Eternal Hippies A Year Homemade and Beyond

This has been a very rough month. My last chemo treatment was on the 15th and that night I starting throwing up. The rest of the month has been a blur of side effects and grieving. A coworker passed away during the month. He was loved by all and had been working there for the past 30+ years. Nothing will make you relieved to only be in pain than the notion of death.  On another note, our garden has seen some success. We harvested enough green beans to enjoy with a meal. We have bell peppers, banana peppers and pepperoncini growing well. Our heirloom tomato plants are not liking the high heat we have been experiencing, but we still have some tomatoes growing. The sweet potato slips are very happy. In fact, we have so many slips growing, we are going to start another container for them. All of our herbs had to be moved because of the heat. Last Saturday we went to a farm market and got some pickling cucumbers and Monday I started them to fermenting using some of the herbs we are gr...

I am worn out. My energy levels are still not what I need them to be. I realize that the side effects of chemo and radiation therapies are in play, but I have things to do and I need to feel better. Take last night, for example. I was cooking dinner and as usual, I had to sit down to rest after each part of preparations were made. I needed help cutting up vegetables, stirring the meal and even grating Parmesan cheese. And it was a simple dinner of Italian sausage, red onion and bell peppers served with rice noodles. It shouldn't have been the drama situation it turned out to be. But that's every night. Especially after working 9 hours a day. This evening Joe and I are going shopping for gardening supplies. I hope I don't wimp out and use a scooter at the store. I am not eating like I know I should and I am not drinking enough water. Little bit ago I went on SparkPeople and logged in what I consumed yesterday on their food tracker and I ate almost 3,000 calories. No wo...

The last two Mondays I have attempted to plan out the meals for that week. Last week I stuck to the plan about 60% of the time. A person can plan for tuna salad all day long, but when it's cold outside, something hot sounds better. So tuna salad turned into soup and grilled cheese sandwich. Like last night, I was planning chicken salad, but that turned into uncured beef hot dogs and garden salad. From here out I am going to blog my meal plans to see how well I stick to it. So for tonight, Wednesday, spaghetti bake is on the menu. But already I'm concerned. I only brought the ground bison (it was on manager's special at Kroger for $2.50!) out of the freezer this morning. I don't own a microwave so a quick thaw is out. Side note on microwave ovens, I haven't used one in four years and don't miss it. Hopefully the meat will be thawed enough in the fridge to use when I get home. I've made spaghetti sauce from scratch many times, but this evening I'm go...