Three Beautiful Things 03/13/15: Late for my Lab, Social Worker Calls, That Soup is Really Good

MOM UPDATE:  Thursday Mom found out from her doctor's examination of her X-ray that the broken bone in her upper arm would not heal properly unless she had surgery.  Mom will be having surgery Tuesday morning in Post Falls to put a plate (and possibly pins) in to help the bone heal.

1.  I forgot that when I drive toward Laurel on Old Baltimore Pike, the only road, after Powder Mill, that goes through to Rt 1 is Muirkirk.  So, I was about ten minutes late for my PPD lab appointment. It took me a while to get turned around, drive (unnecessarily) down to Powder Mill Road, get on Rt. 1, turn on Contee Rd and Van Deusen, and make my way to the clinic.  I have a chance to get it right on Monday when I return to the clinic so my skin test can be checked out.  (I figured if I wrote this out, it will help me not make this mistake again.)

2.  When the Deke got out of the car to start her day at work, she requested that we have some meat for dinner.  Later in the day, I was driving to the Co-op to shop for meat and other things (like eggplant and tofu), my kidney transplant team social worker called, so I pulled over to the side of the road in front of St. Hugh's Catholic Church and had a good conversation with her.  The transplant team met today to go over my case and she thought some questions might come up and so she we talked about those questions.  I felt good about how I filled in some blanks and about my mental preparedness for a possible kidney transplant.

3.  About that request the Deke made;  until today, I had never fixed a recipe I have called Chicken Sweet Potato Kale soup.  It was easy.  First I skinned the on bone chicken breasts and covered them with odobo seasoning salt and set them in fridge.  Then I sauteed a chopped onion and three stalks of chopped celery seasoned with thyme, cumin, and oregano and later added four cloves of garlic and let the garlic get brown.  Once this mixture was soft, I poured six cups of chicken broth over it, added in the chicken breasts and a bunch of cut up celantro and a jalapeno pepper cut length-wise in half.  This cooked for about 20 minutes and then I added three chopped sweet potatoes and a bunch of chopped up kale.  This cooked until the sweet potatoes got tender and the chicken was cooked and then I removed the chicken breasts, stripped the meat from the bones, returned the meat to the pot, and let it sit, covered, until the Deke returned home and about a half an hour or so later, we ate this really, really delicious soup.  My favorite flavor in the soup was the way the sweet potatoes sweetened the savory broth.