some bits - anti inflammation diet

 foods : have been doing this for a few years now, was discussing with someone about it, after discussing earlier in the week with family in another state but they are now back to thinking that hEDS is not what their pain is from and they 'no one has ever heard of it' again *sigh* but I've found some good results for myself and I like these foods anyway.  the family members really love sugar and sugary drinks, as well, and 'can't give them up' where I've been drinking mostly black coffee (sometimes a little milk) with a pinch of a tea that has licorice and other herbs in it for several years (for the respiratory benefit) and that in itself is odd to most people.

bell peppers

carrots 

summer and zucchini squash

green peas

green onions

regular onion

beet greens and kale, fresh from the garden or frozen from garden

cucumbers (ground up as a sauce with mayonnaise, served on top of starches, like rice or pizza) 

olive oil, good quality - avoid many other oils

balsamic and rice wine vinegar 

canned beans, lentils or chickpeas 

brown rice, prepared with rice wine vinegar

rice noodles 

white sesame seeds (added to cooked rice)

nori or wakame seaweed

canned mackerel, tuna or sardines

eggs (from our own chickens, high in omegas, dark orange yolks)

peanut butter

olives

bananas 

mayonnaise 

avocado

relish  

naval oranges 

cherries and blueberries (sparingly) 

canned fruits and pineapple juice

licorice tea in small quantities brewed in coffee (for respiratory)

whole milk only

real full-fat butter, only (no margarine or spreads) 

dark chocolate 

ginger, garlic, hot madras curry powder, lots of black pepper

celery seed (usually in lentils, pea soup or rice) 

daily supplement : methyl folate tablet with food at breakfast 

still do eat pizza, pasta, pork chop or pork stir fry, beef - all in moderation with the family at dinner, although I often will make one or more of my own foods and mix with and limit consumption because it is harder to digest some of what the rest of the family wants to eat.

avoiding corn grains and cornstarch

avoiding overeating of sugar

limiting amount of beef when the family has it, I just don't digest it as well, a little is good (especially with horseradish) but definitely have a limit I can feel

definitely no sucralose or artificial sweetener

I used to drink a lot of green tea, but for the past few years it has made me vomit - it might be the brand type changed something or something else changed with me.

knock off the spiderwebs

 I haven't picked up a paintbrush in about a year, at least, not for long.  This was a slapdash I did back then - never decided if I wanted to do anything else with it, and put it on top of the failed paintings stack.  But thus, I've been looking at it, albeit flat, for that past year, and it has grown on me in general that it had something to it.  When I painted it, I didn't even plan anything, just threw whatever colors I had down and then squinted trying to make some picture out of it.  

I started matching some of the colors today to put on the edges, as having it flat, I was also always looking at the unfinished edges.  Then I put a bit of the colors back through the painting, altering it a little here and there.  It's no worse for wear, maybe not any better, either.  But now my paints are a bit more organized again, less spiderwebs, the brushes and paint pans have been taken out, used and cleaned.  I might clean up the drawing table a little more - closed some containers and moved things around.

It is a temptation to say 'I might need more of that', and buy something.  It is also a temptation to look at the bottles of printing ink I have that are nearly 15 years old? and say throw them out... and then stick them back in another container.  Maybe they'll work if I get another idea and take out my paper and inks.  But who knows when I'll decide to work on it again.

 Working on Japanese.  In all of these years of working with Duolingo they never once did the 'we' or 'they' forms?  I started HeyJapan a few days ago and it already has me learning new words.  And it is making me trace more kanji.  Doing a little WaniKani. 

 

'Eye to Eye' - just sit down and start to sketch, and let the picture form itself to a point - this is the third or fourth though where I had sat down and tried to find my basic black drawing pencils (H, HB etc.) and could not find a one of them, and ended up drawing with something else.  There isn't any explanation for all of them to be missing from my drawing kit except that I gathered them up and put them in a 'safe place' - which is sort of why I don't clean up and organize that often, because it backfires and I can't find things that I usually leave in the open and then know where to find it.
 

there can be only one

 We got a new to us used car, because the little car was still having tantrums, and I need a reliable way to get to work.  We had to look a few times, and ended up with something 10 years old that looks like a good bet.  I hope it is.  I was really stressing out about not having a vehicle and having to pay for rentals when the little car had a problem.  

