I think I have ADHD...

Ok it's not officially diagnosed yet but wow do I ever feel relieved that I'm not crazy/stupid/lazy/slow/etc. So to anyone who might actually pay attention to this I can finally give a valid explanation for my inconsistent posting! Although I love blogging I can never manage to do it consistently. Along with many other things.

I discovered this after a bad event happened recently. I got a 3-day unpaid suspension from my job for having made too many careless mistakes over the past month. I'm really not ashamed to say this after I've read all the other stories of people who didn't know they had ADHD that lost their jobs or had lifetimes of never being able to hold down a job for very long because of it. At least I've been able to hold down my job for 5 years now (although it took twice as long to train me, I've had to be re-trained twice and my performance has always been inconsistent), and I still have two chances left, the next step is a 5-day suspension before I get fired. I wish I could find a dishwashing job that paid as well as this... it wouldn't be as difficult to do without meds...

I had started to suspect it last winter when I got a warning from my boss and figured it's either a sleep disorder or ADHD and managed to get an appointment this spring with a sleep clinic but forgot about the ADHD until it came back to smack me over the head. So I've contacted someone at a hospital and tomorrow they're gonna email me some availabilities for appointment times next week for the first step in the long process of screening and evaluation (yes it's a long process there is no one test that you can take for it, it takes several hours of interviews with several doctors that speak with you as well as close family + friends)

A bit of basic info that I learned with all the reading about it I've done recently:

- There are 3 types: Hyperactive, Inattentive or Mixed. I'm definitely more innatentive than hyperactive, I was always the quiet distracted daydreaming kid that had a hard time in school. I match up with all the symptoms of the inattentive type that I've read online (the description of the "daydreamer" here fits me as a kid to a T)

- ADHD in adults is massively underdiagnosed, because it was only in the late 1980's that they finally realized that it existed and started doing research on it and how to treat it. Something like only 10 percent of adults with ADHD are officially diagnosed with it.

- There is a huge lack of doctors that specialize in ADHD in adults for the same reason as the previous paragraph, so to get tested/diagnosed for it it's either very expensive, or like here in Quebec you can get it covered by Medicare but the wait is looong. Thankfully not as long as the sleep clinic (6+months) but still 3 months or so.

- Medication is decided on a case-by-case basis since not every type of ADHD med works for everyone that has it. A lot of people have to try 2-3 different kinds at different doses before they find one that fits best.

- Medication is not the only treatment, several types of therapy and coaching are also important to have as medication is only half the treatment.

- ADHD can be missed in childhood and only discovered in adulthood, especially for those with the Inattentive type and especially for girls/women as well since they are on average more "quiet" than boys. See the paragraph under the question "How are the symptoms of ADHD different in adulthood?" here.

Brief hiatus

I made... 1 swedish recipe last week? I made the smorgastorta, but I was too hurried and lazy to make it pretty like in pictures you see online so I basically just made a triple-decker double-wide sandwich with 1 layer of salmon and mayo, 1 layer of kippered herring and mayo, and 1 layer of egg and mayo on plain white bread. But I'm kind of ashamed to post a pic of such a plain drab half-assed effort so I'll relegate that to another day when I've actually taken the time to do some research beforehand and do it properly. I'm gonna skip this week and next week I'll see if I can get around to making some kropkakor and a more detailed post about my next longanisa attempt. And as for a Quebecois recipe, I'll stop at my favourite place for poutine and post about that.

This past weekend has been running-around-like-a-chicken-with-my-head-cut-off punctuated by oversleeping and naps. But fun. On Friday night me, my sister and a friend went to watch the grand finale of the Lotto Quebec fireworks competition from the top of the huge Jacques Cartier bridge beside it (which they close off completely to traffic to let everyone walk on it) and brought a picnic and some drinks to enjoy at the same time. I went to visit my sister an hour and a half away (by public transit, by car it's half an hour) in St-Anne-De-Bellevue on Saturday and did some grocery and other shopping with her, but I didn't get around to going to the wharf  to watch the sunset like I wanted to cause I was too busy cooking dinner at sunset. Oh well, another time. Sunday I only got half of what I wanted to do done, and the rest will be done this weekend hopefully. Off I run to go put away laundry and make dinner and hopefully get to bed EARLY (~9:30pm) tonight!

