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Recipe: darling pasta

I’ve been busy this weekend with visitors. My aunt (one of my dearest friends) and her family are staying with us. They’re in the Denver area for some business and I am delighted to have our first guests in many many months. It is the first time I have seen her since my diagnosis and we had a tearful, heartfelt reunion on the sidewalk outside of Sushi Tora in Boulder. Yes, we had sushi. She is as much a sushi whore as I am (we are related, mind you).

So I wasn’t able to get online until late last night when to my delight, I learned that beloved Chuck of Sunday Nite Dinner has revved up Food Gawker, a budding replacement for Tastespotting. Good on ya, Chuck, and thank you thank you thank you for stepping up to the plate. A lesser cook could not have done this so quickly, so elegantly. You are superfly, babe.

Now, I have to be quick with this recipe because I need to make brekkie shortly and I am still managing random and annoying side effects (yes, they linger long after chemo – stupid chemo…).

I chose my partner well, this is obvious. Jeremy is never a cause for strife or stress in my life – he always makes everything better. But you can’t be guaranteed the same for your partner’s family. Luckily, my in-laws are incredibly sweet and loving people who treat me as if I were their own daughter. And they love to cook! Every time I see them, MIL and I always wind up exchanging recipes and sharing new dishes. We’ve been doing this for over 15 years and some of my favorite recipes come from the early days.

pasta, chicken, sun-dried toms, pesto, parm, roasted peppers, garlic, pine nuts

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This is my first week of my radiation treatment. Unlike chemo, radiation is daily instead of once every three weeks. Unlike chemo, radiation lasts all of a few minutes instead of 3 hours. Unlike chemo, radiation doesn’t suck shit nearly as much! There are still going to be side effects, but they will appear later and won’t bring my life to a screeching halt quite like chemo did. At least, I hope they won’t.

in the stairwell of the cancer center

The cancer center is a lovely building and the people are so incredibly friendly and kind. I am in a good mood when I go in, and it’s not forced like it is when I have to deal with a department like General Surgery at the medical center. The other day when I went for my treatment, I wooshed into the dressing room and emerged in less than a minute with a gown on and dumped my stuff in a locker. One of my radiation techs said I was like a superhero, dashing into the changing room and emerging with a gown on faster than anyone. Ha ha! My dreams of superhero status will be realized yet :)

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Recipe: chinese stir-fried pork and soy beans

Admittedly, I haven’t been cooking much lately. I’ve been having a few issues with my left arm as well as a few other annoying and lingering side effects, thanks to chemo – the gift that keeps on giving… or not. I’m doing my best to ride it out and be patient (ha!) because getting my panties in a wad over it isn’t going to make anything better. On Saturday, our pal drove up to our place and we all went for a nice hike with the crazy (Kaweah) in tow – or rather towing Jeremy along at the end of the leash. The spring runoff is the highest we’ve seen it in our three years here. We’re having a late thaw and we also had some nice late season dumps in the high country.

runoff was high

but that didn’t stop miss crazy from gettin’ her swim in

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