What we ate and what we bought, 07-11-14 plus the news from my dentist appointment (not good)

Jeremy made dinner last night. The chicken was cooked well. The pasta was cooked well. The sauce was... oh dear god. The sauce was a mixture of mustard, honey and Sriracha. Not something I'd have put together and mixed with pasta. But I appreciate the effort.

Breakfast: Cocoa Krispies with milk
Lunch: salad made with cabbage, radishes, grilled chicken, slivered almonds and ginger sesame dressing
Dinner: mustard pasta
Snacks/desserts: sugar cookies
Beverages: water, Crystal Light

I also stopped at the store and got the following:

Lofthouse key lime sugar cookies (reduced for quick sale) $2.00
1 pint of half and half $1.49
2 6 oz blackberry yogurts ($.39 each, reduced) $.78
Peanut Butter Cookie flavored Powerbar (had a free coupon loaded onto my QFC card) $0.00
Zico pineapple flavored coconut water drink (also free) $0.00
.89 lbs broccoli $1.59

Total: $5.86

I went to the dentist this morning about my broken tooth. Apparently the damage goes into the root, and it's infected. So my options are to get a root canal and a crown for $800, or an extraction for $100. I also had to spend $1.45 on a round of antibiotics. I am going with the extraction because we really don't have $800 to spare. Suckssssss. I am going back on Monday to have the tooth pulled. At least the exam and x-rays were covered at 100%.

What we ate 07-10-14

100% fruit

Last Christmas we got an Amazon gift card for the family. We wanted to get something the whole family could use and enjoy, so after much deliberation we bought a Yonanas machine. What it does is it turns frozen fruit into a soft serve style frozen dessert. Last night I turned some frozen bananas and strawberries into strawberry banana Yonanas for dessert. It tastes more like a smoothie than straight up ice cream, but the texture is very smooth and ice cream like. I also like it made with mango and/or kiwi. Some fruits pulverize better than others. In general, the less fibrous the fruit is the better it works. Winter loves Yonanas. Sometimes we have it for breakfast.

Breakfast: protein bar and chocolate milk
Lunch: wrap made with flour tortilla, goat cheese, chipotle chicken, radishes, and cabbage, and leftover bean and vegetable soup
Dinner: stir fried chicken, cabbage and carrots with teriyaki sauce and brown rice
Snacks/desserts: strawberry banana Yonanas
Beverages: Coke Zero, water

Jeremy had a sandwich for lunch, stir fry for dinner, and we shared the Coke Zero and the Yonanas.

Purchases yesterday were the Coke Zero for $1.69, the chocolate milk for $1.39 and the protein bar for $1.00

Some work and health updates

So I may not be taking that shift at the spa in Bellevue after all, because my boss at my main job offered me more hours today. I would be coming in two hours earlier on the four days I currently work. It would be a total of 35 hours a week, so I am thinking if I took up the offer I should probably make that my only job. 35 hours is a lot of work for  massage therapist. I'm going to give it some thought. Having three days off would be pretty nice, but if I had a slow week or two, I wouldn't have any other paychecks coming in to fall back on. I'd like to think I could just work sub shifts on a very occasional basis, but I also know I have a tendency to say yes to everyone and overbook myself. On the plus side I would also save $40-50 a month in bus and train fare since I walk to that job.

On that note, I finally have a day off on Monday. I can almost taste it. Oh, and my boss brought in a microwave too, so I can now take leftovers for lunch!

Jeremy got his veins mapped  today for the fistula surgery. He said they didn't have to use an ultrasound because they could see them quite easily. I laughed so hard. He has the most vascular arms I have ever seen on someone who wasn't a professional bodybuilder. He has veins popping out on his fingers. His fingers. Really. So his vascularity may have saved us the cost of an ultrasound.

He's scheduled for the fistula surgery on the 21st, which quite luckily is one of my four days off this month. He is also getting a minor procedure on his eye to remove some cloudiness from behind the lens. They were going to do it on the 24th, but they moved it to the 25th. He should be able to see fine afterward (operative word being "should")  but I'll still go into work late that day, just in case. The eye doctor is only one block away, but I don't want him stumbling around trying to get home.

What we ate 07-09-14

I used the rest of the fish burrito sauce in a breakfast burrito yesterday. I think in retrospect t I'd have used less. It was a bit too much. I also spent $2.45 on a frozen yogurt, $.75 on a lemon mousse yogurt, and $1.25 on a pack of 8 hamburger buns.

