MAKING RAMEN

As you have probably noticed, I have not been doing much cooking or baking lately. Taking care of my dog Lucky is taking up a lot of my time and energy. 

Today I am changing that. I decided it is going to rain for a few days and what tastes better in the rain but ramen! Tonight I made dashi which is the base of ramen. To make dashi, I had to leave the mushrooms, seaweed and water soaking overnight. Tomorrow it will be the base for ramen. I made a double batch so I can have a few nights of ramen. I'm going to make danden ramen, miso ramen, and shoyu ramen. Fun! 

I decided not to make my own noodles this time. It was fun the first time but I can buy good noodles and they are almost as good. Plus, it doesn't take forever to make them. I'll save making them for a special occasion. 

Until tomorrow...

DAY TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-FOUR OF VEGAN COOKING COURSE

 The Vegan Lavender Blueberry Cheesecakes taste delicious. They look so vibrant.  The inside is vanilla and cocoa butter and the outside is lavender and blueberry. 

I showed up for virtual book club but they were having technical issues. It didn’t hurt too bad because  I only read about 1/ 5 of the book. 

Until tomorrow…

DAY TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-THREE OF VEGAN COOKING COURSE

I was so excited to wake up and make a dessert from my cooking course. First my neighbor wanted to borrow a few things and I went over to say goodbye to their little kids. That pushed back my timing. 

Then I guess I got my days mixed up. My friends came by at 2 pm but I thought our meet up was 2pm Sunday. Otherwise I would have made this dessert yesterday. Now I had nothing to serve them. They brought me a lovely bouquet of flowers. I felt like a horrible host. Luckily I was not in the middle of heating something up. 

After they left I finished the entremet. I hope they come out okay. We will see tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

Until tomorrow...

DAY TWO HUNDRED THIRTY-TWO OF VEGAN COOKING COURSE

 I am back working on my vegan cooking course. If you are paying attention, there are a bunch of numbers missing on my title count. During my Staycation, I did not write the count of what day I was on for the cooking course when I made all those cheeses.

Today I started the Vegan Raw Desserts chapter. It is set up differently than the other chapters. The other chapters give you an overview and then a break down of different recipes with corresponding videos showing you how to make them. Some are even dishes or meals with all the steps laid out. 

This chapter has a few recipes but they are only on the video. There is no corresponding written recipe with the video. There is a handout that has some recipes but also different ideas. Example: mini cake can be made with pecans or hazelnuts. It can be topped with caramel, fruit jam, or glazed. It can be filled with jam, caramel, compote. You get the picture? They give me many options rather than one recipe to follow. 

I wanted to start out slow so I made Dark Chocolate Mini Cakes with Caramel Drizzle. It would have been really good had I had vanilla ice cream. It tastes like an amazing brownie with decadent caramel on top. It was fun to make and now I have more confidence to make another dessert. 

I had a very lovely phone call from a friend, took Lucky for a walk, took a bath, and watched TV. Oh and I deleted a ton of old email!! Clean out the clutter. 

Until tomorrow...

FOURTH FRIDAY NO WORK

This is my 4th Friday off with no work. Funny. I keep seeing to do work even though I have the day off. Not a lot of work but still some. 

Today I went for my blood work. It was easy but I got to the place and it was not very organized. I made a reservation and when I got there I checked in at a kiosk. Then I waited. They said they would text me. I waited and waited. Then I asked a woman at a desk how far they were running behind and she said that I arrived after the man seated. I said my appointment was 15 min ago. Oh, you have an appointment? It said it right on the big board on the wall. (Maybe if she wasn't chit chatting with her BFF) Oh, you can go right in. 

It was all very painless and I was home fairly quickly to let Lucky out of her cage. She was sound asleep. She and I went for a walk and then I did some things around the house. Lucky seems 75-80 percent better. I am still concerned about the congestion in her nose/chest. 

That was most of the day. Pretty boring. I am planning my next chapter "Raw Vegan Desserts". I had to buy some molds. It is going to be fun to make entremets (small cake-like desserts). 

