Think pink

This is the view from the front porch of my engineer's parents' home in NJ. They built their cozy house there when they first got married 53 years ago. I can understand why his dad missed it so while he was stuck in a hospital bed for 2 months this summer.

Okay, I was going to write a more detailed post about the last few days, but I just have too much bad news to cope with right now, so this is going to be blunt, and I will revisit the fun parts later (and there are fun bits, really).

So my brother-in-law was found wandering in the street at 1am this weekend, not a phone call you ever want to get about your spouse, much less from the police in the middle of the night. I decided this was not a good weekend to visit for my annual birthday cake.

My biopsy results came back, and they were not good: early stage invasive cancer. I will be meeting a specialist at Memorial Sloan Kettering for a lumpectomy and sentinel lymph node biopsy (don't do a google search -- trust me on this) as soon as my doctor can push through the paperwork, so hopefully within 2 weeks.

At least they caught it early and the original sonogram (after the mammography) of the nearest lymph node looked clear, so everything should turn out okay, but I am still shocked and weepy.

Okay. That's it. Waiting for my engineer to come over so I can curl into a little ball.

Girl Stuff

The ever popular and amusing apple hat makes an appearance since I am way, WAY behind in my baby gift knitting. Between the 2 hours in the hospital waiting room (more on that later) and the hours in front of the TV at my engineer's parents' home on Xmas Day, it was a breeze.

In fact, it was such an amusing F.O. that my sweetheart plonked it on his normally serious dad's head, and we all cracked up, providing the perfect photo op moment. Imagine tiny apple hat (see the wine glass below it here?) perched on top of the head of a dignified senior citizen. ;-)

And the plethora of sock yarn skeins was the result of my friend Ellen's bonding with my ballwinder all day as she held my hand (metaphorically speaking) after a follow up visit to the hospital (more details shortly, really) since my engineer had to be at work today (yes, there is a Scrooge, and he is headquartered in Omaha).

Speaking of the engineer's family, the picture to the left shows the various stages of the spiced peanut butter cookies [which used pureed chick peas!) that I made for my engineer's dad (yes, he of the apple hat). It tasted a wee bit spicy fresh off the cooling racks, due to the red pepper flakes but settled into a nicely nutty, not too sweet flavor (I used all natural peanut butter and not Skippy or Jif, thereby vastly lessening the sugar content) the next day.

As it turns out, it shouldn't have been his dad's approval I worried about, but his sister's: apparently she is allergic to something in the recipe -- no one knows what, since she usually only finds out the hard way. I was mortified and felt badly.

Speaking of trauma & drama, upon my annual visit to the "woman 's doctor" this month, she said the words no woman ever wants to hear: "I found a lump." It turns out to be early stage and relatively small (0.6 mm)

So yes, I have been becoming acquainted with the wonderful facilities (and they are indeed wonderful) of Columbia-Presbyterian Hospital: X-rays (less painful pancake moment than expected, since the technician was excellent), ultrasound machines, and ultrasound needle biopsy. I find out the results on Tuesday or Wednesday (not quite the birthday present I would have liked) but regardless of the outcome, the doctor says, "Out it comes."

The doctor I was lucky enough to be assigned was fabulous and had a great bedside manner (she gave me her cellphone number, -- not the answering service number, and came in to check on me and hold my hand during the biopsy, which was performed by another doctor) and made me crack up the other day when she met me, "Oh you're the knitter!" since she had chatted with me in the inner waiting room (there is a more private, women-only waiting room after the patients change into the double "breasted" exam gowns -- why can't other places use this version which gives patients a little dignity?!) and seen me at work on the apple hat.

Regardless of the (mercifully arriving soon) results, I will soon get to meet another new doctor (a breast surgeon) who my very nice doctor recommended... well, once everyone comes back from the holidays. And I thought I would be mostly okay with everything today, especially since my sister and mother both had have cysts removed so this was not totally unexpected, but apparently I was a little more shaky than I thought.

So Ellen, who had offered to go to the hospital with me for the biopsy, came over with lunch and we knit and ate, and watched some of my TiVo backlog, and then eventually ordered dinner, unlike the chicken thighs braised in sherry-balsamic sauce (bonus: used some of the sherry I bought during my ill-fated trip to Spain a few years ago -- still can't face chorizo without grimacing) which I made for knitting night at my place on Tuesday night (the same night I was nervously baking cookies for B's dad) including Ellen, Marci, and Jackie.

Girlfriends rock.

Monster mugs

Mea culpa -
I realized some of my measurement math was off, so I corrected it, and then tweaked a few other things here... and there... so, um, there have been some edits below, after the original posting. Oops.

Remember the gigantic mug I made a while ago? (My hand is there for scale, not presentation, a la voila!)

Well, I discovered that the reason it's so capacious (besides my being thirsty like a camel) is that it holds over 3-1/2 cups of liquid, a/k/a 28 oz.! (Here, the pen is for scale, without any foreshortening.) The only drawback is that the damn thing is HEAVY when it's full (a/k/a 1lb.+12 oz.+mug= probably over 2 lbs.).

