Kitchen Tactics

After our morning play in the rain, I gave Harley his treat and found my way into the kitchen.

I had 4 litres of chicken stock to batch up and freeze and a second batch to get started.

Then I decided to beat the kitchen rush for “fend for yourself” night and made myself some puff pastry pies.

The filling was made with chicken, garlic, celery, capsicum, shallots, some leftover mashed potato, mushrooms, home made cream of cauliflower soup, butter, salt, pepper, baby spinach and tapioca flour.

I ate one for lunch and two thirds of one for dinner. I still have one left over for tomorrow. Delicious!

BGWLBH made minestrone for her dinner. Minestrone is one of my most disliked foods - and she knows that - but was offended when I didn’t thank her for offering it to me.

“Thank you so much for offering me food that I strongly dislike AND thank you too for being offended when I screwed my nose up AND thank you also for trying to make me feel guilty for not thanking you for your offer of food that I dislike.”

I’ll be sure to offer you some cauliflower and Brussels sprouts in the near future.

Adoring Husband cooked himself some Barkers Creek pork cutlets on the barbecue and made mash and beans to go with it.

So the kitchen got a good workout today!

Of course it’s Super Saturday night for football so we parked our butts in front of the TV. So far, I have 4 out of 6 tips correct, with two more games tomorrow. I have actually lifted myself from last position to 2nd last! Woot Woot!

I forgot to take a pic of our new outdoor furniture. Must do that tomorrow.

We had some good rain overnight and this morning. It seems to have cleared now, but the forecast is for around 100mm over the next week. We shall see!

Time for sleep now.

Nite all.

Rain is Coming

"This constant lying is not aimed at making the people believe a lie, but at ensuring that no one believes anything anymore.

A people that can no longer distinguish between truth and lies cannot distinguish between right and wrong.

And such a people, deprived of the power to think and judge, is, without knowing and willing it, completely subjected to the rule of lies.

With such a people, you can do whatever you want."

- Hannah Arendt

(14 October 1906 – 4 December 1975) German historian and philosopher

Our new outdoor furniture arrived late this afternoon. I’ll take a pic tomorrow, but we definitely need an outdoor rug.

Tomorrow I will attempt to teach Harley NOT to jump on the new furniture.

BGWLBH spent the day in The Bay.

I spent the day in front of the TV.

AH spent the day waiting for the furniture.

We’ve had intermittent rain since lunch time and a few heavy downpours this evening.

I’m exhausted from doing nothing all day haha.

Nite all.

Typical!

Adoring Husband removed the old furniture from the pool area today and then pressure washed the pebblecrete, ready for the new furniture to arrive tomorrow.

I unwrapped the swinging egg chair (which was a task in itself) only to discover that the warehouse had not provided the hook, chain and bolts for construction! This sort of thing always happens to AH - typical!

After a quick phone call, AH very generously offered to drive all the way into The Bay to pick up the box of necessities. Personally, I think that they should have brought them out to us! AH needed to purchase our new fire extinguishers and fire blankets, so the trip into town served a double purpose.

While he was gone, I started editing some of the photos from Bambooland …

I have used my camera twice in the last 4 yrs and I have to say that it’s NOT like riding a bike. It was difficult trying to remember how to use/change the settings effectively. Some pics were pretty bad and there were very few great shots.

I’m only a quarter of the way through editing - that’s the other thing I’m struggling with, and both of the editing programs that I use have had some big changes in that time so it’s a learning process all over again.

When AH returned from The Bay, we put the egg chair together and I sat in it for 45 minutes throwing the ball for Harley.

Dinner was very early today and I called out the familiar “Dinner is served” at 4.50pm!

Nachos and taco wraps.

I heated up some leftover lasagne from the freezer which took an hour to reheat!

Number One Son called and we chatted for 40 minutes before the rest of us played trivia for an hour.

I can’t believe it’s almost 11pm. Time to sleep.

I disagree with the first one - I don’t think we should eat less meat - I think meat is important for brain health - everything in moderation.

Nite all.

Post Trauma

Adoring Husband conducted the necessary post-mortem on our barbecue today.