Until tomorrow...

FINISHED BOOK FOR BOOKCLUB

Today was a good day. Lucky and I took a walk and saw some neighbors. About two months ago I bought some cookie mixes that I have been buying for years but this time when I got them, the ingredients included powdered milk. I was disappointed because I bought 6 of them in different flavors. Today my neighbor said he would try to take them back for me. 

I finished reading the book for the virtual book club I am participating in tomorrow. If you don't remember I tried to join this bookclub in person pre-pandemic but it didn't work out and then it was lockdown and the bookclub stopped. Now it is virtual so I thought I would give it a go. I got the book a few weeks ago. It is a mystery bookclub. I enjoy mysteries so it might be fun. Plus I need to be more social. 

I spent some of the day planning out the new Raw Vegan Dessert chapter of the cooking course. It is different than the other chapters. The other chapters had recipes and videos telling you how to make the dish. This chapter tells you how to do techniques and it is up to me to decide how to use those techniques to make a dessert. A little intimidating. The desserts are mostly entremets. Little desserts. It will be very creative. 

Until tomorrow...

DAY 9 OF STAYCATION

Today is the final day of my staycation. It went by too fast. I really tried to not work or do work things. I made a decision to take vacation days on the next month of Fridays. I think this is what is best for me. 

Today I finished watching the movie I started watching last night while cutting out the items for my vision board. Then I took Lucky for a walk. It is a sunny breezy day. There is a big festival going on so the neighborhood is empty. 

When I got home I decided this was a good time to move my office furniture. I really wanted to move my desk either in front of the window or away from the wall. Well, after moving the desk and other furniture around, it became clear it was not going to be an easy task. If I want to move my desk, I would have to reorganize everything due to modems and electric outlets and other things. It will be a much more time consuming task. I put my desk back to it's original spot.

I started working on pasting the items on my vision board. This task too a couple of hours but the board looks great. I have a section for travel, cooking/baking, photography, dogs, and misc. 

I photographed the Parmesan cheese that I made for the vegan cheese chapter. 

That's been my day! 

Until tomorrow...

DAY 7 OF STAYCATION

Today was a beautiful sunny day. It got up to 80° today. I decided today was the day that I was going to work on my vision board. This is a project I've been wanting to work on for almost the entire pandemic. I had to wait until I had enough magazines stacked up to cut out items to put on my vision board. For those of you that don't know what a vision board is a piece of cardboard in my case that you put on pictures, sayings, words that you want to project out into the future, world of things that you want to happen. An example would be for me that I want to continue baking and cooking vegan food so I would put on maybe pictures of food, the words vegan food, and maybe a saying about cooking or baking. The reason the people make a vision board is to have something visual to help them to remember what they're working towards.

So I spent part of the day cutting out items for my vision board and then trimming those pictures and words. Then I had to go to my physical therapy appointment.

When I left for my physical therapy appointment I knew that the dog may come back before I did so I went and checked the entrance where the dog walker comes in and I couldn't get the door open. Since the cab was already here I had to tell the dog walker to delay bring the dog back until I returned from physical therapy. I ended up returning from physical therapy before the dog walker, tried the door a different way and it opened right up for me. I think somebody tried to jimmy the door again. I think I may have to get some sort of camera on that door because this is now the second time the door has been messed with. 

I ate leftover pizza for dinner. But I wanted to show you the cheese that I made the other day it is vegan smoked paprika cheese.

Until tomorrow...

DAY 4 OF STAYCATION

Today was another day with a surprise first thing in the morning. If you remember from yesterday's post I had a potential client that called yesterday to hire me for work. Well one of the things that she told me was that she had gone on to my company website and filled out the contact me form on the website. I did not get contacted but she had filled out the contact me form. I did a little bit of investigation and realized that I had not been getting the contact me forms for a couple of weeks. So I had to call the website company and I ended up being on the phone with them for almost an hour. 

For many years I have been told that my website was outdated and that I needed to update it. I would always ask will it still work even if it's not updated and they always told me yes it would still work, so I ignored them. Fast forward to today and the contact me form did not work. 

