Water and Fish. Two separate stories.

Cup 11 of 16 for the day!

I have had every intention, lately, to blog about my life, but every time I sit down to write about work, I just....can't.  It's not that I don't love my job!  It's just not that interesting, and I'm not allowed to talk about the few things which are.  I do a lot of paperwork, and my office is right next to the bathroom.  Close proximity to the bathroom is a HUGE thing right now, because my doctor has decided I'm dehydrated.  I don't believe her, so I drink 12 cups of water a day in an effort to prove her wrong.
 What I really need to do is man up and tell her I want to get off my meds, but I'm too much of a wimp to do that, and besides, if I get off my meds I'll actually have to be healthy, and who does that?
Honestly, I've been doing really well lately, but then the other day I had a bit of a scare.  Y'all probably remember my BP problem (I never shut up about it), but it's been basically under control for the last 6 months.  I've been taking  my meds, and avoiding salt, and working out, and it's been summer so I've been pretty much stress-free, not to mention a trip to Hawaii; how much more laid back can you get?  So things are good.  I get dizzy every once in a while; usually when I first wake up, I make it to the bathroom and I kinda have to catch myself on the counter until things even out, and then I'm good.  The doctor said that's normal, to drink some water and tell her if it gets worse.  Cool beans.
Well, the other day, Jesse was leaving for work, so I stood up to give him a hug goodbye.  I'd been up for about an hour, at that point, no dizziness.  Well when I stood up things swam a little bit, but no black spots or anything, nothing out of the ordinary, just stood up too fast, right?  Then I was dreaming.  I don't remember what I was dreaming, but I was definitely not awake.  You know that in-between stage where you're asleep but you still kinda know what's going on around you?  It was like that, and then I heard Jesse saying "what are you doing??" but it was all quiet and far away, as cliche as that is.  At that point I realized I was half on the floor and Jesse was holding me up, so I said "I'm falling over, hang on a second!"  I stood up, sent Jesse off to work, had a bottle of water, and thought "huh, that was strange."  Well, I work with many women who love me, and they decided I was probably going to die, so I called the doctor and the doctor said "no more monkeys jumping on the bed!"  Oh wait....that was what we were singing while we were in line for the bathroom, sorry!  No, the doctor said "oh you're fine, just have some water", and that was when I decided I don't believe her.  I'm pretty sure you're not supposed to pass out like that.  Anyway, that's my blood pressure story.  I drink a lot of water, and I pee even more, and I take my BP 3-4 times a day.  Woohoo!

Can't decide if this combo will be divine or disgusting...

And on to other things....like dinner!  That's what I really intended to be talking about, because I really like food, and I really like excuses to take pictures of my food.  There are too many pictures in this post, fair warning.

Tonight I'm making kokonee.  That's as far as my menu plan went, so at lunch today I asked my friends how they like to cook salmon and we went from there.
This is my Great Kitchen Adventure of the day!

I'm starting with this recipe, and then making it how I want to.  I don't like guacamole, so I didn't want to buy any like the recipe says, and instead I'm whipping up my own version of the topping stuff.
So far I have a nice big spoonful of greek yogurt, 1/4 of a small avocado, a teaspoonish of minced garlic, a few cilantro leaves, a splash of lemon juice, and a sprinkling of sugar.  I mixed this up about an hour before dinner, for two reasons:

1. My choices were start dinner or do laundry.  That's a no-brainer, folks.
2. Things like this are yummy when the flavors have time to soak together and blend and stuff, right?

So far my verdict is that I used too much garlic.  I bought a big jar of minced garlic and it's strange.  It almost has an after taste, and I'm not a huge fan, but I'm stuck with it till I get through it, sadly.

While that's been chilling in the fridge (pun only partly intended), I've been clickity clackiting away here, and it's about time to start some mexican rice.  Of course it's a Pioneer Woman recipe.  What else would it be?  It was supposed to be rice pilaf, originally, but then I had this can of tomatoes, so it's evolving...I'm going to keep that recipe open in another tab and we'll see how close it turns out, shall we?
Melt some butter, saute up some onions...
(I've always had this strange fascination with chopping onions.  It was the first thing I would do when I was doing prep at the coffee shop because I wanted to get to it before anyone else did.  Is that abnormal?  I don't know why it brings me as much enjoyment as it does...)
Add some garlic and rice and stir it around for a while.  Then the can of tomatoes that started it all, salt, pepper, and cumin, chicken bouillon, and BAM!  You got yo-self some Mexican rice pilaf.


I actually mostly followed the recipe for the spice rub on the fish, but I didn't have any of that chili powder, so I used half regular ol' burrito makin' chili powder, and half cayenne pepper.  I rubbed the fishies down, and tried to get some on the inside, too, since they're whole fish, not salmon steaks like the original recipe was designed for.

A big mess and twenty minutes later...rice is bubbling away on the stove, and as soon as the oven heats up I'll pop the fish in the oven!  I should probably provide some sort of vegetables, but that would most likely require cleaning a dish to cook them in.  Unless I just throw some corn in the rice cooker or something, but corn hardly counts as a vegetable.  It's mostly water, after all, and your body doesn't even digest the majority of it.

In other mostly-water vegetable news, I'm growing celery and it hasn't died!  It's green and growing and alive!!  Go celery!

Hey, that looks almost edible!  Actually, it was pretty delicious.  In Jesse's words, "love me some kokonee!"  Just a teensy bit spicy, but the yogurt sauce countered it beautifully.  Jesse said he didn't like the rice, but we only ate half the pan at dinner, and the rest of it has now been finished off, so it must not have been that awful!
All in all, if I would learn to slow down while I eat fish, so I don't swallow quite so many little fish bones, fish would be one of my favorite foods.  But I'm impatient and I don't like having to dissect my food after I've cooked it.

I forgot the guac-y stuff in the first picture....so here's another!  I know you wanted more....

And that's my life.
Wish you were here.