Boring Sleep Stuff and Food Catchup
It turns out that the bipap card reader has died entirely, so it's not recording data at all. This means that I can pull the card (and make it stop with the infernal constant beeping/flashing) until I get it fixed, which will happen... uh... well I am playing phone tag with the DME at this point.
If it doesn't happen before my next appointment I am pretty sure my doctor will kick my butt (nicely), so I need to get it fixed before then. Anyhow I have used it in a daytime crash, then used it at the higher pressure, but couldn't sleep more than an hour or two before I got the dreaded "I am a balloon" feeling and my stomach filled up with air. So then I got it set back down where I can sleep again.
I got to peer at my titration study results, which was interesting. Basically my doctor scrolled through looking for a sweet spot where I was dreaming (as indicated by eye movement), asleep (as measured by the EEG), breathing properly, and not waking up a lot. I had a tantalizing bit of REM rebound before the pressure got lowered last week, so I am hopeful that the higher pressure will get me back to dreaming normally (or even weirdly vividly) again. If I mostly *haven't* been dreaming properly for the last ten years (and my remembered dreams have dropped off significantly) then I will have a lot of catching up to do. I was getting some REM at the current pressure and more REM at the higher (balloon) pressure; I think I'm going to have to get used to the current pressure first, though.
So I haven't been perfect with the machine by any means, but it is such a relief to be able to get a whole night's sleep with it.
In other news I haven't been cooking much, but Brad made this completely astounding chili for last week's batch cooking, along with sweet potato and black radish soup. (I didn't get enough black radishes in my order, so I tossed in a few watermelon radishes to radish it up more.) The earthy radish (black radish tastes kind of like a cross between turnip and breakfast radish to me, and watermelon radish is a sweeter and milder daikon thinks about going turnip) goes nicely with the warm sweetness of the sweet potatoes and leeks, but it needed a little something to bring it together so I've been pouring in a tablespoon or so of red wine when I reheat it for lunch and that seems to pull it together. The chili needs no enhancement, though we did heretically add cauliflower to it. (I like having vegetables in with the main dish and proposed that as a non-starchy veggie since the soup had starches in it, and it's easier to just cook it up in the chili rather than do it on the side.) The cauliflower works surprisingly well.
I've also been messing around with eggs; I am trying to figure out how to soft-boil an egg in the thermos while I go on a walk. That probably sounds a little crazy, but it'd be a pretty low-fuss way to get breakfast: pour hot water over the egg in the thermos, go on walk, return, eat perfectly cooked egg... well... not so perfectly cooked as I'm still seeking the right starting temperature for the water. So far I have gotten pretty-much-raw (which I just fried up) and an egg about halfway between hard-boiled and soft-boiled. Eventually I'll figure out the temperature for the Goldilocks egg. (What I likely want is for it to end up at 63C but I have to calibrate it for the efficiency of my thermos plus the thermal hit I get by just taking the egg out of the fridge.) This is maybe a lot of work for what is supposed to be not a lot of work, but really it hasn't been; I've just been dropping eggs into the thermos, adding water, taking the temperature, and going for a walk. I've also tried out the rice cooker method of making onsen tamago, but that works less well for breakfast because I haven't figured out how to use the rice cooker timer and even if I had, I don't eat grains very often so it's not like the rice cooker gets used that much.
There's also an interesting possible side trip of hot cereal in the thermos, where you can throw boiling water in and let it sit. This supposedly works for steel cut oats (but it takes 1.5 hours) so it might work just as well for fast cooking hot cereals like rice or quinoa flakes at shorter times.
This week we decided to try out the Staff's rotisserie chicken, since they don't put anything on it I can't eat. We had a lot of arugula lying around and some eggplants and potatoes so we made arugula walnut pesto and roasted the veggies and tossed the roasted veggies together with the pesto and chicken. (Okay this is for definitions of 'we' that mean 'Brad' -- he did almost all of the cooking this weekend because I was mostly too exhausted to do anything.) There was also a waldorf salad made with celeriac, Fuyu persimmon, Asian pear, and walnuts, served on romaine and/or spinach, and a shiitake mushroom soup that was really nice even though it spoiled our plans to use up frozen soup. (I'd ordered a pound of shiitake mushrooms last week thinking they'd go into the main dish, but they didn't really fit.) We also had a lot of figs and cayenne peppers and made tabasco sauce (which came out too vinegary; I reduced it and it is better but now tastes too cooked) and brandied figs. Also preserved lemons. And pickled shisito peppers. And chicken stock. Phew! Basically a whole bunch of 'this is the last week of X' stacked up and we wanted to get it done by the end of the weekend.
We had a whole bunch of extra celeriac that didn't go into the salad so rather than make another salad from it I mixed it up with an onion, some cannellini beans, chicken stock and some remnant daikon to make a sort of bean and celery root dish that I've been eating for breakfast.
Today I actually made it out to the farmers market! I ordered a case of Dirty Girl tomatoes, to be delivered next week, and got some fruit and veggies. Also someone was selling perfectly RIPE Hachiya persimmons, so I got one and devoured it on the spot. I should have gotten some more to eat tomorrow... there's no way they'd last past that. I hope they sold them all. Also there were pears so I got a ton; any that we don't eat out of hand can be frozen or made into sauce. Astonishingly there were also raspberries. Raspberries in November? All righty then. And tomatoes and peppers are still going....
