Someone’s In The Kitchen…… (posted by Evelyn)

  And thankfully it’s Steve and not me.  When he cooks, it’s usually a dish that is very labor intensive and takes hours to prepare.
  Steve is skinny.  Steve needs to eat A LOT in order to not lose weight.  Lately,  I have found myself cooking more and more higher calories foods to satisfy his appetite.  And that’s not helping me because I am only down 14 pounds this year.
Solution:  On Steve’s 3-4 days off each week he is going to advance cook his own meals and because he’s not as strictly vegan as I am he can shop for and cook with cheese and whatever else he wants.  Here he is preparing lasagna rolls stuffed with an eggplant ricotta cheese mixture that I’m going to stay away from.  At the same time I have plenty of veggies and fruit on hand so his dishes won’t tempt me.

And this was my lunch today – no cooking required.  It was also my supper last night and is so easy and tasty that I’m tempted to prepare it 7 days a week. 
There’s no name for this dish because I made it up.  Take baby romaine lettuce leaves (mine came from Costco) and fill them with black beans (rinsed), some chopped green onion, diced avocado, chopped bell pepper, and top with salsa.  I did make the salsa from scratch so that it wouldn’t have salt included. The nice thing about these smaller romaine lettuce leaves is that you can easily hold them with your hand and they don’t bend.  Also on the plate is a fruit salad made with honey dew melon, apples, oranges, kiwi, and dark seedless grapes. 
   The past several months I have had blog-block and hopefully can soon get back into the swing of posting again.  In my last post I wrote about the special blood tests I was having to determine if my high cholesterol was genetic.  I also ended up seeing a cardiologist and having several other tests including a stress echocardiogram.  For the most part, results were much better than expected given my family history. Perhaps at some point I will post the details - I learned so much and there is a lot to write about.
And once again our family history of heart disease strikes.  Last week my 63 year old brother Herb had emergency bypass surgery for three arteries that were up to 98% blocked.  For the past year, I had been trying to convince him to change his diet of donuts, bags of salty nuts, and fast food junk.  He improved his diet but evidently not enough.  He admitted to me that he had a cheeseburger the day he had the chest pains and went to the emergency room.  To his credit he had lost 22 pounds this summer but has more to go.  The thing is, Herb had no other risk factors other than his horrid diet and being overweight.  His cholesterol was fairly low, low blood pressure, had never smoked (or drank), and he was very active with almost daily lap swimming and bicycling.  So now we will see if he drastically changes his diet and what affect that will have on his health. 
And a little bit off topic but I have to say it:  Last year, when my 55 year old sister went to the emergency room for what symptoms we do not know, the doctor prescribed pain pills and sent her home. (My mother found the emergency room paperwork and pills in her purse).  Five days later, she was found unconscious in her house and died that evening.  An autopsy determined she had had a heart attack 5-10 days previous.   Most probably, my sister didn’t have the classic heart attack chest pains but by now I would think doctors would be aware of the other symptoms women have and test accordingly. It just shows what we know already, that women are not taken as seriously when they go to the emergency room and so we have to be much more aggressive and vocal in these health situations.  This is why I have pushed to have the tests done to at least learn what my health status is and to try and prevent the same outcomes as so many members of my family have experienced.