He was hoping that a good clean with the karcher pressure washer would bring it back good as new.

Sadly, it was not the case and he found that the metal frame had warped so much in the heat of the fire, that the metal hot plate trays no longer slot into their spots.

So not only is AH suffering PTSD, but the barbecue is suffering unrepairable PTSD and 3rd degree burns to 75% of its body.

For now, we have a second barbecue which we store in the pool area. We use it in Spring and Summer to cook breakfast which we enjoy under the Bali hut. It’s a bit smaller than the dead one but will do until we decide whether we need a replacement.

AH has also decided that we not only have to replace our kitchen fire extinguisher (which he used yesterday), but we need a second one dedicated to our barbecue area. The same goes for the fire blanket.

I went to The Bay with BGWLBH today, so I didn’t get to edit the photos.

Before we arrived home, Burrum Heads was hit with a good heavy downpour, which we could see from Hervey Bay so our safest bet was to drive halfway home, then park at Craignish shopping centre until the storm passed. It took about 25 minutes.

We enjoyed home made hamburgers for dinner and then an hour of trivia.

The rest of the evening has been Olympic viewing.

I’m feeling pretty weary tonight.

Nite all.

Woopsie

It was a very small class for meditation with just five happy souls in attendance this morning.

Unfortunately, the gardener arrived right on 8am and found it the perfect time to mow, blow and vacuum directly under our window.

It was good for us to practice remaining calm in a usually frustrating situation and to meditate no matter what the circumstances.

It was, however, difficult to hear The Gypsy through a lot of the class.

After a brief chat among the individuals of the group, The Gypsy and I drove out to Bambooland for our photoshoot.

We avoided the beach because it was a dull overcast day and beaches are very grey and gloomy on days like today. The low light was much better for lush green surroundings.

Coffee and a chat was first priority. After about 30 minutes we found a few nice spots to grab some pics and we spent about 40 minutes clicking away.

I was home before midday.

I have prepared the photos for editing and if I get a chance to sit down with them tomorrow, hopefully I can share some here.

Adoring Husband cooked some snags on the barbecue for my lunch and forgot to turn it off, causing a fat fire in the drip tray.

The only reason he found it before it caused more damage was because our ‘life saver’ Harley pushed his way through the sliding doors into the house and came to the doggy gate that blocks the lounge room. AH got out of his lounge chair to go talk to Harley and noticed the flames through the window!

He didn’t say anything to me but moments later he screams out to me “Get the fire blanket!”

I yelled back “Where is it!?!?”

He replies “I don’t know!” 😳😳😳

Luckily, I remembered that I’d seen it on the floor beside the fridge in the cavity so I grabbed it and raced it out to him. He had tried the fire extinguisher which was ineffective so we covered the barbecue with the blanket but even that was taking its sweet time to reduce the size of the flames.

A slow release of water from the hose seemed to do the trick.

By then AH, realising the gravity of what could have been, had a bit of a breakdown.

My advice to him was to not waste energy panicking over what might have happened - because it didn’t! He should be happy that nothing happened and he was able to get the fire under control!

We all survived and Harley got a treat for inadvertently bringing it to our attention.

Sadly, the barbecue is not in good shape, so I had to cook the snags in our kitchen at dinner time. Bangers, mash, beans, carrots and tomato/onion gravy from scratch.

We played trivia for an hour before getting our Olympics fix.

I think I’ll sleep well tonight.

Nite all.

Products of our Generation

Aging looks good on anyone who believes that it does.

It’s an inner light kind of deal.

It shines through skin, bone, muscle and sinew - bathing everything you see in a luminous glow of peace, acceptance and utter loveliness.

It’s some sort of chemical reaction when self-love (at last) meets Mother Nature.

Then wisdom and hindsight all join together too and cast their magic -

until what you see is a woman who has evolved, grown, learned and risen many many times.

And it’s a beautiful sight to behold.

So, age however you like because if something is not making you happy, that will show.

Time can’t erase your beauty my friend, only negativity can do that.

