Making almond butter

You will need approximately 10oz. of raw almonds, and a bit less salt, appoximately 1 teaspoon. Plus you’ll need 1/4 cup of oil, you can use peanut, soybean or even olive if you want that flavor.

Dump it all in a food processor and pulse until it reaches texture you’d like. Simple – delicious too. It’s amazing.

One thing I did discover – if you want a fine grind be prepared to process it for some time on the order of 20 minutes. Someone stopped me because he detected a burning smell from the food processor.

I put some on a celery stalk – it’s awesome. Didn’t add any sweetener to it but the savoriness of it is what I like most.

In other news, packing the house up for the big move. Dear non existent deity – 12+ years in one place and you really do have a lot of stuff to pack. The bookshelves alone are 20 boxes.

I know, we are only hours away from the U.S. Holiday of Thanksgiving. It’s funny – as a member of Providence Emergency Management Agency (PEMA) I correctly answered a question regarding who established the day as our day of Thanksgiving. Hint – President Abraham Lincoln.

Anyhow the menu for the upcoming day:

Roasted turkey, on bed of carrot, celery and onion. It’s a 12lb bird. On the small side because as I’ve previously posted somewhere there are only so many things you can do with turkey tetrazini.

Mashed cauliflower

Broccoli casserole with cheese

Bacon wrapped fresh steamed green beans

And then Goat Cheese Puffs. It’s that universal dough from Around My French Table with a mixture of goat and cream cheese stuffed in it. Less than 3g of carbs per puff. Not bad.

This time I glazed the Pate au choufe. Here’s what they look like chilling in the toaster oven and you’ll note they’re pretty uniform in size. Used a 1 tablespoon ice cream scoop:

And here’s one that fell undersize that became fodder for me to test quality. Delicious.

You’ll note no stuffing, no mashed potatoes. Ah well – the carbohydrate load on those is pretty high so they got nixed. But all in all I think a fairly good menu for the day. For just the two of us it’s not bad.

From “I will fear no evil”

“The lawyer looked sheepish. “Well…yes. But I had the best cook in Safe Harbor enclave. If I had fired her, I might have wound up with one just as expensive-who put sugar in gravy.”

Indeed – never put sugar in gravy. Or sauce for that matter. It’s a mortal sin in Italian-American households.

“It’s just that I have never been able to see life as anything but a vast complicated practical joke, and it’s better to laugh than cry.”

Indeed, I follow this particular quote to the letter. I always tell people the same, I’d prefer to laugh rather than cry.
And from the book Friday:

“Good. They need sleep. Both of them are worriers; I am not. I decided that there was no point in attending Armageddon with my eyes bloodshot, so I came in here. You were asleep, I think.”

Yep – as I say it, don’t bother holding the end of creation or Armageddon before I’ve had my morning coffee/tea/etc.

This one from To Sail Beyond the Sunset – in fact my very first cat got his name from this book:

Random Numbers may have been the silliest cat I’ve ever lived with – although all cats are sui generis, and Pixel has his supporters for the title of funniest cat, unlimited, all times, all universes.

And this is how the cat Random Numbers got it’s name:
`That kitten doesn’t have a brain; he just has a skull full of random numbers, and whenever he bangs his head into a chair or ricochets off a wall, it shakes up the random numbers and causes him to do something else.’

“No subject matter? That’s right; no subject matter whatever – just coloured water with artificial sweetening. `Theo-‘ = `God’ and `-logy’ = word(s), i.e., any word ending in `-ology’ means `talk about’ or ‘discussion of’ or ‘words concerning’ or `study of’ a subject named in the first part of the word, whether it is ‘hippology’, or ‘astrology’, or `proctology’, or `eschatology’, or `scatology’, or something else”

And this – I’ve long known since my high school days that ology indicates the discussion of, study of etc.

“God’, or `god’, or ‘gods’ – have you ever seen ‘God’? If so, where and when, how tall was She and what did She weigh? What was Her skin colour? Did She have a belly button and, if so, why? Did She have breasts? For what purpose? How about organs of reproduction and of excretion – did She or didn’t She?”

And this one – why would a god have nipples or genitalia? In the images I’ve seen the god character has nips and likely other genitalia.

You know, when I think about it I really have had a charmed life to some degree.

I got to see a whole bunch of music acts, comedians, plays, monlogues etc. That last by the way – the boy who gave it was completely naked and proud. If you know what I mean. I attempted the Japanese that while nakedness is noticed, it is never stared at.

But in many respects it saddens me – I believe we no long have comics that are edgy, and the music acts whilst some are still touring some have gone to the ethereal plane never to return. We’ve seen Roy Ayers, Earth Wind & Fire, George Clinton and P-Funk. In the case of Earth Wind & Fire a few members are no longer with us.

