Cheryl Katz

I was able to get up and dressed this morning, and I’m confronting the reality that every time I look at her crate, she still isn’t going to be there.

Eventually I’ll put the crate outside or give it away, but right now it just feels like I’d be telling her to sleep outside. More pain than it’s worth to me right now.

Someday all the little things she left behind, all her dog hairs and surprise toys buried random places, will be gone. I’ll always remember her. But I miss her so terribly much right now, it’s hard to believe I could still be alive in this house without her.

Just one foot in front of the other, a day has already passed and life is going on, but every minute that takes me farther from her sleepy puppy face right now just hurts more.

Alex went out of this world in the way I know she would have wanted. She only had the muzzle on for a total of maybe two minutes, and she drifted out of consciousness while licking the last of a bag of peanut butter almost entirely clean in my hands.

She ended up nearly unable to get her tongue out of her mouth. I ended up holding her while she snored. And then she was gone.

I know it’s tacky, but one of her last moments was funny and we took a picture. I don’t think I’ll share it online, it feels very private to me, but I do wish everyone would get to leave this world with their loved ones around them and full of favorite foods and fun last memories. In this case she sort of tanked over with peanut butter EVERYWHERE. If it hadn’t been so sad it would have been hysterical.

She was a dignified yet hilarious dog. I will absolutely never forget her. I don’t think it’s possible to.

I’m glad she was happy in her last moments. I’m glad she was relaxed, and that I could hold her. She didn’t feel dead, even after it was over.

I flipped up her ear before I left her. She slept that way a lot. I will like to think that she’s getting the restful sleep she needs, without the nightmares she used to have, either asleep or awake.

I will miss you, Alex, my puppy-girl. I hope you knew I loved you. I know you loved me.

I’m sitting here on my sofa now, Alex is laying on the floor, on the sofa, standing and panting, half-heartedly considering destroying the last cardboard box I’ll ever give her.

I’ll be with her for the rest of her life, and it is so much shorter than I thought it would be.

She has to go now. She has a growth that requires surgery, and even to get to the point of surgery requires more consultations, more sedation, more fear and stress and hyperventilation, than I could ever ask her to endure just to keep on living with pain.

Even if we could make her 100% physically better (which we can’t) we can never take away the fear and paranoia that made her such a difficult dog to have in the first place. To put her through all the pain and stress of healing, only to be a) at best only partially successful and b) still just as fearful and skittish seems cruel.

It is selfish to keep her with us and let her pain get bigger every day. She is a stoic dog, she doesnt complain about pain until it’s excruciating, and every time she lies down now she is whimpering.

I know we are making the right decision, for all of the many right reasons, but then why does it feel so BAD?

I don’t want to say goodbye to my friend.

She was there for me at some times when no one else was. Before I knew I was pregnant, when I had the “stomach flu” I took Alex outside to pee, and before I could get back in the house I had to barf. I curled down on the lawn, and she sat next to me, not taking advantage of the perfect getaway time when I could easily have lost hold of her leash, and she sat there, licking the side of my head and helping me stand up when I was done.

She was home with me when Ben had to be traveling for business, so that I (and Sami, after Sami came) would not be alone.

I’m not just losing a pet. Not even just a difficult pet. She’s a family member who had problems and who taught me that you don’t just bury or ignore problems, but work through them as a family, and you don’t ever stop loving your family. No matter what.

Not even when you want more time to love them. Especially not when more time with them means more pain for them.

There are so many thoughts going through my head, I don’t know what else to write.  I’m speechless and yet could go on for days about how hard and complicated and guilt ridden and compassionate and loving and terrible a place I’m in right now.

But her last thought will be about our happiness, about protecting us from everything she was afraid of, and so I’m going to make sure that I take away as much fear and pain as I can in the next 4 hours.  It’s a pittance compared to the joy and love she’s given to us unconditionally (except for the occasional peanut butter matzo.)

I hope that whatever comes next for her, she is pain free and can finally truly rest.

ruhlman.com: Lunch: Peanut Butter and Cabbage Sandwich.

