Pat's Adventures in Dialysis: The "Exploring Las Vegas", edition.

Good Wednesday morning! If you wake up at the right time, you see the most stunning sunrises. This morning, the clouds gave the sunrise a yellow and pink striated effect. And now it's gone. Yesterday Brian was going to run some errands. I asked him if I could with him and I'd like to stop at a bakery I'd looked up. First stop was the library. Brian is a library fiend. Next we went to the post office. Needed to send Shawn her birthday cards. Now it was time to visit the bakery. I had the address and I always look up the map to see where places are and plan the route. We found the bakery with no problem, although it was a ways back from the road.

So we found Great Buns Bakery. I wasn't prepared for what awaited us. As soon as you walk in, the smell gets you. The heavenly smell. Something(s) was baking. But even better than that. The left wall had every type of baked good you could imagine. Self serve. Pecan sticky buns, turnovers, cookies, bagels, pound cakes, breads, rolls and more. Brian even found a cupcake that looked like a hostess chocolate cupcake. You could even buy pizza dough and gnocchi. Did I mention the intoxicating aroma?

We ended up walking out with a pound cake, a loaf of cheddar cheese bread, a loaf of Italian bread (it was the daily special), a pecan sticky bun, 2 everything bagels and the hostess cupcake facsimile. You can bet we'll be back. Did I mention being accosted by the scent upon entering the building? The place is huge. Baking is going on while we're there. You can see it!!! So yeah. We'll be back.

Moving on. A recipe by the Neelys for corn popped up on my Facebook timeline. That was timely because corn will be on my Christmas dinner menu. The recipe is for candied corn. I read the recipe and ingredients and watched the video. It didn't take a lot of effort so I was in. Of course the Neelys used fresh corn but I went the frozen route. So here it is. I sautéed one shallot in butter until translucent. Then added the corn. While the corn was cooking I made a paste out of 2 tablespoons of honey and 2 tablespoons of brown sugar and 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper. Added the paste to the corn , mixed it and that was it. Yes it was good. And no, it wasn't overly sweet. MAnd oh yeah, I added salt and pepper to taste to the corn before adding the paste. The only change I need to make is to cut the cayenne to 1/4 teaspoon. Since I had twice the amount of corn, I doubled the recipe, which was fine, but that was too much cayenne. Now it didn't bring a big burn, but It could be toned down, especially since my audience will be my seniors. And. Looking through the circulars, I found fresh sweet corn. So. I'm going to get it. Have Dad shuck it, Brian cut off the kernels. Cook it and freeze it. Yeah!!!

Finally, on the dialysis front. Still not feeling 100%, but I am feeling better everyday. I have much more energy. And I look forward to getting out of the house. I've explained some of my dialysis procedures to you, but know I'm posting some photos so you get an idea of our prep. What you're looking at us my set up just before I stick myself and Brian hooks me up.

The supplie for the night. The "15G" are the needles, the vial is the heparin, which stops the blood from clotting, 2 sets of wipes. The alcohol wipe the use on the heparin lid. Cleaning it. The Bernadine used on my accesses. Again cleaning it. 2 syringes to be attached to the saline bag and filled with saline. It's used to flushed my lines after treatment. Gauze pads used to anchor the needles after the stick. A syringe for the heparin and tape to rape the needles to my arm.