Longanisa v1.0

My first attempts at both regular longanisa and sweet longanisa turned out like this:

They were very delicious but I used pork belly rather than pork butt and cheek fat cause I couldn't find any close by so they turned out a bit more dry and grainy than I wanted.  I've ordered 3 pork cheeks from Porcmeilleur at the Jean-Talon market and reserved them for next Friday though so I can get it right next time. I can't wait to try making these again! They weren't even comparable to the store bought ones, they're so much better. I only made about 6lbs of sausage last time and they ran out in a week so I'll make twice or three times that next time so I'll have some left over to freeze and give away to friends and family.

I forgot to take pics of the making process and the cooked sausage but I will next time. I even went to a tiny Filipino corner store half an hour away just to get the right vinegar for this! I wanted them to be the best possible, and they were, so I can't imagine how good they'll be once I use those pork cheeks. I'm going to visit my parents an hour away this weekend though so I'll make them next weekend instead.

One thing I noticed is that they tend to give off a lot of juice that collects in the bottom of the container after you've made them, especially the regular ones with more vinegar, so to remedy that I left them in the container in the fridge uncovered for a day or two to dry while repeatedly emptying the container of the juice that collected in the bottom.

I'll have to try frying up some loose sausage meat from these recipes too sometime, cause in my experience it's even yummier cause each little piece gets browned and it's overall more browned and crispy and delicious! Maillard reaction FTW!

And maybe even a sausage meat hamburger, or a patty made with 50/50 beef and sausage meat, or...

Next week I'll hopefully be making kroppkakor and smörgåstårta.

Palt

Palt is a traditional Swedish dish. They are large dumplings made of potatoes and flour with some pork in the middle. My mom made these occasionally when I was a kid and I always loved them. It's hearty comfort food.

5 large potatoes, cubed
wheat flour
barley flour
1-2lb ground pork
1tsp allspice
1 tsp freshly ground white pepper
2 tsp salt

Put a large pot of salted water on to boil.

Grind the raw potatoes through your meat grinder with the fine plate.

Add a tsp of salt, 1/2 cup wheat flour, 1/2 cup barley flour and mix. Add a little more of each (with a bit more wheat than barley) at a time and mix until you get a paste thick enough to form into patties.

Mix the other tsp of salt and the spices into the ground pork.

Form a handful of dough into patties and then make a ball of pork roughly the size of a golf ball with the other hand and put it in the middle:

Then close them up and put them on a floured surface like this:

Reduce the temperature under the water to low. When it's just barely simmering put them into the water using a slotted spoon or other large utensil, first dip it into the boiling water, gently scoop up a palt with the help of an extra hand if needed, then gently lower it into the boiling water to the bottom and gently shake it off. Don't worry if the first ones stick, once you have a layer of potato mix on the spoon the rest don't stick to that. Repeat till they're all sitting in the bottom of the pot. Cover and let them barely simmer for 30-45 minutes, or till they're floating:

Remove them from the water, cut them in half and serve with butter and lingonberry jam. I didn't have any jam so I just ate them with butter.

Slowing down

This morning I noticed that one of the wooden stools we keep in the livingroom was in front of the balcony door, but I didn't bother moving it this time, thinking "oh it doesn't matter we don't go out there anyways". But thinking that bugged me, I WANT to spend more time on my balcony. I had already told myself a few weeks ago that I should spend more time just sitting outside enjoying the sunset/sunrise.

