Monday's Dinner

House-Smoked Salmon!! I saw a show called Chuck's Day Off where he smoked salmon using a wok, wood chips, water and a bamboo steama. Decided to try it for myself. I thought it was really good...but I think I used too much water so there wasn't as much smokey flavor as I'd wanted.

Here's what the parts look like:



Here is is smoking:



I took a picture of the finished product, but it was all blurry. Besides, it looked like a regular old piece of salmon.

Say, how about an episode of KEEPING UP WITH THE KECKY'S! You may recall last week I ended up having an Ocular Migraine. Poppy thought it a fine idea for us to make appointments to have physicals. Those are tomorrow. But first, we needed to have our lab work done. We did that today. Poppy likes it when we do our doctor's appointments together. We call ourselves "Kaiser Buddies."

Lucky me, I take after my Grandma and I have what they call "Rolling Veins". They tend to roll from side to side so it's like a hunt-n-peck game trying to find them, not to mention they are tiny. They always use a pediatric needle on me. If they still don't have any luck, they'll move on to my hand. Oh, and I've been known to try to pass out if I detect they're not catching the elusive vein. Today was no different. I warned the nice Phlebotomist about my hiding veins. But they are a confident group of people and like a challange so they always try to catch the little buggers. Some have success, some do not; as was the case with this morning's draining.



First the nice Phlebotomist tried my right arm. Couldn't feel a thing. Then moved to my left arm (I don't mind saying while writing this, my knees are getting weak) and to her surprise, she felt what she thought was a viable vein. I told her she best hurry before it runs away...sure enough, she got the needle in and, poof! Vein-Be-Gone. Then just for fun, she tried to catch it by rotating the needle around. This is usually the point where I'll start with the sweating. She pulled the needle out and said "I should have listened to you." So she went for my hand. Getting the life juice from my hand is really easy cause my veins stick out, only thing about that is it's about 10 times more painful.

So by the time she got the needle out of my arm, I was indeed, sweating a river and seeing spots before my eyes. I'm light headed. She asks me if I want some juice. I say yes. Warm apple juice. Ick. Now I still have to go wee wee in a cup so I'm thinking I'd much rather be sitting on the toilet in private if I'm going to pass out. So I make my way to the sanctuary of the bathroom. I take care of business and by that time, the sweats have passed and I'm good to go...although, I'm drenched.

I go find Poppy in the waiting room. She's still holding her bag with the wee wee cup in it. Unfortunately, Poppy can't pee on demand so she's got to do this at a time when she's more relaxed. I know, we truly are perfect for each other! I show her my bandages and she wonders what happened. I have her feel my back and tell her what happened. Moral to the story...Kaiser Buddies are good!!

Bye bye.