Home Remedy That Worked!

(And it's disgusting!)
I mentioned in the last post I'd tried a bunch of home remedies that hadn't done anything for my cold. When I mentioned to Nicki, the other leader at Cubbies, that nothing was kicking my cough, she told me she had found a recipe with honey and ginger that her husband had taken the night before, and it worked for him. So when I got home, I Google-d it, and found this recipe:
1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp. ground ginger
1 tbsp. honey
1 tbsp. apple cider vinegar
2 tbsp. water
I mixed them up, using boiling water to help dissolve everything. The web page said to take it by the teaspoon, so of course, I took a tablespoon. (I figured, with these ingredients, the worst that would happen would be that I would puke.) Then after a peaceful, hacking-free movie, I took another tablespoon and went to bed.
I'm not saying I didn't cough at all. I still coughed a bit. But not the hacking and gasping episodes like before, and the coughs actually started to be "productive."
Don't get me wrong. This stuff is NASTY. Don't smell it. Don't sip it. Toss it like a shot. (Not that I've ever taken shots before.) But I will keep the recipe on hand for the future.... I'm not sure that I'd take it at the first hint of a cough, but when I get these coughs that won't go away, you'd better believe I'll use it again.
The web page I got it from tells why all the ingredients work. Also, if you do try it, you'll need to shake it before each dosing, as obviously the cayenne and ginger will settle.

Killer Cold

It's been a long time since I've had a cold kick me this hard. In fact, it's been a long time since I've even had a full-blown cold - the last one was the week Jacob was born.
I started coming down with this one on Sunday, a week and a half ago. The hacking started last Tuesday, and it's still going full-force. I hack ALL. NIGHT. LONG. And this isn't just cough, cough - it wakes me up 3 or 4 times a night. This is coughing so hard I pee my pants, tears streaming down my face, until my head feels like it is going to implode - for an hour at a time. (And do I need to mention what coughing with a hernia is like?)
Nothing seems to be working on this one.... I've tried medicine, prescriptions (left from last round), home remedies, supplements, herbal teas, hot showers, sleeping in the recliner or propped up on pillows..... Generally, a combination of a few of the above would make it so I can sleep at night, but this round, they work just about long enough for me to actually get in to bed, and then it starts.
I guess the upside is that during the day, I don't feel too bad. Wiped from not sleeping, but I don't cough much.... That sets in about supper time. So there is an upside. Although just about anything can set me off - getting too hot, dust, flour or spices while cooking, strong scents, and air blowing on my face, like from a vent (which probably has dust in it). Not to mention the wood stove, which I would tell Paul to let go out, if it weren't 2 DEGREES outside (and that's at noon with bright sunshine!).
But I'm still taking a nap today.... if I can without coughing!

This Happens Every Time!

Why does it always happen this way? The week started off great - it was going to be a productive week. Paul washed dishes and cleaned the kitchen for me Sunday night, so the house was in great shape already. I exercised Monday and Tuesday, and was well on my way to getting back in the P90X routine.

Then I got sick.

Not just the "this is an annoying cough, but I'll muscle through it," but the "I can't do anything but sit on the couch and hope the kids don't touch me because I ache all over, I can barely swallow, and my chest feels like someone's sitting on it." I had to skip AWANA, and completely forgot about a ladies committee meeting because I was still in bed when I should have been leaving (not that I felt like going anyways).

It seems like every time I finally am going to get on top of things around here, something happens. Usually someone gets sick. And it's the worst when I'm sick. Not because I don't feel good, but because if I don't feel good, nothing gets done when Paul's working. I just loaded the dishwasher for the first time since Monday. I have 3 laundry days worth of clothes to fold. And yet, I can't motivate myself to do anything other than sit and watch the boys while sipping something to scald my throat. I try to nap when they nap (if I can actually get Nathan to take a nap), but I have just been coughing the whole time, so I get up more exhausted than when I lay down.

Maybe it's God telling me I don't really need to exercise. (I wish.) I did really good exercising every day last fall, until we went on vacation. I did kind of hit and miss until December, and then things just got out of control - schedule- and food-wise. My sister started P90X again this week, so we were going to challenge each other at it, and I know she's winning (she had a head start on the exercise in general to begin with).

In other news....

Paul and I got the book The Love Dare by Sephen and Alex Kendrick for Christmas. We were going to go through it together, but then realized that it will take away some of it if we each knew what the other was doing every day. So Paul told me to give him a week or so head start. That may be the reason for him doing the dishes, and probably also for the gorgeous flowers I got on Monday, but even though I know he is being "told" to do these things, it still makes me feel loved. I am going to start sometime next week.

