the_rck | Entries tagged with salt

I'm trying to come up with ideas for things to do with a lot of extremely salty ginger paste. We bought it online because Scott hadn't been able to find it at Kroger over the previous month. I use it in cooking for myself, and I will sometimes do a lemon ginger drink the recipe for which calls for fresh ginger peeled and minced. As I can't do that, I buy ginger paste which normally works fine.

This bottle, however, is salty beyond what I can handle, and I normally add extra salt to everything. It tastes of salt with a ginger afterburn rather than of ginger.

The label claims that it's 5 mg of sodium per tablespoon, but judging by the taste, it's rather a lot more. My guestimate is that there's at least a quarter teaspoon of salt per tablespoon, just going by taste, and the internet tells me that there are 2300 mg of salt in a teaspoon. Rounding, puts that at about 600 mg in a quarter teaspoon which is vastly more than 5 mg. Even if my guess is way high, there's more salt than the label says.

Possibly the jar was filled with the wrong product. I would buy this as a brined ginger paste. I'm not sure what I'd do with brined ginger paste, but... Somebody must have a use for the stuff.

Anyway, the drink recipe would use up what remains of the ginger paste, but I did a batch with this stuff already, and it was nasty. I could have about 1 part of the stuff to about 19 parts water, and it still tasted briny, just tolerable (for me) levels of briny.

(Using fresh ginger requires someone else to be my hands. No, a blender or food processor will not help. I can't get them out of the cupboard or put them back again, and I can't clean them. I'm unwilling to give up the microwave or the toaster oven or the stand mixer in order to have a blender or food processor permanently within reach. I can't use an immersion blender because vibration hurts my hands.)

At this point, I don't see any likelihood that Scott's work will close even temporarily. They make plastic bottles for water, milk, juice, etc., and each machine needs someone watching it to deal with problems and to make the changeovers to accommodate different types of bottles (handles and caps, mostly, but also labels and, sometimes, weight of plastic used).

His work is having staff clean all of the usual contact surfaces-- control panels, levers, tables, etc-- at the end of each shift. Normally, there's only one person using any given surface per shift. Mostly.

Scott has been stopping, briefly, at Meijer, on his way home from work every day in hope of finding toilet paper and distilled water. He's shifted to using boiled water for his sinus wash, but we can't do that for our cpaps. I hesitate to ask Scott to look for other things because each item adds time to his day; he doesn't know the store layout well enough to find things efficiently and keeps having to double back.

I'll probably ask him to pick up some extra things Friday night since he (hopefully) won't have to work Saturday. (Weekend work is possible given that there's an unexpectedly high demand for bottled water.)

We're reasonably good on shelf stable food options, but I'm concerned about our status with perishable foods. For example, I use half and half in my coffee every morning. I haven't got any viable substitutions (same fat content and type of fat, no sweeteners, same consistency/texture, no separation), and I can't make an open container of the stuff not go bad after about 10 days. This makes stocking up hard.

I'm trying to come up with other alternatives for my morning caffeine, but it's really hard to hide 900 mg of salt in anything but coffee, and I can't drink the stuff without half and half. My body refuses it completely. The no sweeteners thing means carbonated caffeinated beverages are out for everyday consumption.

I can pretty certainly get past the caffeine withdrawal, but it will be miserable, and it doesn't solve the salt problem. I salt everything, all day, but that 900 mg in the morning is probably half to two thirds of what I add. I feel less well on days when I don't get that salt even when I get normal for me amounts of caffeine.

Our cleaning lady isn't coming today. Her text said something about someone being in the hospital (the exact bit was 'my da8at hospital'), but I'm not clear about who, and I didn't ask about the reason. I didn't think it was my business. I just assured her that we're okay and will be fine on our own. I told her that our prayers are with her.

She has a daughter who lives locally and who works in a nursing home, so I fear the daughter may be ill. Otherwise, our cleaning lady works mostly for people who are too old or too disabled to manage without help. She's semi-retired and not taking new clients to replace those who no longer need her. It's possible that the person in the hospital is another of her clients.

It doesn't really matter. Doing some cleaning around the house will help keep Cordelia busy. Her school work isn't filling even half of her normal school hours. Maybe it will eventually, but I suspect not. When school is meeting normally, she seldom has more than an hour of homework each night, total. Class periods are long enough (only 5 classes a day) that most of the work can be completed in class. Most of the teachers deliberately schedule to allow in school work time so that they can see what the kids are having problems with.

I haven't gone for any walks yet. Yesterday, it rained in the mid to late afternoon. Tuesday, I just got distracted. Repeatedly.

I have two Overdrive ebooks to finish today, before they expire. Part of me doesn't want to, but I know I'll regret it if I don't because I have been enjoying both. I have a couple of Overdrive audiobooks to finish, too, but I've got a few more days on those.