After being passed from person to person at the website company, I finally ended up with a very nice helpful woman who explained that I would need to update my website but at the same time she would try and fix the current problem. Well I was on hold for words to 40 minutes I began updating the website and by the time she came back to tell me that she could not fix the current problem I had already completed 2/3 of updating my website. Now it may not be perfect but it's good enough for right now and there is one part that has an "under construction" notice on it. But the good news is that a nagging task of updating my website has been completed and in a lot less time than I thought it would take because I had a very nice woman on the phone answering the few questions that I had and my contact us page now works again.

After that phone call and task sucked up a much of the morning, I quickly took a shower, threw a few things in a bag, grabbed the Lucky and jumped in the car. Lucky and I went to a park to walk around and sit and have some snacks. Our plan was to stay there a little bit longer but after walking, sitting and watching some people dance while we had our snacks, and walking some more it started to rain. At that point we turned around and started walking back to the car. Luckily it did not rain hard so we didn't get very wet even under the trees.

Once we got home I fed Lucky and then I began making the next vegan cheese recipe. This time it was mozzarella cheese. Since I have to leave it overnight I'll let you know how it tastes tomorrow.

Here is the picture of the vegan cheddar cheese balls rolled in roasted sesame seeds.

Now I am watching The Handmaid's Tale season 5. 

Until tomorrow...

DAY 3 OF STAYCATION

Today started out slow. It felt like a normal Monday. It was overcast and not rainy but looked like it was going to rain. I woke up early enough to catch the end of the British Queens funeral. Then after letting Lucky outside to pee I fed her and the bird. After Lucky ate I let her out again. That's when I saw it. There were white-winged insects coming out of the ground in between the pieces of slate in my backyard and they were also ants. It was very disgusting but I knew it wasn't good so I ran upstairs and got insect repellent and immediately sprayed them. I did not let Lucky go outside. Later that day I took some all natural cleaning fluid and washed it down to get rid of that insecticide.

So after that fun start of the day and calling a pest control company to have them come out and do an assessment, I decided to relax for a bit. After Lucky went off to her day with the dog walker I then took a bath. 

In the afternoon I finished up my cheddar cheese balls and started on the smoked paprika cheese. This is my third cheese and I think I like this one so far the best. We'll see when it's finished.

After finishing up the cheese I relaxed until dinner and I decided to order in vegan fried rice and vegan fresh spring rolls. The fried rice was amazing I haven't had fried rice in many many years because most places put things in fried rice that I can't eat. I had fried rice once without the stuff I can't eat and the person made it so bland it was like eating plain rice with vegetables in it not very tasty. 

Now I'm settling down for the first night of the new season of TV.

Oh wait I forgot to mention that I was sitting here with Lucky and I heard my work phone ring and it turns out that I got a new client while I was here on my staycation so that was quite fortuitous. We have an appointment set up for next week when I get back from my staycation.

Until tomorrow...

DAY 2 OF STAYCATION

I woke up to rain. At points lots of rain. My friend did not come by due to the rain. No one wants to stand outside in pouring rain. I am sure I'll see him on his next trip or if I go to Hawaii. 

Here is a photo of Lucky getting tired of waiting. 

While waiting to see if he was coming or not, I finished watching last night's movie Minions: The Rise of Gru. I fell asleep watching it last night. It was pretty good. 

Then I wanted to get going on my cheese making. Last night I soaked my nuts so I was ready. First I made cashew milk for tomorrow. Then I made the first step for Cheddar Cheese Balls. I have to finish them tomorrow. I organized my cheese schedule for the week. There is prep that has to be done each night for the next day. 

Since it was raining I watched a series that I have been watching. Then it was time to order dinner. I wanted some comfort food so I got vegan Pho delivered to my door. It was so good! Just what I needed on a cold and rainy day. 

I am watching a show on PBS before I go to bed. 

Until tomorrow...

