Continuing to work on the kitchen, I made good progress with more cleaning and a bit of painting before leaving the last coat of paint to dry and heading out to do some shopping.
Lydia has kept me company all day and she enjoyed an extra lamb rib as well as a raw chicken wing with her tea.
I had some savoury rice, and vegetarian sausages that were in the freezer. Then I made some chilli enchiladas for Trev and me to have for our tea tomorrow night. I bought avocados and limes to make fresh guacamole, and crème fresh as a lighter alternative to sour cream. There’s plenty of chilli left over so we can have that on Saturday night, or it will freeze for later.
I’ve been reading more of the book, ‘How to Transform Your Life’ by the Venerable Geshe Kelsang Gyatso, Rinpoche.
Just being able to concentrate on reading again feels like a bit of a transformation, although that is not the type of transformation that the book is about. Or maybe it is, in that meditation and doing my best to put the teachings into practice have helped to start bringing my concentration levels back.
Lydia has done a lot of barking today, after a quiet walk this morning. She’s now had her tea and is snuggled up to her blanket/quilt. She’s looking at me and blinking her eyes and making a few gurgly noises with her throat, so I think she’s fairly relaxed.
There’s meatloaf left over from yesterday that Trev made so it’s an easy tea for us, with some boiled potatoes, steamed broccoli and gravy.
A bit more telly tonight, keeping things steady this week as I’ll be doing some intensive deep cleaning next week. Trev’s away for a few days so I’ll set to with my steam cleaner. We’re getting ready to put the house on the market in the New Year, and it’s just about doing what needs to be done for that, before Christmas.
Lydia gave me a gentle nudge in the early hours and I went downstairs to open the back door for her, propping it open so that she could enjoy some morning air, which I knows she likes to do, while sheltering inside. It gives her a chance to go and have a ‘peepie’ if she needs one and I go down later to close it, as expected finding her now curled up in her chair.
My lower back is aching a bit after my exertions of yesterday, balancing on a stepladder that I’d positioned so that I could reach the far corners of the walls I was painting. I knew I hadn’t strained my back – I’d been careful and I have Qigong and yoga to thank for giving me flexibility and strength that I wouldn’t have otherwise. I did, however, feel that I’d stretched muscles that I wouldn’t otherwise have stretched, and decided to make myself a cup of tea for comfort, to take back to bed. It must have worked because I didn’t wake until after 9am and I felt I’d had a reasonably deep sleep for a few hours.
It was the ‘Boot and Shoe’ walk – that I also call the ‘woodland walk’ – for Lydia and me this morning, the name coming from the house nearby. She was sniffing and pulling most of the way so I don’t know what scent or scents she’d picked up on, but they were strong.
After coming home and giving Lydia her breakfast, I decided to make some blueberry muffins. I don’t feel like my usual breakfast foods at the moment – even poached eggs on toast which I normally love as a brunch – and muffins seemed like a good option. I’d bought a large tray of blueberries when I went shopping yesterday and they are a good nutritious fruit.
For a standard cake mix I use a basic formula of equal quantities of butter or margarine, sugar and flour in a ratio of 4, 4 and 4 plus two eggs. This morning, I had 12oz of baking margarine in a tub leftover from when I’d made a cake a couple of weeks ago, so I used that as the starting measure. Deciding that I didn’t want my muffins too sweet, I weighed out 8oz of sugar instead of 12oz. I’m quite happy to use metric measures but this morning stuck to imperial as it made it easy with the amount of margarine I was starting with. Six eggs, a sprinkling of salt, 12oz of self-raising flour – plus a little extra baking powder just to help the muffins be as light and fluffy as they can be – an unmeasured quantity of blueberries and a splash of evaporated milk completed the mix.
I’d preheated the oven to 180 degrees centigrade and spooned the mixture into 18 paper cases. I baked them initially for 20 minutes and then moved the muffins from the top shelf to the lower shelf and the ones from the lower shelf to the higher shelf to help them all cook evenly. I set the timer for another 10 minutes but got engrossed in writing this post and didn’t hear it go off! The muffins, however, are just nicely browned, not burnt, and I am now waiting for them to cool down so that I can try one, or two, or more.
