Food Delights

I cooked a lamb rack for dinner tonight accompanied with potato, pumpkin, carrot, asparagus and kale.

I seared the lamb rack in very hot coconut oil in my cast iron frypan, then lay it on a bed of fresh rosemary, chopped garlic and thick slices of onion. I baked it in a hot oven for 30 minutes.

I chopped the potatoes, pumpkin and carrot into evenly sized pieces and coated them in a mixture of cumin, turmeric, chilli powder, salt, lime juice and coconut oil, then lay them on a tray covered in baking paper and baked them in the oven at 180C. They took about 45 minutes turning them once.

The asparagus were blanched in boiling water, butter and garlic.

I tore the kale into small pieces, then rubbed the leftover coconut oil mixture into the leaves and put them in a low oven (120C) for an hour, to make kale chips.

It was all so delicious, I could have eaten a second helping!

Lunch was home made gf garlic toast with tomato and cheese melted over the top.

Watermelon for afternoon tea.

I think I'm about to have some red papaya, strawberries and banana for dessert.

Adoring Husband and I had a fairly productive morning around the house, but by lunch time I was well and truly spent and needed a nana nap right after lunch!

It has been a very lazy afternoon.

Only one more day of rest before the study begins. Time to activate the brain again.

Nite all.

Something New

A quick and easy Friday night post of my favourite quotes found in facebook this week.

... and just because it's Halloween. I am totally against Halloween, which is an American tradition that Australian business and media have cashed in on ...

Last year, we were not at all prepared for Halloween and had to turn away children knocking on our door. This year, I bought some sugar filled crap to dish out to them, which really goes against the grain. Next year, if I'm on the ball, I can make some healthful sweets and cakes to hand out instead!

Nite all.

PS Just want to acknowledge Jamie's birthday. He would have been 36 today.

Welcome to the World

What luck!

Today, I went to check the second nest and saw some movement! This is what I found ..

So there are at least two chicks there, possibly three, but only time will tell. It's very exciting! For me anyway.

I attempted to give one of the psychotic dogs a hair cut this morning but she was cranky and horrible, so the job didn't get finished.

My second text book arrived today, so now I can officially begin studying! The book looks incredibly intimidating, to say the least, but I'm pretty excited about what's next to learn.

Today, I've started a health journal for myself, and am in the process of setting one up for Adoring Husband, so that he can document the 'possible' healing journey that we are about to embark upon.

Finally, this afternoon, I rode down to the river because the soft cloud was looking promising for a pretty sunset. Unfortunately, as often happens to our sunsets, a bank of cloud appeared from the West and snuffed the sun, so I rode home the long way, just so that I could enjoy the lovely evening light.

Adoring Husband had SES training tonight, so it's been very quiet here on the home front.

I'm trying for an early night, so ...

Nite all.

Surprise!!

I have had suspicions for some time that there might be two chicks in the Tawny nest, but two days ago, I conceded that I was wrong and there must only be one.

It seemed to me that each day, the chick looked a bit different. Some days it seemed too small and some days it's eyes seemed smaller and darker, but then I thought that maybe the nest was quite small and it just depended on what position in the nest that she was situated on any particular day.

So today, as I was trespassing to get my morning shot of the Tawny family, I climbed the stairs to the house (which is an empty holiday rental property) so that I could get a better angle and was taking photos for about ten minutes, and just about to return to my trike, when I saw movement to the left of the chick.

This little clump of feathers appeared from under the parent Tawny and suddenly he opened his eyes and looked at me!

How adorable is he!? Quite a bit smaller than his sibling and he has a bit of a grumpy face, but still very adorable.

I was so excited, I was talking to them in a very high pitched voice (which might explain the weird looks on their faces!). Looking forward to searching them both out every morning now.

The other nest that I've been watching is still pretty quiet, although the parent Tawny is sitting much higher, or taller, in the nest, so I think the eggs have hatched and now it's just a matter of time before they poke their little white faces out to take a look at the world.

I'm checking them every day.

I had a nice lunch with the ladies today. There were about 15 of us. The food was pretty average, but the wine was good and the company was excellent.

Next month, we are taking the river boat across the river to have lunch at the Woodgate Bowls Club. I've already booked and paid for my spot, so I'm IN!

Nite all.

The Dealer

Adoring Husband and I visited The Dealer today.

I call his doctor 'The Dealer' because every time AH has an appointment, he comes home with a new prescription for another drug.

