My Little Maxy

I very unexpectedly lost my first born dog this weekend, Max.  You've seen me blog about him before.  He came down with a cough on Friday and it just tragically went downhill very fast, by Sunday he was gasping for air and I wanted to die just watching him suffer so much.  I called the vet and she said to bring him in overnight, and I knew in my gut and my heart he wasn't going to make it through, but I wanted him to be comfortable and for them to try and help him so I brought him in.  As I was in the shower getting ready to take him, I heard him battle the stairs so he could come sit outside the shower - our daily ritual - even though he couldn't breathe, he still came up the stairs just to be next to me.  When he got into the bathroom he started to couch pretty badly and then proceeded to throw up blood.  He sat there and really fought falling down.  His body so desperately wanted to lay down and I think give in, but he really kept fighting it.  He was such a little fighter, he got hit by a car when he was a puppy and nearly died.  I have another dog Pazzo, but Max was my baby.  Max never left my side.  Max followed me everywhere, and was the first to great me, cuddle with me, follow me to bed, follow me into the bathroom, lay outside the shower, wait for me by the door.  He really truly loved me.  When I got really sick before my first transplant he never left my side.  He looked at me every time I coughed.  He would lay in bed with me for hours, and forgo cookies and food.  I will miss him very much, and I will miss him even more when I get that sick again before my second transplant.  I'll miss little Maxy watching over me like no one else.  I wrote this a few years ago and I would like to share:

  I knew everyone wanted me to get new lungs for them.  But the credit is owed to two individuals that aren’t even human.  I have two dogs Max and Pazzo.  When I came home from the hospital the first time—before the very last time, Max started to obsessively lick his paws to the point that they would bleed.  I could see the worry in his eyes.  I knew he sensed how sick I was more than any human ever would.   My mom brought him to the vet, as I didn’t leave the house much anymore, and she told her he was chronically depressed.  Imagine that.  When I was in college and would go home for weekends and return to school, before I got really sick, my mom would tell me how Max would sit at the door and just wait for me.  He would sit there and sleep there and never move until I came home.  She even took a picture of him once sitting by the door staring out of the glass.  I realized at one point that if I died everyone around me would have the luxury of grieving.  They would know the fight I put up and understand what happened to me.  Not Max and Pazzo.  It broke my heart more than anything in the entire world to think that Max would sit at the door the rest of his life and wait for me to come home when I wasn’t going to.  I needed new lungs for Max and Pazzo and even though I felt like I wasn’t going to wake up sometimes, that I would stop breathing in the night, I would fight for them because it would not have been fair to them if I didn’t.  They would always be the first reason that I would fight.  

Miss you little Maxy.   

 

Martha Fricken Stewart

Tomorow Laura and I go to see a taping of the Martha Stewart show!

Details to follow on Wednesday!

Cooking on hold

All of my cooking has been on hold for a few days and it is killing me! I didn't even realize how much I love to cook! I have been having SEVERE stomach pain after I eat the past couple days and I do not know why.  Tuesday I had a check up with my transplant doctor, and I had an ultrasound on my belly - turns out I have gallstones.  EEK.  But this may or may not be what is causing my pain.  I will go back for an endoscopy to check for ulcers and to see if my fundoplication (aka stomach wrap) is maybe too tight.  But I really miss cooking so much.  So today I am going to cook anyway even if I can only have a bite.  In other news my lung function has held pretty steady around 40% the last few months which is good news! So I am not back on the transplant list yet....even though a small part of me wants to be.  I can't explain it, but now that I know what it is like to breathe normally my tolerance is pretty low when I get short of breath or cough or struggle.  But at the end of the day the more time I get out of these lungs the better...

Beer and Bacon Fest 2010

I really like food festivals, but am leery of them when they ticket price is reasonable, because generally this equals long lines.  I went to a Phantom Gourmet food fest once, that was in this giant grey blob of a warehouse (someone else had bought a group of us tickets) and let me tell you there were thousands of people at this event and the lines to taste anything were about an hour long.  I'll go buy a whole pizza at upper crust instead of waiting in a mile long long for a sample, thanks.  This is one of the reasons The Taste of the South End works so well, ticket price is a little higher, so you don't have lines, and the food is above and beyond.  But who doesn't love Bacon and the south end, so 4 of us gave it a try! 

When we first arrive, before it started, the line was so massive to get in I kind of thought we were going to have to skip this and go over to Rocca or Gaslight for a meal! But come to find out they just had not let people in yet and this was the reason for the long line.  We waited for a little bit before we go in, which wasn't bad.  The crowd was mostly 20 something hipsters I would say, and people that love pig obviously!  There were a lot of pig themed t-shirts here!

We finally got inside and headed straight for the beer.  But then I threw my cup out, I was only concerned with bacon.  The first thing we had was a cupcake topped with bacon from South End Buttery. It was very yummy! 