- Donna Ashworth

J of Inveterate Travellers - age looks good on you! (FYI the above pic is NOT J)

We enjoyed a LONG lunch with Best Cousin in the World, Marco Polo and the Inveterate Travellers at Aquavue today.

The company was pretty much the only good thing about the day.

The food was ‘ok’.

The service was very slow.

We ordered one after the other, in couples, and our meals arrived 15-20 minutes apart. In fact J had to go ask where their meals were when the rest of us were finished ours!

When I asked for sugar for our tea and coffee, we were given a silver jug of ‘sugar water’ which they explained was sugar and water mixed by them. Why?

😳

I took it back and they found a container of raw sugar under the counter.

Because we were enjoying the company, The Inveterate Travellers, Adoring Husband and I decided to remain at our table after BCITW and MP had to leave and we girls ordered $17 cocktails while the boys had coffee.

I’m pretty sure it was after 2.30pm when we all agreed it was time to move on. Warm hugs and fond farewells followed and I have to say that I enjoyed the day very much.

Thank you J & P Inveterate Travellers and of course, BCITW and MP.

One problem. Young people take selfies and group pics to commemorate these occasions - we oldies don’t even think of doing that until 2 hours after the event and we have no evidence of our wonderful lunch.

We are products of our generation.

🫤

Before we went to lunch, AH and I did a run through all of the furniture shops in town to find an egg chair, and this is the one we eventually selected …

After lunch, we returned to our selected chair, paid for it, and drove across town to pick it up from the warehouse.

We also did a shop at Go Natural and picked up some delicious organic goodies including roasted capsicum relish, fermented garlic paste, duck fat, GF beef pies, chilli tuna and more.

Oh and a new toaster because our old one only works on one side.

Now it’s time to sleep because tomorrow is meditation and if the weather permits, that elusive photo shoot that we’ve been trying for since last week.

Nite all.

Sunday Solitude

I struggled to get out of bed this morning, but I needed to get Harley’s play time in before my planned zoom meeting with The Gypsy.

I mistakenly thought that we were doing our photoshoot, but it was a zoom meeting instead.

So I finished with Harley, made my breakfast of tea and toast and returned to bed where I had 30 minutes to enjoy my food before the meeting.

I always zoom in the bedroom, for privacy, comfort and light.

Our zoom chat lasted for just over 3 hours!

We had a long, in-depth discussion about depression and all the telltale signs like no motivation, procrastination, avoiding social situations, staying in bed, emotional eating or not eating, irritability, addiction, finding no joy in things you usually love, struggling to prioritise, not showering/cleaning teeth/brushing hair etc etc etc

Both of us have experience some of these symptoms to varying degrees over recent months for different reasons.

We talked about the different ways we monitor ourselves and how we clear the blocks that keep us stuck in depression. It seems that ‘movement’ is the key - whether it’s walking, dancing, hula hooping, tai chi, qi gong, riding/cycling, swimming, gardening etc.

The other important thing is ‘traffic control’ - monitoring our thoughts - setting the alarm on our phones for every hour between 9am and 5pm - and taking one minute to check and change our thoughts from negative self deprecating to positive and self respectful. That’s 8 minutes each day to practice self love.

Of course it’s important to acknowledge and recognise your decline and put these things into practice ‘before’ you reach the “I don’t give a f#@%” stage. That stage speaks for itself.

Our chats are always insightful and we learn a lot about ourselves and each other.

We finished in time for me to watch the football. Two great matches and I did OK with my tipping this week - if only I hadn’t tipped Tigers on Thursday night 🫤

I did a Lamb Tagine for dinner which is browned lamb chops, leeks, tomato, chickpeas, stock, garlic, cumin, lemon zest, Cayenne pepper, salt and pepper for 3 hours at 160° in the oven.

The meat just falls off the bone and the flavour is lovely. I served it with the leftover spinach and potato pie from last night.

Right now, I’m watching Djokovic and Alcaraz play for the gold medal at the Olympics. They are playing a tie breaker for the first set 6-6 (3-3) - it’s as close as it gets!

I’m off to support Novak.

Djokovic won the first set!

Nite all.