DAY 1 OF STAYCATION (OR HOMECATION)

Today was the first day of my staycation. Or homecation as somebody in my family called it. The weather turned out to be reasonably okay although the impending rain is definitely on its way. The rain is supposed to start tonight and it's pretty clear that it is going to happen. But I did not let it deter me today.

The day started out with the first activity being clearing up the kitchen a little bit so that I could make my first recipe from the vegan cooking course cheese chapter. I made vegan Parmesan cheese. It is currently in the refrigerator fermenting and will be ready tomorrow for a trial tasting. Once the cheese was completed I took a shower and then Lucky and I went for a walk.

When Lucky and I got back from a walk I decided it was warm enough and sunny enough to sit in the backyard and read my book. I read the last couple of chapters of my current book and then started a new book that I want to finish in the next 3 weeks. I wanted to join a book club at my local library right before the covid lockdown but but that never happened and then the book club went into hiatus. The book club is now back and I am interested in the book that they are reading this month. So I thought I would try the book club out for a book club meeting in October. After about 25 minutes outside it got a little too for me so I came inside where I started my next activity.

I took out my VR (virtual reality) glasses I guess they're called and began taking virtual tours. The first couple of tours I took were through nature I went through a cave and I saw a waterfall. I can't remember where any of these places were but they were very beautiful. Then I went to another section and I did tour of some planets and the solar system it was very very cool to do virtual reality of the Milky Way. Then I looked up another site and I saw a virtual reality movie which I thought was very cool.

After playing with my glasses/goggles I'm not really sure what they're called, I got my delivery from Amazon and I had enough time to make chocolates. I made vegan dark chocolates with salted caramel inside and vegan milk chocolate with regular caramels inside. The caramels are also vegan made with coconut milk. They came out delicious although watch your teeth they will definitely pull out any fillings or crowns. I've been sucking on mine so as to not lose any teeth. 

After making dinner, I played with Lucky and now I'm settling down to watch a movie. Since the weather forecast is for rain all day tomorrow I have indoor plans all day. Although a friend contacted me today telling me that he is in town. He lives in Hawaii but he's passing through on his way back home. We are scheduled to do an outdoor visit at 11:30 a.m. pending the weather. If it's just drizzling we could stand outside but if it's downpouring but probably going to have to skip this visit. I'll be sad but there's not much I can do about it.

On day one I feel pretty relaxed and I'm happy that I thought in advance of things to do that bring me joy.

Until tomorrow...

MY NAME DAY

Today is my Name Day. This is a European tradition. Each name has a day. When your name day comes up it is like your birthday. I celebrated by it being the first day of my vacation at 5pm! 

Today was a day of tying up loose ends before I shut down. Of course one client decided to schedule three meetings at the beginning of the week that I need to be at. I plan on continuing my vacation into the next week to compensate myself by taking another day off. 

I am just excited to start my time off. I think I might finally start the first vegan cheese chapter from my cooking course. I can probably complete a number of the recipes this week. It will be something interesting to do. 

Until tomorrow...

DAY TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-SIX OF COOKING COURSE

 The chair is together and it looks great. It reclines, heats and massages. The guy showed up early to put it together. I think he was a taskrabbit kind of person because he was reading the directions. He wasn't like a tech who puts these chairs together for a living. 

I have been sitting in it all day. It is really comfy. 

My landscaper came today for his final day for a couple of weeks. He dug out an ivy root that weighs about 70 pounds. It has probably been growing for at least 30-40 years. It had grown into the back fence and he had to cut a piece out of the fence to remove the root. I have a large rock that covers it nicely. 

Next comes the fencing people. I am happy to have some peace and quiet for a few days. I need to get some work done. It is hard to work and try to project manage all this stuff. 

Vegan Chickun Burritos made with Seitan. 

The seitan is in the wrapped packages where it is steaming. Then once it is done, it gets broken up and fried.  Seitan is essentially a dough made with vital wheat gluten, a high-protein wheat flour, and liquid. Here I used it to make chickun to put on the burritos. 

