Saturday Bliss

I set my alarm for 6am this morning, so that I could go to work. The alarm went off right on cue, so I switched it off and promptly went back to sleep!

Despite the scrambled start to the morning, I did get my work done and then spent some time at the Seat of Knowledge. Later, I kicked my shoes off and went for a long walk along the beach as the tide came in.

I sloshed, ankle deep, through the shallow water which was icy cold in patches, but comfortable in others.

There were quite a few pelicans resting on the beach, so I took a few quick snaps of them, until a lady stopped to chat. Her name was Christine and she was in her early 60s and a self proclaimed hippie.

She had lived in Gladstone for 39 years, then sold her house and bought one for $20000 in Cracow, which is about 300 km west of here. It's a very small and old gold mining town with a population of about 120 people.

She was travelling in an old 4WD, but was planning on getting a small camper and painting it bright colours and then travelling wherever life wanted to take her. She makes dream catchers out of the bird feathers that she collects on her long walks.

She did confess to stopping for road kill .. a dead Wedge-tailed Eagle on the road, to steal it's feathers for her dream catchers! I told her that I thought that was pretty sick .. and not in a good way! She laughed and said "Well, it's not like I killed it for the feathers. It was already dead!" We both laughed.

We shared a little of our life history and then went our separate ways. She is taking a sick friend to Brisbane for surgery and then they are coming back here for recovery time and then home to Cracow.

I walked for another 45 minutes and then pedalled to my local haunt, got my usual take-away coffee and sat outside in the sunshine for about an hour.  A few locals stopped by for a chat and finally, I arrived home at about 11.30am.

I had some lunch and then set myself up in bed with my laptop and study material, ready to spend a couple of hours studying before the football started. Yes, it probably seems strange to do this in bed, when I have a perfectly good desk to sit at .. but the air and light in the bedroom was so lovely, it just seemed like the right place to be.

After a while, I got a phone call from Vegan Chickie, who has been very ill for a couple of weeks with every ailment known to mankind, from the flu to food poisoning to infections to serious allergies!

The poor thing. Luckily, she is on the mend now, but it might take a while for her poor body to fully recover from such an onslaught! It was really nice to hear from her and I loved listening to Chicklet chatting in the background. I miss them and need to get down there for a visit soon.

I decided to go for another ride before the football started and as I rode along the path beside the river, there was a Whistling Kite floating above me ...

I waited patiently for the White Breasted Sea Eagle that was soaring in the skies across the river, to head in my direction, but even though he teased me a couple of times, he never got close enough to photograph and eventually I gave up and rushed home to watch the football.

There were 3 games today and I tipped the losing teams in all three games .. not happy Jan!

I think I will now climb into bed and watch the end of the movie "Armageddon". It's highly possible that I will fall asleep before it finishes, considering it's now 10.40pm and it doesn't finish til midnight!

So, nite all.  

A Good Time

It was a good night tonight at the club.

I won a raffle prize and it was nice to have some fun with the girls.

We discussed that I would be brief in my blog post tonight because I planned on coming home to have some more wine and then fall into bed.

I haven't had any more wine since I arrived home and I only had 3 glasses at the club, but I am decidedly tired so am climbing into bed as soon as I sign out.

My footy team won tonight, so they are still in with a small chance of making the finals. Fingers crossed.

Congratulations to my friend The Nikonian, on the birth of her first Grandson, Flynn Cheyne. I can feel the overwhelming love from here! He looks so peaceful and perfect and I know that everyone is over the moon with happiness.

On that note .. my bed is calling.

Nite all.

The Joy of Sales

Firstly, a photo of our lady's lunch yesterday ...

... and my neighbour asked me if I'd like some herbs, namely Dill and Parsley, from her garden. I accepted her offer because my herbs are failing in their tiny little dried up pots. Her brand new garden is flourishing, as ours did when we first moved here and she gave me this lovely big bouquet of herbs.

Remember the wonderful walls of herbs that Adoring Husband created for me in April? Well, it seems that the herbs don't like such tiny pots because the soil dries out so quickly, it's impossible to keep enough water up to them. So we have to rethink our herb situation.

Just recently, the Rainbow Bee Eaters have returned to our area. They have always nested, by tunnelling into the ground, next door on what was once an empty block of land, but now our neighbours have built on the block and the birds have had to find a new nesting spot.

Luckily for us, there are still a couple of empty blocks nearby, so they are still nesting quite close and they sit in the branches of our young Jacaranda trees on our footpath.

Tomorrow, I plan on sitting on the garden seat in our front yard, camera in hand, attempting to get some good shots of the Bee Eaters as they feed on the bees from our garden! I hope they co-operate!

Adoring Husband and I spent a lot of time in The Bay today. I got some great clothes and jewellery on sale .. which of course, means that I have to toss some old clothes out of my wardrobe .. that's the rule! Out with the old. In with the new.

