Successful Surgery and a Bit of Sunday Cooking

After what I’m told was a successful two hour surgery and bone graft, I am home and relatively comfortable. This recovery is not nearly as awful as the last one, even though this one was more extensive. Perhaps the techniques have evolved or my periodontist is just more experienced. My parents took excellent care of me this weekend, Chase was a huge help to me today, and I had lots of calls and emails from friends. And of course, thanks again to all of you for your well wishes, sympathy, empathy, and sound advice.

I have been eating soft fruits (fresh mango!), oatmeal, mushy lentils, Amy’s soups, and some pureed cauliflower I made last week. Everything has to be room temp, and it’s still quite painful to eat or drink anything. But I have been off vicodin since Saturday afternoon and hope to stay off. I have to take xanax before bed so I won’t clench, and then there’s 2 antibiotics and an anti-inflammatory to take for another week. This is what I see first thing every morning and last thing before bed …..

The roof of my mouth feels huge and very hairy with all the stitches, and my speech is a bit lispy. I have a just a touch of a cough left over from the flu, and I’ve finally gotten rid of a monster headache, which I think is from the 20 shots of novocaine! My dad told me I have a dead guy’s bones in my mouth now. I said that’s better than a dead cow’s bones. I guess I mean that. I believe in donating organs, and not that I know anything about it, but I think my body would prefer human rather than animal parts in it.

Enough of that, and on to food!

Chase came over this afternoon and went to the store for me and made the most awesome Tofu a la King! He made a simple white sauce, then seasoned it and added in the tofu and a bag of frozen peas and carrots. I made his favorite English Toasting Bread to serve it on. Some like to serve it on rice or noodles, but it’s great over homemade toasted bread. We made a salad with the arugula from the farmers market, steamed broccoli, and for me – boiled to mush sweet potatoes from the farmers market. I had a little of the sauce (it was really excellent) on the sweet potatoes, and I did get a couple of broccoli trees that were very small and soft. I was so happy!

Chase thought you would like to see some different table angles. I guess he thought you’d enjoy seeing how much we mess up the kitchen on Sundays.

I did feel like baking cupcakes this morning. My nephews from Alabama are coming to visit in a couple of weeks and they are crazy for cupcakes at the moment, so I thought I had better start practicing. Good thing I have I have a copy of VCTOTW! Today I decided to bake Orange Creamsicle Cupcakes because I had 4 farmers market oranges left. Of course these cupcakes did not disappoint. I made orange flavored cupcakes (Isa’s cupcakes turn out perfectly every time)….

orange pudding to fill them with…..

and orange buttercream frosting. Yes, these were soft enough for me to eat. And they had vitamin C!

Thanks again SO MUCH to all of you for helping me through my “ordeal.” I’m quite tired right now. I’ll be staying home tomorrow for one more day of rest and catching up on home things, and I’ll be by to visit your blogs then.