building a Lubuntu box

Lubuntu logo

This falls into the "anything else that strikes me as interesting to write about" category; most of my readers will not be interested.

It's about my experiences converting from XP to Lubuntu 12.04, which process took a circuitous route via spending a month of configuring Ubuntu 12.04 with the Unity-2D desktop. After all possible tweaks to speed up Ubunut/Unity, I gave it up as a bad job and decided to instead install Lubuntu, a lightweight version of Ubuntu.

My reason for switching to Ubuntu in the first place is that my XP netbook is dying a slow death and buying anything else with XP seemed a waste of time and energy given that support goes away next April. Much of the software I used was not supported when I went to XP, and I assume I'd lose most of the rest if I went to a Windows 7.

And then a friend donated an old laptop to me (thanks Pete!) so I figured since I was going to have to learn all new software anyway, it was time to switch.

multiple recipes with bacon with only one cleanup

multiple recipes with bacon with only one cleanup
by Jackie Patti

I like it THICK!

We like our bacon chewy rather than crispy, and the thick-cut stuff is much easier to cook that way.

I love bacon in bacon bean soup, bacon breakfast casserole and my favorite bacon quiche recipe as well as plain old eggs and bacon. But it was always a pain to cook and get grease all over everything until I inadvertently discovered this neat trick.

No, it's not baking. Baking bacon seems to me to take just as long, if not longer, and needs close watching.

Once, I accidentally froze 3 pounds of bacon without separating into smaller packages. So when I thawed it, I cooked it all and had a bacon bonanza! There's a few tricks to this though.

November 2013 links

I'm thinking of this post as a time capsule, so trying to add an introduction that reminds you what was going on in the world at the time.

In November, both Somalia and Sardinia got hit with cyclones, but their disasters were dwarfed by the typhoon that devastated the Philippines.

Hawaii passed legislation against new GMO crops and legalized gay marriage. I somehow doubt those two topics are related, presumably GMOs cannot marry.

The 50th anniversary of JFK's death occurred. Apparently, people older than me all remember where they were when they first heard of it, but I was a year old, so don't remember squat. For people my age, I think the moments seared into our memories are John Lennon's death, the Challenger disaster, 911 and the Columbia disaster. I will also never forget the day my daughter was born and the day I met my husband in person (we met online first), but likely the rest of you don't share memories of the poignancy of THOSE dates with me. ;)

In November 2013, the first day of Hanukkah occurred on Thanksgiving. Apparently, this hardly ever happens and was a big hairy deal. Some news media tried to make a meme of calling it "Thanksgivukkah," but it never really caught on. Apparently, it will not occur again for another 80,000 years; maybe they'll have a better name for it by then.

In contrast, the exact moment you are reading this has NEVER happened before and will NEVER happen again, so THIS moment is much more unique than that! And here you are in this unique moment spending it with me.

I have some very kewl stuff to share with you...

I'm a rockstar

default image
by Jackie Patti

One of the REALLY weird things about starting your own blog is that suddenly these people you've been looking up to for so long consider you a peer. It's as if you are a groupie suddenly invited backstage and realize they consider you a rockstar too!

My first surprise was when Amanda of Fresh Bites Daily "invited me backstage", asking me to join a blogging network where we all try to assist each other. I've followed Amanda's writing through several blogs now and was just really surprised she considered me a peer. And then when I joined, so many of my heroes were in there!

My more recent surprise was when Pat of Heal Thyself! asked if she could repost some of my Facebook posts as guest posts on her blog! Whoa! I'm honored!

You can read my guest posts here: Ignore Cholesterol Readings and Your Doctor Shouldn't Be The Authority On YOUR Health.

Now my head is all big and I'm half expecting Melissa Etheridge to ask me to join her on stage at her next concert...

dietary calories are just as real as Santa Claus

IMNSHO, gnolls.org is one of the most underrated paleo blogs on the net.

The "There Is No Such Thing As A Calorie" series is truly one of the best explanations of calories that I have ever seen anywhere.

