Max update

By last weekend, Max could barely breathe, barely move.  He refused food and water.  We were drizzling Gatorade into his mouth with a syringe to keep him hydrated.  We said our goodbyes on Sunday.  I dropped him off at the vet on Monday morning, fully expecting not to bring him home. 

There are two vets in our practice.  Our "regular" vet, Dr. C., was not the one who diagnosed Max with CHF, but he was the one who saw him on Monday.  When I got the phone call that the tests were complete but Dr. C. wanted to meet with me, I assumed that was it.  Max was done.

Max, however, was not done. 

Medicine, Dr. C. says, is an art, not a science. 

(Translation:  Oops.)

Sometimes, Dr. C. says, you can have two conditions that present the same symptoms, and Max definitely does have something going on with his heart...

(The $600 you just dropped on X-rays and bloodwork was not totally wasted.)

...but these X-rays are clear; there's no sign of the fluid we would expect to see in a case of congestive heart failure.

(How 'bout those Pats?)

And the nasal congestion that has come up, well, it seems likely that he caught the same bacteria that we just treated Herman for, and the early symptoms of a sinus infection - nausea, coughing - those can look an awful lot like congestive heart failure.  And the medications for congestive heart failure could mask, or delay, the more obvious symptoms of a sinus infection.

(My associate effed up big time but I'm trying not to throw her under the bus.  Have I mentioned the $600 worth of tests gave us some really good information to go on?)

So what I'd like to do is cut the heart medication and diuretic to half of what Dr. D. prescribed last week - just in case -

(Because she might not be a totally out to lunch, overreactive, test-happy whack job... I suspect she is, but I'm trying to save face here...)

- and throw in this antibiotic that Herman responded so well to, and if all goes well after a week we can take Max off the heart medication completely and just monitor the murmur every few months or so.  Okay?

(Please don't ask too many questions.)

And so Max came home.  Within a day of starting the antibiotic, his activity level was almost back to normal.  He's eating like a truck driver.  He's harassing the dogs again.  He's sitting in the bathroom sink waiting for me to get out of the shower in the morning.  He's sleeping on the kids' beds.  Any moment now he'll catch a mouse, and then all will be right in the world.

Things I Have Inherited from my Mother

These need to go to the local stringed instrument builder to see if it's worthwhile - or even possible - to restore them.  One looks to be in pretty bad shape; the other probably can be fixed pretty easily.

Adding "learn to play accordion and violin" to my bucket list now...

Recipe: Thing One's Bacon Breakfast Sandwich

My elder child, who has both an abnormal affection for bacon and the metabolism of a hummingbird, has perfected a breakfast sandwich that puts KFC's Double Down to shame.  No, he does not eat this more than once a week.  Yes, his cholesterol is fine.

First, take a bagel ("The Works" variety, with garlic and onion and seeds on it, is preferred), cut it half...

...and toast it to perfection.

Place a slice of cheese on one side.  We're talking Kraft Singles here so the word "cheese" is debatable.  You want something that melts good.

Now fry up some bacon in a skillet, then set it aside to drain on paper towels.  Don't clean the skillet.

Next up is one egg...

...which is dropped into the still-sizzling bacon grease...

...topped with a little salt and pepper, and cooked to a perfect sunny-side-up.

Here's the secret:  use a spoon to drizzle hot bacon grease over the thick part of the egg white to cook the top of the white without overcooking the bottom or cooking the yolk.

Lord have mercy.

Now put it all together.

Place the assembled sandwich back in the skillet ... 










...and fry the whole sandwich, turning once, in the remaining bacon grease until the outside is crispy and the cheese is melty.

Now if you will excuse me, I need to go eat a stalk of celery as penance just for looking at this picture.

Recipe: Buffalo Chicken Pizza

Very exact measurements given here.

Buffalo Chicken Pizza

1 boneless chicken breast, cut to 1/2" dice
Flour
About 2 tablespoons margarine (not butter)
Frank's Red Hot
Celery seed
Dough for 2 pizzas
String cheese (optional)
Ranch dressing
Bleu cheese crumbles
Shredded mozzarella
Red pepper, sliced in thin strips
Red onion, cut in 1/4" wedges and separated

Coat the diced chicken with flour.  Melt the margarine in a skillet and saute the chicken just a few minutes until it's done.  Glug in Frank's Red Hot to taste along with a shot of celery seeds, and cook, stirring, until the sauce is thickened and adheres to the chicken.  Remove from heat and set aside.

If you're feeling particularly ambitious and want to make a cheese-stuffed crust version, take three or four string cheese logs and separate into 1/2" sections.  Roll the dough large enough that you have about 2" extra all the way around.  Lay the string cheese sections around the perimeter, fold the dough over to enclose it, and seal.

