I've had a comfort food craving lately. So baked casseroles are de rigueur. I picked up this amazing book deal at Walmart Monday: Cook's Country Best Lost Suppers cookbook for seven bucks! Whoa. This is just what the doctor would order for me (if I had the stamina to see one, that is). I haven't been "book" shopping since Borders announced it's closing. I'm still too bitter to drag myself to a Barnes & Noble. Not yet. I really needed to literally "stumble" upon a book find like this. (There were only two on the shelf--just waiting for me!) The cookbook has been a dinner respite here for the past two nights. Going on three if you count this evening because I already have my mind set on another famous meal from this "Lost Treasure" collection. Sure, the cookbook's full of meat eater stuff, but as a veteran vegan, I can easily manage most, if not all the book's offerings as a vegan translation. And the very first recipe in the book beckoned me to do just that. The chicken and dumplings had my name all over it. I could not have been more pleased. It was the perfect salve for broken hearts. Dr. Thyme and I kept oohing and ahhing over this scrumptious dish of yum. The bisquits (or dumplings) are the key to this whole meal. Hubby proclaiming the dumplings "the best" and requested them in some future breakfast ensemble. Sometimes I think the cooking gods look out for me. Especially in my great despair at the unfairness of the it all. The world. Life. Everything.
Last Friday it became clear that our boy was not improving. I was in a state. I called our vet and made an appointement, barely able to speak other than answering the all-too-familiar question: What seems to be the matter? I stammered, He won't eat. And that was about all I could get out. The next morning was the first appointment available. When we arrived, the receptionist and I weighed him--I knew he'd lost weight because his leash and collar had had to be adjusted. She looked at me, I looked at her, then we went into "the room" where not one, but three of our kids in just the past two years had taken their last breath. It was about all I could do to not run out of the room screaming. To say my nerves have taken a beating would be an extreme understatement. I've not been sleeping well either. No wonder.
