A simple, useful tool.

One of the most useful tools in your cancer-fighting arsenal can be obtained for as little as a dollar.

A notebook.

When someone has been diagnosed, they encounter a few things fairly often:  questions, information, worrying and waiting.  Yes, there are more than just those four.  But they do keep coming up.

A notebook can really help.

It gives you a place to record all the appointments you will have.

All the doctors and office numbers.  Who to call when in case of whatever. When you fill in forms, you will probably be asked for the name, phone number and address of your doctor.  And the fax number.  Possibly the email address.  When you are a cancer patient, you collect a lot of doctors and other medical professionals.  I recommend writing the contact info on one or two pages, right at the front of the notebook.  Along with what each one does.

You can write notes from meetings in the notebook.  You can write questions in it, so you have a better chance of remembering to ask them.  You have a place to put forms, pamphlets and business cards.  You may need to staple or glue them in, but still.  It saves rummaging for the things later, when you are trying to go someplace and really can’t spare the time.

One of the things that happen to the patient is an increase in stress levels.  This happens for their principal support person/care giver, too.  There is a hormone, called cortisol, that is IMHO, really annoying.  When you are stressed, you produce more of it.  It really isn’t your friend.  It packs weight on you, screws with your sleep patterns, and can make you forget stuff, and may even make you more likely to develop breast cancer. There are good descriptors at this link.  And of course here’s another paper that says stress makes cancer grow.

Lovely.  Does this help the patient?  Well, I suppose it does, but it also makes me think of the IT Crowd episode, in which the boss of the company declares war on stress.  And decrees that anyone who is stressed will be fired.  Because that’s going to help.

But forewarned is forearmed.  If there is something you can do to reduce your worry, why not try it? 

So, back to the notebook.

Write stuff down!  It may help!

If there is a change in your treatment, write it down.  If someone recommends you do something, but you want to check with your care team first, write it down. 

Your doctors will want to know your history.  Write it down.  When did you first notice symptoms?  When you’ve figured that out, write it down.  You can refer to it later. 

When did you have a test?  When will you get the result?  Do you call them or do they call you?  Write it down.

It doesn’t have to be fancy, or plain, or depressing.  I like a notebook with a flexible cover, but something with a cheerful or calming cover may be more your style.  Stick photos in it.  Drawings.  Things that make you feel happy. 

Or at least, less stressed. 

Yummy Lunch

OK, this is a feature now.  I think I need a proper title.  "Yummy Lunch" is today's place holder.  Pretty lunch?  Cutsey food?

  Eh.  I'll think of something.  Or perhaps someone will leave a suggestion?  ;-)

The past week saw the traditional February Thaw.  Temperatures warm enough for us to believe spring may actually come.  Then of course we remember this is Canada in February.  The warm temperatures are probably a trick, trying to lull us into false sense of warm.  Making us think about planting things and wearing summer clothes.

Now winter is back. -19 C.  Blowing and drifting snow.  People are saying nasty things about the groundhog.

In the spirit of summer hope, Peanut and Pumpkin took flower bedecked lunches.

Both were the same, but this photo turned out best.

Cucumber flowers sit atop left over BBQ chicken, which is contained in lettuce cups. I know you can't really see them.  Trust me, they are there.  A line of cucumber slices help hold the chicken and lettuce in place.  Grapes and red pepper slices and flowers provide more colourful veg.  The red silicone cup holds slices of Swedish Rye bread, cut with a large flower cutter.  The girls told me they were not soggy at lunch time.

More lovely lunches at:  What's for lunch Wednesday

Triple Chocolate Muffins

I mentioned the children love bananas.  And they do.  Except in baked goods.  I have no idea why. 

I am very fond of banana bread and banana muffins, and adapted a peanut butter and banana muffin recipe to one that is friendlier to my kitchen.  Peanut butter is not welcome in my house.  I know it’s supposed to be a good source of protein, but it is also a nasty allergen that can have a deadly reaction for some of Peanut and Pumpkin’s friends.  Therefore, it isn’t welcome here.

The recipe is still in the refining stage.  It originally required  2/3 cup of sugar, which seems like a lot for me.  I’ve reduced it to ½, but can probably use only 1/3. 

Ingredients:

1 banana

½ cup sugar

3 Tbsp. vegetable oil

3 Tbsp. cocoa powder

3 Tbsp. hazelnut butter (because I like it, and the one we use doesn’t contain peanuts.  We have used sunflower seed butter, but it wasn’t the same)

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

dash  cinnamon

¾ cup flour

¼ cup 1%milk, plus 3 Tbsp.

36 (or about 3 Tbsp) semi-sweet chocolate chips

 

In a food processor, blend the wet ingredients.  Add the dry (except for chocolate chips) and process briefly.  Scoop batter into 12 muffin cups, filling about ½ full.

Top with 3 chips per muffin, and bake at 350 for 15 – 18 minutes.

