Father's Day Sushi Feast and Fun

It's definitely summer. The temps are rising into the triple digits, I don't set my alarm to get up in the morning, and I only work for a few hours a week. 

Husband and I are back on the low-carb lifestyle, and I quickly ended up reverting to only one meal a day as soon as I cut out sugar and low-nutrient carbs. I guess OMAD (One Meal a Day) is my natural rhythm because I just don't get hungry until about 1pm or 2pm when I load up on protein and low-carb foods until I'm comfortably full and then don't need to eat any more until the next day. I have lost an average of a little over half a pound a day eating this way as well as cut out the need for heartburn medication and eliminated the symptoms of insulin resistance (including skin tags).

I'm getting older, however, and things haven't gone exactly the same as they did even just a couple years ago, so I've had to make some minor adjustments. First, after the first two weeks of eating mostly OMAD, I've had to switch to two smaller meals within a four-to-six-hour window instead of one large meal because I wasn't getting enough calories. I also had to add in some more carbs. It has been immediately obvious that eating low-carb (which means cooking from scratch almost 100% of the time) has thrown off my estrogen/progesterone balance, and maybe one of the reasons is because I'm not getting as much soy estrogen from packaged foods and junk foods. I'm speculating here, but there is no question that going low-carb on whole foods immediately equaled some unforeseen side effects having to do with an estrogen/progesterone imbalance, including the return of hot flashes (though only very occasionally and not the former fifteen to twenty per day, thank goodness!). My mom and I had a long talk yesterday about how she made her own soy milk and tofu for years, which got her through peri-menopause with almost no symptoms whatsoever. 

I remember my mom making soy milk because we lived with my parents for a long time before buying our own house. She bought a soy milk maker and organic, non-GMO soybeans. Two batches of beans in the soy milk maker would yield enough soy milk for plenty of homemade tofu (she made it very firm) as well as milk for a soy milk/berry shake every morning. The pulp left over from making soy milk is called okara, and she used that to make croquettes that she fried in a little bit of butter. It was quite an undertaking, to say the least. The soy milk maker did a lot of the hard work, but she still had to coagulate the milk into curds and then press the curds in a tofu box to extract the whey, which took a while, though the resulting tofu was delicious when sliced and fried in some seasonings. Cleaning the soy milk maker was also tedious. Yet I am tempted to buy my own soy milk maker and organic, non-GMO soybeans and make a go of it. 

Speaking of my mom, we had a big family get-together yesterday at our house for Father's Day. Almost all the usual attendees were there (my parents, my brother Aaron, my sister Ann and her SO, my three married daughters and their spouses, and all of us who live here; missing were my nephew, who had to work, and my youngest brother, Thomas, who also had to work), and we had a great time. When my three-year-old grandson, Tyler, walked in, he threw up his hands and shouted "Hi! I'm here!" because we all get very excited when he shows up, and he loves that. He had a great time.

I decided to make Sushi Bake--or Deconstructed Sushi, if you want to sound more avant-guard--and it was a big hit. We all love sushi, but making sushi rolls is one of the most tedious ways to spend hours of your time for a couple minute's worth of eating. Instead, you make sushi as a casserole, which will give you at least ten rolls' worth of great sushi experience for a fraction of the time spent making it. In short, you press the seasoned sushi rice into the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan, top the rice with furikake seasoning (found in Asian grocery stores) followed by whatever sushi filling ingredients you want to use. In this case, I kept it very simple by shredding surimi (fake crab) in my food processor and then mixing it with mayonnaise. On top of the crab filling, I squirted lines of Kewpie mayo (Japanese mayo), sriracha-mayo, and unagi sauce (eel sauce) before baking the casserole for fifteen minutes to get it warm. I served it with chopped cucumber, sliced avocado, sliced green onions, roasted sesame seeds, and more of the previous sauces along with squares of nori seaweed. Everyone scooped the sushi filling into their seaweed squares to eat it. 

I made two pans of the Sushi Bake and a huge pot of hot and sour soup (yes, I mixed Japanese and Chinese cuisine) to fill in the nooks and crannies if anyone was still hungry. Everyone got seconds of the Sushi Bake, and I still have a ton of the soup left (Elannah loves hot and sour soup and has been asking for me to make it again, so having leftovers was my goal). 

My kids and family are used to me making weird stuff, so they're experienced in bravely trying out my attempts at international cuisine, and I am fortunate that my sons-in-law are also pretty food-adventurous. Not everyone in the world enjoys trying unfamiliar foods. Still, if they want to marry into our family, they're going to have to put up with my food experiments. I was very happy with the outcome. We all talked and laughed and played games until I was ready to drop, and then they all went home and Husband and I collapsed into bed.

Sushi is definitely not low-carb, but I ate some protein before eating dinner and then didn't eat any dessert. Also, even though it was my second meal of the day, my first meal was pure protein. Also, the fact that you mix vinegar into the sushi rice helps to slightly mitigate the insulin response from the rice. I won't be eating this type of thing again for a long time, so that is how I justified it, haha. 

