price back then (even less per pound in 2019) was around 75 cents.

Clothing is not on racks, and most small hard items are not on shelves. Most everything is in large rolling bins. The employees roll out new bins periodically, removing the old ones to the back room. Shoppers descend on the "new" bins and begin digging through the piles. I'm not a huge fan of digging through bins, but my two daughters absolutely love to go to the Outlet. I sometimes think that they love a great bargain more than I do. 

Saturday morning they got up and out to the Outlet when they first opened. And they brought me home a "goodie."

They found this beautiful autumnal Jones New York silk scarf -- great colors and pattern to go with my fall and winter wardrobe. And yes, I wear scarves often! The price for this lovely scarf? About 25 cents! It needs a good pressing, but otherwise looks beautiful.

There are no dressing rooms and no mirrors at the Goodwill Outlet near me. I presume that is just how these outlet stores are. We deal with this, when it comes to clothing, by wearing leggings and slim-fitting tees when shopping at the Outlet, so we can pull clothing on over what we're wearing. To "see" how they look on us, we ask a family member to use our phones to take pictures from all angles. This works for us.

Anyway, that's where Goodwill merch goes when it doesn't sell in their regular stores.

Hi friends,

I'm just taking today away from my blog, as it's a holiday in the US. I'll be back tomorrow (Tuesday). Enjoy the rest of your evening!

Another Less-Egg Baking Success: This time a 1-egg pumpkin custard pie

Last week it was a reduced egg loaf of banana bread. This week I wanted to try using half the eggs in a pumpkin pie. 

This is a hybrid cornstarch pudding-baked egg custard pie. My thought was if I could combine a pumpkin pudding with some egg the pie might just work out with a single egg. I modified the recipe on the label for Libby's canned pumpkin. There's less milk, slightly more pumpkin, and less sugar, plus the tablespoon of cornstarch. 

The process to making the filling is two-step, cooking a milk and cornstarch pudding on the stove then combining with the rest of the filling ingredients.

just before baking

What I used:

1 tablespoon cornstarch
1 1/4 cups milk or half and half (I used soy milk)
2 cups pumpkin puree (I used home-cooked and pureed pumpkin)

1 large egg
1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons packed brown sugar
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon ginger
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/2 teaspoon salt

1 9-inch pie crust, unbaked

In a medium saucepan, whisk together cornstarch and milk. Cook over Low-Med, stirring constantly, until thickened and has bubbled for 1 full minute (about 4-6 minutes total cook time). Remove from heat. Quickly mix in the pumpkin puree before the milk or cream mixture cools. 

In a large mixing bowl, beat the egg, then mix in sugar, spices, and salt. With an electric mixer, combine the egg/sugar/spices with the pumpkin/milk/cornstarch puree. 

Pour into an unbaked pie shell.

Bake for 15 minutes at 425 (if a metal pie plate, 400 if glass). Reduce oven to 350 (if metal, 325 if glass). Bake an additional 35 minutes or so, or until crust edges are golden and center of pie looks set.

just out of the oven

As you can see, the top of the pie has those traditional cracks in the surface that an egg custard pumpkin pie customarily has when first removing from the oven.

Cool on the counter for 1 hour, then transfer to the refrigerator and chill for 2 hours to finalize the set.

The cornstarch helps thicken and firm up the filling, so slices can have a more clean cut (like lemon meringue pie). When I've tried adding either flour or cornstarch directly to the uncooked filling, it has settled to the bottom of the pie, creating a thickened layer at the bottom. This new way with cooking the milk and cornstarch until thickened stabilized the cornstarch in the custard filling.

Here's a photo of a slice of pie after chilling 1 hour (I was impatient). The pie sliced nicely and came out of the pie plate intact. It's texture is soft and pudding to custard-like.

I think this is a success. The pie looks good and tastes delicious. The texture of the filling is great. And with eggs about 50 cents each right now, this is a money-saver to use one less egg.

Have you tried baking with fewer eggs than recipes call for? What has worked and what has not worked? Next, I will be trying to use half the eggs in a batch of brownies. I'm not sure how those will turn out. 

"Use It Up" Tip

This is how those plastic squeeze bottles of mustard work out for us. The first 98% of the mustard squirts out perfectly. With the last little bit, we slap the bottom of the upside down bottle while simultaneously squeezing. The result is a spray of mustard all over the plate as well as the sandwich, hot dog or burger. But I can't just throw the bottle out while containing a small amount of product still. So that almost empty bottle goes to the back of the fridge, and we get a new bottle out to use.

To salvage that last 1% or 2% of mustard, I pour in about 1 tablespoon of vinegar or lemon juice, put the lid on and shake it vigorously. I then take the lid back off and turn it upside down over a small dish or tiny canning jar. 

Why vinegar or lemon juice and not water? The primary flavor I taste in mustard is vinegar. (Vinegar is even the first ingredient on the label.) If I added water, I would be diluting that tangy taste and acidity. I use this salvaged mustard in homemade salad dressings, sandwich spreads, and marinades. So the vinegar or lemon juice is actually a plus in flavor and ability to break down meat fibers if used as a marinade.

