Roast Turkey with Rosemary and Lemon — hmmm, lots of turkey

Cauliflower with Mustard Lemon Butter — since you know, I’ll have lemon

Savory Sweet Potato Casserole — marshmallows not allowed

Green Bean Casserole — yes, that green bean casserole. Mac requested it. Mac wants to make it. I’ll let Mac eat it. I didn’t like it even with bad eating habits.

Pumpkin Soufflé — This requires a roux, which I’m going to do with guar gum instead of flour.

Blackberry pie — From the Merc. I WILL ACCEPT THIS INTO MY HOME. Don’t care^**.

I hope that we have lots of turkey leftovers. If we don’t, I have two turkeys, so I’ll make another turkey over the weekend for the leftovers. Here are my two leftover meals

Turkey Vegetable Chowder — which used to be Turkey Corn Chowder, but I’ll probably ditch the corn and add more bell peppers. There is no bacon in my Thanksgiving meal. This is where the bacon comes in.

Nutty Mixed Up Salad — you know, the one from Jason’s Deli? I love that salad. I make it myself at home. With turkey.

*Except for the turkey, of course.

**I should, though.

Mac is downtown again with the kids for the Lawrence South Park egg hunt. I’m enjoying the gift of silence, sipping coffee, looking through my latest Saveur and planning what I’m going to cook to take tomorrow. I’ve already decided to make some bacon wrapped scallions for tonight if we eat at home. I also decided that I must make some curried pickled cauliflower. I’m going to try two–one with sugar^* and one without. I’m hoping I like the one without. I love pickled vegetables, and I don’t know why it isn’t something that I haven’t tried making myself.

And now I’m shutting down this laptop to pop in my recently purchased RAM upgrade in 3,2,1…

ETA: That was surprisingly easy, given my bad technology juju. Now I’m running on 8GB in my laptop instead of 4GB. Also, the case underneath the hardshell has been wiped clean and the small amount of dust inside the laptop has been blown out. I need to pop the top hardshell off and clean it up, and perhaps purchase a new hardshell because the bottom one has a couple of big cracks in it in the name of protecting my laptop from Jay.

*I know. I KNOW.

Mac earned Extra Special Husband Points: He made me a salad for lunch. With salmon. Yes, he grilled salmon, the stuff he can’t stand smelling. He even found a bottled vinaigrette that I could eat–no added sugars, HFSC, wheat or soy. It was made out of fruit juices, vinegar and oil.

The good thing to come out of it though is this comic.

I’ve only read three comics on this site, but based on those three, it is now at part of my regular RSS read. Thanks, Facebook, for this new discovery.

I was going to do it this weekend, but some odd terrible upper-back and neck pain put an end to that plan. I have no idea what I did other than wake up and have it hurt, only for it to get worse over the next day, and not feel any relief until this morning. I really wanted to run today, but decided that, no, I would rather not have the level of pain I felt yesterday come back. Even though I don’t use my back and neck to run, I still get the impact from running in those areas, I’m sure.

I am going to go ahead with that closet task though, saving the locating of the packed up clothes that were in the dresser downstairs for another time since it involves a lot of lifting of filled boxes to perform that search.

Other than bringing on the chore of sorting through clothes, I am really loving autumn. I didn’t used to. I used start getting grumpy in August at the loss of summer. Why it is different now, I don’t know. The leaves are changing. The air is cool. I welcome the return of sweaters and fall food. The hardest thing for me will be to not bake, at least not like I used to. It is very comforting to do and smell when the weather turns cool. I did buy acorn squash and some apples for my start to fall cooking. Apples, when not eaten dipped in almond butter, are usually baked into some sort of sweet dessert. This year I bought them with the intention of dipping them in almond butter and baking them into a frittata–eggs, apples and bacon. It sounds good on paper. I have yet to ever add an apple to a frittata, so I’ll report the turnout after I make it.

Oh, and Shaake’s is open now. I think a trip there this coming weekend is in order. If I can figure out what to do with all the pumpkin puree I will end up making. It won’t turn into muffins, quick bread or ravioli this year. Okay, hopefully it won’t turn into ravioli. It may very well turn into muffins since I volunteered to bake for a fundraiser for Ada’s school at the end of October.

Mac also suggested that we go see a movie since my SIL offered to watch the kids all day. We headed to Kansas City to see Resident Evil in 3D. It was at the Fork and Screen. There is barely anything there that I can order, even deconstructed. There are a few salads, and of course, I can order a burger and not eat the bun. However, as Mac said, “It is a cheat day afterall” I had quesadillas because tortillas are one thing that I still do miss.

Thoughts: I felt like I ate too many quesadillas, even though I didn’t finish them all. Without grains, I can actually stop eating because I no longer feel hungry rather than stop eating because my stomach is stuffed. The first is a feeling of satisfaction. The later is a feeling of stomach bloating, discomfort and then sleepiness. After the movie, we ran a few errands in KC since the kid’s afternoon plans were cancelled. I couldn’t stop yawning the entire time. That used to be a regular occurrence that stopped after I changed my diet. I did not order any fruity cocktails during the movie though, and next time, I’ll just get a burger or the chopped salad. Hopefully next time will be in December for Tron.

Sushi was good, but not as “OMG, wonderful” as it used to be. I still felt like I ate too much.

The good part is I didn’t have any sugar cravings today. Tomorrow I am back at it. Happily.

Also, I have one more run left of the C25K program. As long as everything goes well, my graduation day will be Tuesday. I picked up new headphones since my old ones are starting to crackle. Then I have about 11 runs left until my 5K.