Breakfast: burrito with scrambled egg, pepper jack, and left over white sauce

Lunch: peanut butter and honey sandwich, apple, sweet potato crackers with peppered goat cheese and honey

Dinner: leftover bean soup

Snacks/desserts: cookies and cream frozen yogurt, lemon mousse yogurt

Beverages: water, tea with sugar

There will likely be a permanent shift coming available at the spa in Bellevue in mid August. It would be 10-4 on Wednesdays. I am strongly considering taking it. That would give me a total of five regular shifts a week, and once Winter comes back for school I am not wanting to be at work all the time, so I will have to seriously cut back how many shifts I take at the airport. I don't think I'd quit though, since it's a good way to bring in a bit of extra cash, and I like having a badge so I can meet Winter at her gate easily. I won't be taking any more of the later ones except when Winter's at her dad's though. Nothing that gets done past 4:30.  

What we ate 07-08-14

Breakfast: smoothie with frozen banana, strawberries, vanilla yogurt and milk
Lunch: wrap made with a flour tortilla, chipotle chicken, peppered goat cheese, cabbage, and sliced radishes, apple
Dinner: bean and vegetable soup
Snacks/desserts: chocolate LaraBar, Dove milk chocolate, smoothie made with frozen banana, vanilla yogurt, milk, and goat milk caramel
Beverages: water, Crystal Light, Mt. Dew Baja Blast

Jeremy had a frozen entree for lunch, and bean soup for dinner. We also shared a 20 oz bottle of Mt. Dew Baja Blast. He measured out 8 oz and drank it out of the Pyrex measuring cup. Weirdo.

Slow cooker recipe for hearty bean and vegetable soup

sooooo many vitamins

This soup gets tons of flavor from fresh, dried, and canned veggies and beans, and is high in with lots of assorted micronutrients. I am tagging this recipe as vegetarian, because you can very easily replace the chicken bouillon with vegetable or mushroom bouillon. Don't be intimidated by the long ingredient list. This is super fast to put together.

1/3 cup dried black beans
1/3 cup dried pinto beans
1/3 cup dried garbanzo beans
1/3 cup yellow split peas (if you can't find these, try brown lentils instead)
1/3 cup green split peas
5 cups water
2 carrots, thickly sliced
1 bell pepper, chopped
1/4 cup dried onion
2 T sodium free chicken bouillon
14 oz can diced tomatoes in juice
3 cloves of crushed garlic
1/4 cup white wine
1 t oregano
dash of black pepper

Combine all dried beans and pulses with the five cups of water the night before and allow them to soak. The following day, combine all ingredients in a 2 qt or larger slow cooker and cook on the low setting for 6 or 7 hours until beans and split peas are tender. Makes 8 cups. Nutrition info is for 1 cup.

What we ate 07-07-14, and what I bought today

OMGMOARSPAGHETTI!!!

I made spaghetti sauce with basically the same recipe I used before, but I used mushrooms instead of zucchini, 1/4 lb of browned, drained, and rinsed ground beef instead of veggie burger, and I cut the olive oil back to one tablespoon, since the meat was pretty fatty.

Breakfast: just coffee(see beverages)
Lunch: Wensleydale cheese with dried fruit, sweet potato and cinnamon crackers, cherries
Dinner: spaghetti with meat sauce
Snacks/desserts: apple, butter toffee Rice Krispie treat, Chocolate Therapy ice cream
Beverages: coffee with milk, Crystal Light, Diet Dr. Pepper, water

Jeremy had a fish burrito for lunch, and we shared the Rice Krispie treat and the Diet Dr. Pepper.

Today I picked up 12 oz of raw organic honey for $3.79, and a chocolate LaraBar for $.95 at Target, I also got a milk chocolate Dove bar at Rite Aid for $1.00.

Increasingly disillusioned with gardening

Between forgetting to water my window boxes for a few days, and it being in the 90's my tiny baby lettuce died. I am starting to think it was never going to get much bigger than it was anyway. I'm glad I literally grew it from something I'd have thrown out otherwise.

I am also 95% sure my radishes are not going to bulb. They have been growing for like a month and a half and all I see is skinny pink stems.

I am running into issues with my potato plants being way too tall/heavy and there is no more room to hill them in those little planter boxes. Plus now when I water them it mostly just runs down the side of the "hill" and onto the sidewalk below, so I have to make sure no one is walking underneath when I water.

