Day 9

Another milestone, hooray! Went in to work today for a few hours. It was much harder to get out of the house than I expected but it was great to get out of the house. Got down the stairs OK and it was nice to see everyone at work.

Then we had a bit of a surprise party for Dave’s birthday. Pizza and friends — not a bad way to celebrate 35!

Today’s Stats
Stopped taking Advil every 8 hours; doing well.

Learned Today
Turns out out Dr. Schena (orthopedic surgeon I have an appointment with on Tuesday) does all of his surgeries at New England Baptist Hospital which is nationally recognized as one of the best orthopedic hospitals in the country. Thanks to Holly for the recommendation! And luckily, it’s not on my insurance’s list of “high-cost” hospitals.

Day 8

First time out of the house!

Big lesson of the day, don’t go to Target when you’re on crutches. They didn’t have what I needed (where are the wide-legged pants??) and people don’t move out of the way of someone on crutches. Harrumph.

Today’s Stats
Setting: flexion limit 80°, extension limit 20°
Leg lifts: rest day
Thigh lifts: rest day

Day 7: one week later

Today’s Stats
Setting: flexion limit 80°, extension limit 20°
Leg lifts: 30, 25, 30,
Thigh lifts: 30, 30, 30 (hard!),

What I learned today:
* Health insurance doesn’t cover transportation to get to and from work.
* Sitting while on a work call for an hour not paying attention to your leg is a bad idea and may lead to really, really cold feet.
* Cold feet is not necessarily something to freak out about if it’s transient.
* With knee injuries, you do want to be careful with clots. Look out for cold feet AND pain in calves or thighs.

Cork and wheel and crutches?

Welcome to 2016… [three months into it]

So this site isn’t getting much love in the food posting department. Maybe we’re just too busy eating! Instead, I’m turning into a place to read about my adventures in fixing my knee.

Last week, while on vacation in Montana, I fell while coming down a green run, twisted my knee, and tore a bunch of ligaments. OUCH! At some point I’ll write more about what happened that day and in the days after but for now, I’m starting with today.

Biggest feat of the day so far (it’s only 10:10AM)? Making myself breakfast!! HUGE. And it only took nearly 20 minutes… not bad!

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Daffodils and delicious soda bread courtesy of mom and dad who so very wonderfully came up to visit for a couple of days to take care of me and spoil Dave a little (soda bread is his favorite!)


Today’s Stats
Setting: flexion limit 80°, extension limit 20°
Leg lifts: 23, 28, 19, 26
Thigh lifts: 20, 25, 25, 25

Quick and impressive party appetizer

Always a crowd pleaser, cheese straws are super easy to make, if a little messy!

My favorite recipe is Ina Garten’s Cheese Straws [Barefoot Contessa recipe link].

Of course feel free to change up the toppings if you want to get creative. I usually skip the thyme leaves just because I never have them on hand.

 

Ina Garten’s Cheese Straws

2 sheets (1 box) frozen puff pastry, defrosted overnight in the refrigerator
1 egg
1/2 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese
1 cup finely grated Gruyère cheese
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme leaves (optional)
1 teaspoon kosher salt
Freshly ground black pepper

Preheat the oven to 375 degrees.

Roll out each sheet of puff pastry on a lightly floured board until it’s 10 x 12 inches. Beat the egg with 1 tablespoon of water and brush the surface of the pastry. Sprinkle each sheet evenly with 1/4 cup of the Parmesan, 1/2 cup of the Gruyère, 1/2 teaspoon of the thyme, 1/2 teaspoon of the salt, and some pepper. With the rolling pin, lightly press the flavorings into the puff pastry. Cut each sheet crosswise with a floured knife or pizza wheel into 11 or 12 strips. Twist each strip and lay on baking sheets lined with parchment paper.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, until lightly browned and puffed. Turn each straw (or the entire baking sheet if you’re lazy) and bake for another 2 minutes. Don’t overbake or the cheese will burn. Cool and serve at room temperature. ** If you happen to peek at them and see cheese oils seeping and the cheese looking gloopy, don’t panic! In just a few more minutes they will puff up and look delicious.

