Sunday Stroke Survival~Baking and Doing Dishes

Now normally for Christmas, I'm feeding fifty to seventy-five people that's just the closest family members. My family didn't start out this huge...it was just my mom, dad, little sister, and me. We were just an ideal semi-American text book family.

My Girls and me

Then some friend of ours died in an automobile accident, and my family adopted their children...all seven of them. That was the population explosion in sheer madness in numbers. Later we grew up and had children of our own, and their children started having children. Up until the death this year of my step grandmother, it was four generations at any family gathering.

Every year I gave each family an assortment of cookies. Some were my own recipe and some were my grandmother's treasured recipes. That won't happen this year. Imagine... 144 dozen cookies! That's a lot of cookies just short of a professional bakery. Also this year marks, the first time I am not prepping or cooking for this small army of relatives. My stroke changed all of that.

I've done very little cooking since my stroke except for popping things in the microwave. It has been a major battle inside my brain with the former chef in me. I love to cook and bake. It has been a passion of mine since I chased all the servants out of the kitchen, and made my first vegetable soup and cake for my parents' anniversary way back in 1969. Bet that's longer than some of you readers have been on Earth. I've run a catering business, been the line cook, been the executive chef, been the general manager of restaurants, and a culinary instructor. So having to turn over the reins to someone else really gets my goat big time.

I asked my husband for one of those cake pop ovens for Christmas. I thought they wouldn't be to difficult to make one-handed. Since it just the two of us in the house, it didn't make sense to buy a pan which makes a dozen or more. Also it didn't make sense electricity-wise. Anyhow, it arrived last week just in time for my kitchen-aid mixer to die a horrible death. I can't really complain. It's lasted me ten years and I definitely put it through more than enough to make twenty standard hand-held mixers scream in protest with all the wedding cakes, cheesecakes, gallons of frosting, and meals I used it for.

Anderson cake 580 servings

So here I am with a new toy and unable to play with it. I have a hand held mixer. It was my backup for small amounts of colored frosting, but I have trouble using it now. Too many switches, bowls to hold, and hold the mixer too with one-handed. I bought a new stand mixer. It's a cheap one, but it works. I won't be making six to eight tiered wedding cakes again anytime soon.

Red Velvet with Cream Cheese Frosting

I figured right. the cake pops were easy. The regular cake mixes made too much batter so I poured the leftover into Rubbermaid water bottles. One cake mix, I'm still not ready to make it from scratch, will make enough batter for a week of fresh cake, baking every other day  for us. The Rubbermaid water bottles are easy enough to handle one-handed. It's just squeeze enough into the cups and close the lid of the oven to bake. Four minutes and I have fresh cake. Decorating them is just melting some store bought frosting and dipping. I haven't tried fancy decorating yet just some swirls back and forth across them, and some sprinkles. But wait, as my confidence builds, I'll be experimenting more.

Another milestone I've made is figuring out how to wash dishes one-handed. Now I have an automatic dishwasher, but as little as we eat, it would take a week to make a full load. I mean really, two small pots, two plates, two glasses, and eating utensils for a dishwasher load? Who would do that? I don't put out serving utensils since I make up the plates from the pots and serve one hot meal a day.

I'll carry them to my bathroom sink. It's small. It has sides. I can fill the sink halfway with water and wash dishes to my hearts content. I will wash my sink before and after I do this. The last line is for all you people that went "Ewww!"when you read that. I tried to wash dishes in my kitchen. It was just to big to hold my dishes and try to wash them too. I just didn't have enough hands. Dish washing is usually a two-handed activity.

Unfortunately while taking the added time to figure out all this new stuff, my writing time has been impacted. While I'm still writing this week, I'm in Christmas mode, aren't we all? I think I accomplished 600 words in the manuscript. Maybe I'm trying to do too much once again. Possibly, but that's who I am Mrs. Overachieving-Everything. While it's been said that you should or try to learn something new everyday. I'm slower now. Instead of learning or trying five somethings everyday, it's more like one every other day. I'll be putting up a new snippet soon, so be watching.