Peanut butter and cabbage sounded weird to me at first, but I think I will try it tomorrow.  (At the very least, I could probably bust through one or two of the heads of cabbage I have around the house in a week or two.)

Ruhlman’s post got me thinking, though – I don’t have any kind of lunch traditions.  In fact, most days I don’t put any thought into it at all.  Leftover something or other, a slice of bread with something on it, the classic standby bagel with cream cheese and tomato.  One day recently I made tuna salad with yogurt, fresh pepper and a little paprika.  Nothing groundbreaking.

I’d like to make lunch a little more special.  Even just once or twice a week.  I pledge to find something to bring a little charm to an otherwise utterly perfunctory part of my midday.

Anyone out there have a lunch tradition they’d like to share – a special food or a special personal ritual they like to do that surrounds or relates to lunch?  I would love to hear it!

This weekend was a good weekend for food. On Thursday I baked onion rye bread, about which Ben said that if I’d told him I bought it at Bread and Cie (a San Diego bakery) he would have believed me. Win! I also made a chard and beet greens gratin, my first gratin, and it turned out thoroughly edible – even to my non-veggie-eating husband and progeny. I made everything in it on my own, down to the toasted bread crumbs. I was so exhausted after the gratin that I just reheated some of the (bazillion pounds of…) leftover turkey.

One successful dinner down, one weekend to go. On Friday I baked challah according to Sami’s preschool’s pre-K class recipe, and it turned out as I had expected it to, and as it had when I tasted the pre-K class’s yield – heavy, doughy, but completely tasty. It’s not so much challah-like, per se, but it is good bread, and I bet we’ll like the sandwiches, French toast and bread pudding that eventually come from it.

For Friday dinner I made a dish I will heretofore lovingly refer to as “how to kill a lot of the week’s vegetables in one pot before the next vegetable delivery needs to be refrigerated.” I sliced thin potatoes, onions, mushrooms and bell peppers, layered them in a Dutch oven with some parmesan and cayenne seasoned béchamel sauce, and baked the whole thing within an inch of its life at about 350* for 30 minutes. It burned a little along the bottom, but not enough to impact the scrumptiousness.

If there’s a name for that dish, I don’t know what it is, and I don’t really care. It was onion/potato/veggie heaven.

Saturday I made pizza and had friends Laura and Josef for dinner. My first pizza dough turned out lovely except that it was yeast free. I set that aside and made another ball of dough, from which two veggie pizzas emerged – topped with – you guessed it – red-pepper seasoned béchamel, tomato sauce and parmigiano – fantastic. Dessert was angel food cake (I didn’t bake it – sadly, no springform pan) with strawberries and crème fraîche. Simple and delicious.

Today I pondered what to do with my yeastless dough, and came up with proofing yeast in a separate container of water, then kneading it in and letting it sit. Come dinner time, I pushed it flat and round, brushed it with olive oil and sprinkled salt, oregano and basil on it. Homemade focaccia, along with the leftover Kill the Veggies in a Pot – killer filler leftover meal.

I’m getting prouder of myself every day for all the stuff I make at home. Also, eventually it will be exceptional. Right now it is all pretty ordinary. I think.

I’m reading A Handmaid’s Tale and I’m not exactly finding it depressing, but parts of it make me feel real sadness.

I made challah yesterday – the texture came out not very challah-like but it was very good bread.

Reheated coffee isn’t very good.

Sourdough starter is on Day 2 – it is very foamy, very quickly, and smells sour. Not exactly how I was expecting. But I think in another day or two it will be ok.

Wanted to make a post but now it seems like it was a bad idea.

(Photo forthcoming.)

Yesterday was Day 2 of the failed Roast Turkey Project.  On Sunday Ben got me a full on, 15 lb organic free range sans-antibiotics frozen turkey from our favorite butcher shop.  I put it immediately into the refrigerator to begin thawing, thinking that on Monday afternoon it would be ready to roast.

Well, one thing led to another, and come roastin’ time, there is a plastic handle thingy sticking out of the butt end of this turkey, and I can’t for my life get it to come out.  (Especially not when I’m trying my hardest not to touch the turkey or anything inside it with my bare hands, but my sissy-tude is not in question at the present moment.)  I donned rubber gloves and fought and wrestled and fought some more with this godforsaken turkey, to no avail.