If you have a vague and fuzzy understanding of calories, definitely check it out...

eating with the seasons in autumn

eating with the seasons - autumn

In autumn, there are three things I stock up on for the year: apples, pumpkins & winter squash and nuts.

You get 3, three, THREE posts in one! ;)

apples

Apples are a dirty-dozen crop, so I only get them organic. From September onwards, I can get them in bulk from local farmers considerably cheaper than I can get them the rest of the year.

For fresh eating, we eat as much as we like all fall; the rest of the year, I'm much more frugal with my fresh apple purchases.

But much of the fall purchase of apples around here is stored for the year.

frittata

finished frittata ready to chow down!

A frittata is one of our favorite meals; I make one almost every week. It is similar to an omelet, but it doesn't brown on the outside like an omelet (which hubby dislikes). It is also similar to a quiche or breakfast casserole, though mostly cooked on the stove top and only run under the broiler for a few minutes to brown the cheese, thus is faster and has less clean-up.

We don't do a meatless day for frugality like some do, but I tend to do a couple low-meat meals, one in which I make some sort of bean or pea soup with a quarter to a half pound of meat and the other in which I do a frittata with a similar amount of meat. Usually, we're talking bacon, ham or sausage - but it's there mostly for flavor.

Frittatas are frugal because most of the protein and healthy fat comes from pastured eggs, a much cheaper source than grass-fed meat. They also use up odds-and-ends of vegetables before they go bad.

While I give a recipe below, the method is what matters as I rarely use the same exact ingredients week to week.

Invokana for type 2 diabetes mellitus

chemical structure of canagliflozin (tradename Invokana), a new drug for type 2 diabetes mellitus

2016 update

DO NOT TAKES DRUGS IN THIS CLASS! (SGLT2 Inhibitors)

They cause diabetic ketoacidosis

I spent 2 days in the ICU after less than a month on Jardiance, a drug similar to Invokana. I had extremely acidic blood, was passing ketones though not on a ketogenic diet, was severly dehydrated, and was low on ALL electrolytes, sodium, potassium, chloride, magnesium, phosphate.

Lowering your bG is not worth dying over!


Last time I was at the endocrinologist, Deb, my nurse practitioner, recommended I do a trial of the hot new drug, Invokana. Because it's new, and thus patented, it's expensive and doctors have to call insurance companies to get it approved. To encourage this process along, Johnson and Johnson is giving away coupons for a month for free.

When Deb suggested this to me, honestly, I was less than enthusiastic. I'm not fond of ANY new drug. Let it be on the market for 20 years and see how many people it kills or three-headed babies are born and THEN I'll try it. I have a bad attitude. ;)

Nevertheless, I took 100 mg Invokana this morning, as I have for a while now, and I'm sharing my thoughts here about this drug and who I think should or should not give it a try.

easy no-knead bread

no knead bread

When my daughter was growing up, bread was something that was made from scratch maybe once or twice a year. When we moved to the country, I discovered that if you're at home working anyway, making bread isn't much harder than baking cookies. I spent a couple years baking bread here, ground from whole wheat berries in a manual grinder. I utterly loved it, the fresh flour tastes yummy in everything from pancakes to breads, but Steve did not. Since I rarely ate much wheat due to being diabetic and needing to limit carbohydrate, I eventually gave up on baking good bread on a regular basis since he wasn't enjoying it.

After my CABG, homemade bread was just unthinkable as there was no way this chest was going to knead without a Percocet or a half bottle of white wine! But then I ran across the idea of no-knead bread and decided to give it a try.

I have perfected a method that takes a total of about ten minutes to make and even an old, crippled lady can do it with just a bowl and spatula and almost no cleanup.

best of October 2013

Some of the things we are officially supposed to be aware of in October 2013, because it was blank Awareness Month):
ADHD, Audiology, AIDS, Blindness, Breast Cancer, Bullying Prevention, Celiac Disease, Co-op, Diversity, Domestic Violence, Down Syndrome Awareness, Dyslexia, Emotional Intelligence, Head Start, Critical Illness, Cyber Security, Depression, Disability Employment, Liver, Pregnancy and Infant Loss, Respiratory syncytial virus, Sarcastic, Spina Bifida, SIDS, Rett Syndrome, Squirrel, Workplace Politic

October also contained several awareness weeks, such as Mental Illness, Food & Drug Interactions and Prescription Errors. The really sad things that only had a day for people to be aware of them include Cephalopod, African Penguin, Latino AIDS, Reptile and Stuttering days.