We got Chinese food delivered from Evergreen yesterday for lunch. The driver set the bag on the porch, rang the bell, and retreated. They stayed long enough to be sure that someone came out for the bag, but, judging by the volume of Scott's 'thank you!' the driver must have been out by the main sidewalk.

Last night, I wrote a treat for a flash exchange that I don't plan to sign up for. It's an exchange for having nice things happen to characters, and, while that's a thing I can sometimes write, I'm not certain enough of my current ability to make signing up seem like a good idea. Most of the request are things I simply can't write, and a lot of the rest are things I don't want to write. There are more than 20 pages of requests, and I think I found four that I'd consider trying. The one I wrote last night was the only one that felt like something I really, really wanted to write.

( To-do list for my own reference )

Other things to be added to the list as I think of them.

Today's mail brought the annual review paperwork for my LTD from the University. That's due at the end of the month. I guess that's what they meant by setting the termination date at the 29th of February. I very much don't want to deal with it because I feel like I've had to do it seventeen times since last February.

I will do it, of course, but I'm going to get my Chocolate Box story written first. I've got a few paragraphs of set up written for that.

Something I forgot to mention yesterday-- The bloodwork for my recent doctor's appointment showed that, after a year of me quadrupling my salt intake, my blood sodium levels haven't changed. My blood chloride levels haven't either. My blood pressure is still excellent.

I'm currently experimenting with the amount of iodized salt I consume. I think I want some of my salt to not include iodine. We have a shaker of 'popcorn salt' which isn't iodized and which is much more finely ground than the other salt we have. It dissolves better in water.

I'm having issues with my left knee. I'm not sure what I did to it. It's pain when I put weight on it, but it's not where I expect it to be. It's at the back and on the right side. I'm actually wondering if it's bursitis as it doesn't feel like tendonitis.

I talked to

hopeofdawn last night, and she says she wouldn't mind me reworking our old rp stuff. I don't know that I will because it would take a lot of time that I could use for other things, but part of me wants to.

( Discussion of food and IBS issues )

( Discussion of hand/wrist issues )

Scott and I ordered glasses yesterday. I got a pair with progressive lenses and a pair for more or less the distance at which I keep my laptop. I may order another cheap pair of reading glasses online, but I wanted to order the progressives face to face so that all the measurements were more likely to be accurate.

We had lunch at Bob Evans before the glasses shopping. The place was pretty empty, so the waitress gave us a lot of attention in terms of refilling my coffee cup and such.

Scott's going to take Cordelia back to order her prescription sunglasses that she can use for driving. The place where we went gives a big discount on a second pair. I don't know that it will happen today. It should, but it's really, really cold out there. We should go to the credit union before the end of the month, too.

There's no school today or tomorrow due to the cold which is compounded by the windchill. The district cancelled for today after the university (which never closes) cancelled almost everything for today and tomorrow. The school cancellation for tomorrow came at 10 a.m. today. I'd been expecting it any time the last twenty hours. I'm not sure why they didn't cancel for tomorrow sooner. If the university had already cancelled for Thursday then Hell really is freezing over.

Scott will have to go back to work on Friday. He's been on vacation because he was using up vacation days before losing them on his anniversary of hire on 1 February. Naturally, my one appointment this week is Friday morning. If it's anything like this cold then, I'll be taking a cab. It's worth the $11. Getting home by bus is less dangerous/unpleasant because it doesn't require standing at a bus stop.

I'm in a weird space right now because part of me wants Scott and Cordelia to go away and give me the time alone that I'm used to. I love them both dearly and enjoy spending time with them, but having them home for this long disrupts my routine. I tend not to do my PT or household chores. I also tend not to write. Given the weather, I really can't just kick them out.

( House related stuff )

Monday, I got four loads of laundry done and changed our sheets. I got no chores done yesterday apart from making Scott and Cordelia take the trash to the curb. Then pick up was delayed until Friday (or next week) due to the cold which is for the best since the work would be extremely dangerous in that sort of weather but also is something we found out five minutes after the bins went to the curb. I think the timing is the part I wish had been different.

I'm worried about the mail carriers. I haven't heard anything about suspension of service, but sending them out in this is potentially lethal. If we routinely got these temperatures, it would be different, but we don't. Having my mail would be nice, but it's not risking someone's life levels of necessary. I suppose it's hard for the USPS to sort out which bits of mail are that urgent.

( Cut for discussion of sleep issues and headaches )

( Cut for discussion of salt and bodily functions that may be TMI )

Experimenting with this many variables and a sample size of one makes drawing conclusions hard. I have found some studies that indicate that low salt diets increase insulin resistance and increase blood sugar generally. I've also found some studies that indicate no correlation at all. None of them are big or, I think, well controlled in terms of other variables. I do know, though, that I'm much less interested in sugar since I've started adding salt. I'll still eat sweets if we've got cookies or something, but when I eat them, I can tell that they're not actually what I want.

