FEBRUARY Chitchat

[Prot]

Just keeping track of meds can keep a person busy. You must be fairly busy keeping track of yours, Tim. No fun.

I am fortunate in that I have a daughter who fills up an automatic pill dispenser for me. An alarm goes off when it's time to take the meds.She deals with medical matters for me, including ordering repeat prescriptions . The reason I went onto a depot for my mental illness was a rather poor record for remembering to take oral meds.

A good research article re Autism and adaptive functioning. Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

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[Prot]

Do any of you use slow cookers? Or does the MS make them too difficult to use? My daughter was told about this Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register.... She's made me 4 fish casserole,2 chilli,2 beef stew,4 savoury mince,and 4 bolognese. With the bolognese you can cook the spaghetti in the slow cooker with it, but not for too long. I made that mistake, and ended up with overcooked mushy spaghetti! But,as I said to my daughter, it's a learning curve. I have quite a large appetite, but still get 2 servings per bag.

[Virginia]

Parsi, what an ordeal for you. I didn't even know they could go through a vein in the wrist to do a catheterization. I know that you are saying you were going to PT when you talk about the therapy. Since you feel it was helping you I would like to encourage you to give it another try.

If you do go back to therapy and start exercising and don't feel better pretty soon, it sounds like you might want to talk to your doctor. Since you have several stints you would know better than I would, but I thought they could sometime get clogged quite quickly. I hope you feel better soon.

As for my insurance, I thought I would take a look at an advantage plan next October. I started looking too late this past year during open enrollment to make a rational decision. I will continue to pay if I can't keep the doctors I have now. I have had to change my PCP several times but the location is very important to me. I can drive there and so far I can get in by myself. So many places around here are hard for me to drive myself to.

Agate I do hope you don't have to change your doctors. That is one reason I continue to pay the overpriced insurance premiums, I can go anywhere I want to.

Tim I saw those graphs earlier and wondered what was going on.

It is cold here but not as bad as where Paris is. It snowed here for much of the day which means I will be shut in for quite a while. Plus they said on the news that it is going to snow again tomorrow. Then when it warms up and begins to melt a little it will freeze over at night.

I was productive today in spite of the weather. I did both my federal and state taxes. It took most of the day but I am so glad it is over. I did them on line so they have been sent off.

Virginia

[jingle]

Virginia, the news has been saying that Virginia has been getting lots of snow. I sure hope your roads aren't completely covered and you're doing OK. We sure had too much snow but our roads are almost cleared. I think I'll take myself out for a Chinese lunch then a visit to Walmart.

[agate]

jingle, that sounds like a good plan--an outing involving a Chinese lunch. Nice to hear from you!

Tim, you asked about slow cookers. I don't even know much about them--I'm afraid I haven't kept up with the world of cooking very well at all. Air fryers, convection ovens, slow cookers--those are all just names to me. I have limited countertop space and so have shied away from anything that might need to be plugged in and it on a counter. A toaster oven I had for years is long gone, and recently I donated the microwave in an effort to make life easier. My cooking efforts have been pared down drastically in the last 15 years--ever since making the move to another state. I'm happy with really easy meals these days--something frozen that just needs to be heated in the oven or on top of the stove. I do steam occasional vegetables and even treat myself to melted cheese on a piece of toast now and then. I slice the cheese and toast the bread and put this in the oven long enough to melt the cheese.

For years I was making meals from scratch, cutting up lots of veggies and making lots of pasta and rice, and then freezing the leftover servings so I had my own frozen dinners. I would make my own refried beans and divide it up into about 20 portions and have the makings of an enchilada that way. Heat up a tortilla and cut up some lettuce, tomatoes, onions, and cheese. Making the refried beans took the better part of a day though.

Food preparation is tiring, and I might start doing dumb things and dropping and spilling things (and cutting and burning myself) in the midst of some recipe but I felt obliged to go ahead with the rest of it--and get even more tired, sometimes too tired to want to eat it when it was ready. This got too frustrating, and I found that there was a fairly big variety of frozen food out there with more vegetarian options.