The carbs should help to set me up for some more painting this afternoon. Having finished the walls I’m now turning to woodwork that was done not so long ago but needs a bit of freshening up in places. It shouldn’t take long and won’t be anywhere near as strenuous as yesterday’s efforts. I do find the process of painting soothing, so I’ll just take my time and it’ll get done.
As it turned out, the small pot of paint that was in the garage, that I thought was a water-based satin white for woodwork, was actually a matt white emulsion. I only discovered this after I’d painted over with it in a few places but it’ll be fine. I’ll buy a pot of the paint that I need tomorrow and go over it again.
There’s also a skylight window frame that needs doing, so I started to prepare that by giving it a good clean with some sugar soap solution. I was too tired to start painting it today as it will need careful concentration – including masking tape application in places – to make sure I do a proper job of it. It will take a couple of coats and I also need to try and reach the outside pane to clean it. I cleaned the inside pane today but I may need my steam cleaner for the outside.
Positioned at the top of the stairs, I used a combination of a chair, stepladders and a left-side-step on to my ‘strategically placed’ filing cabinet today and was able to reach all parts of the skylight frame. It’s going to be a job for later in the week and probably going on into next weekend.
Trev’s back after going out earlier. He sampled and approved the muffins and I’ve now reached the 28th day of my latest 28-day writing cycle, so I’m taking a short break from writing new posts and will publish an earlier post each day instead, starting with ‘A Bag of Clay’ that includes a poem. Hope you enjoy it.
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I rarely remember dreams but woke this morning from a deeper sleep than I’ve had for a long time, remembering one.
The sense of relief that comes from sleep is immense. The strategy of reducing my caffeine intake, limiting myself to just two or three cups of tea a day – in the morning – and no coffee, is starting to pay off.
It is by no means the only part of my strategy, as limiting or eliminating caffeine altogether isn’t necessarily going to do the trick without other factors kicking in, in my experience anyway.
For me, I know it is a combination of physical and creative and other activities.
It also depends on the type and context of activities.
The heavy lifting and shifting I’ve done recently, clearing stuff out of house and garage and taking them to the tip, are good for the musculoskeletal system, but my nearly 70-year-old back was giving me a few warning signs. A few stretches at home helped, but not as much as the yoga class I went to yesterday. There has been no Qigong this week as we do classes in groups of three, then have a break, then back for another group of three. This works very well and yesterday meant that I had time to do a charity shop drop-off, again with more lifting and carrying – a big bag and a box – and then go shopping for our tea, a stir fry that I cooked using a combination of a bag of pre-made sauce, some hoisin sauce from a bottle, and some dark soy sauce. I usually make a stir-fry sauce from scratch, using a combination of lemon or lime juice, ginger, garlic if we have any, and again soy sauce; also a bit of brown sugar, salt and pepper. However, due to my having had a cold, I thought I’d make it a bit easier for myself. I also took the time to buy a large pot of matt white emulsion, some concentrated sugar soap and a precision paint brush for edges. This will enable me to start doing the painting work I have lined up for later in the week.
So, for now, I’m keeping my strength up and the aches and pains at bay, glad to be able to enjoy a walk with Lydia on this bright and sunny, if somewhat breezy, morning. I always feel invigorated after I come back from our walks, and I now have a good little routine that involves putting her poopie bags in the outside bin, washing my hands, filling and setting off her breakfast ball for her to nudge around the lounge, putting a chicken wing or drumstick (sometimes a lamb rib) in a cool bag for later, so that it defrosts and hopefully gets to room temperature but doesn’t go off, and making sure that there’s a further supply of her raw food starting to defrost in the fridge.