Having read the previous paragraphs, you are now caught up on everything you were supposed to be aware of in October, but missed due to distraction about the government shutdown, which is all anyone was talking about all month.

When we were all just about fedup with hearing about it, a Facebook friend complained about the USDA nutritional database being down. Leave it to a Real Foodie to put things in perspective!

More interesting Real Food things that happened in October...

funky carrots

funky carrot guy

On Facebook, I belong to a private group that is into food porn (message me on Facebook if you want an invite). It is a lighthearted group that is dedicated to two basic types of posts: food and recipes that are nearly better than sex and food pictures that cause naughty thoughts.

For some reason, carrots reign supreme for growing into bizarre shapes that make you think dirty, and I don't mean gardening.

Pulling up the last of my carrots after a few freezes, I found this guy, not naughty, but pretty funky. So I made a few cartoons to entertain myself...

why I make fresh juice almost every day

Fresh juice is one of the habits I retained from GAPS.

I never thought too much about juicing because it's proponents always seem to be sticking entire pineapples in a juicer and going on about juice fasts and as a diabetic, that sort of thing would utterly destroy my bG.

But GAPS convinced me to give it a shot for several reasons...

how Jackie got her groove back

how Jackie got her groove back

Things have been very up-and-down this past year with my fatigue.

In spring, I was doing great! I was gardening up a storm, plus doing yard work, 4-5 hours a day. I even mowed about a quarter acre one day with a push mower. I started job hunting, thinking I could handle something at least part-time. Meanwhile, I cooked up a storm and got over 100 home-cooked meals in the freezer.

I was doing better than I had since the heart attack. I was so excited as I could barely even consider myself disabled anymore.

And then... it stopped. The fatigue came back.

ubuntu thunderbird on external drive

Ubuntu circle of friends

This ALSO falls into the "anything else that strikes me as interesting to write about" category. I've no intention of this becoming a Linux-oriented blog, but this problem kept me off-line, except for my smart-phone, for over a week. Again, I want people Googling for this problem to find this!

It's about installing an external hard drive for data on a Ubuntu system. I have spent a week thinking mounting was a problem, and/or Thunderbird had a problem, and it was neither, but a problem with the drive itself, which needed a good fscking.

wireless adapter problem while installing Ubuntu

Ubuntu Circle of Friends

This falls into the "anything else that strikes me as interesting to write about" category; most of my readers will not be interested.

Conversely, if you found this site Googling for this problem, the rest of my blog may not interest you.

It's about installing Ubuntu on a Dell Inspiron 5100 laptop and the known issue with installing Broadcom wireless adapters in Ubuntu.

My particular wireless adapter is the BCM4306 14e4:4320 one, which information I got running some command I don't recall anymore.

I'm moving...

a blog is born

I will no longer be posting at GAPS for T2 but instead at Deductive Seasoning, a blog about cooking, diabetes, disability, fatigue, homesteading, nutrition, science and anything else that strikes me as interesting to write about.

I have always enjoyed BBSs, Usenet, IRC, web discussion forums and lately Facebook, because I like the give-and-take in chatting with other folks.

However, sometimes it gets a bit tiresome to explain the same thing in one conversation after another and I always thought it'd be handy to have a blog to post so I could write something once, and then provide a link whenever the topic came up again.