[jingle]

Agate - lots of area people are celebrating good weather and almost clear roads. My Chinese restaurant was packed and I couldn't even get into a Walmart. In both nearby stores the parking lots were too full for me to find a spot. :(

I bake a lot - lots and lots of cookies. And I love to make soup!

[Prot]

Jingle- I have a soup maker.It's so easy to make soup with. My mum was a great soup maker,like many with Scottish ancestry are. Before the vascular dementia my wife and I would often bake together. I've hardly baked at all since she died. It's hard to believe that it'll be 20 years on September 4th since she passed away.


Agate- I can see why,with the MS, you'd want to make meal preparation as easy as possible. Supermarket ready meals here in the UK tend to have little veg in them. I sometimes buy meals from Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register... . Do you have similar in the USA?

[Virginia]

I just typed a post and it went away.

Jingle, I went to the store Tuesday and pretty much stocked up so I am doing fine. Our main roads are pretty much cleared from what I see on the news. However, I will probably be in for awhile. My steps and where I park my car are icy. And even if it would melt some it freezes over at njght. Glad you could get out for a Chinese lunch. Sounds like a fun thing to do on a cold day.

Tim, I do use a slow cooker, known as a crock pot. I store mine in a kitchen cabinet so it doesn't take up any counter space. I have certain recipes that I enjoy using it for. I have been using one for many years. I can put something on in the morning and cook it on low and it is ready for supper. They are easy to use and take very little learning curve. You just have to know how long and if you want to cook something on high or low. I almost never use high. A lot of working people like to use them because they can put something in it in the morning and have their supper ready when they get home from work. I do not have an air fryer..

[Prot]

Virginia, It seems we all have less counter space than is desirable. I'm very much a 'put it all in one thing' cook. That's what I prefer, given my limited cooking skills. I don't do well with recipes that require a lot of prep and steps. I choose my groceries online, and use something called 'click and collect'. My daughter usually,granddaughter occasionally, then goes and collects it for me. I grocery shop about once a week.

[agate]

...

Agate- I can see why,with the MS, you'd want to make meal preparation as easy as possible. Supermarket ready meals here in the UK tend to have little veg in them. I sometimes buy meals from Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register... . Do you have similar in the USA?

I was hearing about a place called Schwan's that delivered meals to the home but it went out of business as I understand it. I never actually tried it but some neighbors may have used it as I sometimes saw its delivery truck here. Now a popular way of getting meals delivered is DoorDash. I haven't tried that either but have looked into it. There is a wide variety of local restaurants to order from, but you use DoorDash to order from a restaurant's menu, and they deliver (for a fee). It's fairly pricey but then most food delivery arrangements turn out to cost far more than getting your own groceries and just cooking the meals yourself.

There are also several ways of having the ingredients for a meal delivered--you receive the recipes and the ingredients, all ready to go, and you can get meals for the entire week or just some days. My son used some of those plans for a while. Hello Fresh was one.

Only registered and activated users can see links., Click Here To Register...

I've never tried it myself.

[Prot]

I've heard of hello fresh. Seen some adverts. Briefly looked at their website. If I was wealthier, and a better cook, I'd be tempted to give them a try.

[agate]

The prices are daunting. If all they're doing is supplying some cut-up and measured-out ingredients and a recipe, I've never seen the point but maybe people who are more pressed for time than I am find it a convenience that is worth the price.

[Prot]

It's the peeling and cutting/slicing that I struggle with, but supermarkets do ready prepared veg nowadays.

[clouds z]

i used a lot of turmeric in food -had no cold in a year?purple onions are good

[Virginia]

I don't care for tumeric, but that is an individual thing.

[agate]

I've used turmeric in recipes--mainly curry, if I remember right. Nowadays the only seasonings I bother with are salt, paprika, and freshly ground black pepper.