My engineer liked my gigantic mug enough to request a monster mug of his very own. I wound up making 2 mondo mugs, both of which are a nice deep blue color, which you can't see very well in the photo. (The teeny 1/2-cup size Tupperware container is there for scale in this shot. Heh.) These are the same mugs I mentioned earlier where I re-did the handle after painstakingly attaching it in the first place.

Being an engineer, he measured out precisely the capacity of each much, which was 2 cups apiece (i.e., 16 oz. ea.) which is where I got the idea for measuring out how much "Monster Mug - The Original could hold."

And remember the baby sweater sweater I knit this spring for my (alas) now former co-worker's son in Hong Kong? She sent me a photo before she left.

Okay, lunchtime is almost over. Time to go back and be depressed watching my coworker Dennis pack up his stuff. Since he is on vacation the first week of January, he's boxing up all of his stuff in case we get laid off while he's on vacation.

Which reminds me: we all went out for drinks last Friday (oddly enough, no one is in the mood for a holiday party -- funny, that) and are all going out for booze again this Friday. As The New York Times recently pointed out, when the economy crashes, bar tabs rise.

Oh, and the apricot oat muffins were pretty tasty, even according to my co-worker Mike who is a total Guy (in a nice way) and avoids all things diet or WW.

Stewing in my juices

Backlog of food porn, part 2:

Sausage & cranberry stew a la Shirl, based on a UK WW recipe, where I also threw in a bag of mixed frozen veggies. (Those stir-fry mixes are quite handy!) Made this for a knitting night, and unlike the Brits, decided I wanted more in my stew than meat + fruit.


EatingWell Magazine's Sweet & Savory Beef Stew (w/ dried cherries & butternut squash) was the dish that got me hankering to make stews. (Wish I had a food stylist, so it looks like the magazine photo, but hey, it tastes good.)


My engineer's roast _____ which I diced lots of stuff for: oodles of carrots and celery. For the life of me, I cannot remember the meat involved (sausage? brats? I forget) but the end result was tasty!

And now, for some sleep!

Backlog

One of my buddies at work has (happily for him, sadly for me) gotten a new job... in Switzerland! I will be sad to see Ryo-san leave, but as they say during funerals, it is a far, far better place that he goes to... In honor of which, we went to our last sushi-fest lunch, where we had: miso-glazed bass, udon soup, assorted sushi, and 3 enormous fried oysters with tartar sauce. Yum! (Hey, at least there were only 3 -- the other supersecret Japanese menu special had katsu, which I once figured out had something like 12 WW points per cutlet. My daily budget = 18.)

And tonight, I had the urge to make -- and almost all of the ingredients for -- apricot oat bran muffins. Since I lacked the bran, I swapped out the 2 cups for 1 cup wheat germ, and 1 cup wheat flour. There is absolutely no fat/milk-based shortening, relying instead on applesauce, molasses, and egg whites for binding (?) power. WW pts = 2 per muffin! Yippee! Hopefully, it will actually taste as good as it looks.
And yesterday was my sister's birthday. Indeed, the cappuccino angel food cake was a disaster. It tasted like cappuccino sponge. No, not sponge CAKE -- but sponge. Or as my friend Jackie put it, something not for company, but which would be fine for in front of the TV at home, or great for a bread pudding.

So instead, I made a classic white cake, using a recipe from the Light & Easy Baking book I bought recently, and another recipe for chocolate whipped cream, I made a sheet cake for my sister and our ever multiplying family. My poor engineer had to wait for me while I frantically finished frosting it yesterday morning before we left to meet everyone in CT for an early brunch (11:15, not 2:15).

Happily, that turned out well, and was mostly demolished after brunch. Also, my giganto cupcake carrier also converts into a sheet cake carrier. Hooray for travelling by car!
And speaking of my cute chauffeur, here is the post-frogging, re-knit London beanie for him, which he has been happily wearing. So happily, in fact, that I am now 2/3 of the way through (after once again frogging the last third!) another one in Brown Sheep -- midnight green with old sage stripes.
Backlog of food porn: cheese flights at Caselulla from last Wednesday (or was it a week earlier?) with my long-suffering engineer. (He is learning that I have many fine qualities, but time management is not one of them, see: cake frosting, above. He has been patiently listening to my bitching about our recent and upcoming layoffs; latest estimate: January for round 2.)
The dish above was actually pate, topped with ...um, was it sour cream? ... and there is a pepper relish under the bread.

Double Ginger Cookies

I have discovered the wonderful world of crystallized ginger, courtesy of FreshDirect and MyRecipes.com.

Before:


After:


Using the Cooking Light recipe for double ginger cookies, which makes insanely large cookies -- the size of a flattened golf ball! -- I have made a giant stack of these babies.

Although the WW points value for THEIR size is 2/cookie, I:
(a) skipped the sugar coating -- they are already very sweet from the crystallized ginger and other sugar
(b) bet I could get it down to 1 pt/cookie -- if I skip rolling it in sugar AND scale it down to human-sized portions.

