Fresh starts and progress...

Permission given by April Soetarman to use her photo

I gave up New Year's resolutions many years ago, but like most people, I enjoy fresh starts.  New years, new months, Monday mornings...  the start of anything new comes with hope and a promise of opportunity.  A clean slate.  Or so we like to imagine.

This January is no different.  While some unexplained recent bouts of random racing heartbeats have gotten me an appointment for an echo stress test, and being set up with a heart monitor I'll wear for a couple of weeks (starting late next week), and blood tests and the doctor's scale this week providing the undeniable evidence of little discipline over the holidays, I'm not letting those things discourage me too much.  Rather, I'm choosing to embrace the hope that a new year brings. 

Another truth, though, is, while you can't see the evidence on the outside, it is undeniable that I have gained back most of my strength from all that 2023 held for me.  So, in that light, I count 2024 as an overall success - even if the random racing pulse is a puzzle at the moment. 

Also, I feel pretty good about my Dexa scan last month.  It showed I'm holding steady, with a .1 increase in bone density in the spine.  

I, and others, consider holding steady as progress, since the natural progression of bone density is always to diminish if left untreated - either with medicines and/or lifestyle.  Mainly, the lifestyle changes I made to date are specific vitamin and mineral supplementation, and to change my anti-cancer drug from one that is known to diminish bone density to one that might actually benefit my bones.  

Of course, I couldn't just switch my medicine on my own.  After doing research and approaching my oncologist about this a year ago, he was agreeable to making the switch.  The new-to-me (though older) medicine doesn't come without risks, but life has become a series of weighing one risk against another and making choices I'm comfortable with.  And at this point, it's oddly helpful to recognize and accept that cancer is a bit of a crapshoot.

The internet makes research easy - which can be a good and bad thing, I realize. I suspect my doctors would prefer me to not do as much research as I do, but when I express my concerns about potential long-term side effects of certain medicines, they don't discount my worries.  Sometimes, they reword the risks, thinking they can make it more palatable, I suspect, when all they've really done is confirm what I just said I was concerned about.  I like to think they know that I'm not outright eschewing their advice or their medicines (necessarily), but I'm trying my best to actually make informed decisions, and decisions I can live at peace with.  Or, quite frankly (and possibly too morbidly for most people's tastes) decisions I can die at peace with.  When that thought settles in, it's game changing and kind of empowering.

Not that that headspace is where I live my daily life.  But there is great peace over making informed choices that take into consideration what is important to me.  It actually frees me from some fears.  I wrote briefly a couple of posts ago how knowledge about osteoporosis and what I might be able to do about it, turned fear into hope.

  

I remain open with my doctors about what I'm doing, and, in turn, they seem to respect me.  When I visited my GP last summer, after reviewing my annual blood work, I told her I didn't want to go on a medicine that has potential nasty side effects, when simple lifestyle changes might fix a perceived problem - "perceived" being key here).  This was not about OP, and I'm being intentionally vague here, so just go with it.  I also said, "I trust you'll tell me, nicely, if you think I'm being an idiot."  To which she chuckled softly and said, "You're not."

In a little over a week I will see my endocrinologist again.  Encouraged that my bone density has held steady for a year, and I am physically stronger than when I last saw her, I'm pretty sure I'm going to pass for now on the OP drug I know she wants me to take.  What I hope is that by making that choice, I don't lose a doctor I like.  She seems to listen, and not discount my concerns. But I'm not sure she had room in her files to keep a patient who isn't interested in the only treatment she can actually provide.  I mean, she'd go out of business if all of her patients wanted to try lifestyle changes first, or simply take the risk that a fracture might not happen, right?  If I do end up with a fracture at some point, I'd like to know I could see her again.  Risk/benefit scales aren't static.  They are constantly changing, depending on what's going on in one's life, and I suppose the scales might even be recalibrated when new treatments, or diagnostic tests are available.