Update: I got my mammogram results and the Power of the Tiara worked again. My mammogram is clear. For those of you who don't know, I had a scary mammogram years ago and a dear friend bought me a tiara to keep me safe. I wear it to all my breast screenings. The Power of the Tiara we call it. That tiara keeps me safe and the women at the breast health center who have worked there a long time know me when they see me because of it.

Until tomorrow.

I HAVE CALMED DOWN NOW

 No there is no chair. I spent the day on the phone with Fed Ex talking to supervisors and managers and escalation services. Everyone assured me that the chair would arrive today. I called them all liars. I told them the chair is lost and no one is willing to confess. They told me the chair has been in a van for days and no one dropped it off. I said that was farfetched. No driver was going to drive around with a 50 pound box in their truck for days. Then they said that the box was at the facility and the facility was so behind that they didn't have time to deliver it. Really?? in four days they had no time to deliver one package??  I said if people have the box in their vision than talk to the driver who has the box in their truck and tell them to deliver it. No we don't need to do that it will, I PROMISE, be delivered today. Can I laugh out loud??? I have heard more promises in the last four days than I have shoes. And I have a lot of shoes. 

 UPDATE: As I was sitting here at 8:45pm and a Fed Ex truck pulls up and a guy jumps out. I go outside and ask if he is delivering a box to my house. He was. I asked him if he would carry it up the stairs. He hemmed and hawed about rules. I said would you do it for $40? He grabbed that box and put it up on his shoulder and took it right up those stairs. He did not come in my house but he put it down inside the door and then pushed it a few feet. 

So the chair is here and now I cancelled the appointment to assemble it that was tomorrow morning. 

By the way, the company I bought it from was no help either when I called them.

 Here are some photos from the other day when I made homemade tortillas. 

I am exhausted and I am going to bed. 

Until tomorrow...

I'M GOING TO HAVE TO FIRE THE LANDSCAPER

The landscaper did not show up for work today. No phone call, no text, just didn't show up. I had texted him yesterday reminding him to show up at 10:00 this morning, no response, no show. So that was strike one. I then called the Trex company to find out about finding a Trex contractor.  I found out that the landscaper had not read the directions on how to put up the Trex fencing. He had gone and bought a bunch of wood posts and Trex fence cannot use wood posts. Strikes two. 

After the fence is installed maybe he can come back and finish the landscaping part but at this point he needs to go. 

So I spoke to this Trex representative who in less than 2 hours found me a guy in my area, a contractor in the area who said he'll do this very small project and will come within a week to give me an estimate and possibly could do the whole project in two to three weeks. 

I went for my mammogram this morning. It was a very early appointment. The woman was very nice considering I have inflammation in my chest and back. I was in and out in 20 minutes and then I went to run to some errands including picking up my mail from the post office. I hurried home because the landscaper was supposed to be there and waited for an hour for him to show up.

I got a notification that my heated massage chair is going to show up on Sunday and the person who's putting it together comes on Tuesday. I need to spend the weekend figure out where this chair is going to go in my living room.

I went online today and bought new cushions for my deck bench and a new bistro table and chairs for my lower deck and a new little teeny tiny table for my upper deck. I decided that if I'm going to have a nice backyard the rest of my stuff is all going to look shabby since it is all 15 years old. I still need to buy a new umbrella to go with my table. I'm trying to decide whether I want yellow (which I am partial to) or teal (which would be a new color). Decisions. 

I made vegan beer mac and cheese again. It came out better this time around but still not the way I wanted to be.

I'm going to go rest now.

Until tomorrow...

DAY TWO HUNDRED TWENTY-FIVE OF COOKING COURSE

 I made something really good today. Spicy Red Rice. I could have eaten the whole pan. It was that good. The recipe called for it to be made from fresh garlic but you know I can't eat garlic. Instead I added sriracha. If you don't know what  sriracha is it is a hot sauce made from hit chili peppers and garlic. The emphasis is on the hot chili peppers. Interesting story: the factory is in CA and the people that live near the factory are not happy when it is hot outside and the wind blows in the direction of their homes because the fumes are so spicy I hear it makes their eyes water.  I hear they took the company to court over it. 

