Lemon Blueberry Coffee Cake

When my husband’s siblings and spouses came to Winona Lake for a mini reunion the end of September, we had them to our condo Friday night to chat. I served this recipe, using some of the frozen blueberries from our picking this summer. It is very moist and not too sweet. This is one of the photos that "disappeared" when my husband and I were learning our new cell phones in April 2021 and inadvertently deleted some Google Pictures. Sorry, as I know seeing a picture of the result of a recipe is helpful.

 Lemon Blueberry Coffeecake

 

Cake:

2 1/2 cups flour

1 cup granulated sugar

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

3/4 teaspoon salt

1 cup yogurt I could not find plain yogurt! I used a mixture of vanilla yogurt and lemon yogurt.

3 tablespoons canola oil

2 teaspoons grated lemon peel

2 tablespoons lemon juice

1 egg

1 1/2 cups fresh or frozen blueberries

1/3 cup sliced almonds

 

Glaze: 1/2 cup powdered sugar

2 to 2 1/2 teaspoons milk

1/4 teaspoon vanilla

 

Step 1 Heat oven to 375 degrees F. Spray or grease 9-inch springform pan or 9-inch square pan

Step 2 In medium bowl, stir together flour, sugar, baking powder, soda and salt. In large bowl, beat yogurt, oil, lemon peel, lemon juice and egg with whisk. Stir flour mixture into yogurt mixture just until blended. Fold in blueberries. Spread batter in pan. Sprinkle with almonds.

Step 3 Bake 35 to 40 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center of cake comes out clean. Cool 10 minutes; remove side of springform pan.

Step 4 In small bowl, mix glaze ingredients until smooth and thin enough to drizzle. Drizzle over warm cake.

Fried Green Tomatoes Time Again

One of our neighbors sent out an email inviting us to help ourselves to the last of her garden produce that she had set on her porch. Her garden is finished for this year. I picked up some nice little cherry tomatoes and 2 green tomatoes. I fried the green tomatoes for lunch today, halving the recipe I used last year. The amount was just right for two people.

 

I picked up my x-ray films today from the hospital as I had been instructed to drop them off before my appointment tomorrow with the orthopedist. The receptionist said I could have just brought them with me tomorrow, I didn’t need to make an extra trip. However, it turned out that the doctor was in the office unexpectedly because he needed to see someone who they were unable to fit into tomorrow’s schedule. She said if I had time I could wait and see him today. He examined my foot and definitely found the area of pain. He injected the area with cortisone (boy did that hurt!) and now I am wearing a bigger boot for two weeks. One of my church friends who had ankle/foot surgery just graduated last week from casts to a boot. I guess I had boot envy.

 Since it is my driving foot (right foot), I don’t think I will be going many places the next 2 weeks unless my husband drives me. The boot sort of rocks you back on your heel so that the rest of the foot isn’t bearing weight. I will take it off to shower and at bedtime. It will be 2-3 days before the cortisone has any effect, if any. Right now my foot is sore from the shot. The doctor thinks there is inflammation, thus the cortisone. The area injected is around the os peroneum. I had never heard of it, but he showed it to me on the x-ray. Not everybody has this little “accesory bone/cartilage”.

I had thought about having a doctor look at my foot after two months of pain, but I was afraid that I might end up with one of these boots; it would have been impossible to visit Quebec City with a boot on. Unfortunately, when I did return home, it took several weeks to get in to see my primary care doctor. She is the one that had me wear the post-op shoe. I will say that it was only a 4 day wait (turned out to be only 3 days) to see the orthopedist. The referral went fast. If no improvement in 2 weeks, an MRI will be scheduled when/if the insurance company authorizes it. Just call me Hobble Along Cassidy.

Looking and Feeling Like Fall

It is finally looking and feeling like fall. I believe we will put the electric blanket on the bed tonight. I did find time last week to do some autumn decorating.

I needed a fall centerpiece for Literary Club today. I had been thinking of filling my copper pitcher anyway. Not great, but I didn’t want to spend a lot of money. Not only did it serve my purpose, I now have it on the entry table.

 

One way I decorate is to frame Holly Hobby pictures from old calendars. I change these out each season. I had bought a turkey and Thanksgiving banner window cling set for the bulletin board for GV library. There were some other smaller clings; I added them to the frame of the calendar picture.

Hard to photograph these framed calendar pictures because of the glare on the acrylic frame. You get some idea of how they look.

 The leaves on the trees have changed rapidly the past few days. I love autumn.

 I am still struggling with the healthcare site. When I clicked on my application, it said I had not completed it. I clicked on the information boxes that appeared, though they already had information. Finally a signature box appeared. I typed in my name and submitted. Shortly after that, I received an email that I had new messages. There was successful submission and completion of my application. Hooray. But when I opened the message, it was a PDF notification file with a letter that referenced a table that was not visible. It did not flatly state I was eligible. There is a tab on the top of my account page that says buy and enroll in insurance. It is inoperable. I called the helpline and received zero help. The lady kept saying if I waited until later when the site wasn’t so busy I would be able to log in. I told her I was logged in and viewing my eligibility notice that didn’t make sense because it referenced a table that was not there. Same “explanation” was given. She didn’t seem to have a clue as to my problem, other than I should have received a letter in a pdf. So if I received notification, why can’t I advance to the next step? She didn’t know. I will wait a few days and try again. I can be very persistent, but I fear lots of people are dropping out of the process in frustration.