 Esme and I did our budget for the first thing I wanted to try to get - and it was just too much.  Then the car came back from the mechanic,and it was two days before it was down again.  So I stepped up the game, and found this slightly older vehicle that was more in our budget.  You might be able to tell what it is by the title of this post.  I've asked the family to be a bit more conservative for a few weeks with groceries and everything else - until I make sure the insurance bill is what I checked out beforehand.  I have to call them again tomorrow and make sure everything is as I thought it would be.

I didn't really want to take on even more debt after the HVAC had went down earlier this summer and needed to be replaced!  But I am also glad to have that wrapped up before winter, as the other car wasn't going to be that great in snow, either. 

 Studying Japanese on two profiles and also on WaniKani. 

 

Made the pork fried rice sauce again - NOT the one with 'oyster sauce' which is what I'm seeing online everywhere.  I might have to get some oyster sauce just to see - as that is supposed to be just that and some soy sauce and water to make a pork fried rice sauce.  That seems... too simple?  This is the generic soy sauce based fried rice sauce that I learned long ago.  If you are cooking fresh pork from raw, do that first, and set it aside to cool for a moment.  Then make the rest.

 1 cup of water, set to boiling in the pan, garlic and ginger powder, bit of olive oil, bit of brown sugar, bit of balsamic vinegar, bit of soy sauce, salt, black pepper, bit of prepared stone ground mustard, cayenne pepper or red pepper flake optional

 

bring that to boiling, and stir everything together well... if you are using fresh carrot, shred the carrot and boil it in the sauce separately until it begins to soften, then add green onions, regular onions, any squash or sweet peas and bell pepper, kale etc.  Add pre-cooked pork, bring to full heat, add two eggs and then stir them through after they have cooked a moment.  Finally, add the pre-cooked rice, stir through, turn off the heat and put the steam lid on for a few minutes.

This can be made with kielbasa instead of pork, or just with egg all by itself if that is what you have. 

 

There is also hoisin sauce, which is made with fermented soybean paste, will need to study up how that is different than soy sauce.  It's thicker, I know that.  I've had it once up on a time.  I think out of the choices, I would use that the most often and actually not waste it.  And I used to keep sesame oil but it goes rancid so quickly I have thrown it out long before using it.  I was using fish sauce and the above recipe and lime juice to make a pad thai sauce a few times, and it was quite good.  Same with the fish sauce, though.  I don't know how long it is supposed to keep - longer than I originally expected, but we don't eat pad thai enough to keep it just for that. 

more bits

 We've been looking into getting another car, but haven't yet.  The other little car is still running so far, and we came up against a snag in getting a newer one, although we had found several we liked and could technically swing through and get.  The insurance price on a newer car is twice as high as all of our insurance combined, and that has to be figured out as a monthly cost along with the car payment.  We've always got around that before by buying much older beater cars, which came with low insurance payments and not much if any monthly car payment.  So, regrouping and rethinking, and hoping we have enough time to secure something else or work the budget around.

 I burnt my hand the other day with hot water, but it is getting better.  I stopped myself before I began to fret on it, and that helped a lot because in the past I've actually made the burn worse, Mark said at least, by getting all the stress hormones running etc.  I put it in cold water immediately and then some burn ointment on it after about five or six minutes.  It was a coffee machine that was stuck and I didn't even think properly - I just grabbed the filter cartridge which happened to be full of boiling water and all of the water came out of it luckily just onto my knuckles, and not on to my face or anything else.  And I will say - it would have happened to someone else, and who knows how they would have reacted to it.  I'm such a strange creature when it comes to skin that it could have went terribly bad as well, but luckily it hasn't - there is just a little bit of redness left now after two days and there weren't any blisters at all.  I've cut myself before and pressed it together and it has sealed back up, and I've also had just the opposite - a tiny cut tear and become a larger one.  There is little rhyme or reason except for the stress reaction.