The carrots and beets still look ok, though they are  growing at a maddeningly slow pace, and at this point there are only like six carrots and two beets growing. If they do actually turn into anything edible I am betting they will be tiny.

I'll give it the rest of the growing season before I give up, but I am thinking next year I'll just plant some herbs instead. Growing vegetables is proving to be more complicated than just getting things to sprout and not die.

Health care and shit

I finally got around to making an appointment at the dentist this Saturday. I have a broken tooth I have been neglecting for a while, which just keeps getting brokener. It doesn't hurt (much) so it's been easy to ignore. I have a couple others that I know will also eventually need attention, but they'll have to wait just a bit. 

Jeremy has an appointment Thursday to get his veins mapped for fistula surgery. They need to make a fistula for hemodialysis even if you plan/hope for a transplant, because it takes a few weeks for them to heal and be usable, and once you actually need dialysis you do not have a few weeks to wait. If you do not have a fistula they have to run a line directly into your heart to do it, which has an incredibly high risk of infection. There is also a small chance that one of the pre-op tests he needs before the transplant could cause his kidneys to completely fail. Which would mean he'd need to go on dialysis immediately. I told him I can just draw the map myself because you can practically see his veins from space, but he kindly rejected my offer. And he's pretty sure it's not that kind of map. 

He's also getting minor surgery on one of his eyes at the end of the month to remove some cloudiness behind the lens. And another surgery, which has yet to be scheduled, to remove a cataract in the other eye. He said that there should be no downtime after the first surgery, and he should be able to see as well as he normally can immediately afterward. But if for some reason he can't he'll have to miss work because the eye with the cataract has basically no usable vision right now. 

There will be copays. So many copays. 

More grocery shopping + what we ate 07-06-14

I went back to QFC and got 6 more 12 oz boxes of pasta for $.49 each. That, plus what I already have, should last us 3 or 4 months. Maybe more.

We also went to Grocery Outlet today and bought:

3 frozen entrees ($1.99 each) $5.97
8 oz shredded pepper jack cheese $1.99
3.7 lb variety pack of deli meat $3.99
8 oz. chipotle chicken deli meat $1.99
8 oz. Cajun turkey deli meat $1.99
12 oz. plum preserves $1.69
dijon mustard $1.29
Wolfgang Puck four cheese pasta sauce $1.99
butter toffee Rice Krispie treat $.50
20 oz. Diet Dr. Pepper $1.09
24 oz ketchup $.99

Total $23.48

Jeremy also bought a Rock Star this morning. He's not sure how much. We'll call it $2.50.

Here's yesterday's food I ate:

Breakfast: French toast with strawberries and a banana
Lunch: turkey and havarti sandwich on a King's Hawaiian bun, cherries
Dinner: burritos with baked whiting, cabbage, and a tangy cayenne lime sauce
Snacks/desserts: cinnamon roll ice cream, cashews, M&M's cookie (my coworker gave me)
Beverages: Crystal Light, water

I don't even remember what Jeremy had yesterday other than dinner.

I'm not sure how I feel about the whiting fish. I squeezed a lime over it, sprinkled chili powder, wrapped it in foil and baked it. The filets have the skin on, and even though I removed the skin after baking it, the flavor was kind of briny. I don't mind strong tasting fish, but I'm not really a fan of the briny flavor some types of fish have. Next time I cook it I will attempt to remove the skin first, and see if that helps.

The sauce we used on the burritos was good though. Jeremy found a recipe on some forum somewhere. He thinks it may have been myfitnesspal.com. Anyway, we wound up adjusting some of the proportions, because as written it wasn't all that good. It mostly tasted like mayo, and was too thick.  Here's what we put in it after "fixing" it:

1/2 cup lite mayo
juice of one lime
3/4 t cayenne pepper
1/8 t oregano
1/8 t dill
1/8 t cumin

burrito on a cat plate

What we ate 07-05-14

Breakfast: shredded wheat and milk
Lunch: turkey and havarti sandwich, banana, cherries
Dinner: elbow pasta with tuna, mushrooms, carrots, and cheese sauce made with odds and ends of various cheeses
Snacks/desserts: Chocolate Therapy ice cream
Beverages: crystal light, water

Jeremy ate a big ass sandwich ( but smaller ass than the day before) for lunch and tuna pasta for dinner.