Unbelievable. I’m not done.  I was reading my previous posts, feeling a need to edit – a comma here, a comma there, a little off track – ah but it’s a blog.  It comes out of my head straight through my hands and again, I digress.  I realized there were a few things I said I’d tell you about in another post.

First, an update on the cooking situation.  Though several people close to me believe it’s time for an intervention, my husband, kids and some friends I’ve cooked for are not in favor.  It appears I have a knack for this, though I have no knack for not sounding stupid about it sometimes.  For instance, I probably shouldn’t have blurted out, “You can make whip cream with a whisk?  I just figured it was invented after electricity.”  Ok, in fairness, I do remember my mother’s egg beater, but I really didn’t know you could use a whisk.

I also now know, that if you don’t have basil and your husband doesn’t really want to run out and get some, you can use thyme and it won’t ruin your herb roasted potatoes.  Up until a few weeks ago, I didn’t know what herb roasted potatoes were.  Now, among other things,  I’ve made real New York cheesecake, lobster tails, pan broiled fish with garlic and red peppers (cut them myself don’tcha know!); I even baked a real French baguette.  (Just between us, that could have been a little better.  It tasted great but it was a little heavy.)

In cooking class we learned many little tips and basic techniques to make cooking better and safer.  And that brings me back to a previous post where I mentioned the emergency room.  I never went for the burns – they didn’t seem that urgent.  But the encounter with the Cuisinart blade (almost passed out for that one) and then the one with the big Chef’s knife, required visits.

In Toronto, the wait was so long the hospital suggested a walk in clinic.  The wait was long there too, but I did get medical attention.  No stitches, but a tetanus shot.  Which got infected and made me sick for several days.  Cost:  $ Nothing. Time:  Several hours   Health:  Plenty

The Chef’s knife incident was in New York and luckily we were only a block from the hospital.  We walked over with my finger wrapped in paper towels that were rapidly changing color, and I was fast tracked and taken within a few minutes.  Two nurses got me started – the usual blood pressure, name, history, etc.,  and then they took me into the examining room.  A woman came in wearing a white coat and being the hip, modern woman I am, not to mention incredibly brave, I asked in what handsome hubby says was a pitiful voice, “are you going to hurt me?”  “No,” she said, “but the doctor probably will.”  So she wasn’t the doctor after all.  When he came in, he was a lovely young man from… drum roll please … Montreal, Canada.  I don’t want you to faint so let’s just say there was a really big needle, stitches were involved, and there was a lot of conversation about the health care system in both countries.

I was in and out in less than 45 minutes, I had wonderful care, I had (for a thumb, keep in mind) a bandage wrapped around the whole thumb, crossing over my hand, and looked like I demolished a car, but I was home fast enough to continue cooking dinner and we ate on time.  The pain was still being suppressed by the shot.  All in all, not that bad.  (Except for the shot of course, but that went fast.)  Ten days later they took the stitches out and today you can’t even tell anything happened.

Cost: $ Nothing –  it was an emergency so our supplementary private insurance reimbursed us  Time: 45 minutes the first time, almost an hour the second time getting the stitches out, but there had been a serious emergency they were tied up with  Health: No effect

What’s this got to do with hearing, you may wonder?  Nothing really. That’s the beauty – my hearing loss isn’t always an active part of my life.