I read the book Fireproof (based on the movie, which is where the book The Love Dare came from) this week. I read it in two sittings. It was pretty much the movie, in book form, but I still couldn't put it down, and still cried. The story reminds me of a Karen Kingsbury book. I highly recommend - all of them! The book, the movie, and the Dare.

After a couple gorgeous days, winter is heading back. I heard the wind shift directions this morning (our old house started popping). It's been howling from the northwest, and our draft on the back porch is back in business (apparently our under-house excursions didn't fix it after all).

Well, this post talked a lot without really saying anything. It's lunchtime now.... I think I may be motivated to serve something other than hot dogs today. Grilled cheese it is!

Dangerous Alfredo

I have wanted to try making homemade alfredo sauce for a while, but I always have just bought the jar of sauce, because we don't have "true" alfredo dishes (another of Paul's dislikes). Well, I ended up with a half package of cream cheese, and some leftover angel hair pasta, so I figured - why not try it out? I call it dangerous, because it was WAY too easy to make, and it just took leftover ingredients from other things that I already had floating around the fridge. I always thought alfredo took a few weird things, that you had to blender-ize it to get it smooth, use a double-boiler and watch it tediously while stirring constantly. Well, it took me all of the sophisticated technology of a glass measuring cup and a wire whisk. And the microwave.
2 tbsp butter
1/2 pkg cream cheese
1/2 c half and half (whole milk would work)
3 tbsp parmesan cheese
1 tsp garlic powder
Melt the butter in the glass measuring dish. Drop the cream cheese in chunks into the melted butter and blast again, stirring every 30 seconds or so, until melted. Measure and pour in the half and half, parmesan, and garlic powder. Nuke again, stirring every 30 seconds until Parmesan begins to melt. (It may have a slightly grainy texture, but you won't notice it once you pour it over your pasta.) Season to taste with salt, peppper, or garlic salt (or all three!).
Oh. My. Gosh.
And this recipe only makes enough for about 2 servings of pasta (which I may or may not have eaten entirely on my own).
I am the only one who likes alfredo at this point. I don't consider my own cravings worth cracking open an entire jar of sauce. But I'm definitely going to make it again when I have cream cheese in the house again.... And this time I'll be adding chicken and broccoli.
(I found the original recipe on Cooks.com, but I halved it and adjusted some things.)

Overheard:

"Holy, holy, holy
Is the King
You are the King
I adore You."


-a 3-year-old's version of "Revelation Song", which we sang at church yesterday. Nathan was singing it to himself all evening yesterday. I can't tell you how happy it makes me to hear my child singing worship songs!

Our Underworld Adventure

As promised, I need to tell you about our little (ahem) under-the-house adventure.

Let me just start from the beginning.

Our kitchen sink's faucet has been leaking for several months. It's gotten worse lately, and finally I couldn't take it any more, and I told Paul we HAD to replace it. So we went to town and got the new faucet. Should have been simple - old one off, new one on. The end.

Of course, it never could be that easy for us.

When we turned the water back on, the hot water didn't work - barely a trickle was coming out. We thought something was wrong with the new facet, so we hooked the old one back up - same problem. So then it became apparent that something had happened with the old line, somewhere on the other side of the shut off. Paul figured it was time to replace them. He and his dad are pretty good do-it-yourself plumbers, so they decided to tackle the project the following week.

Getting to the area under the kitchen requires belly crawling from the west side of our house, around some duct work, through a hole in the rock foundation, and finally under the kitchen. Once you're under the kitchen, you can actually sit up and have a bit of head space to work on your project. Paul got back there with the plumbing, and next time he came out, he came inside and said, "I figured out why our pipes freeze so much. There is NO insulation under the kitchen." (Our pipes freeze at least a four times each winter.) Also, he told me that the insulation under the back porch is sketchy (random pieces tacked up in random places, and half of that falling off onto the ground), and the north side is not set on a concrete piling/wall, like we had thought, but was merely set on a wall of cinder blocks, and the wind was whistling through them. (That would explain that major draft that comes from the back porch.)

The daylight is the hole where we crawl in. I'm about to crawl through the worst spot - where a heating duct makes the crawlspace barely wider than my backside, and not tall enough to get my knees under me to actually crawl. (I have no arm strength to pull myself with my arms.)

Sigh.

He and his dad got the plumbing fixed. The next day, Paul and I decided to tackle the insulation. We started with the kitchen floor..... Getting all the stuff back there you need (like 3 huge rolls of fluffy insulation), while having to belly crawl 20 feet is a feat in itself. We got in the swing of things - put the insulation up, he'd staple up his end, then I'd staple my end while he got the next piece ready. We were just finishing up one side, when I decided to staple myself instead of the insulation. Despite the "EXIT" written on TWO places on the staple gun, I held it upside down. I saw two staples go flying, and thought it was just because I didn't have the gun squared up against the board. So I grasped the bottom with my other hand and pressed it again.