And also to save my wisdom for all posterity. ;)

Though I liked the idea of a blog, for years, I never got around to starting one. Every topic I was interested in discussing was blogged about elsewhere. I commented on those blogs and joined the conversation, but never started my own because someone else was already blogging my interests.

all about almond and coconut flours - with six bonus muffin recipes

blueberry muffin, apple streusel muffin, bacon and cheese muffin, zucchini-carrot-raisin muffin
I put some thawed muffins on a plate, took a bunch of pics with my cell phone
from different angles, connected the phone to my computer via USB, uploaded to
PC, viewed and chose the best image, cropped and resized it, then uploaded to a
draft post in Blogger to obtain the URL to put in this post. WHY? Is this for the
huge influx of never-saw-a-muffin blog visitors I'm expecting? You muffin-ignorant
hordes!

Today, I want to talk about gluten-free and/or GAPS and/or paleo and/or low-carb baking.

Generally, I have decided not to post recipes as... well, Google and you can find a bazillion of them. I have decided instead to post tips about food, and only my really, really best recipes.

I'm a tad lazy generally about baking. I have done a lot of ordinary baking for my husband and before that my daughter, things like pumpkin pecan bread, banana walnut bread, oatmeal raisin cookies, zucchini cake and carrot cake. I've done it for several reasons, first to limit the sugar used compared to bought bakery products, second to avoid the inflammatory oils by using coconut oil or butter, and finally because my baking usually has a large dose of fruit or vegetable in it, thus has redeeming qualities not found in Twinkies.

For myself, I don't care about these foods much. I have a very minor sweet tooth. My issues with limiting carbohydrate have always had more to do with starchy foods; I'd rather have a pizza than a cake, I crave pasta not chocolate. And if I have to provide sweetness for myself, the laziness kicks in and I'd rather dessert be a bowl of yogurt with some honey stirred in or a handful of berries with some cream.

Overall, the experimenting I have done with more healthy baking has had a great deal more to do with savory baking than sweet. I'd like something to make sandwiches with, or to dip in the yolks of my soft-boiled eggs. I have developed three recipes I really like for savory breads: a corn bread, a cheese roll (from tapioca flour) and a nacho cracker, which I'll post about later. Today, it will be muffins (but includes a savory bacon & cheese muffin!)

When first introduced to the world of gluten-free baking, I just found the whole idea a tad overwhelming in that there seem to be entirely too many flours involved. Recipes that have THAT many unfamiliar ingredients are just too much for me. I don't want to buy teff flour and sorghum flour and xanthum gum and am entirely too lazy to mix 4 or 5 flours just to wind up with flour. I admire those who do this sort of baking for their families, but I'm just not interested myself.

But I have done a good bit of baking with almond flour and coconut flour over the years and have developed some opinions about them - and handful of truly awesome recipes.

Jackie's simplified food plan

Jackie's simplified food plan

Sometimes, it is easy to get caught up in minutiae and lately, reading a lot of arguments amongst nutritional gurus, it seems all they care about is the details, missing the vast majority of what we agree on.

I find similar arguments occurring in my head when I get caught in the details sometimes, depending on which research I've read most recently and which symptoms are bothering me most.

We know what's wrong. We know most of us mostly eat processed foods full of crap.

how to raise more free-range eggs than you can possibly eat for $50 a year

(everything you ever wanted to know about backyard chickens but were afraid to ask)

A while back, I saw someone had posted about raising chickens and getting free-range eggs for only a couple bucks per dozen. While that is an accomplishment, we raised backyard chickens WAY cheaper than this and we're planning to do it again.

We are receiving our new batch of chicks August 9th, as I'm well enough to start raising chickens again. I thought I'd post about how we did it with our original flock and what we're doing differently this time around.

Italian sausage soup

Italian Sausage Braising in Beer by wickenden, on Flickr
Italian Sausage Braising in Beer by wickenden, on Flickr

I made up a batch of Italian sausage soup today, and thought it was worth sharing the recipe since it is truly one of the most scrumptious things I make.

The soup is adapted from a recipe I originally got off the alt.support.diet.low-carb Usenet group many years ago. Basically, it is cooking several pounds of vegetables in such a manner that it all is flavored yummily with Italian sausage. It's been one of my absolute favorites for years.