Help wanted (Score so far related)

[Physics Guy]

"Cooking wine" is more a legal category than a culinary one, I believe. If you add enough salt and preservatives to cheap wine to make sure no-one will ever want to just drink it, you can sell it in supermarkets in the US. So I think that if a recipe calls for wine, you should be able to use any wine, though it's a shame to cook really good wine, because a lot of flavor is lost. If your recipe was expecting heavily salted American cooking wine, maybe you can just add extra salt?

From learning to make vodka sauce for pasta, I learned that if a recipe calls for wine, the alcohol itself is probably an active ingredient, not because you're trying to intoxicate diners, but as a solvent or emulsifier or something. So you probably can't just substitute grape juice; you might be able to substitute vodka.

And I used to think that a bit of simmering got rid of all alcohol, but I've learned it's not true. Cooking removes some alcohol, but you have to simmer something absolutely to death to get rid of all the alcohol, so if you're cooking for people who don't want any alcohol, you shouldn't be putting in any wine.

[IWMP]

Hey. sorry. I became paranoid that I wasn't being helpful. I have this thing where I want to try to fix things but know I can't.

Fingers crossed for more good days.

I think how things sound for you would fit in the need for low fodmap diet. And if it works then why not? I think you could make your own garlic infused oil.

<3

Nicky! I just looked up how to make garlic infused olive oil and found this!!

https://www.fodmapeveryday.com/recipes/ ... fused-oil/

Here's the intro to the article with the recipe.


How To Make Low FODMAP Garlic-Infused Oil
A life without garlic would be a less flavorful life, but have no fear. Low FODMAP Garlic-Infused Oil is not only flavorful, it is even allowed during the Elimination Phase of the low FODMAP diet and our recipe is completely compliant with the most up-to-date Monash University science in regards to FODMAPs.

(Cue the trumpets playing and angels singing).

Trumpets and angels for sure!! Thank you for saying to make it! See how I can't think sometimes when I get distracted by symptoms? I'm going to try that! Thank you again!! <3 <3 <3

<3 hope it works out nice and your tummy can tolerate it.

[IWMP]

"Cooking wine" is more a legal category than a culinary one, I believe. If you add enough salt and preservatives to cheap wine to make sure no-one will ever want to just drink it, you can sell it in supermarkets in the US. So I think that if a recipe calls for wine, you should be able to use any wine, though it's a shame to cook really good wine, because a lot of flavor is lost. If your recipe was expecting heavily salted American cooking wine, maybe you can just add extra salt?

From learning to make vodka sauce for pasta, I learned that if a recipe calls for wine, the alcohol itself is probably an active ingredient, not because you're trying to intoxicate diners, but as a solvent or emulsifier or something. So you probably can't just substitute grape juice; you might be able to substitute vodka.

And I used to think that a bit of simmering got rid of all alcohol, but I've learned it's not true. Cooking removes some alcohol, but you have to simmer something absolutely to death to get rid of all the alcohol, so if you're cooking for people who don't want any alcohol, you shouldn't be putting in any wine.

I don't use wine in anything I make that you expect wine to be in. Cornflour is a good thickener, not sure where it sits on the fodmap plan. I thicken sauces by blending veg that I put in. Like if I'm making meatballs, I will blend onion, red peppers and courgette, add tomato puree and passatta, herbs and salt, garlic, and use that as the base. I'll also add some chopped veg, (the same ones) just to jazz it up a bit. With beef stew, I use Oxo cubes and then coming up to the end of cooking I add gravy granules which I believe contains cornflour or some type of thickener but I don't think that would be low fodmap.

[Jersey Girl]

The wine...it's beef stew and also beef pot roast. Pretty sure the wine is there to tenderize the meat in the slow cooker. I used to use a tablespoon of vinegar to do the same thing. I suppose I could substitute that for the wine and just give it a go.

Grilled chicken is getting old, my people.

I've been thinking about just making up a batch of the homemade pasta sauce I used to make all the time, throw it on some pasta and see how it goes. What's the worst that could happen? My heart flips out and I end up in the ER? On...propofol?

I'm not seeing a downside.

[Jersey Girl]

Remember the disaster we had with me going to the ER in the dead of night, morphine, and the next day going to the ortho to find out the Boy actually had a fractured ankle? Leaving in a cast and all?

Today was cast off day! Yay! Xray showed good healing!

He drove to the appointment with his right foot in a cast and drove home with it in a boot. He's been driving in the cast almost the whole time. The man is the same person he was at age 19. I'll just leave it at that.