Nothing else to report, except continued work on Japanese. I am doing the Duolingo on both the mobile and pc profiles and then the wanikani as well.   I keep staring at my Amelia book and not furthering.  I also noticed it will be Esme's birthday in two months.  It's a big one, and graduation not long after that.   

 I reminded Esme of the book Alice in Wonderland which she read as part of homeschool - and that there was a sequel.  I showed her the little cartoon again that was made by D - with the mouse - and she barely remembered it.  She said she thought most of the rest of her generation had read the first book at least, and I had to tell her that no, I don't think they have.  They may have read a picture book, but very few of them read the original text from beginning to end. 

bits and books

 I have studied the extra Japanese lessons on wanikani for three days now, as well as Japanese on both of my Duolingos (and a bit of Czech, why? it's me).  The little car did a scary thing this morning and now I have the mechanic picking it up and have rented something to drive for the week until we find out what that was.  We are looking over our budget more to see if we can afford another car payment.  I showed Esme the budget style that I use and explained to her what all the things were to know.

comment Mark made to me tonight : you know you probably drink more coffee grounds than most people, that might have a high lead content or something in it.  You were talking about your diet (seaweed and cucumber mineral contents) and have you considered that?  If it was a problem though, you'd probably already know by now, considering how long you have been drinking coffee (he drinks tea).  Me: Yes that makes you either an idiot, or insane.  And I don't think I'm doing too bad, I found my abstract algebra textbook on the shelf the other day and I was really happy about it.  Mark : You're not convincing me on the not-insane part there.  Me : What, I've been looking for it for a couple of years now, and it is red, but I was thinking it was a much thicker book because of the remembered difficulty level.  Mark : When you need a librarian for your own collection to say 'it's red, can you find it for me', then yes, you have a problem.  Me: Well, I've found it now, it was between a French textbook and that history book about corn.  Mark : Still not convincing me... *all in good fun banter*

 I need to kick my tail and put up more of my kindle books - which requires actually sitting down and editing them and getting them ready to format.  I was happy to see the 'Salt Magic' book had sold some copies.  That one was supposed to be just tucked into an anthology but I had thought it was good enough to go by itself and I had published it at the same time as Mikki Mack.

 These are the ones that I have finished and put up so far: 

 Salt Magic : The tale of an exhausted mage who rediscovers themselves.

Mikki Mack  : The quite pretty small grey cat with the gloriously long fluffy tail

 Unspoken Things Made Words : Poetry anthology with a few philosophy things

Time in December : Magic realism fiction.  Summary: "Bran exists but only in apathy. Isobel doesn't exist, but wants to. Paul, caught between the worlds, is prisoner to the watch. Ingrid, a tiger with her claws the wrong way in, blames herself for surviving her brother's death. To save them all, Bran must learn to fly."

 

And I have more in the wings waiting for me to actually get my tail in gear and make them ready. 

bits

They did the second part of the tooth extraction on Friday.  I remembered the tea bag advice and the bleeding stopped much earlier than last time.  I went to work on the postal route on Saturday, and even brought some groceries home.  I've eaten a lot more than I did last time, but I am still tired enough that I've crashed early and slept as late as possible both days.  Mark made a pork roast starting early this morning, and we've had that for lunch.  I've done an assortment of lessons on my language accounts, Russian, Chinese, Danish, Catalan, French-to-Spanish and Japanese.  I've played a lot in Minetest Luanti, and made a couple of quick-and-dirty computer graphic scrawls to avoid going directly to sleep last night.

 

This morning I pulled a third white scallop squash out of the little front garden - that was the plant I started in a yogurt cup this year because I really wanted one of them - and it has come along very well.  Not much else to report - back to work tomorrow.  Next month they will do an impression for making the denture - and then after that has been made, they will pull out all the smaller teeth in the top that are left and put the denture in - and I expect that will actually be the hardest one.  These two last appointments they were pulling out the largest two molars in the back on each side - that were leftover AFTER they took out my wisdom teeth many years prior.