Balls and Walnuts
more than you ever wanted to know
Life grinds on, and with it, my teeth
This was an unusually busy week, what with the AC pooping out in Karen’s car, scrambling around with a rental, getting the AC repaired, returning the rental, all within the confines of my 8 to 5 job. And I wasn’t even on call. On Thursday after work, I had to submit to another hour and forty-five minutes of Special Torture at the dentist, wherein he finished the root canal and got my #12 ready for a permanent crown. Why this is such a big production, I do not know. You would think I might understand these things since I look at teeth all day, but I’m not really looking at teeth. I’m looking around teeth. And if I happen to look at the teeth themselves, it’s usually because they’ve attracted my attention in an “oh, yuck” kind of way.
I had surgery on Tuesday*, administrative duties on Wednesday, and clinic pretty much every day of the week, and what with the car and the dentist and everything else, I only managed to make dinner on Friday night. Otherwise it was all takeout. On Friday I made doro wat (this recipe), which went over well, except no one liked the couscous. Would have been better had I had some pita, I guess, or even basmati rice, but I was already so pressed for time that I made the fastest starch I could think of, hence the couscous. Of course, traditional is the fermented Ethiopian pancakes known as injera, but I’ve never been able to reproduce these pungent little crepes at home. Wrong ingredients and likely the wrong technique.
Needless to say, I didn’t get any writing done this week. Thinking, yes, writing, no. Not even blogging.
And on Thursday, I succumbed to my usual eat-under-stress drive and consumed WAY too much salt (in the mode of pork rinds) and my weight shot up three pounds. I’ve been piling the water in to try to pee off that weight, but it’s a slow process. I hate my body, the way it craves salt and yet punishes me with instant poundage if I give into the craving even a little bit. (And on Thursday, I gave in more than a little bit.) I wish I could live in a boot camp where I can only eat what they feed me. Such is my lack of self control.
Making lasagna tonight, but I’ll have to avoid eating it myself, other than for the little taste to make sure it came out okay. Since I don’t have a working pasta thingie at the moment, I am going to try using those no-boil pasta sheets. Hell, Cooks Illustrated swears by them.
And now I’m biding time . . . Jake has service hours this afternoon (the Greek Food Festival, where they will hopefully feed their slave labor pool of eager student volunteers) so I will get a chance to go sweat in the gym and hopefully excrete some of this salt water weight.
D.
*Occurred to me in rereading this that most folks would interpret this to mean that I went under the knife. No, gentle readers, I was most definitely over the knife, not under it.
Pork rinds? Seriously? [: I thought I was bad eating BBQ chips once in a while.
I’m using the elevator at work because of my knee and can already see the difference in not using those stairs.
Do you have an opinion on mercury fillings?
Sis, one of my favorite food stories is how I once put a GI fellow off his lunch by eating a meal of pork rinds and cheeze whiz (and NO, I don’t do that nowadays! but I do get the occasional craving for pork rinds).
Lucie, no opinion, I’m afraid. Though I suspect it’s like power lines and cancer, or cell phones and cancer . . . lots of shaky data.
Of COURSE you gain weight after indulging i salt! Just go out side for a bit, and not only will you drop the weight, you’ll get rid of the salt too. 🙂
Yes, I’m sure I sweated off a ton of salt today. The car’s AC is still not working.
In other news: 1250 words tonight. Yay!
I crave sweets more than I crave the salt.
Never been a fan of cheese whiz.
how’d those no-cook lasagne work out for you? i’ve tried the barilla version and the trader joe’s, and i thought they both sucked.
these days, i just get regular lasagne and soak them in hot tap water for about 20 mins while i’m working on the sauce and other fillings. i’ve had much better results.
Quite well, really, and I’m no fan of Barilla and would gladly say otherwise. But, no. I followed their recipe (except I made my own red sauce, and used spicy Italian instead of plain Italian sausage) and it was delish.