The Dealer, again, called me The Bodyguard when we walked into his surgery, and I plan on being the 'ever present' bodyguard forever more!

He suggested another drug today (just like last time) and even drew a lovely little diagram with a graph and percentages to try to convince us how successful this drug would be.

The calculations which he attempted to construct in his head, were not convincing, and I don't think he was convinced either. There was a bit of babbling going on.

So, we left with an appointment card for AH to see someone else about some helpful exercises that he will need, to improve parts of his health (in place of the drugs).

'Apparently' there is nothing natural that we can do to improve this part of AH's health (I love how medical practitioners and specialists ALWAYS say that ... like they've EVER attempted anything natural!). 'Apparently' this is a natural ageing process that can only degenerate as he gets older.

We'll see about that.

Then we had a lovely time in AH's computer record, removing some medications from his list of 'active' drugs .. and there was a good number of them .. until there was just one left.

Can you see the beaming smile on my face? Can you hear my audible sigh of relief? Can you sense how proud I am of Adoring Husband for avoiding those toxic substances and attempting to allow his body to become strong enough to fight disease and illness in a more natural way?

There are still health issues (aside from his Parkinson's) that we have to address and I'm working on those issues as quickly as I can - my education as a process is intense and time consuming. There is just so much to learn and absorb, but I can see progress happening in my own head!

We will get there.

Tonight we had a few storms roll over us. Lots of noise and a hell of a light show with just a couple of short sharp showers. We could have done with some decent rain, but unfortunately that wasn't meant to be.

I hid inside the house until the storms were a LONG way from us, and I took these photos from my outdoor area with the camera pointed between a couple of houses.

The light show was impressive and I wish I was brave enough to set up the camera on the beach because THAT would have been gobsmackingly amazing!

As promised, dinner last night was this ...

The chicken breast (a recipe given to me a long time ago by Lady Lynn) was butterflied, pounded and then I rolled crumbled feta cheese, chopped sundried tomatoes, oven roasted pine nuts & almonds in it.

I placed the rolled chicken on a bed of sliced onion, sprinkled a combination of lime zest, thyme, oregano and minced garlic over the top, covered it with baking paper and baked it in a 180C oven for 45 mins, but I think it only needed 35 mins because it was a bit dry.

The cauliflower rice had toasted pine nuts, onion, chilli, lemon juice and coriander tossed through it.

The cucumber was thinly sliced, mixed with shallots and coriander and then soaked in lemon juice, balsamic vinegar, olive oil and cracked pepper.

You can see the leftover stuffing mixture from the chicken in the middle of the plate too.

I just want to end with my favourite quote from Winnie the Pooh.

Nite all.

Fuzzy

Here are the photos from yesterday that I promised.

The final photo for the facebook B&W challenge ..

Tonight I made Lime and Coriander Cauliflower Rice with Rolled Stuffed Chicken and Lemon Cucumber Salad.

The photos and recipes for that will be in tomorrow's post.

That is all!

Nite all.

Sleepathon

Can you believe that I was in bed by 8pm last night?!

I got out of bed just before 8am this morning!

Unbelievable!!

The last time I did that, was a few months ago, when I arrived home one Friday night from the Bowls Club very drunk and fell unconscious on the bed at about 7.30pm .. but I did wake up at about 1am and spent a good deal of time in the bathroom before collapsing on the bed again a couple of hours later.

Last night, I was very sober, and I woke up at midnight, got out of bed to find Adoring Husband sound asleep in his recliner lounge chair, so I returned to my bed and immediately fell right back to sleep.

It's been a LOT of years since I was able to sleep that many hours in one night and I certainly felt very good for it this morning.

My B&W photo for day 4 of the facebook challenge ...

... and our little Tawny chick continues to grow bigger every day ...

I had a very social morning today and didn't arrive home until lunch time. During my socialising, I got some great photos of a little Wattlebird chick sleeping in it's nest and then a couple of Pale Headed Rosellas eating buds from a Bottlebrush tree, which I will share with you tomorrow.

After crunching through some sand crab for lunch, my afternoon was very quiet. No cooking. No cleaning. Nothing exciting. No visitors.

A little bit of study and research on gallbladders and how they work when they're healthy and when they're not so healthy. There is always something new to learn about the human body and all the bits that make it up. Loving it.

So now I'm off to bed for my usual midnight sleep time.

Nite all.