The Knee That Went Bad and Easy Black Bean Soup (A New-to-Me Recipe)

That Person With the Infected Knee Replacement has kept me super busy lately, so I've been semi-absent from this blog.  After several months of being hooked up to a wound vac, and the knee becoming more and more painful, the decision was made:  the replacement would have to come out.  So a couple of weeks ago, the surgeon removed the old prosthesis and put in a concrete spacer.

Yes, that's what I said - CONCRETE.

This spacer is impregnated with antimicrobial stuff to fight what's left of the "indolent" infection.  (Indolent:  sounds like lazy bacteria!)  It also has no joint, so it doesn't act like a "real" knee replacement.  It squeaks and creaks and pops (sometimes REALLY loud).  It's not cemented in, so it moves around some.  You should see the kneecap travel when it pops.  Eeeeeewww!

The spacer is painful, and That Person can't put much weight on it, so a full-leg brace and a walker are required for trips down the hall.  Going upstairs is doable, but coming back down is a real issue, so That Person sleeps, eats, and does exercises in the living room recliner.  I do a lot of fetch-and-carry work.

So I'm back into full-time caregiving mode.  Back to giving intravenous medicine again, this time twice a day instead of once, and it takes nearly two hours each time to administer instead of fifteen minutes.

But lucky you!  I'm back, yet AGAIN, and with another recipe.

I opened The Magic Box and found a package of chorizo sausage.  What to do with it?  In my copy of The America's Test Kitchen Quick Family Cookbook (the one with the orange cover) I found a recipe for Easy Black Bean Soup.  I make a lot of soups because I like them, they're easy to make, and the leftovers heat up well.  Remember, I'm all about leftovers - make once, eat twice (or more).  Good for the current meal prep trend, too.

Although I thought it was really good, I'm sorry to say this soup was NOT a hit with the rest of the household.  I'll admit it is not the prettiest dish to look at.  Not much color.  Well, black beans - duh!  Anyway, if you like beans and sausage, you'll probably like this one!

You can see there's not a lot of color
here, other than the red bell peppers.

EASY BLACK BEAN SOUP

1 T canola oil
1 onion, chopped
2 red bell peppers, stemmed, seeded, and chopped
6 garlic cloves, minced
6 oz cooked chorizo sausage, halved lengthwise and sliced 1/4" thick
4 15-oz cans black beans, rinsed and drained
2 15-oz cans chicken broth
1 T fresh minced oregano (or 1 t dried)
1/2 t ground cumin
1/2 t chili powder
salt and pepper to taste
hot sauce to taste
1/2 c minced fresh cilantro

In a 4-quart dutch oven, combine the oil, onion, bell peppers, garlic, and chorizo and cook over medium-high heat until the vegetables are softened and lightly browned, about 5-7 minutes.  Add the remaining ingredients except the cilantro.  Bring to a boil, then turn down the heat and simmer 20-30 minutes.  Season to taste and serve.

Books I Read in 2019

It's early 2020 (not as early as I would prefer!) and time to look back at last year's reading accomplishments.

My goal this past year was again 100 books, and I did NOT even get close!  I read 59 books.  Again, I got irritated by several books - a lot more than last year (poor choices on my part, or misleading synopses, perhaps), and so quit reading them before I got all the way through, but I finished most of them.:

So here's the overview of my reading this year, plus some recommendations - both books to read and books to avoid, just like last year.

Memoirs were again a big part of my reading this past year - sixteen!  Last year, I read seventeen, but read twice as many books, so the percentage of memoirs this year has nearly doubled!  Recommendations:  Mr. Ding's Chicken Feet:  On a Slow Boat from Shanghai to Texas; Cleo:  How an Uppity Cat Helped Heal a Family (make sure you have a couple of skids of tissues for this one); The Old Ways:  A Journey on Foot; Thunder Dog:  The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust at Ground Zero; and Don't Sing at the Table:  Life Lessons from My Grandmothers.  Memoirs to avoid at all costs:  Not Taco Bell Material (I got really tired of Adam Corolla); Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube:  Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North (I couldn't even make it through the first few pages - life is too short to spend on something like this); and Midnight Chicken:  & Other Recipes Worth Living For (not terrible, but not at all what I expected - an okay premise - cooking saved her sanity - but not well executed).

Shockingly, NO books on religion or kids' books this year!  I wonder why that is?  Have to cogitate on that.

As usual, lots of cozy mysteries.  I read a TON of cozies from M. C. Beaton and Marion Chesney (they're the same person!) - not great literature, but fun to read and a little addictive.  I'm still reading her stuff, especially the Agatha Raisin series.  The main character is kind of a train wreck, but I just can't quit!  I want to know what's next.