Today I had to run to the store, and I stopped by the soup aisle to grab more bouillon because I had decimated my bouillon supply making the hot and sour soup yesterday. Two men were standing there looking at the broths and bouillon, so I snuck in next to them and snagged a bottle of beef Better Than Bouillon, which prompted one of the men to ask me if I liked it better than granulated bouillon because he had never tried the Better Than Bouillon paste. We had a little chat about bouillon and then they asked if I make bone broth and if I roast the bones before making the broth, which I do. We bid each other a good day and separated to continue our shopping, and I thought how fun it is to have unexpected pleasant little conversations with strangers. Is that mainly an American thing to just spontaneously strike up a conversation with strangers? It's been a long, long time since I was out of the country. The other day in the checkout line at a different grocery store, the cashier (whom I had never met before) quietly confided in me when I asked her how she was doing that she was having a hot flash and was very uncomfortable. I can definitely sympathize, so I told her about evening primrose oil, and she asked me to write it down so she could get some later. I hope it helps her like it did me. Weirdly, I had almost the same conversation with the lady who cut my hair a day later. I must be God's ambassador for evening primrose oil. 

Update on MIL's Ovarian Cancer

 Husband often plays music and asks me if I remember it from my youth or if it was a song that only made it big in Britain. 

A while ago, it was Yazz's "Stand Up for Your Love Rights." 

If you're like me, you haven't thought about Yazz since the 1980s, and you only barely thought about them then. I certainly don't recall that song, which I think was only big in Britain. In fact, I only remember one Yazz song at all: "Fine Time" 

Husband is always looking out for me:

We are pretty corny, I know. 

Speaking of Husband, you might be wondering how his mother is doing with the whole ovarian cancer thing.

The current news is a bit of a mixed bag, but it's mostly good. MIL had six rounds of chemo, which shrunk the tumors enough to allow surgery. The surgeon completed MIL's partial hysterectomy from decades ago and also removed the omentum, the fat sheath that covers the abdomen, which was riddled with tumors. This action removed the visible tumors entirely, and MIL's pancreas, kidneys, and liver also appear to be free of tumors. The bad news is that the surgeon saw something concerning in the colon, so she removed it for a biopsy, and that tissue turns out to be cancerous. So MIL will continue with chemo and they will keep an eye on her colon. She's in pretty good spirits despite the prospect of more chemo, but she's tired. 

They moved to Indiana almost a year ago now, and while Husband and his parents and siblings have a weekly Zoom call to stay connected, I miss having them just down the street. Even now, when we take Marmite the Dog for a walk, he wants to veer into their old driveway and go into their house, which is what we always used to do.

I just talked to my own mother, and, while her broken foot is healing nicely, she's been getting a series of migraines that leave her exhausted and brain-fogged. She gets the aural signs of a migraines (the flashing, jagged lights mainly), but, while the headache following isn't too bad, she has that drained, limp-noodle feeling you get in the aftermath of a migraine. Just when she is recovering from one, another one comes along. Her physical stamina is pretty low at the moment, just when she needs to be exercising her foot more. 

My mother is not a complainer, and she doesn't want to be pitied, but I worry about her and my dad, whose stamina is also very low. It's very hard having to face your parents' mortality. Even though Husband and I are middle-aged, it's hard to see your parents as old and much nearer death than you want to think about. We are both very fortunate that we have such good relationships with our parents, however. Not all people can say that. 

My mom did bring up life insurance on our phone call, and she was very pleased that their insurance broker had found them some extra life insurance policies that will cover the costs of their funerals. 

In less depressing news, my two grandsons are healthy and happy. My second daughter, Gabrielle, and her husband, Raine, are currently living with Sian and Nathan and the boys while the landlord finishes fixing up Gabrielle's and Raine's townhome, which needed repainting, re-flooring, and some maintenance work after the last tenants of ten years moved out. The landlord, who is 85, moves slowly and is a perfectionist, so all of them have been crowded into Sian's and Nathan's place for the past two weeks, though the new place should be ready "in a couple days." Considering the rent is so reasonable and the landlord is also very reasonable despite his perfectionism in maintaining his units, it's a small price to pay. I'm just glad Gabrielle and Raine are out of that horrible condo. They were the first tenants in the newly-built condo, but it was built very, very shoddily with cheap furnishings. It wasn't obvious how shoddily it was built at first, but the more they lived there, the more apparent it became. The property management company is a nightmare, to make things worse. One of the things they told tenants is that, if anyone finds mold of any kind in the walls or rooms, it is the tenant's fault and responsibility, and the tenants would be forced to pay the rehabilitation costs, though the property managers got to choose the company. That is a huge disincentive to report anything, really. And Gabrielle and Raine did find black mold in the nearby roof-access stairwell, so it is safe to assume that the mold was also in their own walls. We are all hoping that this move helps their health, which has been terrible for both of them over the past year.

But tiny Nicholas is already teething, the sweet, wee baby. He's only three-and-a-half months old! (I had a kid who waited almost a year to start teething.) He's enjoying gnawing on teething toys, and other than being occasionally irritated by teething pain, he's a happy, talkative little boy who absolutely adores his big brother. He's sleeping through the night, as well, which makes Sian so very, very happy.

Anyway, just rambling on here, so I'll stop. I've only spent a few hours at work this week, and it's very, very nice to just hang out with Husband and the boys (Elannah got herself a summer job at the golf course again).