Then this afternoon I thought to myself "I didn't get those blog posts done this weekend like I wanted to... I'll have to do them this afternoon... but I wanna finish reading Failblog and Verydemotivational and I Can Has Cheezburger and 9Gag and... etc"

And then I came across this (I mean more the part about lazy summer days than the one about growing old), and then this. It happens sometimes that I come upon 2 blog posts in the same day in my followers list that are on the same theme, even though completely unrelated. And these ones make a lot of sense to me. I'm tired of being busy. Now I'm not meaning to say I wanna give up on this blog again, I'm just saying that I don't want to push myself so hard with this blog that it takes the fun out of it. Yes I wanna cook every recipe ever RIGHT NOW cause it's so much fun and so exciting and I love trying new recipes but I CAN'T DO THAT. Not until I win the lottery and can quit my day job anyways lol.

So I'm gonna force myself to not be over-ambitious and exhausting myself with this till the fun is gone from it by restricting myself to ONE post per week. Yes this frustrates me cause I'm thinking to myself "but it'll take FOREVER to get anything done!!!" but I'm beginning to value NOT being rushed and stressed rather than accomplishing ALL THE THINGS!!! LIKE AN ADULT!

So. Um, yeah. I'm gonna try to stop reading all those pointless time-killing websites that although funny and cute don't contribute to my inner peace, just my hurry to switch from client-pickup-window-to-firefox-icanhas-tab-to-client-pickup-window-to-firefox-tab-to-client-pickup-window-to... ... ...

Maybe turning around and looking out the window at this instead might help:

Which can actually be very pretty sometimes. In the winter when the leaves are gone you can see all the way to downtown, not just the tops of the buildings like now.

So if I'm bored, I'll blog extra. But until then I'll have a glass of something yummy on my balcony with my sweetie :D And try to be more like a (responsible) kid :)

Edit: Lol I googled "slowing down" just for the fun of it and came up with this.  It's the best thing I've seen in a while :D I have to get myself one of those mugs!

Lol, something funny just happened, not one, but two of my coworkers asked me in succession what I was still doing here after 5. I replied that I wanted to finish reading something before going home, I had nothing especially urgent to do at home tonight.

It's nice to not have to rush home!

Poutine pt.1: Homemade

 I decided to post about this first cause it's the easiest of the 3 I have left to post, and also has the least pictures. Which is important cause my phone hiccups and freezes and has to be rebooted after every 3 pictures I upload to Google Drive. I can't wait to have a new phone...

Poutine is fast food consisting of fries, cheese, and gravy, sometimes with other stuff thrown in. Very popular here in Quebec, it has spawned entire restaurants dedicated to it. I made some yesterday and decided to go all out and do a poutine tasting, with two different brands each of cheese, fries, and gravy. I love the stuff, but I only started liking it when I moved to Quebec, maybe due to the quality of the ones I had while I was living in Ontario as a kid.

Here are the fries I bought:

I didn't want to buy the fries of the brand with the largest share of the market (I think) cause hey they have enough money let's support the underdog. And I like trying brands of food I haven't tried before. I should have taken a pic of these out of the bag. Basically the Cavendish ones are long and brown with the skins still on, and the other ones are short and pale. I liked them both.

And the cheese:

This is fresh curd cheese (a.k.a. "squeaky cheese" cause it squeaks against your teeth when you eat it) that is sold all over Quebec. A lot of people argue that it's the only cheese to use for "authentic" poutine, personally I don't care what kind of cheese is on there as long as there's a lot of it. Most places that sell poutine who don't use curd cheese will use grated mozzarella. I prefer the brand in the small bag with the blue label personally, the flavor tastes more like curd cheese flavor to me rather than just cheddar.

And the gravy:

You can find cans or packets of instant mix of this stuff in every grocery store. There are several brands of it but I didn't have any preference among the store-bought stuff yet so I bought these two. St-Hubert is a chain of restaurants that has commercialized their poutine sauce, but I prefer the flavor of the Cordon Bleu brand personally. They're both ok, but the best poutine sauce I have had recently is from a little pizzeria inside Guy-Concordia metro. I dunno what's in it but it's awesome! I could eat that stuff forever. My next post about poutine will be about theirs.

