Pajama Pundits

Okay, so one person requested the recipe... but she's really, really popular around here.

I got this recipe from a cousin who is a nurse. She said she got it from a co-worker. I'm guessing, after trying these that they both work in a cardiac unit and circulating this recipe is a form of job security.

As much as I love butter, I couldn't quite bring myself to use all that the original called for. The original said this recipe would make 24 medium-sized rolls. Mine were about 3" in diameter and there were 50 of them. They are so rich, that's plenty big.

The Dough

7 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
1/2 cup powdered milk
3 T instant yeast
1 T salt
2 large eggs (or 3 medium)
3/4 cup butter (melted)
2 cups water

Measure and blend dry ingredients, including yeast. Measure wet ingredients into mixer bowl. Add dry and stir until moistened. With dough hook, mix for 10 minutes. The dough will be very soft, almost moist. Let rise until double.

The Filling

2 cups brown sugar
2 cups white sugar
1 T cinnamon (more or less to your taste)
2 cups butter (reserve 1/4 cup)

Mix sugars and cinnamon until blended. Melt butter.

Roll out dough as thinly and as near to a square or rectangle as possible. Spread melted butter over dough and top with cinnamon mixture. Choose an edge and start rolling the dough up. Cut 1" slices and place 1/2" apart on jelly roll pan. Brush tops with reserved butter and let rise. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes.

The Icing

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 T. vanilla
1/4 t. salt
1 lb. confectioner's sugar
1/4 cup milk

Blend all ingredients together using the paddle or whip attachment. Add milk (1/2 teaspoon at a time) or powdered sugar (1/8 or 1/4 cup at a time) until you get a consistency that is just slightly too thin for cake icing.

While the rolls are still hot, drop approximately a tablespoon of icing on each one and spread it as it melts.

Eat. Enjoy. Check your cholesterol.

UPDATE: Belated link to Carnival of the Recipes at RDoctor Medical. It's supposed to dedicated to healthy food, but I think some not quite so good for you snuck in. There's also a link there to a post titled Worst Thankgiving Dinner Recipes: How to cook a Thanksgiving meal that ensures you'll never be the host family again. I'll have to check that one for sure!

I'm still waiting for the referral to see a radiologist. Someday I'll post all my frustrations with Tricare's referral system. And appointment system.

In the meantime, I finally got around to getting a CD of the MRI & CT scans done in July. These three slices show the meningioma's location. The first two are from the MRI, the last from the CT scan. UPDATE - all three are from the MRI.

I don't foresee a Name This Tumor contest.

Below, in To blog or not to blog, I wrote that one of the reasons I'd stopped blogging was that I'd developed a serious distractibility.

I'm hoping that the good news embedded in some recent bad news is that the reason for that has been discovered and can, perhaps, be eliminated.

I have a benign meningioma.

I knew this seven years ago, but at that time it was so small that the neurosurgeon said it wasn't worth worrying about. Frankly, I'd forgotten almost everything about that episode of strange headaches except the extreme unpleasantness of the MRI.

It's bigger now (at least 10x according to my memory of the first MRI which has been destroyed by the hospital due to storage space problems and the written report did not include any reference to size except small), but it's still small (< 2.0 cm), at least according to one neurosurgeon I've seen. The other... well, he says it's too big for Gamma Knife surgery. I'm going to see about the TomoTherapy recommended by the other neurologist as soon as the official insurance referral comes through. Also, one says it is near the optic nerve and the other says it is attached to the superior sagittal sinus.

What should I expect from a third opinion - that it's adjacent to a kidney?

The seizure I had was small too. One of my roommates at McCurdy (back when it was a boarding school) had epilepsy and this was nothing compared to the seizures she had.

I do not want to experience another one, no matter how "small" it was.

Is it too much to hope that getting this thing out of my brain will alleviate the distractibility and other little annoyances that I've noticed over the past year or so?

Unbelievable that anyone is offended by the mere mention of a the name of a medical procedure.

Reynolds says:

...there aren't many simple safe procedures that can absolutely prevent cancer, and this is one. Don't forego it because you're squeamish.