CSA week 10/11

Lagging behind! Here’s what we got the last two weeks…

Week 11:
  • 1 zucchini
  • 2 lbs of tomatoes
  • 1 lb of onions
  • carrots
  • 2 cucumbers
  • 4 oz. of basil
  • 2 bulbs of fennel (small)
  • 1 head of lettuce
  • 2 eggplants
  • 6 ears of corn
  • edamame
Week 10:
  • 3lbs (!) of summer squash
  • carrots
  • curly parsley
  • potatoes
  • tomatillos
  • yellow grape tomatoes
  • cucumbers
  • eggplant

Piggies, green dinners, & dinner bowls

Lately I’ve found myself eating a lot less meat. This is for a couple of reasons: making sure to eat everything I get in my CSA, saving money, and lastly, wanting to start really “eating what I preach.” After reading a bunch of really great books on the subject of the food industry I can say that it’s pretty grim. I recently went to go see Food, Inc. – great movie, I highly recommend it – and while I knew about much of what the film discusses, it does a good job presenting how government agencies, food corporations, and American farmers interact and what it means for us as consumers. I won’t go preaching about it all but it’s definitely worth checking out.
As a result of my deciding to eat less large-industry farmed meat, my meals have taken on a vegetarian turn:
This was my green dinner — Zucchini pasta with fresh greens. Again, super simple and only takes maybe ten minutes to prepare. All it requires is:
  • grating zucchini with a mandoline so you get strips of zucchini
  • heating up sliced garlic in a couple tablespoons of olive oil
  • adding zucchini to olive oil/garlic and cook for ~5 minutes
  • grating some fresh parmesan on top
  • enjoy!
Another super easy dinner is what I call my dinner bowls. All you do is cook a few ingredients, together or separately, and then combine in a bowl. One of my old favorites is a brown rice, sliced zucchini, and italian sausage bowl. This week I made a potato, corn, and zucchini bowl.
For the potatoes:
  • potatoes
  • onions
  • olive oil (I used ~1-2 T, original calls for a lot more)
  • s&p
Dice the potatoes into large bite-sized chunks, cover with cold water, bring to a boil and cook until just fork tender (about 5 minutes depending on chunk size). Drain and cool slightly. Heat up oil in a pan and add the potatoes. Don’t move them and cook for about 5 minutes. The amount of oil in the pan will impact the “crustiness” of your potatoes. Flip the potatoes, add onions and salt & pepper, cook another few minutes. Set aside.
For the zucchini & corn:
  • zucchini slices
  • corn (fresh off the cob is ideal)
  • garlic
  • olive oil
Slice the garlic and add with the olive oil to the same skillet as used for the potatoes, heat up slightly. Add the zucchini, sautee for a couple of minutes, add the corn, sautee about a minute more. Take off the heat, combine with the potatoes, and enjoy!

CSA week 8

The bounty for the week includes…
  • 1 bunch of kale
  • 1lb green beans
  • 4 oz basil
  • 2 tomatoes
  • 2 zucchini
  • 1lb beets (3)
  • 1 eggplant (an heirloom Italian variety – big, round, and light purple)
  • 1 bunch of sage
  • 3 onions
  • 1 head of lettuce
  • 2 green bell peppers
  • 2 cucumbers
Apologies for the blurry photo…

Black Bean Burgers & Sick Tomatoes

Yesterday I randomly clicked on a link for Low Calorie Budget Meals (oh-so-exciting, I know) and the only thing that piqued my interest was mention of black bean burgers.  I’ve never had one but I knew I had a couple cans of black beans in my pantry as well as some toppings in the fridge.  Dinner plan, check.  

I looked up a couple of recipes to get an idea of how these would come together and then decided to loosely follow their guidelines.
Very simply all I had to do was drain a can of black beans, mashed ’em up with a fork, and combine with minced onion, salt, pepper, a bit of Goya Sazón (because I didn’t have cumin), and some homemade whole wheat bread crumbs.  
Formed two patties, put them on the stovetop grill pan on medium-high heat and cooked for about 7 minutes.  Then I went to turn them and….  fail.  The patties didn’t hold up at all.  Time for improvisation #2: transfer to a skillet.  I actually let them cook about 10 minutes a side so that they formed a hard crust on the outside (yum).  
In the meantime I made a carrot slaw from this week’s CSA veggies.  It was super easy.  All I did was combine some shredded carrots with a quick lemon vinaigrette.  The carrots were really sweet so the slight tartness of the lemon vinaigrette was nice.  
As for the sick tomatoes, we just got an email from our CSA farm, Red Fire Farm, alerting us that about 2 acres of their 8 total acres of tomatoes have been struck by late blight.  They’ve removed all of the infected plants and are hoping that the rest of their crop will not be affected.  Keep your fingers crossed!  
Just in case, I’ll be monitoring Boris (and Natasha) very closely.  They both already have a tomato or two growing.  Let’s hope they don’t get sick as well.  

Boris with his first tomato fruit (to the left of the flowers)