I got on a knitting kick later in the year, so there were several books, both fiction and non-fiction, with knitting/wool themes.  Recommendations:  The Sweetgum Knit Lit Society and At Knit's End: Meditations for Women Who Knit Too Much (not as serious as it sounds - some of the entries were hilarious!).   To avoid:  Craft Activism:  People, Ideas, and Projects from the New Community of Handmade and How You Can Join In (how to make political and social statements with handmade items and to "bring awareness" to issues, but NOT how to actually HELP anybody as you might by making hats, gloves, and scarves for the homeless - pompous and self-congratulatory - UGH).

I read several non-fiction/history books.  Recommendations:  A Hobbit, a Wardrobe, and a Great War (how WWI influenced the work of J.R.R. Tolkein and C.S. Lewis); The Almost Nearly Perfect People:  Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia (the title says it all); The Indifferent Stars Above:  The Harrowing Saga of a Donner Party Bride (WOW);  Ravensbruck:  Life and Death in Hitler's Concentration Camp for Women; The Last Jew of Treblinka; and The Case for Nationalism:  How It Made Us Powerful, United, and Free (EXCELLENT!).  To avoid:  We Two:  Victoria and Albert:  Rulers, Partners, Rivals (this got really repetitious - okay, we get it - Albert was smarter than Victoria, and actually made most of the political decisions of her reign after they were married - geezo Pete).  

Again, there were some surprises, both pleasant and unpleasant.  First the bad.  The Curse of the Bridal Chamber is a mystery - both its plot and how it ever got published.  UGH.  Two spunky old ladies, their gay nephew and his partner, and a bulldog, set at a mermaid convention in Florida.  Sounds like fun, but...!  As I said in my Goodreads review, "the characters were all annoying and did illogical things. The dog was a prop, and contributed nothing to the story."  Just pitiable.  And I did read the whole thing.  My mistake.  I kept thinking it would improve.  Alas, no.

Gingerbread, by Helen Oyeyem.  What can I say?  Weird.  Just.  Too.  Weird.  A total waste of time, although there were plenty of fabulous reviews.  

Now for the good.  Several novels:  The Colors of All the Cattle (The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series - always a good choice!); Leopard at the Door; and A Column of Fire (Ken Follett - great as always).  And a collection of essays and articles, Things That Matter:  Three Decades of Passions, Passtimes, and Politics, by Charles Krauthammer.  Great writing.  Good humor and baseball.  Intelligent, insightful, and logical political analysis.  I actually got this as an audiobook from the library, and more than half was read by the author himself.  I thoroughly enjoyed them all.  Krauthammer died last June.  A great loss.

If you want to see the complete list of the books I read this year, click here.

98.6 Isn't Normal Any More (This Week's Oddity)

Big medical news, folks - 98.6 isn't normal.  Well, it hasn't been MY normal for a long, LONG time!  My personal normal hovers around 97.1, so when I go to the doctor and they say my temperature is "normal," I tell them I have a 1.5-degree fever.  I usually get odd looks. 

Yes, I know.  It's not just my temperature that makes people look at me strangely.

Anyway, a new study of body temperature records reveals the temperature of the average American man has dropped 0.6 degrees centigrade (a little less than 1.1 degrees Fahrenheit) since 1860.  Earlier studies had already recognized the "new normal," blaming the difference on faulty thermometers.  But more recent research concludes the original number, established in 1850, was correct, and American body temperature has gradually dropped over a span of 150 years.

The reason for the drop?  Maybe it comes from lower "overall levels of inflammation" (that oh so trendy bugbear of health), or because of antibiotics, vaccines, improved food and water quality, and central heating and air conditioning.  Here's the article I saw, published last month.

Fascinating! 

Ants on Stilts (This Week's Oddity)

Putting ants on stilts may prove they count their steps to find the way home.  

I just read a blurb about this in the past week, but when I did an internet search, I found the original study was performed in 2006 - fourteen long years ago!  This particular experiment was designed to determine whether ants count their steps.  Apparently, they do.

The researchers "made modifications" to desert ants to test the idea.  They set up an ant nest, let 25 ants take a 10-meter walk from home, then gathered them up.  In one group, the researchers glued tiny stilts to the ants' legs (awkward!).  In another group, they CLIPPED the ants' legs to make them shorter (poor ants!!!).  The control group's legs were left alone (whew!).

They gave each ant a tiny bit of food and set it free.  The ants headed for "home."  The hypothesis was if the ants do indeed count their steps, the "modified" ants wouldn't be able to find home.  The stilted ants would overshoot the mark, and the "stumpy" (their descriptor) ants would fall short.

The hypothesis was proved!  Neither group of "modified" ants made it home.  The ants on stilts went about 5 meters too far, and the "stumpy" ants stopped about 5 meters short.  The control ants had no problem finding their way back.

They then let the "modified" ants take another walk, and they had no problem returning home.  

Interesting, but oh, the poor ants - especially the "stumpies!"

Anyway, you can read more about it here.