This January I've already started working on some habits that may continue to improve things.  To be clear, I didn't start the year with great gusto and impressive resolutions only to burn out by now already.  But rather, I'm continuing to approach the building of habits in the way James Clear writes about in Atomic Habits.  Small changes accumulated regularly over time result in big improvements, or as Clear puts it:

"Habits are like the atoms of our lives.  Each one is a fundamental unit that contributes to your overall improvement.  At first, these tiny routines seem insignificant, but soon they build on each other and fuel bigger wins that multiply to a degree that far outweighs the cost of their initial investment.  They are both small and mighty. This is the meaning of the phrase atomic habits - a regular practice or routine that is not only small and easy to do, but also the source of incredible power; a component of the system of compound growth."

And spiritually, which ultimately is far more important that the physical, I'm working on private habits to take in and meditate more on scripture.  I've also signed up for a Bible study starting soon where adult women and older teen girls will study and share insights together.  And overall, I'm seeking what God wants me to do in this season of life.  What ministry opportunities I should be involved in.  Do I keep doing or increase doing what I've done in this regard in recent years, or should I do new things?  I have a feeling it will unfold slowly, and perhaps not obviously, and hopefully I'll look back and marvel again at what God has done in me, and for me - as He always has.

This is where I am in January of 2025.  A little bit all over the map, but feeling thankful and hopeful, recognizing and accepting that I have been a work in progress all my life.  And trusting that my Creator and Savior will continue to mold me and shape me as Paul writes to the believers in Philippi:

"For I am confident of this very thing, that He who began a good work among you will complete it by the day of Christ Jesus."  - Philippians 1:6  NASB

Osteoporosis online summit...

I want to jump in today with a last-minute post to let  anyone who might be interested in learning about Osteoporosis and natural approaches to dealing with it, know about a free online Osteoporosis Summit this week.

I've written more below, but here is a link if you want to just go check it out now:

Osteoporosis and Bone Health 

Online Summit

Why am I sharing this?

In November of 2023, after I had mostly recovered from chemotherapy for breast cancer, my oncologist ordered a DEXA scan for me.  I'd never heard the term DEXA before that, and I had no understanding of why one was being ordered for me.  It is not normal for me to not question a test - especially something I'd not heard of before, but at that point I'd gone through so much medical surveillance, diagnostic tests, and treatment (most of which I've never written about here) I just nodded in acceptance that this was the next thing on the "cancer conveyor belt". 

I may write in more detail someday my processing getting an osteoporosis diagnosis, but I'll just say now, I was shocked to find out I had osteoporosis in my spine.  When I started doing research on it, I was dismayed (actually angry - I'm still angry) that this topic is not adequately discussed in our culture, or even in the medical community.  My endocrinologist, who I'm presently seeing for surveillance of and maybe (in the future) treatment for OP, was the first person to say to me that the medical community does not do a good job educating people about osteoporosis.  She seemed surprised at our first meeting how much I already knew about osteoporosis and the medications she could offer me. 

My continuing research and conversations with people my age and older only confirms that most of us (including general medical persons) are woefully undereducated about a condition that can affect as many as 30-50% of us - men and women.  

Which brings me to the point of this post.  Having watched many of the video presentations in the Osteoporosis Summit last year, I highly recommend it to anyone - especially, if you have a new OP diagnosis, and don't know where to start learning about it.  Or maybe you've had OP for years, but you want to understand it better.

Things I gleaned last year:

A understanding about bone metabolism, and what osteoporosis is.

The many things that can cause osteoporosis. Not to scare anyone, but being lean is actually one risk factor.

Information on what tests one should ask for when considering treatment.  Some of these tests will show whether or not there is a secondary cause of OP, and may point to potential treatments that are not drugs.

The importance of improving and/or maintaining balance and muscle strength as we age.

Exercises for balance as well as for possibly improving bone density.

The significant relationship between muscle strength and exercise and bone metabolism.

And, perhaps most of all, I came away with hope and an idea of how to proceed - whether I chose medical intervention, or decided to try natural approaches.  My fear of fracture was replaced with a bit of optimism, and a determination that fear would not keep me from doing things.  