Or

Put the muffins in the oven, begin cleaning up your work area, discover chips, gasp, check timer, pull muffins out of oven after about 3 mins. of baking, top with chips, pop back into oven and keep baking.

I actually prefer the Oops method, because the chips have a tendency to sink into the muffin as it bakes, leaving a molten chocolaty bit in the centre.  Otherwise the chips tend to sit on top of the muffin and say “Hey!  Look at me! Totally not a healthy thing!”

Wait!  Where's the third chocolate?

Well, you see, it's in the hazelnut butter.  That's one.  Two is the cocoa powder.  The chips make three. 

Triple Chocolate Muffins are quickly gobbled up.  Banana-Hazelnut Muffins, not so much.

Bananas

Why is it that the bananas in the house are either barely yellow, completely eaten before I can get one, or have expanding black spots?

Sigh.

Peanut and Pumpkin love them.  Bananas are healthy¹, and don’t require a knife, making them a favourite “I do myseff” snack when the children were younger.  As long as someone started them, of course.

A few years ago, one of my colleagues told me he switched his peeling from the top-of-the-stem-down method to the flower-end-up method after watching primates in a zoo.  He watched as a mother chimp (or baboon, I don’t remember exactly which of the smaller primates it was) showed her young one how to peel a banana.  He said the mother started with the bottom end; her young one imitated, and was successful.

So my colleague tried it.  Sure enough, he was able to successfully peel the bananas without the smushing that happens when you start at the top.

But that doesn’t help with the browning bananas on my counter.

Some of them will be peeled and tossed into the freezer once I’ve posted this.  Two of them are going into muffins for tomorrow’s breakfast.  Which means there will be a weekend post, maybe even with pictures and a recipe.  That should make up for the lateness of today’s post.

They are definitely outside the 100-mile diet.  Unless I make friends with an experienced gardener who has a palatial greenhouse, they are going to be trucked in.  I’m OK with that.  We can’t get locally grown coffee, either. 

1 - Healthy – According to canadianliving.com (I got very frustrated trying to find this info on the Health Canada site, so went to a magazine instead.  Sorry.), bananas have 3grams of fiber, and are a source of vitamin B6, potassium and folate.  The article also says bananas have more potassium than most fruit.

Wednesday Post

Hmm.  I'm sensing a trend here.  For the [checks calendar] third week in a row, a food post.  On a Wednesday.   Perhaps this is a 'Feature'?

Anywhoo....

This was Peanut and Pumpkin's Valentine's Day Lunch.  Well, their Valentine's Day influenced lunch, since their school offers lunch on Mondays.

Heart shaped brown rice with peas decorated with a red bell pepper heart, meatballs in a romaine lettuce cup, with red pepper slices and another heart.  Kiwi slices are decorated with carrot flowers. Tangerine sections (only two, testing the waters here) are nestled in for snugness. 

More great lunches at: What's for Lunch Wednesday

Happy Dance!

My friend Gabriel's blog is back!

This is the man I mentioned in my first real post.  The husband of the lady who makes the wonderful empanadas mentioned a few food posts ago.

Earlier this month, he was hacked.  It was awful.  Four years of his work erased.  But now, he is back.

He writes about all sorts of things.  Life in Canada.  His children.  Food.  Cultural phenomena.  The Three Stooges.  Travel.  Photos.

I encourage you to check him out, here:

(And as soon as I figure out this button business, I'm going to add it to the side bar.)

Meet Cancer Bag

Cancer bag is the name given to the tote I used for going to hospital.  The idea came from my Mother's ‘Chemo Bag’, which I suppose is itself a variant of the go-bag (or get-gone, or jump-bag) many members of the armed forces (and their families) may be familiar with.

Cancer bag is, in it’s present incarnation, a backpack.  It is fairly light weight, yet strong.  It’s got padded shoulder straps and a carrying handle.  It has a few big pockets and some smaller ones.  And I don’t go to any follow-up appointments without it.

The day I went for my diagnosis, I grabbed a small bag and threw in a notebook, a  pen and a box of Kleenex.  I knew I’d be getting bad news.  I wanted to be at least a little prepared. 

Since that day, the contents of Cancer Bag have changed.  Cancer Bag itself has changed. 

“CancerBag Mark1” is a lovely Lands’ End zip top tote bag.  I ordered it online.   I had it monogrammed with my husband’s and my initials.  CancerBag arrived the day before I had to leave for surgery.  I was so worried about what was coming up that I was overly excited to receive it, and inadvertently frightened our postal carrier. 

The Mark1 has since been replaced by the above mentioned knapsack, but we still call the original CancerBag.   All one word.  It helps take the scary out of the 'C' word.  And when you are fighting cancer, you are also fighting fear.

I don't think this looks scary, do you?

We take CancerBag to the beach.  We take it on picnics.  We take it camping.  We take it to Great Wolf Lodge.  Everytime CancerBag goes someplace that isn’t a hospital, I win.

(Although I do get strange looks when I tell the children to put the sunscreen back in CancerBag.)