Dinner Party

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday and Adoring Husband and I are hosting a dinner party for six guests!

We've hosted parties, but this will be our first dinner party since we moved here 6 years ago and I'm quite excited about it.

It will be a three course meal .. entree, main and dessert .. along with some pre-dinner nibbles.

Everything will be home-made, from scratch.  Absolutely nothing out of a packet.  All gluten free, sugar free and hopefully delicious enough to satisfy our friends.

I won't tell you what's on the menu here, just in case our guests read this blog tomorrow.  I want it to be a surprise!  Also, a couple of the dishes are experimental and I'm not sure how they will turn out, so I have back-up plans .. you should always have a safety net!

My preparations and planning commenced on Good Friday when I planned my menu and then started on my entree meal.  It should only take another 20 minutes in the kitchen for it to be ready to serve.

Today, I've started preparations on the nibbles and the dessert.  I think the dessert is going to take some time, and unfortunately, it's one of my experiments, so I'm not sure on the timing and there are a lot of components to it, so it's the meal I am most afraid of failing.

I'm disappointed that I don't have an 8 piece dinner setting.  It's been ten years since we bought any crockery and in that time, pieces have been broken and now we have three incomplete settings.  Even cutlery could be interesting mismatches!  It would have been nice to create a restaurant feel like in My Kitchen Rules, just for the fun of it.  Maybe next time.

I came across these today and liked them enough to share ...

For many, your soul mate is not even a human being. It could be part of nature, an animal, an idea or another part of all that is. It could be several things at once.  It's whatever assists in your growth, helping you to ascend to all that you can be.  When you feel it, you'll know exactly who or what that is.

I'm off to watch the end of the footy.

Nite all.

  

It's a Good Friday

Adoring Husband and I have been quite busy on this Good Friday.

We started off watching the horror that is Easter at the Seat of Knowledge this morning, with all of the tourists lining up to use the boat ramp, with a bit of ramp rage here and there among the tourists, who have all obviously registered for the Easter Fishing Classic and were in a hurry to get out and start catching fish!

Then we did a little grocery shopping enjoyed a coffee outside the local shops before heading home to get started on our chores for the day.

Adoring Husband spent the entire day in the garden, setting up my new herb garden, pruning some plants and tidying up the pot plants around the water feature.

I spent time in the kitchen doing some preparations for our dinner party on Sunday night and cooking our main meal for lunch.  We had crispy skinned salmon steaks on potato and sweet potato mash with a side of zucchini and broccoli.  Quite delicious.

For a light dinner tonight, we had fresh king prawns on bed of salsa (cucumber, tomato, onion, grapes, coriander, mint and lime juice) and homemade mayonnaise.

I think we might both have an early night tonight.  I'm feeling quite weary after a restless night last night and a busy-ish day today.

Let me introduce you to our new "Helen"

Yes she is quite beautiful, but as yet, has not laid an egg!  I warned them today that if they didn't get a wriggle on and start laying, they would be the main course for the dinner party on Sunday!!

They've been very happily scratching around in the garden and I'm sure that they thoroughly enjoyed every mouthful of my bok choy, the remnants of which can now barely be seen :(

I'll get some better photos of Hector and Happy some time soon.

Right now, I need to wake Adoring Husband up and send him off to bed before his snores drown out the football game that I'm watching!

Nite all.



 

Short and Sweet

I found this in facebook today, and after discussing it at the club tonight, I just had to share it here .. such a beautiful sight .. and I've told Adoring Husband that he can train our 3 new chickens to do the same!  Imagine how nice it would be to get chicken hugs every morning!



and then I found this and it really tickled my fancy .. sick .. but hilarious!

I can't believe it's already after 11pm, so I'm off to bed.

Nite all.

World's Toughest Job

This is very interesting .. the responses and the realisations (It's only 4 minutes this time)



I don't know if you remember, 2 years ago, me telling you about a married couple that I met, who lived in the old service station in town.  The woman had a stable brain tumour and had survived 4 years, at that stage, although she wasn't strong.  Then, not long after I met them, he too was diagnosed with a brain tumour and passed away within 2 months of his diagnosis.

Well, yesterday, I bumped into her at the local supermarket and promised that I would visit her this morning.  She has new dentures and is having trouble with her gums and lips, so I took her a small bottle of coconut oil, with some instructions for 'oil pulling'.