Or not.  In which case, just roll out the pizza dough.

Slather on some Ranch dressing; cover with shredded mozzarella and sprinkle with bleu cheese.  Top with red pepper slices, onion wedges, and chicken.  Bake according to the dough recipe (or package) instructions.

Yum.

CHF? WTF?

You know Max, that crazy, burly, fearless bundle of felineness that we inherited from my mother?

Yeah, him.

Heart disease.  Big time.

I took the cats (two of them, no longer three, as the third one succumbed to her neurologic event and faded peacefully away last fall) in for their rabies shots a couple of weeks ago and the vet noticed a heart murmer in Max.  That and weight loss - which we had ascribed to a larger house, more human and pet interaction and aggressive mousing - indicated either a benign condition or the possibility of a heart problem which, given his youth and activity level, seemed to call merely for a checkup in another month. 

Ten days later we were back under emergency circumstances.

And now it's touch and go.  The disease seems to have taken over and the medication is having a tough time keeping ahead of it.

Does this sound familiar? 

My mother was relatively young and vital, and then bang, Stage IV cancer.  Which was held at bay for a while and then roared to life and consumed her body; there was no stopping it. 

This was her cat.  She loved him.  He was clearly attached to her, but for all I could tell, he didn't give a shit when she actually died.  He didn't seem to notice; he doesn't care who's in his space.  He harasses my dogs during the day and sleeps with my kids at night.  But this is not his house, my kids are not his person, my dogs are not my mother's dog.

Is it possible this cat is dying of a broken heart? 

Recipe: Italian Wedding Soup

Yesterday as the temperature was dropping through the teens on its way to zero, I was channeling my inner over-achieving homemaker.  She tends to gravitate toward somewhat fussy but very tasty meals; hence the yard-long list of ingredients.  It's a pretty basic concept though:  meatballs, chicken, pasta, and vegetables in chicken stock.  No fancy seasonings.  The meatballs and the nod to stracciatella are a riff on Giada de Laurentiis' recipe over on the Food Network site.

Fair warning:  this makes an awful lot of soup. 

Italian Wedding Soup

8 oz ground beef

8 oz ground pork
1 small onion, grated (about ¼ cup)
1 bunch flat parsley, chopped, divided
3 large eggs
6 cloves garlic, crushed, divided
Salt & pepper
½ cup + 2 tablespoons grated Parmesan (from a jar is fine), divided
About ½ cup bread crumbs (fresh if you have them, dried if you don’t)
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 large yellow onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 medium carrots, peeled & sliced
12 cups chicken stock
2 bay leaves
½ teaspoon dried thyme
¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes
8 oz. tubettini pasta, cooked, drained, and rinsed with cold water
1 10-oz package cut leaf spinach, thawed & squeezed dry
1 ½ - 2 cups cooked chicken, diced
Freshly grated Parmesan, for garnish
 
For the meatballs: 

Combine the beef, pork, grated onion, ¼ cup of the chopped parsley, 1 egg, 1 teaspoon crushed garlic, 1 teaspoon salt, a few turns of black pepper, and ½ cup grated Parmesan.  Mix well.  Add enough bread crumbs so the mixture holds together but is still fairly moist.  Not wet, just moist.  Pinch off 1 teaspoon at a time and roll into small meatballs.  Spread the meatballs out on a baking sheet, cover with plastic wrap and chill. 

(I mean chill the meatballs.  Though after shaping one pound of meat one teaspoon at a time, you may need to chill as well.  Totally up to you.)

For the soup: 

Heat the olive oil in a skillet over medium heat and add the onion, celery, carrots and remaining garlic.  Sautee until the onion is tender. 

Combine the vegetables with the chicken stock, bay leaves, thyme, and pepper flakes in a large stock pot.  Heat to boiling, then reduce heat to a low, cover and simmer until the kitchen smells really good.

Uncover and return the soup to a boil.  Stir in the chicken, spinach and meatballs.  When the meatballs are cooked through (five or six minutes), beat the remaining 2 eggs with remaining 2 tablespoons of Parmesan cheese.  Drizzle the egg mixture into boiling soup, stirring gently to create ribbons.  Add cooked tubettini and heat through.

Remove the bay leaves, correct seasonings and serve garnished with chopped parsley and freshly grated Parmesan cheese. 

"There's a WOMAN running this place?"

Rant alert.

Here's the thing about where I work:  almost all of the senior managers are women.  Not just women, but women who are now or have been, for most of their careers, working mothers.