If it doesn't happen before my next appointment I am pretty sure my doctor will kick my butt (nicely), so I need to get it fixed before then. Anyhow I have used it in a daytime crash, then used it at the higher pressure, but couldn't sleep more than an hour or two before I got the dreaded "I am a balloon" feeling and my stomach filled up with air. So then I got it set back down where I can sleep again.
I got to peer at my titration study results, which was interesting. Basically my doctor scrolled through looking for a sweet spot where I was dreaming (as indicated by eye movement), asleep (as measured by the EEG), breathing properly, and not waking up a lot. I had a tantalizing bit of REM rebound before the pressure got lowered last week, so I am hopeful that the higher pressure will get me back to dreaming normally (or even weirdly vividly) again. If I mostly *haven't* been dreaming properly for the last ten years (and my remembered dreams have dropped off significantly) then I will have a lot of catching up to do. I was getting some REM at the current pressure and more REM at the higher (balloon) pressure; I think I'm going to have to get used to the current pressure first, though.
So I haven't been perfect with the machine by any means, but it is such a relief to be able to get a whole night's sleep with it.
In other news I haven't been cooking much, but Brad made this completely astounding chili for last week's batch cooking, along with sweet potato and black radish soup. (I didn't get enough black radishes in my order, so I tossed in a few watermelon radishes to radish it up more.) The earthy radish (black radish tastes kind of like a cross between turnip and breakfast radish to me, and watermelon radish is a sweeter and milder daikon thinks about going turnip) goes nicely with the warm sweetness of the sweet potatoes and leeks, but it needed a little something to bring it together so I've been pouring in a tablespoon or so of red wine when I reheat it for lunch and that seems to pull it together. The chili needs no enhancement, though we did heretically add cauliflower to it. (I like having vegetables in with the main dish and proposed that as a non-starchy veggie since the soup had starches in it, and it's easier to just cook it up in the chili rather than do it on the side.) The cauliflower works surprisingly well.
I've also been messing around with eggs; I am trying to figure out how to soft-boil an egg in the thermos while I go on a walk. That probably sounds a little crazy, but it'd be a pretty low-fuss way to get breakfast: pour hot water over the egg in the thermos, go on walk, return, eat perfectly cooked egg... well... not so perfectly cooked as I'm still seeking the right starting temperature for the water. So far I have gotten pretty-much-raw (which I just fried up) and an egg about halfway between hard-boiled and soft-boiled. Eventually I'll figure out the temperature for the Goldilocks egg. (What I likely want is for it to end up at 63C but I have to calibrate it for the efficiency of my thermos plus the thermal hit I get by just taking the egg out of the fridge.) This is maybe a lot of work for what is supposed to be not a lot of work, but really it hasn't been; I've just been dropping eggs into the thermos, adding water, taking the temperature, and going for a walk. I've also tried out the rice cooker method of making onsen tamago, but that works less well for breakfast because I haven't figured out how to use the rice cooker timer and even if I had, I don't eat grains very often so it's not like the rice cooker gets used that much.
There's also an interesting possible side trip of hot cereal in the thermos, where you can throw boiling water in and let it sit. This supposedly works for steel cut oats (but it takes 1.5 hours) so it might work just as well for fast cooking hot cereals like rice or quinoa flakes at shorter times.
This week we decided to try out the Staff's rotisserie chicken, since they don't put anything on it I can't eat. We had a lot of arugula lying around and some eggplants and potatoes so we made arugula walnut pesto and roasted the veggies and tossed the roasted veggies together with the pesto and chicken. (Okay this is for definitions of 'we' that mean 'Brad' -- he did almost all of the cooking this weekend because I was mostly too exhausted to do anything.) There was also a waldorf salad made with celeriac, Fuyu persimmon, Asian pear, and walnuts, served on romaine and/or spinach, and a shiitake mushroom soup that was really nice even though it spoiled our plans to use up frozen soup. (I'd ordered a pound of shiitake mushrooms last week thinking they'd go into the main dish, but they didn't really fit.) We also had a lot of figs and cayenne peppers and made tabasco sauce (which came out too vinegary; I reduced it and it is better but now tastes too cooked) and brandied figs. Also preserved lemons. And pickled shisito peppers. And chicken stock. Phew! Basically a whole bunch of 'this is the last week of X' stacked up and we wanted to get it done by the end of the weekend.
We had a whole bunch of extra celeriac that didn't go into the salad so rather than make another salad from it I mixed it up with an onion, some cannellini beans, chicken stock and some remnant daikon to make a sort of bean and celery root dish that I've been eating for breakfast.
Today I actually made it out to the farmers market! I ordered a case of Dirty Girl tomatoes, to be delivered next week, and got some fruit and veggies. Also someone was selling perfectly RIPE Hachiya persimmons, so I got one and devoured it on the spot. I should have gotten some more to eat tomorrow... there's no way they'd last past that. I hope they sold them all. Also there were pears so I got a ton; any that we don't eat out of hand can be frozen or made into sauce. Astonishingly there were also raspberries. Raspberries in November? All righty then. And tomatoes and peppers are still going....