That said, I take things like ice and tripping hazards very seriously now.  I don't walk through dark rooms now if I can help it.  I'm also continuing to try to improve my posture in everyday activities.  I never really thought of myself as a slouch before, but I've come to realize how much I do slouch, and how easy it is to slump into poor posture when doing just about anything - especially when sitting.  Learning that simple slouching can lead to spinal fractures in someone with spinal OP has created hyper posture awareness in me. And still, I catch myself slouching. 

My caveats about the summit...

By signing up for the summit, one is giving permission for their email address to be shared with all the presenters, and agreeing to receiving promotional emails.  To be honest,  I received a few promotional emails from some of the presenters last year, but it was easy to unsubscribe from those I wasn't interested in.  That said, I do suggest using a "junk" email account.  I think everyone should have a junk email account anyway, just to protect a main account from becoming burdensome with inevitable unwanted email.

You will also receive some emails encouraging you to purchase ongoing access to the summit.  Each day's presentations are only available for free for 24 hours, and when the whole week is passed, it's over, and there is no more access to anything.  

And lastly, not every presentation is going to be everyone's cup of tea.  There were a couple of presenters that I thought were a bit "woo-woo", but for the most part, presenters were professionals in various fields who speak from their experience and education with helping people with osteoporosis, and some dealing with it themselves.

Am I benefitting?

No. I am in no way benefitting from promoting this summit.  

My advice is to not make any purchases at all in regards to this summit.  My guess is, if you're interested later, the offers will still be available. I believe they were offered for at least a week post summit last year.  I have not purchased anything to date.  That said, I did recently purchase Keith McCormick's book, Great Bones, off of Amazon.  MY introduction to Keith McCormick was this summit. 

I will not benefit in any way if someone reading this post, participates in the summit, or even just checks it out.  I am simply passing along information and my experience with this summit last year.

And that's all.  Now I'm off to listen to my first presentation today.

Quiche Lorraine...

In an attempt to keep my recipes from getting lost, I'm ever-so-slowly posting them here on my blog for easy access.  

A few years ago, I went through all my cookbooks and Taste of Home magazines, and made copies of what I wanted to keep, and then recycled the stained, falling apart cookbooks, and rehomed a bunch of still nice, but not necessarily wanted, cookbooks and magazines.  I put photocopied recipes into sleeve protectors, and then into two three-ring binders with dividers. I can add to the binders any time I find a recipe online that is a hit, or I want to try.  This system, along with my collection of recipe cards (stored in three recipe boxes) has served me well ever since.

But recently, it seems my old tried and true Quiche Lorraine recipe, that I'm sure I photocopied from an old Pillsbury cookbook, turned up missing.  I hope to someday discover where I stuck that original recipe, but without it I did what modern cooks do and I searched for quiche recipes online.

Working from a couple of different recipes I've found online in recent months, I have put together a recipe that I think is basically the recipe I used to use.

If you're so inclined to try this version, I hope you liked it as much as Hub did.  He pronounced yesterday's quiche "the best I've ever made."

