I need to constantly remind myself of this. My strength comes from the Joy of the Lord. If I am feeling weak, I need to remember to go back to the Lord find Joy and get strength.

Working at Plum has not been getting easier. Tears of feeling overwhelmed does not seem to stop. Though my grandma is slowly getting better, I haven’t been able to spend much time with her due to work. I only hope that when she starts radiation treatment next week that I would be able to change my schedule to make it more accommodate-able with taking to my grandma to the docs everyday. 

I pray that I find strength to power me through work and to support my grandma. 

Amen

=)

My grandma is doing significantly well for having to go through Chemo Therapy. She just had her 2nd chemo this past week and she is doing fantastic! PTL! She hasn’t had any vomitting, she’s been eating a lot and she’s rather strong for having her white blood cells killed. I’ve been making sure she’s getting a lot of nutritious foods, such as fruit, a lot of vegetables, soups, ginger + scallions etc. It was initially quite challenging to figure out what to make for her, because she can’t quite chew that well (she has fake teeth). But after a while, it became easier. I braised a lot of meats so that they became soft and tender, made jook and threw in vegetables and cooked it until soft and I also got a lot of help from her church friends who bring food over every now and then.

It’s funny though, living with my grandma this past month and a half has showed me a lot of parallels between living with my grandma and culinary school. My grandma is quite routine, she wakes up around 6-7am eats breakfast (oatmeal with grounded black sesame/ black sesame paste), plays the piano/ take a walk, and at 12 its lunch. Normally I make something light, maybe watercress carrot soup that I made the day before, or noodles with vegetables a little meat and eggs. Then she knocks out right after lunch and I clean the dishes and whatever that’s messy. She wakes up for a snack at 3-4, reads, I’ll take her out for walk #2 if shes not too tired or her friends would come visit her (My grandma is quite the popular! she always has different visitors!) dinner at 6 and she reads and watches the news and in bed by 10pm.

Culinary school is quite similar. Work at catering from 8-1pm, pick up requisition at 1:30, lecture at 2-3:30. Cook and demos till 6.45, dinner at 7, clean up at 7.30-8.15, wrap up till 8.30, then homework/ rest + prep for tomorrow and bed by 1.

Other than the schedule though, it seems as if my grandma practices proper procedure in the kitchen just like I was taught! She labels her food items. 

Very smart to label sugar and salt.

She “cryovacs” her food.

Put them in smaller portions

Instead of using paper towels (like the way they taught at culinary school) to keep herbs and what not dry, she dries them out and then uses recycles TJ bags to keep herbs and vegetables dry.

And ta-da. Meet my grandma. She’s so smart.

Initially her hair started to fall off because of chemo. (And I will spare you from seeing chunks of hair fall off). But anyway, she didn’t want to shave it off because she thought it wouldn’t look good until I finally convinced her that I’ll shave my head with her if she does it. And she did. =)