Our plant is something of an anomaly in the giant Swiss company which owns us.  Not simply because of the noticeable dearth of females in leadership positions at other sites and at the top levels of the organization, but because our plant runs really, really, well.

Go figure.

Say what you like about gender equality, and a lot of us are married to men who would self-identify as progressive, even feminist, but the reality is that most working moms also manage the vast majority of the household responsibilities.  This means that even though we have achieved income parity with, and perhaps superiority to, our professionally high-functioning spouses, we are still the ones that leave work early to take the kids to the dentist and come home to help with homework, cook dinner, and scrub the toilets.

We're the ones who know what size jeans and shoes the kids wear and which socks came through the laundry last week without a mate.  We're the ones who know how much money is in the checking account and when the bills are due.  We have the family calendar in our head and we're the ones that schedule our workday around the piano lesson or ski team practice.  We're the ones who go to soccer games.  

We're the ones that plan the meals, grocery shop, and cook dinner every night.  We're the ones that do the Christmas shopping.  We're the ones who wash the clothes and dispense relationship advice and make sure the pets and children are all up to date on their shots.  We're the ones who divvy up the chores and make sure everyone does their bit.

We have our heads in the details.  We can juggle six things at once.  We not only know what needs to be done, we know how to do it... and we know how to delegate.  And we know how to address someone who isn't pulling his or her weight.  There's no ego involved.  We're just doing what we need to do.

This is what makes us able to run a successful business.

We're damned proud of it.

We interviewed a man a few weeks ago - I won't name names, because I don't in this blog, but he is a member of a prominent local family which owns a landscaping company and whose last name starts with F and rhymes with gnarly.

The guy was a knuckle-dragging misogynist.

Not to put too fine a point on it.

He could not get his brain around the fact that women were running the joint.  The rest of us could not get our brains around the concept that in the year of Our Lord two thousand almost twelve, a man would come into a job interview and in all seriousness say, "Let me get this straight - there's a woman running this place?  And a woman in charge of production?"

Women can vote, get advanced degrees, be personally and professionally successful, marry or not, have children or not, even own property in our own name.  But we still aren't president; we still don't earn the same dollar for the same work; and our success is marred by institutionalized paternalism and cultural chauvinism.

For all our gains, true equality has been far too slow in coming, and has even regressed in the past twenty years as we have, as a nation and as a gender, allowed the anti-feminist rhetoric of the Right to infect our values.  We've been lulled into thinking we have it good enough.  We've been brainwashed into believing that the veneer of political correctness - even as we sneer at it - has corrected discrimination when, in fact, it has merely concealed it.

We need to do better.  We need symbolic, meaningful and binding acknowledgement of a social and economic commitment to equality.  We need the ERA.

Mr. Rhymes-With-Gnarly did not get the job.

Shameless Plug: Cafe Miranda and Recipe: Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Onions, Mushrooms and Pancetta in Balsamic Cream Sauce

There's a little restaurant in Rockland called Cafe Miranda.  Not that we get out that much, mind, but it's one of our fave places - funky and informal but devoted to serious food and featuring a constantly changing, mind-bogglingly huge menu. 

One of the items usually on the list of appetizers is Brussels sprouts roasted in the brick oven and finished with a balsamic cream sauce.  It's delicious.  A Brussels sprout roasted at high temperature is a gem of carmelized sweetness; an entirely different creature from one which has been boiled to death.

I have been trying to recreate Cafe Miranda's dish at home and I think this is pretty close.  (We happen to be fortunate that the children will enthusiastically taste-test just about anything, including charred cruciferous vegetables.)  

This highly unphotogenic side dish really shines as part of an otherwise simple, yet richly flavorful meal - say alongside roast chicken like our favorite from the New York Times and baked sweet potatoes. 

Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Onions, Mushrooms and Pancetta in Balsamic Cream Sauce

For four generous servings:

1 1/2 lbs uniformly sized Brussels sprouts, rinsed, trimmed and sliced in half lengthwise
8 oz sliced white mushrooms
1 large yellow onion, cut in 1/4" wedges
Olive oil
Sea salt & freshly ground black pepper
4 oz diced pancetta
1/2 cup chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
2-3 tablespoons Balsamic vinegar (to taste)

Heat oven to 450.

Place Brussels sprouts, mushrooms and onions on a large rimmed baking sheet; drizzle with olive oil and stir to coat evenly.  Roast, stirring regularly, until sprouts are tender and charred in spots.  Maybe 20 -30 minutes, depending on the size of the sprouts.

While vegetables are roasting, in a small saucepan, combine chicken stock and heavy cream. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring occasionally, until thickened and reduced by about 1/3. Stir in balsamic vinegar. 