Today I didn’t feel like sitting down for breakfast so I put some mashed banana on toast that I’d spread with olive spread and did some tidying up in the kitchen while I was eating it, unloading and loading up the dishwasher and a few other things. A dishwasher is a relatively recent acquisition for us and it makes such a difference.
Later today I’ll visit M in her care home. We’ll go for coffee and a cake but I’ll make sure I get decaff. It’s the way forward for me, for the time being at least.
Trev has done some more clearing out as well, which puts us in a good position for me to start painting the walls by the stairs and in the landing area. I painted through all the rest of the house when we moved in, a section at a time as I wasn’t feeling well and I could only do a section at a time. I never did get round to doing the walls up the stairs and on the landing though and since then there’ve been a lot of things going on. I now, finally, have time, energy and inclination to do that job. It shouldn’t take long but then there’s no need to try and do it in a rush. A bit at a time and it will get done.
Cooking with leftovers isn’t a new concept, but it’s an important one.
I’m interested in reducing waste of all kinds. Reducing food waste in my own kitchen is something that I can and like to do.
Trev and I have different views about ‘waste’ when it comes to food. When I was living on my own – which I was for some time before we met – I used to cook batches of food and either eat it for days on end until it was gone, or eat some and freeze some.
He, on the other hand, thinks that if he leaves something in a pan it’s going to ‘go to waste’ and therefore feels obliged to eat it (well, that’s his story!).
Anyway, because we both need to watch our weight, I’ve had to rethink my approach to batches and think more in portions. Apart from when I’m cooking soup.
It’s hard to overeat soup, by nature of its liquid bulk. And even if – when – we eat generous portions, the calorific value is relatively low (unless it’s laden with cheese, croutons, dumplings … but they’re another story).
At the weekend we indulged in roast leg of lamb with a herb crust, complete with jabron potatoes, sugar snap peas and Savoy cabbage. It was a great combination (with gravy, of course), followed by magic lemon pudding (I’d been massively remiss in not having made this for over forty years) and ice cream (delish).
So, there were a few sugar snap peas and some cabbage left, plus some sticks of celery and a couple of peppers which were ‘on their way out’ but got thrown in.
Added stock, a few splashes of things here and there (my secret) and, once cooked, liquidised.
The result was healthy, ‘slurp worthy’ soup that tasted so much better than anything out of a can.
Each batch of leftover soup is unique; once it’s gone, it’s gone. But it’s great just to conjure something up from odd bits and pieces, instead of throwing them out.
Cooking with leftovers isn’t a new concept, but it’s an important one.
I’m interested in reducing waste of all kinds. Reducing food waste in my own kitchen is something that I can and like to do.
My partner and I have different views about ‘waste’ when it comes to food. When I was living on my own – which I was for some time before we met – I used to cook batches of food and either eat it for days on end until it was gone, or eat some and freeze some.
He, on the other hand, thinks that if he leaves something in a pan it’s going to ‘go to waste’ and therefore feels obliged to eat it (well, that’s his story!).
Anyway, because we both need to watch our weight, I’ve had to rethink my approach to batches and think more in portions. Apart from when I’m cooking soup.
It’s hard to overeat soup, by nature of it’s liquid bulk. And even if – when – we eat generous portions, the calorific value is relatively low (unless it’s laden with cheese, croutons, dumplings … but they’re another story).
At the weekend we indulged in roast leg of lamb with a herb crust, complete with jabron potatoes, sugar snap peas and Savoy cabbage. It was a great combination (with gravy, of course), followed by magic lemon pudding (I’d been massively remiss in not having made this for over forty years) and ice cream (delish).
So, there were a few sugar snap peas and some cabbage left, plus some sticks of celery and a couple of peppers which were ‘on their way out’ but got thrown in.
Added stock, a few splashes of things here and there (my secret) and, once cooked, liquidised.
The result was tasty, healthy, ‘slurp worthy’ soup that tasted so much better than anything out of a can.
Each batch of leftover soup is unique; once it’s gone, it’s gone. But it’s great just to conjure something up from odd bits and pieces, instead of throwing them out.
Glad About 
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