We’re Talking Turkey!

So last weekend was Thanksgiving for us Canadians, and I hosted my annual indulgence of all things turkey. Thanksgiving dinner involved a boneless, turkey breast roast courtesy of my friendly butcher, stuffing, roast potatoes, gravy, steamed carrots and green beans, roasted butternut squash, an apple cake with maple glaze and more terrible jokes than I could count out of my 7 ½ year old niece who decided she needed to be the entertainment for the evening. Nom!

Fortunately, most things on the menu already fit with the whole low-residue thing (one of the advantages of me doing the cooking!), so the only thing I really had to adapt was my stuffing reciepe. I made everyone else the usual kind, and I made myself a low-residue version (*sobs*).

I’m not a fan of the traditional sage and onion stuffing balls favoured in the UK, I much prefer my mom’s recipe, and seeing as there is rarely any left at the end of the meal, I think everyone else does too!

This stuffing works well with chicken too. I never stuff the bird; I cook the stuffing separately so that I don’t need to worry about the possibility of food poisoning from it (as often happens at this time of year) and it allows me to cater better for special diets.

I tend to save the ends of loaves of bread in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and toss them in the freezer. When I’m ready to make the stuffing (which can be done the day before), I thaw and then tear up the bread into small chunks. I used the equivalent of about 4 slices of bread for this. I spread it out on a baking sheet, and pop it in the oven at 180C/350F for 10-15 minutes, giving it a good stir half way through.

Once the bread is dried out (but not overly toasted), I take it out of the oven and let it cool.

For my normal stuffing, I chop up half an onion and two sticks of celery into small pieces and add this to the bread.

For those of us doing low-residue, I substituted 1 tsp of celery salt and ½ tbsp of onion powder.

I then melted 1/4 cup of margarine (use butter if you are using dairy) and poured that over the bread, mixing well. Then I added the following -

    ½ tsp parsley
    ½ tsp of sage
    ½ tsp of thyme
    ½ tsp of rosemary (yes, I am also humming Scarborough Fair)
    1/4 tsp of salt (I leave this out of the low-residue version because of the celery salt)
    1/4 tsp of fresh ground pepper

I give that all a good mix. Then I add ½ cup of chicken stock to the mix, and stir it until everything is well moistened. If you are doing dairy, this is particularly scrumcious if you use ½ of evaporated milk instead of the chicken stock.

Then I transfer everything to a greased baking dish, and cook it in the oven for about 45 minutes (about 30 if you are only using a very small amount).

When done, serve with your bird for a tasty side dish!

What a Pain!

One of the joys of still having your ovaries after a hysterectomy is that you still get 'phantom periods'. Compared to life pre-hysterectomy, these 'phantoms' are pretty manageable, but they are still rather unpleasant. And they can bloody hurt. I was woken out of a dead sleep by the pain a few nights ago, and considering how much a good night's sleep is a luxury for me, I'm really rather resentful of my ovaries for doing that to me.

Pre-hyst, I lived with chronic pain for years. I was never really not in pain for about 5 years before I had the op; even when I didn't have my period, I had a constant low-grade pain in my pelvis. And when I had my period, it was agonising.

The problem with pain is that the experience is subjective. One person's pain is not another's, and there are different types of pain, which feel totally different, but could have the same levels of intensity. Which makes it very hard to assess or measure. Failing an objective measure, doctors often use a 1-10 pain scale like this.



The problem these pain scales is that this is still pretty subjective. One person's 2 is another's 7. Before my hysterectomy, every day was at least a 2. Periods varied between a 4 and an 8. I always held back on saying it was ever a10 because I'm the kind of person who always thinks things can get worse. I have experienced a 10; that was after my op when the hospital cocked up my pain management. I have no words to describe that experience, but I still remain ever in debt to that student nurse who realised something was terribly wrong and did something. When I was in the midst of the Crohn's flare, the gastro clinic kept asking me if I was in pain. Yes, I hurt, but compared to life pre-hyst, it was rather manageable. Frankly, the problems I was having with my back at the beginning of year hurt a hell of a lot more than my abdomen.

Of course, the problem with all of this subjectiveness is that there is no objective measure of pain. Which means that lots of people who are in pain aren't believed. Like most women with endometriosis/adenomyosis, I lost track of the number of times I was told my pain was imagined, that I was attention seeking or that I was nuts. And just about anyone with a chronic pain problem has had the same experience.

So why am I wittering about this? Because I read a really interesting article about the potential use of brain scans as an objective way to measure pain. It has some interesting potential, but is very controversial. It's worth the read.
http://www.vox.com/2014/10/15/6895171/how-doctors-measure-pain-brain-scan-fmri