One good thing: On the way home we stopped by Target to pick up an oline order I placed. I got (I'm not bragging here, this is gratitude.) a navy blue bath mat so I can change up one of our bathrooms since it's been the same for 4 years or more now, 3 floral stems, and I went by the Dollar Spot and I got two travel size hair styling tools. A small flat iron and a crimper for 5$ each! Pink and mint green. So cute! <3

Nicky the Dollar Spot is a couple of small rows of items that are 1-5$ USD like a Pound Shop. There might be 10$ items as well. Not sure. Anyway they have things for children, decorating, tiny candles, organizer bins, all kinds of small things there. You can see it on youtube.

It was SO nice to pick up some cheery things today!

Another good thing: Our neighbor has been doing snow removal for us since it snowed here. He's shoveled our sidewalks, deck, and plowed the driveway for us! I did have to do some shoveling myself here and there, but what a relief to have help!

Pretty sure that was 3 good things today!

[Jersey Girl]

Moving this forward since it's starting to get buried in the thread. Will fill in weight checks and make notes if I need to.

Regrouping on the daily weight checks. The Jan 3rd check is wrong. When I stepped on the scale today it threw an error code. Replaced the batteries and now I'm right in the ballpark of gaining. I'm going to keep this list rolling forward so when I go on the 28th I've got it documented. Going to put a previous weight check from the last follow up and star weight checks on the doctor's scale. Don't let it scare you, folks. I dashed out of the house on basically no breakfast and cup of tea, no water.

Dec 27: 78*
Jan 2: 86
Jan 3: 82 (this is probably wrong)
Jan 4: 85.4
Jan 5: 84
Jan 6: 84.5
Jan 7: 83.4
Jan 8: Skip*
Jan 9: 84.8
Jan10: 85.4
Jan11: 84.0
Jan12:
Jan13: 82.2*
Jan14:
Jan15:
Jan16:
Jan17:
Jan18:
Jan19:
Jan20:
Jan21:
Jan22:
Jan23:
Jan24:
Jan25:
Jan26:
Jan27:
Jan28: Appointment

Notes:

Jan 8 -Carrots want me dead. Stabbing pain mid-abdomen for hours. Too much fiber? Second try at reintroduction.
Jan 13- 2 meals evening symptoms

[Physics Guy]

Weighing daily but only caring about the average over the past seven days is probably worthwhile for gaining weight as well as losing. Weight can go up and down from day to day for temporary reasons, like drinking a glass of water. The averaging tends to smooth out those random ups and downs, and give a better sense of the underlying trend.

Noting a suspect measurement as you have done (“probably wrong”) is good scientific practice. You don’t erase the data, but you can and should flag it like that.

[Jersey Girl]

Weighing daily but only caring about the average over the past seven days is probably worthwhile for gaining weight as well as losing. Weight can go up and down from day to day for temporary reasons, like drinking a glass of water. The averaging tends to smooth out those random ups and downs, and give a better sense of the underlying trend.

Noting a suspect measurement as you have done (“probably wrong”) is good scientific practice. You don’t erase the data, but you can and should flag it like that.

Thanks for the feedback, PG. I wouldn't normally recommend doing daily weight checks but it seemed like a good idea to identify trends given the circumstances. Thanks for the information on flagging a suspect reading on the scale being good practice. That happened at least once before when the batteries needed to be changed. It made sense to me to document it as an anomaly.

It does look like there's a slight uptick in weight but I don't think it's been long enough to really determine that as a trend.

[IWMP]

Weighing daily but only caring about the average over the past seven days is probably worthwhile for gaining weight as well as losing. Weight can go up and down from day to day for temporary reasons, like drinking a glass of water. The averaging tends to smooth out those random ups and downs, and give a better sense of the underlying trend.

Noting a suspect measurement as you have done (“probably wrong”) is good scientific practice. You don’t erase the data, but you can and should flag it like that.

Thanks for the feedback, PG. I wouldn't normally recommend doing daily weight checks but it seemed like a good idea to identify trends given the circumstances. Thanks for the information on flagging a suspect reading on the scale being good practice. That happened at least once before when the batteries needed to be changed. It made sense to me to document it as an anomaly.

It does look like there's a slight uptick in weight but I don't think it's been long enough to really determine that as a trend.

<3

[IWMP]

Don't know if this would work but when we slow cook ham (gammon joint), we often cook it in cola which breaks down the stingy bits in between the tissue. Maybe you could try orange fizzy drink for beef like tango or Fanta. I'm sure orange and beef is a good combo.
(When we do this with cola, we only put ham and Coca-Cola in the slow cooker with the ham covered with cola (also doesn't taste as nice with cheap cola).

It's nice going in the "cheaper" shops and finding little niknaks. I quite like the middle aisle of Aldi(you probably have one, a cheaper supermarket but has interesting things in the middle) it changes often so it's like oooh I wonder what they have this time. Not that I buy much of it, I just like looking. I love the Range but don't go often because it's out the way but it's like going on an adventure lol.

It sounds like things are going well, glad lé foot is doing well. Did you have a nice holiday season?