Kroger brand vanilla ice cream sprinkled with salt is surprisingly delicious.

I'm pretty sure that part of me not writing very much during the last month has been that my energy levels have been different. I don't have a good feel for how much I can do before I fall over. I'm used to my energy levels being variable, and they still are. They're just variable in a different way. I keep misjudging how much I have left right then and discovering abruptly that I've used everything.

I've now downloaded an app called Scanner Redacted that's supposed to go back to classic Ingress. I haven't had a chance to try it out yet, but everyone in the local team Slack swears by it, so I'm hopeful.

Cordelia has a nasty cold. I'm still hoping that I won't catch it, but I don't think my odds of avoiding it are very good. I suppose I should be grateful that it's a cold and not the stomach flu that's currently going around at school.

The delivery people called again this morning because they'd lost track of having called yesterday to schedule the dishwasher delivery/hook up. The guy remembered talking to me, though, once we started conversing. He just didn't have our delivery anywhere in the calendar. I'm more annoyed by the timing of the calls than by the company having lost track. Both times, I was trying to nap. Yesterday, I had actually fallen asleep and was dreaming.

I have the basement freezer defrosting now. I'm not sure what we'll do with it, but right now, everything frozen fits in the new freezer drawer. We never actually used the basement freezer the way I had hoped to. I think, most of the time, Scott forgot we had it which meant that he didn't think about buying extra when things we absolutely would use were on sale.

The main barrier to getting rid of the freezer is likely to be the difficulty of getting it out of the basement. It still works, so someone will likely want it if we can get it up the stairs. Maybe someone will want it enough to get it out of the house? Given what we'd likely pay for transportation and disposal, someone hauling it away at their effort/expense is likely to be a best case for us.

We have a new refrigerator. I washed the inside and then waited for it to cool enough for me to put the food back. The delivery guy said three hours for that which worked out to right around when Cordelia got home.

The frozens are still in the basement freezer. The fridge stuff was in the garage. Cordelia helped me get everything back inside. I still have to go out and take down the card table before Scott comes home. If I leave it up, he's likely to run it right over when he gets home because he won't be able to see it. I'm just giving myself ten to fifteen minutes to warm up before I go back outside.

It looks like we're going to have to have someone in to do a little electrical work in the kitchen. The new fridge has a shorter cord than the old one. There's an outlet it can reach, and it's running fine, but it's not one of the ones we upgraded when we moved in. We want to be sure that this outlet can handle the load, long term. The circuit breaker hasn't tripped, so I think we're okay. I just want to be sure.

We don't have a date set yet for the dishwasher installation.

Saturday evening was the choir concert. Well, the Ann Arbor Symphony Orchestra concert. The choirs only sang during the second half. We sat on the ground floor this time rather than in one of the balconies. I found it a much better experience. I had vertigo issues last year, and that combines badly with agoraphobia.

Of course, I didn't have the same level of agoraphobia issues at this year's concert. It was weird because I was much less worried than I had been. I don't miss the migraine and nausea that I expected.

This is not to say that I got a lot out of the concert. I don't have the sort of ear for music that would let me appreciate what I was hearing. I'm mostly in the 'yeah, that's nice' camp when listening to choirs and symphonies. I think Cordelia enjoyed the concert, though, and us being there mattered to her. It wasn't much different from attending one of her softball games back when she was doing Rec & Ed sports. (I'm mainly going with softball because the duration was similar.)

My body has decided to stop feeling constantly too warm. I had to pull out an extra blanket two days ago, and my legs have been aching. The joints in the legs were hurting enough Thursday night that I was near to whimpering and really didn't expect to sleep. Moving didn't change anything; mainly, heat helped.

I'm a little peeved that my feeling too warm all the time has vanished in mid-January rather than in mid-June. I don't know if this is just some sort of perimenopause fluctuation or if it's related to my having increased my salt intake. I'm assuming that the lower anxiety at the concert relates to the salt just because it fits with how I felt Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

I hosted a write-in yesterday with two guests, one of them our niece. I wrote slightly more than 2000 words. I've got less than two weeks to finish this story, and I don't think it's more than half done. I haven't written anything yet today, and I have a dental appointment tomorrow and will need to run some errands while I'm out. I've got the rest of the week clear after that. I'm pretty sure I can get to the end of the story by the end of the week.

I thought I'd be back to posting before this, but I guess I needed the time. I'm not sure how often I'll be posting for a while. I'm taking it off of my Habitica dailies for a while.

Monday night, I bought a bottled tea that I like and only processed, after the first swallow, that I really shouldn't have it now that I know that raspberries give me gas and other IBS issues. I had trouble that way all Tuesday morning, so that's how little raspberry I can have.