I made it to the grocery, being out of vegetables. Again. Mac requested vegetable soup, so I picked up stuff for that, including two items that the checker did not know what they were: fennel and leeks. I’m sure they are not two that he checks out often, and it seems that the teenage boys are easy to stump when it comes to vegetables not in a bag with their name on it. Not their fault though is the POS system that doesn’t allow substring matches. You can’t put in “fennel” and have it come up. It has to be an exact match, and the name that is in their POS system is “anise/fennel.” The same goes for endive. You have to have them put in belgian endive, or they will never find it. The best part was the person who came to help find fennel in the system before I suggested they look up anise started talking about how items are in strange places, like zucchini being listed under squashes, and I got to say, “It is a squash.”

Still, it isn’t as bad as the checker who did not know what broccoli was. How can you not know what broccoli looks like?

I do not understand why people would rather spend tons of money on supplements and/or diet pills. Why they would rather spend tons of money going to a doctor to fix their ills. Yet if you suggest that people just change what food they are shoving into their mouth, they will act like you’ve requested the impossible. When people finally do go on a “diet” they stock up on that crappy cardboard frozen diet food. No wonder they quit.

Honestly, there is one thing that can help your health and diet. Learn how to cook. If you live by opening a box day after day after day or visiting fast food day after day after day, then try giving it up for 1 week. Buy actual food. Use the internet and cook it. Even if you can’t boil water without it overflowing, the internet can help you. There are videos everywhere.

I gained a little over 4 lbs in one day^*, and I swear it is all in my thighs. I cannot even stand to wear my jeans. You know, the one that I was close to taking off without unbuttoning.

And I want to eat. And eat. And eat. And then eat a little more. Rice. And naan.

I haven’t caved yet, but Indian food is on its way. So, while my normal everyday food cravings are gone, it hasn’t solved this food craving problem.

In a good move today, I guess, I decided to kill my sourdough starter. I’ve kept this starter alive for awhile, but why would I keep buying flour to feed something I’m not going to use? Bye-bye, wonderful sourdough. There are bread baking methods that can give you that tangy flavor of sourdough^** without the wild yeast starter. Starters online are relatively cheap^***. If I want to pick it up again, I can. The starter I used was from one that has been going for a little over 120 years, supposedly.

*A few days ago. The way my jeans fit, I don’t even want to step back on a scale for some time.

**Not the same flavor, but still a tangy one.

***I guess it depends how dedicated you are to bread baking.

I had to retrieve Ada from school early on Monday because she had diarrhea. Once. She never had it again, and was fine not only the rest of the day Monday, but also all day Tuesday. I’m fine bringing her home because they swim and you can’t take the chance it happens again and that ends up in the pool. The small chance it is some sort of horrific disease, she can’t stay there at all. Even isolated. Also you cannot take them back to school until they have gone 24 hours diarrhea free. So, anytime I pick her up, I automatically have to keep her home the next day. The days of nurses and sick rooms in schools are over. This policy also applies to fevers and excessive snot.

This was a stress for me when I was working because I was missing at least two to four days every two to three weeks during Ada’s big ear infection days^*. That has been the nice part of not working this last year. Keeping Ada home a couple days? Okay, no problem.

However, Ada has been having this diarrhea problem for the last few months. It is always the same. She has it once at school, she comes home, and she is fine. Since I am now trying to look for a job^**, the stress of it is building because she’s always fine once she gets home. It makes me believe that it is something she is eating, and this is where the policy fails. Ada’s food issues will not be contagious. She could not swim in the pool, rest for a bit, feel fine and continue on with her day and the next just like she does here. But it doesn’t matter, because honestly, they wouldn’t know if it was food or not. In our society, laws and policies must be applied illogically for the safety of all our children. WE MUST DO EVERYTHING TO PROTECT THE BABIES! Even if it is stupid because people don’t know how to do risk assessments. That might require adults do simple math, like probability. I have nothing against the school or her teachers. I love both. It is the policies that are enforced upon them, by the State of Kansas, that are often stupid.

I’ll stop ranting and get to the problem. I’m taking dairy away from Ada. She’s had it everyday she had her intestinal issues. Of course, she’s had other food too. However, her father spent most of his life being lactose intolerant, so to me, that’s the logical place to start. I’m taking away the big three: drinking milk, eating cheese and eating ice cream. I’m not going to concern myself when they feed her something like a graham cracker because while those types of packaged things often do contain milk, the amount is small. I’m going to keep her off of the big doses of lactose and see if it changes her pattern of being sent home every two to three weeks. If it doesn’t after about a couple of months, then I’m thinking of taking her in for an allergy test because I’d have no idea what to eliminate otherwise.

This morning she had rice milk, which she seemed to like fine. School is going to print out the lunch menu for me to have in advance so when there are days that have big cheese items, I can send something for her to eat as a substitute. I can also bring an alternate drink since milk is all they serve for lunch, other than water. While I’m fine with her having water, I think she might like the variety of something different. I also think she will be excited about the days she gets to bring an alternate lunch once she sees the pink Hello Kitty reusable lunch bag.

* She was getting them all the time before she was one, that it was at the point when she was eleven months old that she was going to have to have tubes put in her ears if she got another one. At that time, I took her out of daycare and my mother watched her in our home for the next two years. She wasn’t sick again. In two years. So, I understand the policy because I’m sure Ada was getting sick because she was surrounded by a bunch sick in a daycare that frankly wasn’t that clean.

**Trying, as in, I haven’t had many free Tuesday/Thursdays because I’ve had to deal with a sick kid, like yesterday. Although Ada is easier to get things done than Jay because she self-entertains better and can fetch her own drinks and snacks.