While the sauce is reducing, fry the pancetta until crisp.  Drain on paper towels.

When vegetables are done, season with salt and pepper.  Combine with balsamic cream sauce and pancetta.  Serve at once.

Recipe: Pork and Sauerkraut for the New Year

Gotta say this was a new one on me when I met Himself:  pork braised in sauerkraut until everything is falling-apart tender, mellow and soft.  It is not a New England thing, but it's very much a midwest bohunk thing, and as Himself is a midwestern bohunk, this is our mandatory New Year's dinner. 

(He's arguing with me about calling him midwestern because technically he was born and raised in a mid-Atlantic state.  Trust me, his family is midwestern.  His cousin Amy's wedding reception was in the Slovenian Home in a certain very midwestern city which was a mere two-hour drive from our Pennsylvania house.) 

In the areas of the country where pretty much everyone has some sort of ancestral German or Eastern European claim, the grocery stores lay in Boston butt roasts and bags of sauerkraut like cordwood.  Here, not so much.  It's usually a challenge to find a suitable roast, and nearly impossible to find good sauerkraut, which is why we make our own. 

This year the best roast the Belfast Hannaford could offer was an eight-pound picnic which wouldn't fit in my stockpot, so using the stovetop was out of the question.

Here it is with two quarts of kraut in my next-to-biggest roaster, ready to go in the oven for a nice long braise.   No worries; it's pretty tough to mess this up. 

Pork and Sauerkraut

• Well-marbled pork roast (Boston butt, blade, or fresh picnic) - half a pound or a bit more per person
• Sauerkraut, preferably bagged in plastic or from a glass jar rather than a tin can (half a cup per person, but overall amount will vary with the size of the roast and roasting pan, and how much luck you're hoping for in the New Year)

Season the roast with salt and pepper.  If you like, heat a bit of oil in a stock pot and sear the roast until well browned.  Or just plunk the roast in a stockpot and forget the browning. 

Cover with sauerkraut and add water to come an inch or two up the sides of the roast.  Bring to a boil, then cover tightly and simmer over very low heat, stirring every now and again and flipping things over to ensure the pork and kraut are cooking evenly.  Add additional water if necessary.  Depending on the size of the roast, it should take two to four hours for it to be done.

Serve this with mashed potatoes and a nice veg and you will have health and prosperity all year long!

Recipe: Lasagna

When I was very small, my folks were friends with another couple from the Baptist church where my father was the youth minister.  I think the husband of the other couple was the music minister at the time, but my memory is hazy. 

This other couple, let's just say it was evident they really enjoyed food.  And they particularly enjoyed lasagna.  It was said that the two of them could polish off an entire 13x9 pan of it over the course of a single evening. 

They gave their recipe to my mother, and she gave it to me, and I think I have improved upon it somewhat.  We think it's just about as good as lasagna can possibly get.  Thing Two requested it for her sleepover the other night because *eye roll* like everyone has pizza. 

Lasagna

1 lb ground beef (or ½ lb ground beef and ½ lb. Italian sausage)

1 large yellow onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 (4 oz) can sliced mushrooms, drained

1 (28 oz) can whole peeled tomatoes, undrained

1 (12 oz) can tomato paste

3 tablespoons dried parsley, divided

3 tablespoons dried basil, divided

1 tablespoon dried oregano

1/8 teaspoon red pepper flakes

8 lasagna noodles

24 oz whole milk ricotta cheese

1/2 c shredded Parmesan cheese

2 eggs

1 10-oz package frozen chopped spinach, thawed and squeezed dry

1 lb shredded mozzarella

Salt & freshly ground pepper to taste

Preheat oven to 350.

In large skillet over medium heat, cook the ground beef, onion, garlic and mushrooms until beef is browned and onion is translucent.  Drain.  Reduce heat to low and add tomatoes, tomato paste, 2 tablespoons each parsley and basil, 1 tablespoon oregano, and red pepper flakes; simmer until thickened, up to half an hour, stirring occasionally and breaking up the tomatoes.  Season with salt & pepper to taste.

Meanwhile, cook lasagna noodles to al dente.  Drain, rinse in cool water, and set aside.  Combine ricotta cheese, shredded parmesan, 1 tablespoon each of basil and parsley, eggs, spinach and salt and pepper to taste.  Set aside

In 13x9” pan, layer 4 lasagna noodles, half the ricotta mixture, half of the shredded mozzarella, and half of the meat mixture.  Repeat layers.

Cover and bake 30-45 minutes, until bubbly.  Let stand 10 minutes before cutting.  Serves 12.