Patience Required

As an older person with pre-existing health conditions, I was turned down by two companies for health insurance after reaching the end of my COBRA coverage. The only option available to me was ICHIA (Indiana Comprehensive Health Insurance Association) which is the state risk pool insurance. Each year the already-expensive monthly premium increased, and when I hit 60 it skyrocketed. I currently pay $1077 per month for insurance that does not pay a cent toward care (including routine doctor visits) until I have met a high deductible. It does have negotiated contractual fees which are lower than the list prices so helps out in that way. Of course with the advent of the Affordable Care Act, the Indiana legislature voted to discontinue this state-run program as of January 1st. Interesting because they have never provided funds for the program; it is self-sustaining. The state of Indiana decided not to establish a state marketplace for health insurance but threw its citizens into the federal exchange.

 

I consider myself a fairly savvy internet user. The stories you hear about how dysfunctional healthcare.gov is are true if I judge by my own experience. I signed up for the email news items about a month ahead of the start date. Those items suggested registering on the site with a user name and password to be ready. I was ready, but they were not. I did not try to go online until day 4 thinking the glitches would be fewer and the wait time less. I got the “busy” screen, but I did finally get to the log on. The computer program did not recognize my registered information as valid. I reached a dead end. After several days of trying, I registered under a new user name and password. Again I received the email asking me to validate the information by clicking on the provided link, which I did. Now I had two sets of registration information which either came back with invalid information messages or 404 error messages.

 

Finally on Friday October 11th, I called the 800 phone number. A very nice lady offered to fill in the application over the phone. We started with the basic name and address information. It was slow going as her computer was sluggish. She then asked if the application was for me only or included others in my household. She apparently entered that information to bring up the correct application form. I heard a sudden exclamation of “Bonkers! My computer is going bonkers!” She had lost the input information, and the way she put it the computer kept going off (blank) and then on with an unrelated screen. She apologized and sounding incredulous said this had never happened to her before. Rather than stay on the phone to see if the problem would clear up, I thanked her for her attempt and said I would try again online the following week and if unsuccessful would phone again.

 

I will say that the website had improved from October 4th to October 11th. There was no “busy” screen as apparently more server capacity had been added. I did receive an email that had a link to a listing of healthcare plans in one’s county by company and plan level with estimated premium prices before any subsidies. Before, you had no way to “shop” plans to see if you would even want to go thru the trouble of signing up. No deductible levels given, but it was an improvement and an incentive to keep trying once I saw the monthly amounts. I would easily save $4000 to $5000 a year even without subsidies and have much better benefits.

 

Later in the afternoon after the phone disaster, I got to thinking about the FAQ section I had read. I had cleared browsing history and reset cookies and said I forgot my user name so I could get an email to retry, clicked on the validation link many times only to get an oops message that I had already validated, etc.,  but I had always used Internet Explorer. I wondered if using Mozilla Firefox would make a difference. My first attempt did not work. I remembered that sometimes blocking mechanisms in Firefox could be made inoperable by holding down the control. I re-entered my user name and password, held control and clicked on the Log In button. Success. Well, success of sorts. A screen appeared with drop-down buttons to view My Profile which I could and to view application which did not work. I looked at the profile and it said ID not validated. There was a little button to validate now. I clicked and nothing happened. With my profile page still open, I went to the email with the link and clicked. Now a list of multiple choice questions for validation appeared. Whether it was because of the email click or it just took a long time to appear, I had moved a step closer. I later read in the Wall Street Journal that these validation questions came from credit reporting bureaus like Experian and that the software to connect the healthcare site with the bureau data was really buggy. I submitted my question answers and on my profile it said “validated”. Then a screen automatically appeared with a way to start filling in the application. I submitted the application and an application number appeared and status said pending. However, it said I would have to receive a message that I was deemed eligible for healthcare thru the exchange before seeing the health plans available to me and actually enrolling.

 

Saturday I tried to log in to see if the status had changed. Again I got nothing but error messages using Explorer. I accessed my “account” thru Firefox, but the Profile and Application buttons were inoperable. Today the same thing, but when I logged off, there was now a different screen than the basic log in screen; this one said return to your marketplace account with a link. This link took me to what looked like the log in screen, but this screen actually worked and took me to my account. My status had changed from Pending to In Progress.

 

That is where things stand currently. I still am not enrolled in health insurance, but apparently I am in the pipeline somewhere.

You can see application assistance sites by typing in your zip code. Originally, there were only a handful, the closest 30 miles away, but now there is one in my county. The assisters are at the mercy of the website too; many are advising filling out a paper application and mailing it. I am so grateful that I was finally able to submit online as at least there is some feedback there, and I have an application number to follow up on if I don’t hear back in a week or two. Mailing the application is like throwing something into a black hole.

 

The process may get easier as they do continually work on the system. My biggest tip is to use a browser other than Internet Explorer.