So what have you learned this week?

Keep writing and loving the Lord.

Surviving Tooth and Nail

Surviving a stroke and trying to adapt to changes is like surviving tooth and nail...literally.

My teeth and nails have become adaption tools in my attempt to do normal things. Can't close a bag of chips and clip them with one of those clippy things one handed...teeth come in very handy. Have to rip open mail one handed...fingernails work great.

Yes, since I've come to terms with my stroke I'm finding all sorts of alternate uses of what I do have replacing what I don't. While I figured out how to open a can with a standard can opener, I haven't figured out how to open cans with pull top lids yet without buying a special tool. There's just some things I'm going have to sit down and figuret out.

Last night I even accomplished dinner preparations and cooking. It wasn't anything fancy like I used to prepare, but it was a start. The menu was baked chicken breast basted with butter, not the fake stuff but real butter, baked potatoes, and broccoli, cauliflower, carrots in a cheese sauce. I even managed buttermilk biscuits, although they were the frozen variety.

It was one of those Dolly Parton chicken breast so one was more than enough meat. Cutting the vegetables was a bit tricky without an adaptive cutting board, but my Rocker T knife, sort of like the a Ulu knife, that my son-in-law's remade handled and husband's knife sharpening skills made short work of the project, sort of. It only took me an hour to cut the two cups of vegetables needed for dinner. I hate to admit it, but the cheese sauce was from a can. Lord, I hope my old culinary instructors don't read this!

Baked potatoes are easy right? Nope. My fingernails came in handy while washing them. You know you're supposed to pierce them to cook them faster, right? Well I pushed a regular knife through the center and it got stuck. I ended up grabbing the handle of the knife with my teeth and my good hand pulling the potato off the knife. Dangerous, huh? I managed though. I put the chicken and potatoes in the oven and baked it all together.

I basted the chicken with my turkey baster and burned the joint closest the the wrist of my thumb when I touched the top of the oven. Well, no pain...no gain. My Aloe Vera plant is in a pot on my kitchen window sill for just such occasions. A quick pinch, with you guessed it- my fingernails, a firm squeeze, and prying my affected fingers open to hold it while holding the snipped piece of plant with my teeth, and rubbed it on the burn. Now I could have called for help, but I was testing new ground in self-sufficiency.

About thirty minutes before it was done, I popped the biscuits on the baking sheet. This was after I pulled the pull strip on the bag of the frozen biscuits open with my teeth, and placed them in the oven. This was the first time I've cooked a meal without help since I've been home. I've fixed other meals but always with my husband's able hands helping me. I definitely feel proud of my accomplishment.

Meanwhile, I've been steadily working on my newest nonfiction, Don't Get Your Panties in a Wad. It's coming along slowly, but I'm still working on it. In this case, it's like pulling teeth and nails to keep the progress going. I've been in such a funk that writing humor consistently is difficult. I'm still journaling memories as they come to me. Some of the dreams I'm having are just too strange to believe. It's got to be the drugs. I may have to rethink the humor angle, but it's still a work in progress. I really don't know at this point what the final outcome will be, but I'm writing.

Occupational therapy at the hospital continues on my shoulder. I now have a nifty shoulder pulley and weights at home to work the shoulder muscles. I think I'm going to have to convert my spared bedroom into a gym before I get everything back again. Between the Ortho stuff, splints and braces, air cycle, and my treadmill/stair stepper...it's taking over the space where my pool table should be. Now, I've got it pushed back in a corner totally unplayable. Moving it into my old office space took three of my burly son-in-laws and my daughters. It took the same amount of effort to shove it into the corner. 

Painful, but I'm doing it,but I'm still working towards recovery. So long as the tone in my bicep, yep it's back after two months post Botox, will allow. In therapy when the therapist stretches my arm and shoulder it like, "Pain in the bicep,"and "That's the shoulder" with every movement. I think I must have said it the last couple stretches with tears running down my face, but I've got 45% movement in my shoulder now. That's the good news.

Keep writing and loving the Lord.