the_rck | (no subject)

The downtown library was supposed to reopen yesterday, but the library website doesn't yet say that it has. The website also still says that all downtown holds are at Traverwood until further notice. This means I'm not sure where we need to go to retrieve our holds this week. If the downtown library really did reopen yesterday, the holds all ought to be there. It might just be that whoever updates the website doesn't work weekends. I don't know.

Scott grilled crab legs last night. They were pretty good but kind of messy in terms of dripping on the table. We have one more package of crab legs in the freezer (there were sales two weeks in a row, so Scott bought more), but I suspect Scott will grill chicken tonight so that he doesn't have to grill tomorrow night.

We've heard recently that the Olga's chain of restaurants is going under. I don't know if the one near us is still open or, if they are, when they'll close. We'll miss them a lot. I really love their bread and their spinach pies. They were one of the few places on our side of town where we could reliably get a dinner that would please all three of us. This pretty much leaves us with Applebee's or, if we're desperate, Big Boy.

Scott went for a walk last night and tried to persuade Cordelia to go with him. She refused but, five to ten minutes after he left, she set out on a walk of her own. Apparently, she liked the idea of a walk and just didn't want to do it with her father.

Now that season 2 of Agents of SHIELD is on Netflix, Cordelia's watching it. She didn't watch it with us because she didn't finish season 1 until midway through season 2 when we could no longer get the first part of season 2 for her without spending extra money. At least, she'll be with us for season 3.

I'm puzzled-- I have dry mouth issues from one of my medications, and I'd swear that drinking water just makes my mouth feel drier. I'm drinking it anyway, lots of it. It's just that doing that doesn't feel useful. The strange part is that drinking coffee seems to help the dry mouth for a while. It makes no sense to me that that should be true, but it is. It's going to be really, really tempting to drink a lot more coffee.

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Your mouth feels dry because you're not producing enough saliva. That's not just water...it's also the dissolved stuff that makes the saliva coat the inside of your mouth. Plain water can wash that coating away. Syrupy stuff (even really dilute syrupy stuff) is great for making a mouth not feel dry, because it replaces the coating. Unfortunately, replacing saliva with sugar is horrible for your teeth.

They make specialty mouthwash for dry mouth that really works. The big brand name is "Biotene," but there's a CVS brand with the same active ingredient, and Kroger probably makes one too. It uses xylitol to make a dilute syrup, roughly the consistency of saliva. Xylitol is a really popular component of toothpaste these days.

Thanks!

I'll see about getting Scott to pick up some. I'm pretty sure I'm okay with xylitol.

Aw, Olga's! When I was a kid living in Grand Rapids, that was one of my very favorite restaurants. I've never found anything quite like their bread anywhere else, and their spinach pie was the best.

The last I knew, it was possible to purchase their spinach pies, frozen, at our grocery store. I don't know if those will be vanishing, too, so I'm very tempted to stock up.

The only thing that helps with my dry mouth issues is Diet Coke, which is weird on a number of levels. I tried recommended iced water with lemon juice... and turned out to be allergic to lemon juice.

Huh. My psychiatrist didn't suggest water with lemon juice (we don't tend to have ice, so I'd have to leave that out). She suggested sugar free gum and sugar free hard candies, neither of which I can have. We've got an awful lot of lemon juice, so I suppose I can try that. I suspect it would be bad for my teeth, though.

It is strange about the diet coke.

I'm wondering if the temperature of the coffee is what helps, so I need to try some tea, just to see.

Over on DW, someone suggested some stuff called Biotene (there are apparently store brands, too). She said that saliva has a lot of other things in it than just water and that drinking plain water strips away the coating of other stuff that saliva is supposed to leave behind.

Biotene is apparently made with xylitol, so I'm hoping it will work for me. I have a bad time with some artificial sweeteners, but I don't think I've ever had trouble with xylitol.

I was just thinking that I have forgotten to mention this in previous comment. Biotene toothpaste and Act Dry Mouth mouthwash definitely help, but Biotene mouth spray did nothing for me.

Are you familiar with Exotic Bakeries? They're on your side of town and I am pretty sure that they had spinach pies the last time I ate there, and lots of other good food too. But I haven't eaten there in over ten years, so they could be totally different by now.

Or how about Ayse's? They seem really knowledgeable about what ingredients are in everything, especially when Ayse herself is your server. The restaurant is Turkish, which to me seems similar to other Middle Eastern food -- if that is something that you like.

(I hope I'm not being annoying with suggestions! I definitely tend to do the classic "guy" thing of suggesting solutions to a problem when the person who was talking about a problem was looking for empathy and not solutions.)

Exotic Bakeries' spinach pies are very, very different from Olga's spinach pies. The Exotic Bakeries ones use regular bread type stuff for the exterior and don't have much (if any) cheese in them. The Olga's pies are filo dough with layers of cheese and spinach.

We do like Exotic Bakeries food, but we don't get it very often because it's not entirely easy to avoid the stuff that I can't handle in terms of peppers and tomatoes and walnuts. (Also, we mainly are looking for that type of food for Sunday lunches, and they're closed on Sundays.)

Cordelia doesn't actually like Middle Eastern food much, unfortunately. Scott and I do, but we don't get out without Cordelia very often. There are other restaurants on our side of town that we'd like to try but can't because Cordelia refuses to eat there. For example, there's an Indian place called Cardamom in the little mall where the Wendy's is (and where Cafe Marie used to be). Every time we go up there, it smells absolutely wonderful, but Cordelia is adamant that she won't go in there, not even once.

Maddening!!! (And I can *so* relate!)

I have eaten at Cardamom twice. Everybody else seems to love the place. But I had a really bad experience the first time I ate there. The second time was okay, but still left me wishing that I was at Earthen Jar instead. I really adore Earthen Jar -- the food there is better than anything I've had at Cardamom, I know the family that runs Earthen Jar, and everything on the buffet at Earthen Jar is gluten-free. Which makes it a great choice for me, for reasons that aren't on your list of restaurant criteria, so it's not necessarily a good match for you. But I really like Earthen Jar. But Cardamom, not so much. But everybody other than me is happy with Cardamom, so I think it's just me.

Come to think of it: I did really like the soup at Cardamom.

With my problems with peppers and tomatoes, Earthen Jar is a very poor match for me. I went in there once, just to see what it was like, and there wasn't a single thing available that I could eat, so I haven't gone back.

I don't know if Scott and I will ever get to try Cardamom. I just know that it smells great.

Another interesting thing about Cardamom is that the restaurant's owners have a child with life-threatening food allergies, so they (in theory!) have a good grasp of how important food allergy issues are. However, they have a legalese disclaimer on their menu saying that they can't guarantee that any of their food is ever free from any allergen. So I can't figure out if this means that they are actually any safer than any other restaurant for people with food allergies. I suppose probably not.