But I fear the cappuccino angel food cake from WW which I attempted to make (as a trial run for my sister's birthday on Sunday) will not turn out so well. I am letting it cool now and will see in the morning...but that egg white thing, challenging without a stand mixer. Oy.

I sense it will be back to a nice simple white cake recipe for me, for the actual birthday...except maybe with some chocolate whip cream. Ah, the wonders of unsweetened cocoa powder...

OK, time to go **THUD!**

Disclaimers

I put up my little eBay tree this weekend, even though I don't feel very festive (layoffs and the knowledge of additional layoffs will do that to you).


But regardless of my holiday sentiment (or lack thereof) I do find the little guy cheerful -- and a testament to the power of 99 cent stores.


Every year he/it comes out of my closet and I do the pipe cleaner thing and twist it into fluffiness and then hang my various ornaments and doodads on it.



On the bright side, I made 3 dozen oatmeal almond cookies (1 WW point each!) which both my engineer, and my coworker Mike pronounced yummy. My knitting buddies also seem to like it. Best of all: they have all left my house. Ha!


Next up: finding a nice, light cake recipe for my sister's birthday next weekend. Unlike my brother-in-law, she prefers light & fluffy (strawberry shortcake) vs. rich & dense (ex: German chocolate cake).


Since I bought 2 well-reviewed baking cookbooks from The Strand last week, I am hopeful: Perfect Light Desserts: Fabulous Cakes, Cookies, Pies, and More Made with Real Butter, Sugar, Flour, and Eggs, All Under 300 Calories Per Generous Serving, which uses natural ingredients and not Splenda, or fat-free anything, and also Light and Easy Baking, which also has non-chemical ingredients.



And finally, a ceramics colleague made this beautiful vase, which I had absolutely nothing to do with -- I just thought it was pretty.

Opa!

I will be sad to say good-bye to what I think of as my "cossack coat" since it always made me think of a Russian princess, complete with Russian fur hat and fur muff. I bought one summer, many years ago, while visiting my friend Jane while she was a veterinary resident up at Cornell (before she became a vet-I-Dr. and was merely a fabulous but not fabulously wealthy "GP" vet).



It was stiflingly hot, and so we escaped to the Carousel Mall in Syracuse for some free air-conditioning. As it was JULY, this coat was 70% off (don't remember the price, just the discount -- living up to my gender stereotype, I suppose) and I fell in love with it.


It is now way, WAY too big for me, despite being taken in along the back seams by a seamstress (no, not my mom -- I actually paid the lady at the dry cleaners downstairs). And since our company is partnering with the annual NY Cares Coat Drive, (yes, we donated big wads of [probably taxpayer] money -- blow me), I am bringing it in tomorrow to drop off in the donation box in our lobby.


And while I am sad to see it go, I am not regretful, if you see what I mean, since I am determined to maintain my lifetime member standing @ WW.


And thankfully, WW has also channelled my stress into baking (low-fat/whole grain treats, like the oatmeal cherry, cranberry cookies this weekend), and not eating, say, [a] all of the cookies, or [b] KFC (mmmm...wings ...oh! *ahem* sorry about that).


It has also encouraged me to find other, non-caloric ways of venting. Like tonight, I was finally able to indulge in some nice, enthusiastic, throwing of plates against the wall. A helpfully solid BRICK wall.


Why would I want to do this, you may ask? Well, my company finally made the first round of layoffs in my department yesterday (Monday) and handled it in a spectacularly POOR, SUCKY, AND CLASSLESS fashion. I mean, they KNEW they'd have to do this for MONTHS, and the best they could come up with was to call in the 42% (yes, FORTY-TWO PERCENT) of the people to be cut, and tell them en masse in a conference room? And THEN not prepare themselves for the inevitable questions such as "when does my healthcare coverage run out?" Frakkin' gutless idiots.


If they pay you the big bucks, part of that involves sucking it up and doing the hard stuff, like telling people they've lost their jobs privately, or -- at a minimum -- doing it in a respectful group setting and sparing THEM (yes, the newly "right-sized" former employees) the task of telling their now-former coworkers that they were just laid off. Classy, eh?


Having unfortunately been through this mass-layoff process before, I can say that there are much, MUCH better ways of doing this. Jerks. Just thinking about it for any length of time still makes me furious. (Actually, maybe I will e-mail my former Managing Director and thank him for the considerate manner in which he handled it 4 years ago. He's a nice guy and I still keep in sporadic touch with him.)


Oh, and no, this does not mean I am safe: there are further rounds to go... with of course, no actual timeframe of any sort.


So tonight, when I discovered the discard pile at the ceramics studio -- bisqueware (pottery which has been fired once but not yet glazed) destined for the dumpster -- well...! The Studio Manager encouraged me to go outside and do my best Zorba the Greek imitation, using the brick facade of the building. Opa!


Since there was someone waiting in a car in front of the building while this was happening, they must have thought it odd when I went out, flung a dish against the wall, smiled and rubbed my hands with glee, went back inside and then returned with a broom and dustpan. (My engineer says that they'll just think I'm angry but tidy.)


One way or another, I will be revisiting the discard box, oh yes.