Healthy Packed Lunches

It's been a long time since I posted a recipe. Now that I'm back at school, I pack a lunch three days a week and am always searching for interesting, healthy, filling options. Here are a few of my favourites (the first two recipes make 1 serving):

Quinoa and Veggie Salad 2 ways

About 1/3 cup quinoa
Small handful diced sweet potato
Some diced red pepper OR quartered Brussels sprouts
Tbsp each of olive oil and red wine vinegar OR 1 tbsp olive oil, some grainy mustard and a small splash of balsamic vinegar

Option #1: Stick the quinoa in a pot, cover with water (about 1/2 cup if you are using 1/3 cup quinoa) and toss in the sweet potato and peppers. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and let simmer for about 15 minutes until most of the water has been soaked up and the quinoa is plump, but not dry. Mix in the olive oil and red wine vinegar. Sprinkle with pepper.

Option #2: This is my favourite, but takes a little longer so I don't make it as often. Again, stick the quinoa in a pot, cover with water and add the sweet potato cubes. Bring to a boil, turn the heat down and simmer for about 15 minutes. Meanwhile, toss the halved Brussels sprouts with a bit of grainy mustard and oil, then roast at 375 until caramelized, about 20 minutes (but keep an eye on them!). When the quinoa is ready, mix in the roasted sprouts. Whisk the oil, some more mustard and a little balsamic vinegar together, then add to the quinoa.

These are both good at room temperature - no need to heat them up. 

This is my cave in the law library basement, some quinoa salad, and my horrible, horrible administrative law textbook.

Goat Cheese Veggie Sandwiches

2 slices whole grain flax or spelt bread
Spreadable goat cheese (especially good with a garlic-harb or peppercorn cheese)
Cucumber
Alfalfa sprouts

Spread both slices of bread with a layer of the cheese. Cover one slice with alfalfa sprouts and the other with cucumber slices, and stick together.


Italian Bean & Tuna Salad

1 can white (cannellini) beans
Handful of green beans
1 single-serving can tuna packed in olive oil, flaked with a fork
2 tsp capers, chopped
A couple of torn basil leaves
A bit of red onion, minced
Splash of red or white wine vinegar
A bit of salt and pepper

Drain and rinse the white beans, and blanch the green beans until tender crisp. Toss it all together. This one usually makes two or three servings, but it lasts a few days in the fridge.

So, there you go. What are your favourite packed lunches? Please share!

Stumbling through another disclosure

Leslie at Getting Closer to Myself just wrote an interesting post on disclosing her illness. I had, coincidentally, been planning to talk about the same thing this week, and Leslie's post has given me some perspective on my own recent disclosures.

Having two very different health issues to explain can be challenging. After I've gotten one out of the way, I often feel like launching into the other is just too much. Either I've explained my RA and the prospect of doing the same with a genetic heart condition is exhausting, or the other way around. And sometimes I worry that getting both out of the way at once makes it sound like my life is a neverending succession of doctors and treatments. Of course it does feel that way at times, but that's not the whole story.

My first date with the person I'm seeing was less than two weeks after my surgery (I still have no idea why I did that), and the heart thing came up fairly naturally. My incision was bright red and visible above the neckline of my shirt (frustratingly, it still is), and I was keeping my left arm pinned to my side, so it wasn't something I could hide very easily. I explained the surgery and the reasons for it, and that was that. It went well.

But I left out the RA. I'd dumped so much information on this guy who'd never even had blood taken, and who was clearly trying hard to understand and ask the right questions, that I couldn't think how to begin telling him about everything else. "While we're on the subject of medical problems, guess what else I have?" just didn't seem right.

I finally told him last week, after almost two months of dating - partly because I wanted to, and partly because my Mom said I had to do it sometime. To tell the truth, I'd been enjoying not having to tell him. My joints have finally been feeling really good, and there's been no limping or flinching or obvious swelling to encourage him to ask questions. So I told him in my usual stumbling, blurting way, in an icky scene in No Country for Old Men (TERRIFYING) during which he betrayed a fear of needles. "I give myself three a week!" I said, extremely unsexily. Nevertheless, it did the trick, launching a discussion of my RA and at the same time mercifully distracting me from the movie.