I used a small amount in my spicy red rice to give it a little kick and make it spicy. 

Today I went to see my primary physician. It was good to see him. It has been since Jan 2020. I don't think I saw him in March 2020 when I got sick because of COVID. He sent me to a lab for tests. I am waiting for the results. He thinks my chest pains are from my rheumatoid arthritis. He thinks it is inflammation in my clavicle and back. The pain is radiating to my chest. He thinks the fact that I have not been able to stay on Orencia for any length of time is causing me problems. He said my heel/achillies problem should be solved with my new sneakers but if it isn't I should let him know. He checked my swollen lymph node and said it is still sore but looks almost back to normal so he isn't going to touch it for now. He also looked at my throat and it is probably yeast that has been so bad that it is down in my esophagus. He sent in some meds for that. He sent me to a lab for tests and I am waiting for the results. It was a lot to talk about and a lot to deal with. I feel better now. Unfortunately he announced that he is retiring in 9 months. 😪 

It was a full day and I am tired from all the rushing around. I rushed to get some gasoline in my car before my doctor's appointment. It was the first time I put gas in my car since December 2021. I have a little car and I don't drive it very much. Yes, it still hurt to pay $6.59 a gallon. 

Until tomorrow...

DAY NINE OF THE LANDSCAPING PROJECT

 The guy showed up today to work on the backyard. Then he went to buy some wood. He spent the afternoon cutting large pieces of wood. We had to have a discussion about buying Forest Certified Wood. That is wood that is not from old growth forests. I have to live my truth and if I am putting in a fence made from recycled products, I have to use wood that is certified.  He bought the correct wood in the end. 

I talked to someone at Home Depot and I have hopes that I have a lead on getting the fence delivered. I will find out tomorrow. 

I did some cooking. Corn and Bean Salad and Pineapple Salsa. 

Until tomorrow...

JUST AN UNEXCITING SATURDAY

 I spent the day doing laundry and cooking. I am doing the last "meal" in the North American chapter of my cooking course. I still have a few odds and ends to finish up but I really wanted to finish this meal this weekend. First, it would be one thing off my plate and second it would give me something to eat this week. I will unveil later on.

I am not feeling well so I am going to go to bed early and this is going to be a short post today. 

Until tomorrow...

DAY EIGHT OF THE LANDSCAPING PROJECT

 I got the results of my stress test. Basically it was all normal. The test said one thing was abnormal but since no one called to explain it to me and only a nurse called me back, I guess it was all okay. They are going to have someone call me on Monday. 

The guy working on the backyard showed up today. I met him outside and we had a talk. I was not mean. I was straightforward. It turns out there was a communication issue mostly on his part. He misunderstood my text (he read it back and clearly didn't read it right when he got it) and then didn't see my follow up text which would have clarified. He also didn't tell me (he thought he did) that he was taking this week off to go up to see his nephew. So there were a bunch of miscommunications. He agreed to send me a text if he was going to go somewhere again and not just tell me. Sometimes we are a floor apart and I can't always hear what he is saying through a mask. We are all good and today he and his friend went to the store to buy somethings but there was a snafu. The things they wanted to buy would not let me buy them online. But while they were there they scoped out the items he will need and got prices and such so it wasn't a wasted trip. 

The backyard doesn't look like much progress was made but digging out 30 year old roots of vines is hard work. Plus he had to measure out the distance for the new posts and dig those holes. The fun never ends. 

I made the rest of the ribs today. It was only a few small pieces. Enough for two meals. On to the next recipe this weekend. I am also going to remake the Beer Mac & Cheese. The dog walker donated another can of beer to the cause. I am going to make it the right way this time.

My neighbor just texted me to see if I smelled smoke outside. I did so now there are fire trucks rushing by. Such excitement. Hopefully it is nothing but someone with a fire pit. We had some young neighbors burning plastic a few nights ago and it smelled horrible. People....

Until tomorrow...