Then we had scallops from Turner Fisheries which was also good.  But what we tried third was really awesome.  It was pork belly and it was from a restaurant I've never even heard of - Stoddard's! But now will have to try! 

Next we had a fried oyster from Rialto.  I don't like oysters...next....We had candied bacon from Rocca which was excellent! Next to Rocca was B Good and they were serving a bacon chocolate milkshake, which was literally to die for.  I am going to try and replicate this at home! It was so perfectly chocolaty and had little pieces of salty bacon swirling about!

One of the other things I loved was a sort of dumpling kind of dough thing with candied maple bacon glaze on it filled with egg, bacon and cheese and it was INCREDIBLE.  I had two! I loved loved loved loved it. It was from Atwood's.... I didn't even take a picture, it went in my mouth too fast!

The Franklin Cafe was serving a tiny little pretzel like thing with bacon and mustard.  I liked that you could just pop it in your mouth, but I wasn't crazy about it.  It seemed over cooked to me.  Next we had cheesecake that had bacon and chicken and other stuff in it, and I had one bite and threw it away.  Sorry.  I did not like it one bit.  I would have liked it if were the regular sweet kind with bacon bits I think.  Bacon seems to work well with sweet! 

We stopped at The Myers and Chang table were they had like a bacon sandwich which had a good flavor to it.

Next I wandered over to get the bacon wrapped date, but they were out! I love dates :( So we grabbed some bacon laced Chex mix instead which was pretty good.  Then we headed over to Gaslight's table were they were serving begets.

Someone was serving what looked like a great brownie and bourbon sundae but I just couldn't put another thing like that in my mouth.   My stomach was done! What a great event!

Coconut Cake

I really love coconut.  I love it in all forms: it's original form.  Last year I went to the Dominican republic and a man sliced open a coconut off a tree for with me a machete, and it has that sort of buttery texture to it that nothing else really has.  I love it in candy.  I love it in drinks.  I love it in cakes.  I like the way it feels and the way that it smells.  A few weeks ago someone I follow on Twitter had mentioned she made The Barefoot Contenssa's Coconut Cake.  I am not a baker.  I don't like to measure.  I love to cook because if you can taste, you can cook.  There is no science to it, it is an art.  Baking is a science.  Oddly enough I have a degree in biology, but still I do not like to bake, haha.  I always end up screwing it up.  But I love coconut (and Ina) enough to try her recipe.  

RECIPE ---> coconut cake

I changed a few things.  I used buttermilk instead of whole milk and I did not add almond extract, because I don't like nut flavor.  

First you cream the sugar and the butter, as seen above.  Then you add the wet ingredients and they dry ingredients back and forth

Then you have the final mix

Then you put it in the oven and in the mean time you make the cream cheese frosting

When the cake come out it looks like this:

Let it cool before you put the frosting on

This cake was amazing.  I've been having it for breakfast and little nibbles during the day for the past several days now. 

Go make it!

You do the Hokey Pokey and you turn yourself around....

I like to make things with glob of sugar as much as I do with globs of butter...I found this super easy recipe that got really great reviews for something called Hokey Pokey.  Basically it's sugar, dark corn syrup, and baking soda.  How much easier could it get!

Hokey Pokey

First you mix the sugar and the corn syrup:

You then melt it over medium heat until it reaches 300 degrees:

You take it off the heat and very quickly whisk in baking soda, which changes the consistency quite rapidly of this and it quickly becomes taffy like! So quickly pour it into a dish of some kind!

Then it turns to taffy and then it turns really hard and crunchy. 

Okay, now this recipe had really good reviews and I am not sure if all of the 20 people that liked this recipe were high or what, but it was literally one of the top 10 worst things I've ever put in my mouth! When it was taffy it was ok, it just tasted like sugar, but once it turned hard, it tasted like baking soda! Who wants to eat baking soda?! It was gross.  I took one bite and threw the whole thing out....But it's so easy maybe you should try it and report back to me what you think!

Cornbread & Chicken & Broth! Oh my!

I had a desire a few days ago to make homemade cornbread and a roasted chicken.  I should have attempted to make baked beans too, but alas I didn't.  (I love those.)  And both turned out really nicely.  I have never made cornbread before.  I used this recipe: Cornbread

It's really so easy.  First you mix the dry ingredients together:

Then add the wet ingredients:

Put in the oven and presto chango:

When I roast a chicken I generally drizzle EVO all over it, sprinkle some salt and pepper and chopped garlic over it, and cut a few pieces of butter and lay it on top.  For this chicken I did the same but cut a lemon in half and put it inside the chicken, with a few cloves of garlic too.  And I put some fresh thyme on it and inside of it.  I cook it for around 1.5 hrs at 425 and then let it rest for 20 minutes (with foil over it.)  And it comes out as juicy as can be!

After we ate the chicken, I then took the carcus and put it in a pot of water and added an onion, lots of salt and some pepper to make a chicken broth.