And here's the finished product:

Pölsa attempt #1

Maybe I've been too over-ambitious in this blogging thing, either in how many times a week I planned on posting, or choosing recipes that are reasonably doable on a weeknight. I've been too busy cooking to blog for the past two four days, but did get the pölsa, the palt and the longanisa done. I'm going to keep trying to do it this way though with dishes that don't take as long to make and see if I can get the hang of it. I was debating skipping a week next week to use up all the food that I've made already but I'm looking forward to next week's cooking too much to do that :P

I'm calling this my first attempt at pölsa (pronounced peulsa, Swedish has a few extra vowels and this one in particular is similar to the pronunciation of the French word "peut" so that's why I'm writing it that way to help you pronounce it) because even if it turned out delicious it didn't taste like it was supposed to. Pölsa is basically ground organ meat and barley and spices that was originally made to use up scraps after butchering. It's very nutritious and hearty comfort food. It's usually served with a fried egg and some pickled beets and is sold by the can in stores in Sweden.

My mom doesn't have a recipe for it in any of her cookbooks and I couldn't find didn't look hard enough to find any in English recipes online except for this one, (I just tried googling "Swedish pölsa recipe" (if you just google "pölsa recipe" you just get recipes for "polska kielbasa" which is etymologically related to it, but not the same thing) again and going past the first page of results and got this, which I might ask my mother about whether it's worth making) which didn't have any measurements so I winged it, and my mom told me afterwards what changes had to be made. I guess I should have consulted her beforehand :P And now I have to try google-translating any Swedish results I find when searching for "pölsa recept". More research must be done!

When I went shopping for ingredients I went to an Asian grocery and asked for half a kilo each of pork liver and heart. As he bagged them I realized he probably misunderstood (or maybe just didn't want to cut the liver, or he wanted to sell more?) and gave me a kilo of each. So I decided to use it all anyways.

When I chopped them up and put them in the pot I didn't realize what an enormous amount of food it would make once I added an equal amount of pork, beef and cooked barley. I ended up having two big pots half full of the stuff, 6L in total. Luckily I have some friends and family who like it so I don't have to have it sitting in my freezer for 6 months while I finish it off lol. So change #1 I'm gonna do is scale this recipe down a lot.

Change # 2 is the ingredients. The website said to use liver, heart, pork and beef. I figured I'd start off with that, but it turned out tasting more like liver and onions than the pölsa I remembered eating during my trip to Sweden when I was 11 (although my memory might be wrong). My mom never made it herself so I can't compare to hers. So I asked my mom, and she said that you're not supposed to use as much liver, and no beef. She said that you can put anything in it really, but that was how she remembered it.

After some reading of a few more pölsa recipes on Swedish websites with the help of google translate I've decided I'll incorporate all the yummy-sounding variations into one recipe: I'll cook the meat WITH the barley, add some extra bouillon cubes, fry the onions before adding them, and add vinegar, anchovies, bay leaf and cloves.

So my tentative recipe for next time will be:

2lbs mixed organ meats
1lb fatty pork
1/2 lb pearl barley
3 medium onions, chopped
1 small tin of anchovies
1tbsp ground allspice
1tsp ground cloves
1tsp marjoram
1 bay leaf
1/4 cup vinegar
3 bouillon cubes
1tsp pepper

Cut the meat into 1-2" cubes and put it in a large pot with everything else and a bit of water (about 2" above the meat and barley I guess, I'll add more if needed). Simmer for about half an hour, stirring occasionally, or till the barley is tender. While the mixture is simmering fry the onions with two tablespoons of oil on medium-high heat while stirring often until they start to brown and then add them to the simmering mixture.

When it's done cooking drain the mixture, reserving the broth, and grind it finely with a meat grinder. Add the meat and barley mixture back to the broth and continue simmering it on very low heat for another 10-20 minutes, tasting it and adjusting seasonings as necessary.

Here is a picture I took while I was cooking it. I'll take a nicer picture on a plate with some other stuff  like this one when I re-make it.

Later: Poutine!