Prepared mustard doesn't contain added emulsifiers, hence the need to shake the bottle before each use. Otherwise, the solids in mustard settle and leave a thin liquid at the top. In draining the salvaged mustard, this is much more obvious. The solids or thicker part sits in a mound surrounded by mustard-colored vinegar.

When I make a salad dressing or marinade with this, I try to pour off the liquid to use as the vinegar part of a mixture. I then use the thicker part in a mustard-mayo sandwich spread blend.

After draining the bottle for about an hour, I have about 2 tablespoons of useable product. I figure I've gotten near all of it out, and at that point I rinse the bottle with water to clean and recycle. And now, I've gotten rid of one more space-hogging item from our refrigerator.

Memories of My Nana: A Great Depression Era Breakfast That Didn't Short-Change on Protein

A lot of the everyday breakfasts of the Great Depression seemed terribly low in protein by today's standards. Growing up, my nana would tell stories of what my mother's childhood was like, often speaking of the foods she served and the playthings she and my grandfather made for my mother and her brothers. Everyday breakfasts were mostly starches with a little bit of protein. She and my grandfather had 3 growing children in the 30s, and my grandfather's income dwindled over the course of the decade to nearly nothing. 

They went from dining on breakfasts of thick slices of ham, a couple of eggs over easy, and slices of toast or some biscuits in the 1920s to a slice of bread or a biscuit in a bowl covered with warm milk by the mid to late-30s. Other starchy breakfasts included rice in warm milk, saltine crackers in warm milk, and oatmeal with milk. 

They were fortunate that they could get some eggs most weeks. On weekends, my grandmother cooked more elaborate breakfasts using these eggs. A family favorite (and one that actually gave them all a good amount of protein without too much extra cost) was creamed eggs on toast.

Creamed eggs on toast were hard-cooked eggs, chopped or sliced, stirred into a milk-based white sauce, and ladled over slices of toast or split biscuits. When the garden was producing, she would boost the nutrition of this dish with the addition of some fresh peas and green onions mixed in with the cooked egg and white sauce.

My grandmother was queen of the white sauce. She covered meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, potatoes, macaroni, and rice in white sauce. She even made a sweetened version of white sauce to top baked apples or baked peaches. White sauce was an easy way to add the health benefits of milk to meals suitable for growing children. During the Depression, milk was one food she could get plenty of for her family. Even in her later years, she still used milk liberally in her cooking.

I was curious about the protein content of creamed eggs on toast, so I calculated the nutrients based on my grandmother's likely ingredients. I discovered that the basic version of creamed eggs on toast contains about 12 grams of protein per serving and the green pea version contained about 13 grams of protein per serving. This is based on 1 boiled egg and 1 slice of bread per person, plus 1/6 of a recipe of white sauce that uses 3 cups of milk. I estimated she would have added about 1 cup of fresh peas to the entire family-batch (adding about 8 grams of protein). Even by today's standards, that's a fair amount of protein for a child's breakfast, and markedly more than the weekday starch-in-warm-milk breakfast.

Sometimes, it's the little things that make a difference

Although the days are slowly getting longer, it's still so dark when I get up in the morning and then again in the evening.

The remote-controlled battery candles that were part of our spring front porch makeover have added a bit of light to my dark mornings and nights. I brought them into the house for winter, which I think is probably a good idea anyway -- keeping them out of the elements and all.

But it's more than just the additional light in the house. The flicker (although fake) of the candles adds old-time-y ambience. I have one candle in one of the lanterns (from the porch) in the family room and the other candle on a candle stand (from a free pile 2 or 3 years ago) in the living room. They serve as night lights during the hours when the living and family rooms aren't fully lit, when we're scattered each in our personal spaces at both the beginning and ending of each day.

I find it very comforting to pass the living or family room and see the flicker of light. And that extra little bit of light means we are not bumping around in the dark as we move between bedrooms and kitchen.

Bringing in the candles from the porch is just a little thing, but it added so much atmosphere to our home during these short days of winter.

Hand-Me-Ups

A week ago, my daughter-in-law stopped by on her way to donate some clothing to a local thrift store. She had one item in particular that made her think of me, this Columbia Sportswear fleece jacket. I've seen her wear it a couple of times. However, she said she never felt that it fit her very well.

In late December, I thought I really should have asked for a new fleece jacket for Christmas, as my current one is quite worn. It was truly serendipitous that my daughter-in-law offered me this very thing I needed and about which I had been thinking.    

A lot of my husband's and my successful financial management and the quality of our day to day life is due to our openness in accepting other people's cast-offs, be it clothing, furniture, food, and even a car. If someone has offered us something that they no longer wanted or needed, we accepted and found a way to use the item or pass it on to someone else.

