#wanted to try posting writings about more than just the adventures of bandana and taco

[ineedahiddencorner]

3.21.20

Well. The back pain is still there.

I was writing a proper blurb about it, with all the details and everything, but it seems it's affecting my concentration even though I'm sitting upright, in a proper chair, with a pillow for support. It doesn't acutely hurt right now but it feels like its threatening to. I was describing the pain as "acidic" earlier.... It's somewhere between an ache and acute, with flare ups of acute pain here and there.

Summary of post before:

It started moderate, went back to mild, and has been back to moderate to worse the past few days. It does not respond to extra-strength acetaminophen, heating pads, massages, or a proper physical therapy appointment. (That didn't even relieve it much during the appointment - I felt the same while adjustments were being made, let alone walking out.)

The only thing that seemed to loosen it somewhat was a drink, which is definitely not a remedy option.

So. Fun times. Had by all.

A family member suggested it might be stress. (Wonder why...)

I knew I had to pray anyway, because there has been so much I've been working through on my own. So, last night, I took time surrendering everything up to God. I listed off conflicts and concerns, one by one, from the past few weeks - from Bandana and Taco to Bush (oh that last one was necessary), and from family to school to the virus. I surrendered them all and felt better, and then had dreams last night which reflected that - a woman talked to me about life before and after giving it all up to God. It's funny, I'd seen and had a deep, pure, unknown affection for her in both her iterations throughout the dream (she appeared twice in two different contexts), but it wasn't until the very end of the second one, just before I woke up, that she started talking about God. But it was reassurance I needed, and I woke up refreshed and more myself than I had been the last few days. Even the worry about the back pain was gone.

Since then, I spent the morning and early afternoon running errands with (for) Mom. Though I haven't lifted anything heavy, the pain is still ever present. Moving is kept to a minimum, though its mostly transitions that hurt most - walking is fine once I get to it, it's just the getting up part. So for now just sitting, writing, and staying very warm in one of the softest hoodies I've ever had the pleasure of borrowing. (A grey and black one that I've actually stolen and shall never return... Thank goodness the two I stole it from will never see this post.. Nope... Nuh-uh. Never. Thank heavens.)

My back may be one thing. But my mental state is much more at peace. That's at least one out of two steps in the right direction.

Now I just wish I had the energy to reply to all the messages I keep getting... I want to reply to people I care about but my energy remains minimal. We'll get there. For now just taking it all one thing at a time.

To anyone who reads this and is concerned - I'm already set for further medical attention next week. Just hanging out and doing what I can in the meantime, and trying to not overthink anything. (Which I never do.)

(About anything.)

(Not once.)

(Never.)

[twilight-resonance]

Cooking Adventures

It occurred to me earlier while I was writing the other post that this is one I could write, too, and might be fun. It’s a list of all the new recipes that I’ve tried since the beginning of COVID shelter-in-place, and how they turned out. Because I can. And because I want to. End results rated out of 10.

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Daal -- ?/10 I’m going to be honest, this one we made way back in March and never made again, and I don’t remember how it turned out. Relatively unnotable would be my guess, given I don’t remember it and we never made it again.

Shakshuka -- 7/10 This one turned out pretty decent. I don’t know that it was really shakshuka proper - I only skimmed a few recipes but mostly made it up on my own. I also added chickpeas for extra substance. I’d say it turned out good overall, I’m just not a huge fan of eggs most of the time and cleaning the cast iron afterwards is a pain. 

Paneer -- 7/10 Had been curious to try this for a while because it turns out that paneer is very easy to make. The most difficult part was not having cheesecloth to squeeze and drain it - we had to use a bandana instead, and it still smells like funky milk even after a couple washes. The paneer itself was pretty decent, though, and again pretty easy.

Mattar Paneer -- 6/10 The mattar paneer, on the other hand, was not. It was easy enough to make, but the gravy came out tasting wrong. I wish I had some idea of what spices needed adjusting, but I had no idea. It’s this and aloo gobi that I would love to find better recipes for - I haven’t liked any of the homemade ones I’ve tried yet.

Hash Browns -- 10/10 Not a big deal, I just hadn’t made ‘em from scratch before. It turns out it’s pretty easy. Later on we ended up taking some potatoes that were about to go bad and grating/rinsing them all into hash browns, then freezing them for later use. It worked pretty well, and the birds got to pick at the potato scraps left over when we brushed the drying towel off on the pack porch.

Pierogis -- 1/10 Terrible. I love pierogis, but I may never attempt to make them again. One part our kitchen is small and doesn't have enough room to roll out the dough properly; one part, the flavors for the shell and the filling both turned out wrong somehow (how do you fuck that up???); one part, it was a whole lot of work and a terrible mess for something that ultimately wasn’t that good. It’s store-bought from now on.