She recently had a checkup for her tumour and it is still stable .. that makes 6 years in remission!  Definitely something to celebrate, but devastatingly, she had to have her dog euthanised two weeks ago, because she too, had a tumour!!

Personally, I think the vents from the old underground fuel tanks have a lot to answer for.  The outlets are right outside a bedroom window and the living room window, and taking into consideration that they have lived there for over 30 years, I think the toxins and fumes may have played a big part in their illnesses!

She also gave me some interesting information about the Childers Vet, who travels to Howard a couple of days each week to service that small town, but who also does house calls!  The vet travelled from Childers to our town, euthanised the dog, took the remains away and returned to Childers (approx 30 minutes away) for $200.

She was VERY impressed with this vet and how warm, sensitive and helpful she was in that very emotional moment.

More study for me today.  One of the things I learned today is that "the entire tract of our digestive system is replaced every three-five days"!  Who knew!?!?

I'm trying for an early night tonight, but I'm currently watching a documentary on Cannabis, on the ABC, which is very interesting!  Maybe I can stay up for an extra 30 minutes to see the end of it :)

Nite all.

A happy day

I started my morning at the Seat of knowledge, and it was a truly glorious morning, after the threat of horrible winds last night, that didn't eventuate, it was soooo nice to see calm water and clear skies.

I had morning tea with the funniest ladies in town, so I came home with a huge smile on my face and ready to hit the books for another day of study.

Then this evening I pedalled to the beach hoping to catch the blood moon rising.

Unfortunately, there was too much cloud on the horizon, which meant that the lunar eclipse was all over by the time it rose above the cloud and then the sky was too hazy to get a clear shot.

The sunset was a fizzer as well, but just before all of that, there were some nice rays illuminating the river ...

It looks like another midnight bed time for me tonight.

Nite all.

Health, Study, Cyclones and Ferris

I watched a couple of videos of Michael Pollan today.  He makes so much sense to me and I plan on watching more of his videos.

If you have twenty minutes to spare, please use it to listen to this man.



We've been a little on edge this evening, after hearing the news about Cyclone Ita which has been edging it's way down the Queensland coast over the weekend.

The weather report tonight, suggested that we would get winds in excess of 90kph.

It was the first we'd heard of this, even though we had been listening to weather reports and keeping our eye on various weather predictions on social media.

So Adoring Husband rushed outside at 6pm to clear the yard of anything that could become a flying missile in strong winds.  We stacked up the outdoor furniture and put all of our electronic devices on to charge (in case of loss of power like last time).

I cleared a space in our walk in wardrobe so that we have somewhere to shelter if anything sinister happens during the night.  My camera and laptop will go in there tonight before I climb into bed.

Since the news report, I've kept my eye on the BOM website and I must say that it all looks pretty clear.

There are no high winds anywhere along the coast, that I can see, and no heavy rains coming within our 500km radius, so I'm feeling cautiously comfortable about tonight.  I will still take precautions - just in case!

I got some pretty good study in this afternoon, while Adoring Husband slept in his recliner in front of the TV.  I muted the television so that I would have peace and quiet, then sat in my swinging pod chair and read all of the information that I needed for the first lesson in Naturopathy.

It was surprisingly interesting!

Who knew that Hippocrates (The Father of Medicine), Galen (The ultimate authority on all things medical), Lust (The Father of Naturopathic Medicine) and Avicenna (The Prince of Physicians) were so interesting?  I almost wish that I could have met them!

There was a LOT of information, so I'm going to have to go over it a few times to let it all sink in.

Right now, to go to the other end of the brain requirement spectrum, I'm watching a documentary on John Hughes and his movie "Ferris Beuller's Day Off".

It's very entertaining and very interesting but I'm not sure if I can stay awake til midnight to watch it!

Nite all.

Sunday Night Quotes

The cyclone is still a long way from here, but the rain has already started and has been falling steadily all day.

We had a visitor for a little while and we gave him a few basic computer and facebook lessons.

Otherwise a very quiet and relaxing kind of day.

Tomorrow is another big study day, so I'll be off to bed early tonight to rest my brain.  A relaxing day and an early night should make for maximum learning energy for tomorrow!!

Nite all.