use real butter

Recipe: thirteen bean soup

Okay kids, I really have been thinking of that giveaway. I believe I have settled on the prize, but I need a little more time to come up with an interesting question – something that allows me to learn a little bit about my readers. You can be sure that my questions are out of curiosity and not some bloody marketing strategy.

It’s soup season. I was going to say it is soup weather, except it wasn’t when I made this – it was positively balmy and sunny. I wanted to cry my eyes out. Where the *bleep* is my snow?! But today IS soup weather. Overcast, cooler (high in the 50s), rainy… I love it. I have been wanting to try a recipe for seven bean soup for several years. When I walked into the grocery store, I searched the bulk bins for beans. I needed a half cup each of seven types. And then I came across the bin with THIRTEEN beans, all mixed together, right there for me! It was so pretty, I could not resist.

13 kinds

**Jump for more butter**

Lately I’ve felt as if I want to punch my surgeon. No, not Dr. McHottie, but my regular surgeon. I have all sorts of issues right now because of lymphedema in my left arm since my surgeon removed all of the lymph nodes in my arm pit. One of the nodes had cancer. When you first get a diagnosis and they tell you, “this needs to be removed” you just think, “yeah, do it.” You don’t think much about the potential side-effects down the road because you just want there to be a down the road. Of course, I don’t blame my surgeon for any of this – I’m quite grateful to him for my life, really. And he’s a good guy. It’s just that I have a desire to punch something that I can’t strike out at.

My past year has really brought home to me the relativity of our experiences. When Mom complained about having a head cold to me over the phone in the midst of my chemo treatment, I just pursed my lips and kept my mouth shut. I got a ton of emails from “friends” who didn’t really keep in touch with me asking, “So are you all better now?” It doesn’t quite work that way. I have scars and burns and tattoos on my body. The smell of certain liquid soaps brings me back to the sick feeling of my treatments. When I began to correspond with dear Barbara about her cancer, she mentioned a numbness in her feet that she still has three years after her chemo. I have that same problem with my feet, and it has only been 5 months.

**Jump for more butter**

We’re going with a short post tonight. This is the first weekend we’ve been home in a while and there were house things to take care of. It all started innocently enough this morning when I turned to Jeremy and said, “I’d like to take 20 minutes and sort the clothes in the closet so we can cull out any things to donate.” Four hours later the closets were completely reorganized, culled, cleaned. We rearranged the furniture in the office and I converted the perch to my sewing and knitting space (for the winter, at least). I went through the bathroom and boxed all of my cancer treatment meds, got rid of expired meds, organized the drawers and cabinets… And I packed our ski bin. This despite the 68°F weather outside. Jeremy resealed the driveway in the afternoon while I filed away important documents in between letting Kaweah back in and back out onto the deck.

Listening to NPR as I rushed about the house putting things away, I heard mention of Senator Ted Stevens’ trial and that wrap-around deck. When I let Kaweah out to potty, I looked about the side of the house and thought, “yeah, I’d like a wrap-around deck.”

I didn’t plan our menu this week with respect to the weather. I normally do, but didn’t have the time. So on a rather warm day, we ate Chinese hot pot for dinner this evening.

bowl of goodies

I’m trying to clear out the freezer, see. I like to stock up for the winter, but last winter I got waylaid by my diagnosis and things have been languishing and I haven’t been good about sorting through it all. I found half a flank steak the other day and thought hot pot would be a good way to use it up. I also found a ham bone and a frozen fish head. This is actually the second or third time my parents have left a fish head in my freezer since I have left home. It means they love me. Mmm, I’ll have to blog my dad’s bouillabaisse recipe this winter – and it starts with a fish head. It is amazing.

Okay kids, that’s it. I’ve neglected too many things (like emailing my buds) because of NaBloWriMo, so tonight I’m cutting it short. I’ll answer comments soon.