Tikka Masala -- 10/10 Turned out great. We had a bunch of spare veggies and some extra cream around, and the end product was delicious. Especially over some saffron rice. We have definitely made this one a couple times since. It uses almost a cup of spices though, so good gods. Oh - I suppose I ought to mention for context that Hearthsnail and I are both vegetarian, so this would have been vegetable rather than chicken.

Banana Bread - 10/10 I’d made banana bread before but didn’t like the way it came out, so I tried another recipe this time. A bit of an odd one, but the banana bread turned out really well - moist but not too moist, and not too sweet. This is another one we’ve made several times at this point, although it’s hard to catch the bananas in the right stage of ripeness (again, odd recipe)- you have a window of about a day, maybe two.

Broccoli-Potato Fritters -- 8/10 This was one recommended to me by the pen pal who didn’t work out. We had a bunch of broccoli that was going to go bad, and so decided to try it out. It was good! First time cooking it the cheese browned too much to the point where it got a bit acrid, second time cooking was better. It’s basically broccoli, egg, pre-hashbrown, onion, and some spices fried up like latkes. Goes well with sour cream.

Churros -- 10/10 Between this, the fritters, and some third thing I can’t remember, we’ve been experimenting with frying food more than we might have otherwise. Churros are... dangerously easy and fairly easy to clean up after too. We used the Disney recipe, and oh man, are these ever delicious. We typically have enough left to eat for breakfast the following day, too. Good gods.

Breakfast Hash - 11/10 Remember above when I said we had a bunch of frozen pre-hashbrown lying around? Some morning I had a craving for something specific that I didn’t know what was and ended up throwing the hashed potato along with a bunch of veggies (bell pepper, green onion, tomato) and cheese and an egg in a pan with some spices, and It. Was. Amazing. It also tasted like vegetarian sausage, somehow, and had the filling quality of such as well. Really easy to do with leftover bits and pieces, and very tasty.

Baked Ziti -- 7/10 There’s a place we used to go out to occasionally for date nights where we’d normally get baked ziti, and it seemed easy enough so I figured I’d try it. It was decent, all in all - not hard to make, and tasty enough. I think I would have wanted a way to fill the insides of the pasta with a bit more cheese, though, so that it baked on and was a bit more browned. 

Lemonade -- 9/10 Fruit’s been hard to come by for various reasons, so we ended up doing lemonade to try to at least get something fruity. It was a bit of a process, and my hands stung from all the lemon juice afterwards and felt like I’d accidentally bleached them, but the lemonade was good. If not quite as lemony as I’d’ve liked - we ended up having to toss a couple of the lemons and thus the proportions were unbalanced - but it was very tasty, and the cold juice was yummy.

Baked Potato Soup -- 9/10 Have done potato leek soup before and loved it, but leeks are somewhat large and take up precious car space during the big grocery trips. So I tried baked potato soup instead, and it was pretty good. Not quite the same, and some of it accidentally burned to the bottom of the pot and that wasn’t good, but otherwise not bad.

Potato Tacos -- 10/10 So good. Hearthsnail had a night where he wanted more traditional tacos - just meat and cilantro and onion, except we don’t eat meat, so potatoes are the stand in because potatoes are great. And these were great. I’ll confess to using tater tots because there’s a kind we get with some spices already added and they make a good base for breakfast burritos, but I added more spices with the rest of the ingredients and it was so fucking good. Especially with sour cream and a bit of avocado, and chili pepper tortillas. Perfect.

Cupcakes -- 6/10 My birthday was towards the beginning of shelter in place back when the grocery supply chain was more fucked, so I never got to do a birthday cake. We finally found cake flour, so I tried doing a white cake recipe and making a confetti cake (but cupcake-sized). The recipe was out of the Cake Bible so it should have been good, but it ended up like the last time I tried making white cake - dense, dry, and a bit too much like cornbread. So that was disappointing. I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong but it seems to be consistent, whatever it is. 

Buttercream -- 6/10 I’m also not sure what I did wrong here, because I’ve even made this buttercream recipe before and it turned out fine. This time, not so much. Best guess is the butter hadn’t thawed/softened all the way, but that only explains part of the problem. Probably it needed to be whipped more, but I tried for like 20 min and couldn’t get any more air in it. So not so great. I’ll have to try another recipe next time.

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So that’s the roster so far. I have ingredients to try making cinnamon buns from scratch next; I also wanted to do bananas foster, but all of the bananas were very green when we last went to the store so nothing doing there. My fiance’s also tried a few new things - fried rice and egg drop soup come to mind - but they’re his, not mine, so I didn’t write ‘em up here. :)