Apparently the bright orange writing wasn't obvious enough.....

Pain. Lots and lots of pain.

And blood.

And we were stuck under the house.

When I got brave enough to take my hand off of it to inspect the damage, my finger was already swollen and turning purple. Blood was gushing from one of the holes, making me suspect I had nicked a vein. So I clamped my hand back over it and sat watching Paul finish up what he could do on his own. Fifteen minutes later, the bleeding had stopped, so we crawled out.
Of course, this would happen on the week I needed to play piano for a special at church. I made arrangements to have someone fill in for me, anticipating the worst. However, the worst was at the moment of injury. The swelling was down by that night, and I did have some bruising a few days later, but nothing what I anticipated.

We finished up the project on the following Saturday. Paul and his dad worked on a drain problem (as I said - projects are never simple), while I finished up under the kitchen by myself. (No pride or anything.) Then I cut sheets of insulation board for Paul to tack up against the concrete block wall, and handed them back to him.

This weekend is our first truly COLD spell (highs in the 20s) since we finished up, and I can honestly say, the house does feel warmer. If you walk to the bathroom barefoot in the middle of the night, you don't feel like you have two bricks of ice attached to your feet when you get back to bed. And it seems to have helped with the draft. Maybe that's wishful thinking, but at least at this point, I haven't noticed as much of one.

I think that project is completely done now. Now, on to the next one...........

I have about 20 pictures of this adventure, but after 3 days and multiple attempts each day, these two are the only ones Blogger has uploaded for me. I don't know what's going on, but I'm going to go ahead and publish this, and hopefully add more photos later.

Decadence

When Paul was wasting time last week, looking at PeopleofWalMart.com, he found another website, owned by the same people, called DamnThatLooksGood.com. (Personally, I could think of about a thousand better names, but whatever.)

My brother calls such websites (and also Food Network) "food porn." I would have to agree. If you are trying to lose weight, don't click over to that website. You will gain 10 pounds just looking at the pictures. And then go eat gross leftover Christmas food, when what you're really craving is a huge hamburger smothered in cheese and sauteed onions on a toasted ciabatta bun.

So of course, Paul found something there that he wanted. Badly. Peanut Butter Brownie Bottom Cheesecake.

Like, he printed off the recipe, wouldn't stop talking about it, and was dropping totally un-subtle hints. I had tons of baking to do, so I told him it wasn't going to happen until after Christmas. And that was true - I had no intention of even attempting it, because for the first thing, I didn't even have the springform pan needed to make it in the first place.

Paul and I didn't get each other Christmas presents this year, because we bought concert tickets to see his (our) favorite violinist in February in Omaha. I kind of planned on getting him a little something, but couldn't think of anything, and ran out of time. So, on a trip to the store, I bought the ingredients for the cheesecake. My original plan was to wrap them up and have that be his gift. But then on Christmas Eve, I decided I'd just go ahead and make it. It wasn't completely finished by Christmas morning, but close enough.

This was quite possibly the richest, most decadent dessert I've ever eaten, and most definitely the richest I've ever cooked. I couldn't even finish one piece, and Paul requested I take the leftovers to my family gathering (he worked Christmas weekend) to try to get rid of them, because he wouldn't be able to eat more than one piece a day. He called it "the 12 days of Christmas."

Changes I made to the recipe:

1. I baked the brownie crust 20-22 minutes (reduced from 25-30 min), to make it a little more fudge-y.
2. I only used half the amount of chips on top of the crust, because my pan was too shallow - had I used the full 2 cups, I wouldn't have had room for the filling. I thought it tasted perfect this way. (As it was, I made two "tart" pans of filling-only cheesecakes.... This recipe really needs an extra-deep 5" springform pan.)
3. I didn't set the springform pan in water. I didn't trust my old pan (borrowed from my sister) to not leak, so I set a 9x13 pan of water on the shelf below the shelf the cheesecake was on. Same principle: moist heat keeps the cheesecake from cracking. I don't really know what actually setting the pan in water would accomplish that my method didn't.
4. Because I beat the filling too much (trying to get the cream cheese chunks out), the batter had too much air in it, and fluffed up during baking. The top also got pretty brown (presumably for the same reason), so I took it out at just over an hour, because it seemed to be set. It wasn't undone, but it could have been more done. (I read afterwards to mix on the lowest setting, and only until the ingredients are just mixed. Oops.)
5. I only made a half recipe of the chocolate topping, because the recipe said it made so much. It was the perfect amount.

And even though my diet/excercise commitment started today, I had to have another piece. Before it went bad in the fridge, you know.