Hell I saw Sam Kinison live. He was a funny one. Plus Judy Tanuta back in the day. How much better could it get?

The plays – they’ve been good, the demon in the Screwtape Letters was awesome. Plus TEDx talks that have been thought provoking, and in earlier days I’ve been to talks by the son of Nikita Kruschev, and just experienced the hell out of what is to offer in my little burg.

But I can see the TEDx stuff suffering the law of diminished returns.

Plus there’s seeing the local philharmoic and being overcome by the power of the music. Really good stuff.

And I love music. Even to the point there’s a playlist of Dead Artists in my music player these days.
And the list goes on and on.

I’ve long had a pulse oximeter. Kind of handy for figuring out your pulse rate and O2 saturation.

This is relevant to this story because we’ve recently had someones blood pressure go a little high and hypertensive. Which is odd to us because during the process of getting blood sugar under control it meant no external sweeteners and low to no carbs that we’re conscious of from day to day. The result is someone has lost 30lbs and I’ve lost quite a bit too. Which is why it’s puzzling his bp would be elevated.

But I know and have had confirmed by certain medical people that stress, anxiety, agitation, dehydration etc. can drive blood pressure up.

Anyhow I picked up an inexpensive manual BP kit at Walgreens. The issue is that the stethoscope that is built into the cuff – it sucks. Could not for the life of me pick up the pulse from someones arm. So no way to detect cessation and resumption of pulse.

The interesting part I could clearly see the brachial artery pulsing on his arm. But the blasted cuff covers the spot where I could see it.

So with the stethoscope useless and uncomfortable I thought – the pulse oximeter will show when the blood stops pumping. So used that instead and clear as a bell – when the pulse stopped the display of it froze. Then released and when pulse resumed we got the diastolic number.

As I’ve said before and will say again, necessity is the mother of invention. And there’s more than one way to skin a cat.

Roughly a decade ago I had the inner ear issues. One thing that emerged was my blood pressure was normal 120/80. That caused a great deal of consternation among the medical people. They couldn’t grasp how my BP was normal with the manifestation of the ear problem.

Recently we were seeing the Nurse Practitioner for someones BP issue. And she offered to check my blood pressure. 122/80. And I learned through her – it’s not so much the systolic but the diastolic number. But maybe I don’t know enough – I mean I know what congestive heart failure is – it’s the low pressure side or right side of the hear going slightly overboard pressure wise. But I don’t have any risk factors for that. I don’t smoke, don’t drink a whole lot of alcohol.

So I must be doing something right even though I consume a mountain of salt. But in fact I limit the carb intake – still eat fruits and vegetables and even chicken, fish, pork and rarely beef. In fact my resting heart rate is between 60 and 65 bpm. Pulse 02 is good too 98-100. Maybe it’s the fact that I do quite a bit of walking around, or maybe that I’m not all that easy to make me jump into anxiety. I told someone after two and a half decades in the Information Technology sphere two things happened. The first is  meditation I learned in my Catholic high school and the ability to say no have helped me beyond what I would have thought.

Who knew just limiting the sugar intake and carbs would do so much. That said I did make the Chouf a Pate with cheese. Total carbs in that are around 3 grams. All the vids and research says 50 grams a day is max you should take in.

And I don’t limit the fat content either. I’m down to my lowest weight in years.

This recipe is a derivative of the Gugeres – dough is the same less the cheese added directly to the dough.

For a reminds, 1/2c of milk, 1/2c of water, one stick of unsalted butter cut into four pieces. And instead of adding five eggs, only four are used. Same process though – cook the pate and then into the mixing bowl and paddle in egg at a time until they’re throroughly incorporated. Baked in a preheated oven of 425F and down to 375F to bake. Takes about 25 minutes, rotating the pan half way.

Now the cheese filling. It’s 6oz. of goat cheese, 6oz. cream cheese and 6 tablespoons of heavy cream. A little salt and pepper goes in there too. I was supposed to use herbed goat cheese but alas, just plain old in stock. But it’s delicious.

Now I was supposed to get herbed goat cheese but no such thing exists in the supermarket near me. I’m surprised they have a few items there like goat cheese, peppermint tea etc. But I digress.

Once the Chouf a Pate biscuits cool off – slice them in half and lay in the cheese mixture. I used a zip lock bag with the corner cut off to pipe the cheese into them. I know, I know I really should get the professional cake decorating kit but why – plastic bags are cheap and necessity is the mother of invention.

Now I could have added sugar to the biscuits but that ingredient is pretty much verboten in this house.

But even without the sugar they’re tasty as all hell. They store in the fridge because of the cheese products. But they were a hit. Just warm them – zap them for 10 to 15 seconds in the microwave depending on how powerful yours is. I’ve got a full 1.2kW model so 7-10 seconds gets the biscuit warm and the cheese to de-solidify.