Ouch! I Cut Myself Wokking

Cut Left Index Finger - 9 stitchesWhile chopping cauliflower in preparation for my nightly wokking, on Thursday, May 15, I broke a cardinal cooking rule that my mother taught me: "never cut towards yourself".

Shortly thereafter I found myself in the emergency room at Toronto’s Saint Michael’s teaching hospital getting nine stitches. I felt as though I was a patient on the television show ER. The med student that stitched me up did a terrific job with absolutely no pain. My thanks go out to the med student and the supervising doctor for a terrific job.

The injury has resulted in almost constant sharp pain, has inhibited my ability to use my computer for work or play and prevented me from: 1) completing the GTA IV campaign; 2) continuing my GTA IV diary entries; and 3) blogging as much as I would have liked to. Indeed, it’s astonishing how much I cannot do while attempting to safeguard my left hand as my finger heals.

On the upside, the injury has resulted in my having a practical need to test and use, on a sustained basis, the Windows Speech Recognition software built into Vista. In fact, I have written this blog post almost entirely through voice dictation. I’m keeping notes and expect to write a future post on my Vista voice recognition experiences. [June 3, 2009 Update: I never did write that post as typing / and controlling Windows by voice is still not practical for the able bodied typist]

I can’t feel anything above the cut to the tip of my finger on the inside. But both the emergency room doctor and my family doctor believe that the nerves will reconnect themselves within about two months giving me full feeling back.

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Sautéed Squash in a Wok

sauteed squash with a wok Wow! I knocked my own socks off with this one. Following my chilled cucumber salad dish, next on my Michi’s Ladder list was squash – a vegetable I’ve never liked in the past.

I found this sautéed squash recipe on the curiously ravenous blog. I adapted it for the ingredients I had at hand and cooked it up.  (click thumbnail on the left for a bigger picture of the result)

acorn squashPeeling and cutting up the acorn squash was the toughest part. Once that was done it took me 10 minutes cook this delicious dish.

Ingredients:

  • one acorn squash
  • 1/2 cup water
  • 1 packet OXO chicken broth packet(10 calories) – or vegetable stock
  • 2 cloves garlic, thinly chopped
  • 1/2 tsp salt
  • 1/2 tsp ground pepper
  • extra light olive oil, for frying

I think next time I might add some chopped onions and add only half a packet of OXO chicken broth – or stir-fry with real chicken pieces.

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