About 75% of our furniture came from other family members. The car we recently sold to a salvage company was my late in-law's former car. You may remember the trays of food that we were often given following volunteer work at our church's fund-raising luncheons. I've happily accepted hand-me-down clothing from my sister, my sister-in-law, my mother-in-law, my grandmother, and my stepmom. Accepting other folks' no-longer-wanteds has meant that we could live a higher quality of life on a smaller income.

This time, the needed clothing item came from the generation beneath me, my lovely daughter-in-law. It's a hand-me-up. It's the very thing I needed right now. Despite expressing my gratitude at the time, I'm not sure my daughter-in-law understands how much I appreciate this.

There's a bonus to cheerfully accepting other's cast-offs. These family members think of you first when giving something away the next time. And you never know what great stuff they'll be wanting to unload in the future.

How do you feel about offers of hand-me-downs or hand-me-ups as an adult? Do you feel obligated to accept or keep items long-term? Have you ever regretted accepting or turning down a hand-me-down offer? 

Mid-January State of the Pantry and Fridge

One of the things I love about mid-January is the manageability of our food storage. While these spaces are by no means lean, I can actually find what I need easily again.

Earlier this week, I took a few minutes to take inventory and tidy up the shelves and compartments of both the pantry and fridge. I deliberately skipped grocery shopping for about 10 days so our stock would dwindle enough to quickly do this work.

I'll need to grocery shop again over the weekend, but I won't be buying as much as I did November through December. That's a win for tidy food storage as well as my wallet.

Meals we've gotten out of a leaner fridge, freezer, and pantry this week:

• chicken pot pie, using a chicken breast, garden carrots, celery, potatoes and herbs, topped with pie pastry, and a side of watermelon pickles
• homemade pizza, beet salad (canned beets in dressing), lettuce and avocado tossed salad
• chicken stir fry, sesame noodles, homemade egg rolls (my daughter was ambitious that night)
• pot roast and gravy (from the freezer, last week's cooking) over cubed stale bread, roasted yams, apple wedges
• frozen fish sticks (with homemade tartar sauce), roasted garden potatoes, roasted yams, sautéed frozen garden Brussel sprout leaves and onions
• vegetable-beef soup (garden vegetables from the freezer, pantry, and fridge), cheese biscuits
• bean burritos, carrot sticks, sautéed misc. garden greens from the freezer

In addition to a tidier fridge, we've been making room in the freezer, too. I hope to get the small freezer emptied later this winter so that I can defrost it.

My digestion thanks me for the return to more basic meals after a long holiday period of goodies and rich food.

How do you feel when you open your fridge or pantry in January and it's not as full as it was during the holidays? Does this spark creativity in your cooking? Perhaps a sigh of relief? Does it prompt a bit of anxiety over having less? Or something else? Tell me what you think in the comments.

Have a great weekend, friends!

Fun Game We Played On Christmas -- Saran Prize Ball

I know that Christmas is over two weeks in the past, but I wanted to tell you about the game we played after dinner on Christmas Day. 

I put together a Saran Wrap prize ball. Prizes included individually-wrapped candies, pocket-size tissue packs, socks, travel-size toiletries, a device charger to be plugged into a car's 12 V cigarette lighter socket, dishcloths, individual packages of snacks, and low-denomination gift cards. In addition, there were notes wrapped up in the ball with or without prizes, saying "skip one turn," "take an extra turn," "everyone pass their last prize to the person on the left," "swap one prize with someone else's," etc.

To make the prize ball I wrapped the prizes/notes in between layers of Saran Wrap, forming a ball by the end.

To play the game, one person unwraps plastic wrap until they come to a prize and/or note. They then pass the ball to the next player. This continues until the wrap is completely undone.

You should also know that when we finished the game, we rewound the plastic wrap. My plan is to wash lengths of it, dry, then use in the kitchen as needed. No waste on this front.

It was a fun game. You could see what upcoming prizes were, but didn't necessarily know when they would be "found."

These Are a Few of My Favorite Things: Gifts that I received for Christmas -- a little electrical work

My husband is a busy man. He has worked hard to provide for us these past 38 years, and I appreciate that. So I don't like to ask him to do extra things for me on a regular basis. But, for gifts, I do ask for some of these little tasks to be done as my gift. 

 If you recall, last year on my birthday I asked my two daughters to help me spruce up our front porch as their gift to me. One year I asked my husband to install some new shelves in my closet as a Mother's Day gift. 

This year for Christmas, I asked him to do some wiring for a light that I got for free several years ago. This light fixture is for hard-wired application, but I wanted to be able to plug it in. I asked him to add a cord and switch to this light.

For my husband, this is a pretty simple task. For me, it's enormous to have it done so I can now use it. I think he enjoys doing a job as a gift for me. He knows that it means a lot to me. And it's in his wheelhouse.

I still need to figure how I will mount the fixture on the wall. But the electrical part is now done, and I'm that much closer to hanging this up in the house.

Do you ever ask for a job to be done as a gift?