So when Leslie says there is no book on disclosure, she's right. In the past I've wished I could come up with some failsafe formula for explaining everything, but that just doesn't exist. Every relationship is different, and I'll just keep feeling my way forward with each new person who comes into my life. Maybe I should have told him sooner, but maybe his reaction to my surgery and recovery told me everything I needed to know at the time.

Now, seriously: if you haven't seen No Country for Old Men, bring something to hide under for, like, the entire thing.

Update!

So I'm a second year law student.

It's so much better than being a first year law student! My schedule is flexible, I no longer spend every day with the same 15 people (even if they're great, that's a lot of enforced togetherness), and I get to choose my own courses. This term I'm taking Aboriginal Law, Intellectual Property, Real Estate and Administrative Law. Next term I've got Media Law, Advanced Intellectual Property, Trusts and Civil Procedure. I'm beginning to narrow my focus to the various forms of property law - real estate, creative works, media, aboriginal land claims - and it feels good to be making my own choices. Last year I felt babysat. This year, I feel much more independent.

Uncertainty used to scare me, but somewhere along the line it has started to feel the opposite. It's somehow comforting to think that I can't plan everything or see into the future. I turned 28 this week, and I could never have predicted much of what has happened over the past year. Some of it has not been so great - I had absolutely no idea I'd get a shock from my defibrillator or need it replaced, and no idea that my hips would get so bad. But I also couldn't have imagined getting through the shock and the surgery, or feeling excited and content again after my breakup last summer. I'm even dating someone - someone I knew years before - and I definitely didn't foresee that.

When I worry about my future with RA, I remind myself how much things can change in a year. I can't predict how I'll feel or what treatments will be available to me, but I think I can be confident that, whatever happens, I'll have what it takes to adapt and respond. That's all I can do, but I think it's enough.

So things are good. Hips not great, but swimming a lot. School stressful but interesting. Weather starting to turn.

Happy fall everyone.

Two months without doctors

Think I can do it?

I'm so tired of doctors. I don't want to see a doctor, talk on the phone to a doctor, pass a doctor in the street or even drive by the hospital.

My doctors, pretty much without exception, are awesome, but the last few months have felt like a never-ending succession of appointments, procedures and follow-ups to procedures. I really want to feel normal for a while.

Tomorrow I'm stopping by my GP's office to pick up some medication samples, but after that I'm really hoping I can get all the way to my November rheumatology appointment without needing any sort of medical attention. And I don't even want to speak to my electrophysiologist until next year. Lovely as he is, I want us to forget about each other for a while.

Wouldn't that be wonderful?

More evidence that I am actually an old man

According to some recent bloodwork and my new super-cool and thorough GP, I am on my way to having gout.

Gout?

Gout.

When I think about gout, this is what I picture:

                                                    (Not a photo of me.)

This is the latest in a list of issues and ailments that make me suspect I may actually be an old man. Hypertension, kidney stones, shingles, arthritis, and now gout. I should probably order my dentures now.

And the thing is, I eat really well. The culprit foods my doctor listed - smoked meats, ripe cheeses, beer, wine - are foods I hardly touch. So okay, I do touch wine, but not in excess, and I only very rarely eat the other items on the list. Plus, I eat loads of vegetables and fruits, whole grains, brown rice, fish, etc etc. All the stuff they tell you to.

Some people apparently just produce a lot of uric acid (mine was significantly elevated), though my doctor is going to look into my medications and history some more. Meanwhile, since I like to be in charge and don't particularly like to have obscure Dickensian illnesses, I am going to research the hell out of uric acid-reducing diets and then stick to one, even if diet isn't the problem. Just so I can feel like I'm working at it. 

For now, though, I am going to stop thinking about it and instead plop my elderly Victorian gentleman's body on the couch and read for pleasure before school starts on Tuesday.