Movin’ and Groovin’

What’s up, buttercups?

I suck at blogging lately. I know. I’m sorry. Our move into our new house has been difficult and exhausting every. single. step. of. the. way. No joke! And I haven’t been cooking because I’m either too tired or well, because the kitchen is still in disarray. We’re still unpacking and settling in while trying to maintain business and sleep and sanity and “health.” <- ha, no.

My main at-home foods have been:

1-) Berries. Blueberries, strawberries, blackberries, and raspberries. Can’t get enough of them. I’ve been eating like 1-2 cups every day for a month!

2-) Chocolate. I bought 6 large bars of Lindt and Godiva at Target a week or so ago and I’m halfway through them.

3-) Dried fruit. Peaches, cranberries, pears, tart cherries. Gah. So good!

4-) Cheese – Namely Kerrygold Dubliner.

5-) Nutritional yeast + popcorn

6-) Microwavable frozen dinners: Amy’s, etc.

But mainly we’ve eaten out every day for a month in one form or another. Not even kidding. Eight times out of ten it’s been pizza or tuna sandwiches, but we’ve been trying to mix it up when the chance presents itself, like the other day: I Yelped places (with good reviews) to try on our way to BJ’s Wholesale Club and decided on a place called Palace Dumplings. I’ve seen the sign from the road but hadn’t stopped in until this past week. Their menu is mainly dumplings (duh!) but they have a nice selection of out-of-the-ordinary vegetable salads that are reasonable priced, so we tried several of them to be adventurous.

It’s pretty small inside but the service was super friendly and fast!

Fun fact: I call Dustin “dumpling” so eating at a place called Palace Dumplings felt extra fun.

Sorry for the yucky cell phone pics!

The vegetable courses came first—and rapidly! About 2 minutes apart. Barely enough time to get one bite in, lol.

Horseradish Cucumber – this was spicy! But I liked it a lot.

Flavor Green Bean Sheets – I don’t know why I expected them to be like green beans even though the description said they were clear noodles. We didn’t like these AT ALL. They were slimy and hard to eat and flavorless. Blek! The texture was all wrong for my palate. I felt like I was eating jellyfish. One bite was enough.

Agadir Vegetables with Horseradish Sauce – Description: “Savory tree fungus mushrooms flavored with Chef Jenny’s spices” – Because, sure, why not? Try a little of everything.

It tasted like steamed cabbage to me, and the texture was very similar to steamed cabbage, too. Different, for sure. Order again? Probably not.

Flavor Salad — Shredded cabbage and bean noodles with special spices. This was spicy, too. Not bad, but not a fan of the noodles. If it was all cabbage I probably would have liked it more. It’s a texture thing.

Peking-Style Vegetables — Shredded potatoes and shredded cabbage with a mix of spices. I liked this. It was crunchy and pretty tasty. Also spicy.

Small bites of everything to try it. The salads ranged from $1.99 to $2.99, so it wasn’t a major chunk of change to sample. We took home the ones we liked and left what we didn’t (green bean “jellyfish” sheets – GROSS! lol)

Then came the dumplings: Vegetable, egg with zucchini, and shrimp with chive

Now these were AWESOME! We had 3 dozen dumplings and ended up with only 6 left! We got busy on the dumplings. Very, very tasty. The fillings, especially the egg and zucchini, were fantastic. We’ll definitely stop in there again when we’re in the market for dumplings. Yum! Check Palace Dumplings out if you’re in the Hudson Valley on Route 9 Wappingers Falls.

I went to the doctor last week for what I thought would be a routine checkup and to get my usual diuretic refill and complain about my usual symptoms (tinnitis, , but she wanted to do some blood work to check my electrolytes and things like that. Okie dokie. Dustin got his checked, too, just for good measure. So they drew it right at the office and said they’d call in a few days with the results. So you can imagine how surprised I was when my doctor called less than 24 hours later with concern in her voice. She said my blood work came back abnormal.

My potassium was low. It was 2.7 but the lowest should be 3.5. Between my diuretic and all the sweating I’ve done moving and unpacking and cleaning in the past month, this wasn’t a huge surprise. So she wanted to put me on a potassium supplement right away.

But then things got serious when she said I was anemic and close to needing a blood transfusion.

Seriously.

Aunt Flo was especially awful this past month, I lost a lot of vampire juice. What’s even scarier is that I had the blood test a week after she left, so I was probably even worse in the days leading up to my doctor appointment. That explains my dizzy spells and overall lethargy during our move. I thought it was mainly heat- and electrolyte-related, but turns out, I was in pretty bad shape and I’m lucky that I didn’t do more damage. I really shouldn’t have overexerted myself under these circumstances, but that’s what I do. I abuse myself until I get sick and exhausted. Ugh. The doc put me on potassium and iron supplements right away and sent me a list of iron-rich foods to eat (which I already knew). I haven’t been eating well or much due to time restrictions, heat, and overall exhaustion. So, yeah. I messed myself up pretty badly. I have a history of unbalanced electrolytes, heat exhaustion, etc. Like that episode in Washington, D.C. back in 2010 when it was 93 degrees F and I was severely dehydrated. Clearly I need to be more careful.

My blood glucose and cholesterol results were good. My blood glucose was 96, but I wasn’t fasting. I was eating mints and butterscotch hard candies in the car on the way to the doc. Didn’t know I was having blood taken. Cholesterol: 173 total; HDL 54; LDL 74; trigs 172 – Trigs are a bit on the high side, I think, but the doc said it’s probably because I wasn’t in a fasted state. She insisted it was very good. I’d like to see better though. Will retest in a month. Considering how badly I’ve eaten over the past month I’m surprised the results weren’t much worse, lol.

Setting up a house is hard work! OMG. We have so many things!! Not big things, but thousands of SMALL things. Too many tiny things! It’s been completely insane: 3 adults, 4 cats, and 1 dog. There’s never a dull moment.

We finally got the garden planted:

I have a post lined up about gardening. That was a freakin’ project, too. OMG. Farming is hard. haha Even harder when it’s 100 degrees F outside! You know we waited until the heat wave rolled in, right? We wouldn’t have it any other way, lol. #brilliant

Here are some shots from around the deck:

The back ^^

Around the side ^^

Partial front ^^

View of the Hudson River:

I could stare out there all day. The neighbors probably think we’re creepy with our binoculars and telescope, LOL.

I have lots of house posts coming, I’m working on them! Soon, soon! Promise.

I bought more of these reusable Copco cups at A.C. Moore last night:

We already have 4 or 5 of them but Dustin and I like them a lot and we hate when they’re dirty in the dishwasher. We use them all day long to drink water out of and sometimes we bring them in the car with us. Love it!

I’m in our new office with Caesar rockin’ out to 80s pop songs while I write this. It’s one of my favorite things to do. When everyone else goes to sleep, I get nostalgic with my childhood music. Rod Stewart! OMG. Yes! My other favorite night owl loner activity: watching classic TV shows and movies. Yeah, I’m a square. But a happy one!

I think it’s time to go to sleep. Dustin will be waking up soon. Nite, nite!

Tagged as: berries, dining out, dumplings, health, house, Hudson Valley restaurants, life, moving, Palace Dumplings, restaurants