PJ Trader

Sorry to be out of touch this week. It’s been a long hard one, battling nasty cold germs on one side and working extra hard at the job-that-pays-the-mortgage. I hope to do better next week, even though I’ll be living out of a suitcase in Newport News, Virginia.

I got to thinking that there’s a lonely package of chicken breasts thawed out that needs to be used up very soon. So I trolled and found this recipe for this week’s experiment. Since I’m a fan of cream sauces and I love cilantro, I’m thinking this should be pretty tasty. Here’s the ingredient list:

Chicken with Cilantro Cream Sauce

• 4 chicken breast halves
  

• 1 teaspoon Cajun seasoning, divided
  

• Salt and pepper
  

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
  

• 1/2 red bell pepper, sliced
  

• 4 to 6 green onions, with a few inches of green, sliced
  

• 1 1/2 cups chicken broth
  

• 1/4 cup dry white wine
  

• 1/2 cup heavy cream
  

• 1 tablespoon butter
  

• 1/2 cup chopped cilantro
  

• 1/2 cup halved cherry tomatoes
  

If it sounds good to you, click here for the full recipe.

Photo courtesy of About.com

“Errors by healthcare professionals are not made on purpose. But most of the time, healthcare professionals do not have access to your information… don’t assume that healthcare providers will know what your health history contains. Make sure they can find out the latest, up-to-date information by using a Medical Alert device. This is of paramount importance if you have diabetes, asthma, chronic heart problems, seizures, drug allergies or take ANY medication on a daily basis.”

Alicia LePard, RN, BC, MSN, CDE, BC-ADM
The Diabetes Center
Campbell County Memorial Hospital

Medical alert devices save lives. And yet they’re often incredibly ugly. In some cases, you pay a lot for that ugliness. It seems to me that if you need to wear one, they could at least be pretty. The Lish kind of got on my case when my day job indicated I would be doing some travel, reminding me that I should be wearing a medical id. She was right (darn it), but when I went shopping for one I just couldn’t see myself wearing most of the bracelets, necklaces, and watches out there. A plain sports band, maybe. But it would clash and be so obvious.

Then I found someone who understands my whining. The fact that it took a fashion-conscious 16 year-old who didn’t want to wear an ugly ID that brought attention to her diabetes to persuade someone to design some good-looking medical ID jewelry astonishes me (and yet, makes it all so clear).

I’ve searched all the websites and the best one by far is Lauren’s Hope for fashionable and fun medical ID jewelry. They combine a single medical ID tag engraved with up to four lines of 25 characters. (I meant for them to add “CRS Syndrome” to mine*, but forgot to put that on the order form.) The tags can be interchanged with any bracelet style so you can change your look any time you want. The bracelets are custom made to accommodate any wrist size and there’s a huge variety of materials you can choose your bracelet from. Leather bolos, elastic tubes, Swarovski crystals, mood beads, fiber optic beads (my fav) and more. They even do some lovely ones with bracelet strands and a watch. Talk about functional!

Here’s a picture of a bracelet with a tag attached. The tag tends to fall to the inside of the wrist, so most of the time all people see if the beaded part.

The next pic shows the bracelet waiting for a tag – this is what makes the system nicely interchangeable. If you look carefully there’s two clasps, one on each end. And the far right one is a standard bracelet with no ID tag, in case you love the bracelet and don’t need a tag.

All of the bracelets come with their signature “Hope” charm and you can add other charms. I have a little paw print one that reminds me of the webdoggies when I’m slaving away. It never fails to make me smile.

If you’ve hesitated to wear a medical alert, do yourself a favor and start wearing one now. It could save your life.

I was a little hungry when I went internet-trolling for patterns this week. Although the character in Claire Delacroix’s fantastic book All or Nothing knitted vegetables, that’s just too healthy for me. So how about FOUR patterns for this week’s projects? I’m thinking maybe a hot dog…

Now, I know you’re wondering why on earth anyone would ever sit down and crochet food, aren’t you? Me too, so I thought about it for about five seconds. And you know, there might be something there. Crocheted food isn’t real, so you don’t have to worry about calories. Added bonus: Since your hands are busy with hook and yarn, you’re not stuffing your face either, so you can consider it diet therapy. And, from the number of “recipes” I found, crocheting food items is a popular hobby. I guess I could see the kiddies playing with them, maybe doing up some broccoli and cauliflower to promote healthy eating. Or an avocado?

Ready for a little dessert? How about a yummy cupcake? (As usual, click on the pics to find their patterns. All are free unless otherwise marked, free site registration may be required.)

Or maybe some doughnuts would hit the spot?  They’re not exactly Krispy Kreme, but put a dozen of these in a doughnut box and put them out in the office.  Wonder how many hungry coworkers will try to take one?

I was going to hold on to the piece de resistance until February, but knowing my memory I’d probably forget. (So don’t be surprised if you see it again.)  Why not make a cute box of chocolates for your favorite friend - show your love without breaking her diet?

Happy eating crocheting!

For this week’s tech talk, I’m proud to point you all towards Pandora.  Let’s say you want to listen to some music, but you don’t want the inane DJ chatter or commercials from the radio. Satellite radio is always a good option, but it costs a subscription fee.  Enter your next best choice with Pandora radio.  All you do is enter in a favorite band or singer and Pandora does the rest, serving up song after song…and all for free, streamed over the internet for your listening enjoyment.

For example, I created a “Bee Gees Radio” station.  So far, tonight, besides my favorite boy band, I’ve heard from Hall and Oates, KC and the Sunshine Band, Yvonne Elliman, Gloria Gaynor, Elton John, Andy Gibb, Christopher Cross and more hits from my formative years.

Did I mention it’s all free?

Pandora labels itself “the music genome project.”  From their website, they explain:

Together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or “genes” into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It’s not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it’s about what each individual song sounds like.

Since we started back in 2000, we’ve carefully listened to the songs of tens of thousands of different artists - ranging from popular to obscure - and analyzed the musical qualities of each song one attribute at a time. This work continues each and every day as we endeavor to include all the great new stuff coming out of studios, clubs and garages around the world.

By rating each song (only if you want to), the software continues to refine the song choices in your radio statio, playing music that you like.  For those days when you feel like a little rock, go ahead and serve up a Bon Jovi Radio Station.  Feeling a little bit country, no problem - create a Toby Keith station.  Not sure who you are today?  Even better, put all your radio stations on a playlist and let the chips fall where they may.

So, dial yourself up some Pandora radio on your computer and sit back and enjoy!