A quick IM conversation to  one of my many friends of exceeding culinary talent later, I am advised that under no circumstances am I to attempt to cook this turkey if it is not fully thawed.  At first I thought this was because of health concerns – and it is, but not entirely.  The concern is that if you cook the frozen inside of the turkey to a hygienic temperature, you have essentially charred the skin and outer flesh, and/or set your house on fire.  So, scratch that plan.

Instead, I used the recommended recipe: Alton Brown’s Good Eats Roast Turkey.  I prepared the brine and soaked the turkey overnight in the fridge, turning once in the morning (that was a debacle, but not worth posting about.  Just know that it involved a full small load of our kitchen rags used to sop up brine on the kitchen floor, and let your imagination do the rest.  But don’t imagine a turkey on our unsanitary floor.  That part didn’t happen.)

I didn’t wind up getting it into the oven in a timely way, but it was finished cooking not too long after Sami went to bed, and boy does our house smell good.

And here’s the punch line.  I covered it and let it cool some before popping the whole covered roasting pan into the oven.  When I went to research how to carve a turkey, I noticed that all the pictures of mid-carving turkeys were like mine, but upside down.  Yes, I roasted my turkey back-up, breast-down.  *sigh*

So I let it rest, covered, in the fridge overnight, and turned it breast-up in a 500-degree oven for about 20 minutes, just to get that final crisp on the skin of the breast.  It worked just fine, even if it didn’t get out the roasting-rack wire marks from the otherwise luscious, moist skin and meat.

I got my info on how to carve from Google, here and here.  The video is just hilarious, getting the rundown of carving a turkey from the British accent just puts some extra polish on the experience.  And I relied more on the text and images (second link) because I couldn’t keep up with the video.

Now, one can say that in our family, I am the one who has the first clue about how to carve a turkey.  And I think we will give Thanksgiving a try at our house this year.  Though I don’t have *much* of a clue, I can get the job done if given enough time (and some more practice turkeys!)

On to planning my turkey stock, soup, and future turkey-based meals with probably the best roast turkey meat I’ve ever had.  Thanks for the recipe recommendation, AB!

I had every intention of roasting a turkey today, thinking that about 16 hours thawing in the fridge would be enough.

Sadly, I was wrong.  I had to ask around because there was a plastic ring-handle-thingy sticking out of the butt-end of the turkey, and I couldn’t for my life get it to budge!

It occurred to me only much, much later that it wasn’t budging because the inside of the turkey hadn’t yet thawed.  Sigh.  Thankfully a culinarily talented friend admonished me in no uncertain terms that this turkey should be thawed completely before cooking.  I had visions of salmonella poisoning and the like, but in reality I bet it was because in order to cook the inside to a safe temperature, the outside would have had to wind up charred beyond recognition.

So instead, on Alex B’s recommendation, I am using more or less this recipe, and the turkey is brining in the fridge as we speak.

I went ahead and roasted anyway the potatoes and onions that had been slated to roast WITH the turkey, and I added some sesame oil and a little cumin since there was to be no turkey fat or turkey seasoning in the pan.  They turned out excellent nonetheless, and went well with the leftover chicken-garlic creation from last week.  (Anything that contained 10 heads of garlic, as did that dish, has no excuse but to be downright delicious, and it didn’t disappoint.)  This was the final appearance of those leftovers.

I also baked cookies!  I made Melting Moments, a cookie of which I’d never heard before but sounded irresistable to me.  They turned out all right.  I’ve never made them before, and I’m not sure that I’ve even had one before, so I may be disappointed for nothing.  They tasted wonderful.  I just wasn’t excited about how the crust of the cookie turned out.  Chalk it up to my food texture peccadillos, I suppose.  I’m happy to report that both Ben and Sami begged for seconds, so they couldn’t have been half bad.

And, to not send you home empty handed, here’s a picture of the cookies.  It’s not a glamour shot, but they do look edible.  Lucky San Diegans might get to try one, depending on who you are and whether or not you’re already in my calendar.