We were out Monday night because Cordelia had a choir rehearsal (the big concert is this Saturday, so we'll have three more rehearsals to navigate). Scott and I dropped her off and went to look at dishwashers and refrigerators. We decided-- tentatively-- what we wanted, but I was really tired, and Scott wanted a little research time, so Scott decided he'd come back to buy them during the next rehearsal. I'm not sure he realized that the next rehearsal is at a different high school than this one was.

We really want the new appliances ASAP. At least, I do. Another bit has corroded off the dishwasher rack (replacing the racks costs half as much as replacing the whole thing, and the dishwasher is 15 years old and has a broken latch). In terms of the fridge, we're looking at one with French doors and a lower freezer drawer. With the current refrigerator, I have to bend very low to get at most things and really don't feel comfortable doing it without support.

My parents and my brother visited on Sunday. I was a little concerned that we wouldn't be able to fill the time, but they only stayed about four hours. We had lunch at Totoro and walked downtown a bit. All of us parking at the library and walking to Totoro filled at least an extra half an hour beyond lunch, and my brother wanted to browse at a store that sells used CDs and vinyl.

I'm trying to get myself moving on writing again because I actually have a deadline to meet. I haven't written any fiction since the beginning of the year, and well... deadline. I'm hosting a write-in on Sunday, and I'm usually productive at those, so I'm hoping that will get this exchange story back on track.

I took the ornaments off of the Christmas tree today. I'm going to wait and let Scott take the tree apart for storage. I also changed the sheets, did three loads of laundry, and filled out some insurance forms.

This has been a very bad week in terms of me being utterly exhausted. Some of it is that we're back on the getting up for school schedule. Some of it is me having trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. Some of it is me having to deal with things I find stressful and exhausting even when I'm getting good sleep.

On the plus side, in spite of being low on sleep, I haven't had a migraine. On the minus side, my being tired is apparently more noticeable to Scott and Cordelia now because I actually get groggy. I think the salt intake change might be a factor. I'm used to being so wound up that I keep functioning anyway. I think my body's rebalancing. I'm less interested in sugary foods than I was, so I wonder if I was going after those in hopes of getting more salt.

( Doctor's visit and testing )

Cordelia and her friend ended up pulling 5.5 trash bags of stuff out of her room. Half of that went into the trash bin. The other half is probably donatable. I'm going to go through the stuff this afternoon to make sure that nothing's going out that Scott or I value. Cordelia realized that Scott would want to keep his childhood teddy bear, but she might not realize that one of us wanted some other item.

I also ruled that we're keeping the camping pad. It's in the hall closet now. There's room for it there since I got rid of the ancient Disney Princesses air mattress and sleeping bag set. We'll want the pad if Cordelia ever has someone spend the night again.

The idea of added salt was kind of horrible yesterday, so I didn't do it. Today, I'm feeling out of proportion exhausted, and last night, I ached. The aching might just have been because I walked so long on Wednesday and then cleaned the fridge until I was just short of falling over on Thursday, but... It's so very hard to tell. I have a sample size of one and a lot of variables that I can't easily control for.

There's a reason it took me decades to realize that blueberries, raspberries, and strawberries all make me sick the day after I eat them.

I haven't written any fiction in a week. I'd like to manage some more before the end of the year, but I don't know if it's going to happen. I need to get going on the time travel exchange story. I have a rough shape for it, but I need to review the canon and don't wanna. Meh.

I'm going to try to catch up on book logging today and to answer a couple of sets of questions about writing. I also want to finish some library books so that I can return them tomorrow. Most of what's waiting for me to pick up, hold-wise, is CDs, so it's not that my shelf of to-be-read library books would overflow. It's just that some things can't be renewed and that others should be easy to get through fast. I just haven't made myself start.

The stuff that's due tomorrow that can't be renewed is:

Star Wars Rebels complete season 4 - We've only got 3-4 episodes left. I think we'll be fine on this one.

Venom - We've watched 10 minutes and may not get back to it.

Timeless season 1 - We haven't started this. There's a hold on this and a copy on the shelf, but the library system won't let me renew unless someone actually has time to go to the shelf and retrieve the copy that's there already.

How to Invent Everything by Ryan North - I've just barely started this, but it looks amusing, so I'd like to go on with it.

Teahouse of the Almighty by Patricia Smith - This is a book of poetry. I'm maybe a quarter of the way through it and may give up due to lack of time.

Also due tomorrow but can be renewed:

Elementary season 4 - I'm six episodes in.

Negima! omnibus v.1 - This is a reread, but it's been so many years that I really want to review so that I can try to remember who's who. This is one of those manga series with far too many characters whose backstories and abilities actually matter to what's going on. I remember liking that aspect of the series but finding it overwhelming, too.