Considering quiche a simple dish, but knowing somehow it can sometimes also be finicky, all I can add to Hub's high praise is "Good Luck!"

~~~~~~

Quiche Lorraine

Ingredients:

1 par-baked pie crust (comments about par-baking a crust will be at the end of the recipe, and here is a video for reference, as well.  Or this one is informative and funny. Note: I start with a 400 degree oven, and turn it down to 375 after a few minutes.)

1/2 lb strips of bacon (I prefer thick-cut bacon)

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 cup shredded swiss or gruyere cheese (or combination)

1 1/4 cup heavy whipping cream, or a combination of milk and cream.  Some recipes call for Half & Half, but I think Quiche Lorraine is better if more cream than milk is used.  That said, if you want to healthify this a bit, H&H is an option.

3 large eggs

1/4 tsp salt

1/8 tsp cayenne pepper  

1/8 tsp nutmeg

Instructions:

Cook the bacon (here is a video for cooking bacon in the oven - I highly recommend this method).  Though you do need to keep an eye on the bacon toward the end of its cooking time.  It can go from perfectly crisp to burnt if you don't check on it.  Also, thick-cut bacon will likely take a little longer to cook than regular-cut bacon.

After it's cooked and cooled, crumble bacon in 1 - 1 1/2 inch pieces and set aside.

Par-bake the pie crust until light brown. (I start baking at 425, and turn the heat down to 375 after a few minutes). Again, here is a short video and a longer video here that will walk you through this process.  I strongly suggest watching either or both of the videos and/or reading all my notes below before doing this, so you don't have to learn the hard way that there is a right and possibly very wrong way to par or pre-bake a pie crust.   I strongly urge against simply following instructions on the packaging of a store-bought pie crust for how to par-bake.

Preparing the filling:

Sauté chopped onions in butter (or oil) until they are somewhat translucent.   Add the sautéed onions evenly to the bottom of the par-baked pie shell.

Add half of the bacon, all of the cheese, then the other half of the bacon, spreading each layer evenly in the pie shell.

Whisk 3 large eggs, adding 1 1/4 cup whipping cream (or combination of milk and cream), 1/2 tsp salt, 1/8 tsp cayenne pepper, and 1/8 tsp ground nutmeg.  Pour over the solid ingredients, covering everything, but be sure to not overfill pie crust.  If you need more liquid filling, just whisk an egg with some milk or cream and add to what is already in pie shell.  You can add additional, but tiny, amounts of the seasonings in this case, but for this small amount, it shouldn't be necessary. But it also shouldn't hurt.  So yeah...  go ahead if you have any doubts.

Place filled pie shell on a baking sheet, and loosely cover pie with aluminum foil (so that the crust doesn't burn).  Bake in a 350 degree oven for 40-60 minutes, or until a knife inserted into the middle comes out clean. The quiche will continue to cook as it cools for a few minutes.  My quiches almost always require a full hour of baking, but I start checking at 40-45 minutes.

Remove from oven, and let stand for a few minutes.  Slice, eat, and enjoy!

Comments on pre- and par-baking a pie crust:

I have recently learned (or have maybe relearned) the benefits and hazards of pre or par-baking a pie shell.  The benefits are that the result will be a crispy, flavorful crust instead of soggy, bleh one. I didn't use to do this when making quiche, but it makes such a difference I can't imagine not par-baking a shell for quiche ever again.

See that flaky, crispy crust!  

I makes me kind of sad to remember 

all the soggy-crust quiches we've eaten.  

Now, the hazard in pre- or par-baking is that if the oven is not hot enough, or crust is not cold enough, or possibly not made with a solid fat, the crust can melt, shrink, and fold in on itself when put into the oven.  This happened to me for the first time (that I remember) a few months ago when I was making quiche for young friends who'd just had a baby.  When you're due to deliver a hot meal in a couple of hours is not the time to learn a hard lesson, but learn I had to.  Fortunately, I can be a quick study when I have to be. 

I think I was using a prepared refrigerated pie crust that you unroll onto a pie plate, and I par-baked the crust according to the package instructions.  When I took it out of the oven, I was panicked to find the pie shell was collapsing in on itself.  It was completely unusable for putting quiche filling into.  Fortunately, Hub was at the grocery store right then, and I called and asked him to bring home a couple of new pie crusts.  Meanwhile, I searched online how to prevent this from happening again.

Everyone online talked about pie weights.  Even now, with a bit of experience, I think ceramic pie weights may be the most reliable option, but I didn't (and still don't) have any.  Every time I think about their expense vs how often I'm likely to use them gives me pause.  And I have no way of knowing if one package of pie weights would be enough.  If not, they're even more expensive. 

In the moment, while coming to a realization that the world had been going on without me, with clever people using pie weights (probably since before I was born), the concept was new to me, and I wasn't crazy about spending that kind of money on something that seemed like an experiment to me.  And besides, I needed a quicker solution than ordering off Amazon.