He is correct, but doesn't mention that this test also catches cancer before it's too far along to treat effectively and easily. Easily, to me, means surgery without chemo or radiation. Chemo and radiation are never easy, and they generally last much longer than the recuperation period for major abdominal surgery.

I think he's not giving a good picture of the sedative, often Versed, given for this procedure. Not only is it very relaxing for the recipient, it can be fun for whoever gets to accompany the patient. The patient has little or no memory of the events of several hours, is extremely cooperative, and can be very amusing. Precautions after getting Versed include:

Midazolam may cause some people to feel drowsy, tired, or weak for 1 or 2 days after it has been given. It may also cause problems with coordination and one's ability to think. Therefore, do not drive, use machines, or do anything else that could be dangerous if you are not alert until the effects of the medicine have disappeared or until the day after you receive midazolam, whichever period of time is longer.

Ability to think is required for blogging? Damn, somebody should have told me!

In 1992, the doc found a cancerous polyp during a colonoscopy on my husband. Surgery followed - a colon re-section (without colostomy) - and no signs of cancer have been found since. This is a very good thing.

He had yearly colonoscopies until 1997, then a 3 year follow-up, and after finding no polyps this year, he won't go back for another for 5 years.

So, listen to the Instapundit: Don't forego a colonoscopy because you're squeamish.

Or too easily offended.

Ann Althouse links this morning to a Robin Givhan article in the LA Times on the Dove advertising campaign featuring "real" women's bodies.

There's no real disagreement here with the conclusion:

It's healthy to occasionally pull back the curtain and remind readers of what most of them already know. Fashion is not truth. That has always been the operating principle of the business. Fashion is extravagance and incongruity, elegance and rebellion. It is envy and exclusivity. All of that may have been epitomized by Richard Avedon's 1955 image of the lithe model Dovima posing in a Christian Dior gown in front of a line of elephants.

All it takes to verify that fashion and reality have a limited relationship is an occasional visit to Manolo's Shoe Blog.

It is reassuring to occasionally see the machinations of the magician. It's nice to be presented with a female physique that is a little more accessible. And it is good to see the beauty fantasy broadened to include attributes such as strength and endurance. But no one wants to feel as though they've stumbled into the ladies locker room or caught their neighbors in their skivvies.

Given the news stories I’ve read about unauthorized photos of everyday people in just such situations showing up on porn sites, I wouldn’t go so far as to say no one wants that.

And just to prove that reality according to Dove may very well be inspiring, just take a look at their portrayal of Real Beauty:

Not exactly disheartening, are they?

However, if Nike listens to Givhan,

Perhaps Nike's next ad blitz should include a chubby lady with wobbly thighs. Her arms could be raised in victory as she wheezes across the one-mile marker.

I'll be there auditioning for that spot.

If the purpose of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children is for this sign to make the viewer asks questions, they succeeded wildly.

My first question was "Is 1 in 5 children even online?" followed by "What ages are they talking about?" then "Males and females both?" then "Where did they get those numbers from?" and, finally, "What ARE they talking about?"

On their FAQs and Statistics page, the sixth question is "How many children are sexually approached and/or solicited online?" Clicking on that answers two of my questions, the ages are 10 to 17 and the statistic comes from the DOJ Highlights of the Youth Internet Safety Survey, a pdf brochure to which they provide a link. (For more information about the survey, see here.)

More info from the brochure:

• 77% of those solicited were 14 to 17 years old.

• 1/3 of those solicited were male.

• none of the solicitations led to an actual sexual contact or assault.

• 48% of the solicitations were made by juveniles, 24% by adults, the remainder, age unknown.

• 2/3 of the solicitations came from males, 1/4 from females. (Although it doesn't say, I presume the remainder are unknown. It does point out that the identified genders may have been part of a disguise.)

• 75% of the incidents were described as not distressing.

• 1/3 of the aggressive incidents (attempts at personal contact) were unreported (now that's distressing.)

I suppose there's no harm done in the vague and slightly misleading language of the sign, but I doubt there's anything gained by it either. I have less respect for the organization, than if they'd phrased it 1 in 5 teens is sexually solicited online. That would have been an underestimation and I suppose not nearly as scary as using the word "children" (a person between birth and puberty) but I'd be more likely to believe the rest of the their message.

UPDATE: Web-Proofing Your Kids