Ten things I cannot do without

Try watching the Cooking Channel for 10 minutes without seeing repeated references to butter, cream, sugar or bacon. Forget Paula Deen. And her sons. Ditto the Neelys.
Since moving in with my mother, I have had to alter what I cook and bake to fit her dietary requirements. Everything needs to be not only sugar-free, it can be no more than around 3% fat. She has had pancreatitis five times, and we have almost lost her twice.
Mom can't have Nutrasweet and neither can I --- She went to a neurologist who thought she had a brain tumor until she stopped using so much aspartame. If someone slips me a diet drink with Nutrasweet, it makes my ears ring and I feel like I'm coming onto a hit of acid. I have been making do with agave syrup, Splenda, erythritol and xylitol.
Then there are the butter alternatives. I can't stand "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter." I reluctantly use Smart Squeeze. I used to buy chocolate, Nutella, brie and sour cream, plus croissants, kielbasa and pork spare ribs. No more.
Going shopping is now an exercise in label-reading. My mother was quite irked this week while at Trader Joe's to discover that the can of sardines she craved are verboten, even those packed in tomato sauce or spring water. We made do with two cans of smoked trout packed in oil and brine, which are 6%, okay for an occasional treat.
Today, I made pasta for Sunday dinner using Trader Joe's organic whole wheat rotini with tomato sauce, fresh basil and zucchini from our garden, sweet red pepper and rounds of Beeman's Old World Gourmet Sausage with smoked mozzarella, artichoke and garlic, which is only 5% fat. Topped with the 2% grated parmesan from Grocery Outlet, which is also where I found the sausage, it was a respectable dish of pasta.
For dessert, I made mixed fruit cobbler. Into a deep Pyrex baking dish, I sliced big black plums that were sweet but a bit hard, mixing them with an already cooked apple compote, a couple of spoons of no-sugar huckleberry preserves, cinnamon, nutmeg, agave syrup and a little of the commercial brown sugar/Splenda mixture, plus a sprinkle of tiny tapioca beads as thickener. I topped the fruit with a batter made with buttermilk, Eggbeaters, flour, agave syrup, Splenda, vanilla, baking soda and 1/2 tsp. non-aluminum baking powder, sprinkling the top with cinnamon and nutmeg.
Because the plums were a bit hard, I cooked the fruit mixture in the covered casserole dish in the microwave about 4 minutes, with 2 or 3 T. of juice to give it a start. Then I topped it with the batter and baked it at 325 degrees for about 40 minutes. It tastes satisyingly of summer.

I get tired of my own cooking sometimes, and I have the guilty pleasures of Chinese buffets or sushi bars to resort to when away from home for a few hours by myself.
Today, I vacillated over whether to drive into Vancouver for an oil change (and sushi!), but did the dutiful thing and stayed home to make Sunday dinner while Mom was at church.
Instead of Jiffy Lube, I climbed on the folding ladder, and added a little radiator fluid and a quart of high-mileage oil to my delapidated F-150, which is no doubt Clunker-worthy and really does need an oil change. It will have to wait until my next paycheck. Today is the last day for that controversial Clunker incentive program, but I am too proud, and I don't need another monthly payment. I think junking a working vehicle to make another car is just as damaging to the environment, if not more so.
I am doing my part by being less dependent on junk/convenience foods and buying or growing a much healthier diet. Two cylindrical purple eggplant are about three inches long now, with loads of beautiful purple blooms. I picked another zucchini and two tomatoes today. We will soon have quite a crop of heirloom and paste tomatoes in the planter boxes next to the house. There are about eight jars of sugar-free elderberry jelly and peach/pineapple, raspberry and blackberry jam on the shelf. With corn, peaches, plums and other produce from the local farmers market and fruit stands, we are living quite high on the (lowfat) hog this summer. Now if I could just slip away long enough to pick a few huckleberries...

The list of 10 things I cannot do without:
* low sodium chicken broth in cartons
* canola cooking spray
* La Baleine des salins du midi (coarse sea salt from France)
* organic blue agave syrup from Trader Joe's
* Laughing Cow light garlic & herb cheese wedges (for crackers and cheese midnight snacks)
* Fresh Finds chopped dehydrated garlic ($1 a jar at Big Lots)
* Chiquilin pimenton ahumado (smoked paprika from Spain)
* Orowheat multi-grain sandwich thins
* Dreyer's Slow-Churned No-Sugar vanilla ice cream with Splenda (5%)
* Trader Joe's Mixed Wild Mushroom Medley, an imported dried mix with porcini, shiitake, black and oyster mushrooms. The packets are quite reasonable at under $2 for 25 grams and the wild flavors are great in soup, in risotto, etc. There were none in the aisles for a couple of months because of a shipping snafu. I was persistent in my inquiries until they were at last in stock again. I also like packages of dried shiitake sliced mushrooms from Uwajimaya.

The heat from here

It's hot. I, the victim of two former heat strokes, took a picture of the bank thermometer registering 108. Things left in my pickup melted. The air conditioning at work is broken and the furnace comes on at inopportune times, such as today, Monday. My brain ceased working while trying to get the newspaper ready to go to the printers. The repairman finally came after a week of pleading with the landlord. The repairman told him the heat pump is not fixable and will cost $7,500 to replace. Meanwhile, I am being quite even-handed in a front page political story about the mayor's race, featuring our landlord as one of the two candidates.
Mom and I have been trying to deal with living in a mobile home without a cooling system. We have fans, but they only work when there is cooler air outside. Mom is 83 and diabetic, and she crashed and burned Friday night, becoming fairly incoherent with her blood sugar measuring 58. It's hard to eat the right things when it's hot. Instead of a nice salad with homegrown tomatoes and sliced chicken breast, we had to find her more substantial fare in a hurry, a peanut butter and honey sandwich to get through the crisis.
We went on expeditions to supposedly cooler places, only to find campers with attack dogs (Government Mineral Springs), and hordes of windsurfers, kiteboarders, swimmers, kayakers, jet-skiers and other recreationists on the Stevenson waterfront.
We finally found an oasis of sorts at Home Valley Park. Although it was still quite hot and our picnic was desultory, the river as seen from below our picnic table was restorative. We watched the barges go by, drank Hansen's diet sodas with Splenda and ate low-fat ham and cheese sandwiches.
The melons and sweet corn we've found lately have been amazing. I picked the first two Cherokee Purple heirloom tomatoes from our planter boxes, which we nearly lost from the extreme heat. They were wonderful paired with slices of the patty pan squash my sister brought us, plus fresh basil, chives, marjoram and sage, baked in my porcelain-lined Dutch oven. I also made a shiitake and button mushroom casserole with chicken breast chunks, herbs and jasmine brown rice and wild rice. Unfortunately, although I started fairly early Sunday morning, the oven heated up the kitchen and I spent the rest of the day compensating with open windows and fans. The forecast is for slightly cooler temperatures later this week, with the risk of thunder storms in the Cascades, including our area. There are already several forest fires to the north started by lightning. I had to work in the sweltering heat of our office while writing a story about the fire danger, while thanking my lucky stars I'm not a smoke jumper.