Then it dawned on me.  Dried beans might work!  I thought I had a bag or two, but all I found in the pantry were two bags of dried lentils.  

Hmmm.  Well... why not.  

Par-baking the pie crust:

When Hub got home with the new (this time, frozen) pie crusts, I cranked up the heat in the oven. Then being sure to only partially thaw the frozen pie shells, I pricked them thoroughly with a fork, then lined the very cold crust with parchment paper and poured in the lentils.  

It worked!

But the pie looked a little undone in the middle:

So, I put it back in the oven (without the lentils and parchment paper) for just a few minutes until it looked like this:

A nice, flat-bottomed, crispy crust

Then I cooled and collected the lentils 

in a gallon zip-top bag to be used again.  

And again.

And again.

I think I've got my pie weights!

I still don't know why this was the first time I'd ever had this bad experience. I know in the past I've pre-baked pie shells (homemade and store-bought) to fill with custard fillings, and I don't remember using any kind of weight to keep the crust in shape, and I don't remember ever having a crust collapse in on itself.  This makes me wonder if the main reason this happened recently is that manufacturers have moved away from using solid fats in their crusts and have replaced the fat with oil.  What made me wonder this, was reading some comments on a product page for Marie Callender pie crusts, where people were complaining that their once delicious pie crusts were no longer as good due to this change.

I have no idea.  The first time I'd ever used a Marie Callender crust was when Hub brought some home for me when I was in my predicament, and I thought they were good.  In fact, one day after that, I was going to pick up some more frozen pie shells, and I noticed that their Marie Callender shells were on sale.  It was some crazy low price, so I think I bought four 2-packs.  I figured they would keep fine in my freezer at home.  Which leads me to my next tip:

Dealing with cracks in premade pie crusts:

At home with my bounty, I pulled out a two-pack to make whatever it was I had gone looking for pie shells to make, and when I took them out of their packaging, I found they were cracked - like in a lot of pieces!  Aaaaah!  That's why they were marked down so low. Grrrrrr. 

Seriously disappointed, I went online to see what I might do with these pie crusts, and I came across the idea of patching them with a flour and water paste.  While on a small scale, I had patched pie shells by wetting the dough and pinching tears back together, or layering dough on top of a hole, the idea of "pasting it back together" seemed both wild, and obvious at the same time.

Instructions I read call for a 1:1 ratio of water to flour, but measuring seemed unnecessary.  I just made a paste and starting filling in cracks.  Yesterday, when I did this again, I snapped a picture to show you what this looks like:

Back into the freezer it went until I was ready to pull it out for baking.  And here's a picture again, of yesterday's par-baked pie crust:

Except for a few spots where I could have spackled it better, you can't tell this pie shell was dropped and cracked at some point in its life.

Would I knowingly buy frozen pie crusts at a questionably deep discount in the future?  I don't know.  These were all broken differently, and some were a real mess before their repair.  BUT, I don't worry about the possibility of bringing home a broken or cracked shell now.  While it felt annoying to discover them cracked, it's a relatively simple fix.

I think that's about all I have to say about pie crusts.  I sometimes think of making them from scratch again, and while that isn't exactly hard to do, it's a bit time consuming, and messy, and results vary.  

But, especially in today's economy, they would be a lot cheaper...

Maybe someday...

Let me know if you enjoy making pie crusts, and if you have any secrets to a delicious flaky crust. 

The day after...

I'm not sure when it finally stopped snowing today, but we went out around 2:00 pm to start shoveling the driveway.  In the flattest parts of the yard, the snow measured about 8 inches, so that's what we're calling it.  

Took a break to notice a flock of sandhill cranes:

It seems early for them to be migrating this far north already, but their call is unmistakable.  Unfortunately, the wind is blocking out their calls, so you'll just have to trust me about what we're looking at here.

Then, we were back at it...

Drifts at the front door got above 19 inches. I couldn't reach the spots taller than that without walking into snow above my boots, and I wasn't about to shovel more snow just to get close enough to measure those tallest drifts.

Two hours later...

A tired Greg makes the final push of snow off the driveway:

And before I came in, I cleared a path to the front door:

While it wasn't quite as bad as predicted, it will be really nice if this first snow is the worst we get this winter.  

It's probably too optimistic to hope it's the last.

I hope you're staying warm and dry wherever you are!

First snow of the year...

While it's pretty in our backyard, it's dangerous out there on the roads.  If you're in this band of winter weather, please be careful.