I also bought a book called 'I Quit Sugar for Life' by Sarah Wilson. Sarah's facebook page was the first page I joined when I quit sugar in September last year and I have seen a few excerpts from her book, so I was interested to see more. The first shop was selling it for $39 and then we looked in BigW and there it was for $18!! Bargain!!

So, as usual, retail therapy cured many ills today.

Good grief!  It's after midnight!!

Nite all.


 

Lady's Lunch

Had a great day today.

Caught up with a couple of friends as I drank coffee at my local haunt, then came home and made myself presentable for the lady's lunch, which I really enjoyed. The food was good and the company was funny and interesting.

Fabulous storms all afternoon dropped 15mm of rain on our garden and then a quiet evening at home while Adoring Husband attended an SES meeting.

I have photos from today .. but they have to wait til tomorrow's post.

It's almost midnight and I think the pumpkin thing is going to happen any minute!!

Nite all.

People

People suck.

Why do people have such an aggressive and negative attitude about other people's food choices?

How does it affect them?

Is it because they feel guilty about their own food choices?

I know that vegans, vegetarians, fruitarians and raw foodies, as well as Celiacs and their 'gluten free' requirements, all have the same kind of responses and I've had the discussion with Vegan Chickie before.

You only have to look at some of the recent negativity in the media, surrounding Pete Evans and his Paleo lifestyle.

If the Paleo diet gets people to choose real food over junk, take away and processed food, then I'm all for it! If Pete Evans' improved health status is any indication of how effective the diet is, then that's another reason to be all for it.

I like to follow a lot of paleo recipes, but our only real restrictions are on refined sugar, processed foods and gluten.

Anyway, after a pleasant morning enjoying two morning teas and then pedalling around town for about 45 minutes, I came home for another cookathon.

I finished off the tomato sauce and then made a spaghetti bolognese with the leftover sauce and used chicken mince. It was so full of flavour!

Time sure gets away. I'm off to bed because we have the big lady's luncheon tomorrow, so I need to be bright eyed and bushy tailed!

Nite all.

A Bit of Productivity

Yes! I got out on my trike this morning! I saw my boys, rode along the river path, sat with my coffee and did a little grocery shopping ready for a productive day in the kitchen.

I finished off and packaged my beef stock first, and there was still enough meat on the bones to have with dinner tonight, which I'll tell you about soon. I ended up with seven containers of stock to freeze.

I needed the slow cooker for my tomato sauce, which is still slow cooking as I type this. I'll keep it going overnight, so the flavour should be rich and delicious by morning!

Next on the cooking agenda was lunch, which I didn't photograph, but we tried our local butcher's chicken kiev flavoured chicken sausages with a big salad of baby spinach, lettuce, red capsicum, tomato, onion, snow peas, avocado and boiled egg.

So far, we haven't been a fan of his flavoured sausages, and we've tried four or five different flavours. Today's were quite nice though. Our favourite is still his plain beef sausage.

Adoring Husband headed back to the SES shed after lunch, which gave me the opportunity to make some Banana and Walnut muffins.

... and the finished product ...

Delicious, sliced in half with a slathering of butter!

As I was saying earlier, about there still being enough meat on some of the ox tail bones to remove and mix with dinner tonight, I made the same sauce as last night, with some beef stock, red wine, apple juice and a little of the tomato sauce mixture that was still cooking. I stirred that through diced chicken breast and ox tail meat mixed together. There was leftover cauliflower au gratin and I steamed some broccoli and snow peas.

A healthful and satisfying dinner.

So the dishwasher has certainly had a workout today and I thoroughly enjoyed spending so much time in the kitchen. I think I'll try some new recipes tomorrow too.

Oh my gosh, I just looked at the time and realised it's after midnight! I think I am just naturally a night owl .. I'll never be able to stick to my 'early night' rule!

Nite all.

Late Nights and Cooking

Today is day four.

Four days in a row that I haven't gone out in the morning for a ride on my trike.

One of those mornings was far too wet to even consider it, but the other three have been because Adoring Husband has brought my coffee to me in bed and then I have lazed in bed with my iPad, sipping take-away coffee with not a care in the world.

Suddenly I miss my morning routine. I miss seeing the boys at the Seat of Knowledge. I miss riding along the river path and soaking up the fresh air and beautiful water views. I miss sitting outside the local shops drinking my coffee and chatting with the locals.

It's time to get energised again and start my days with a bit more enthusiasm!

When I climbed into bed last night .. well after midnight (Yes I know! Much later than my new rule allows!), I was flicking through the channels on the bedroom TV to find something to fall asleep to, when I stumbled across the beginning of a movie.

I recognised it immediately. The opening scene is a huge indoor concert arena with the audience chanting and spotlights moving through the darkness. A frisbee sails through the air and it glows under the spotlight.

It was the movie "A Star is Born" with Barbra Streisand, Kris Kristofferson and Gary Busey. Another one of my favourite movies of all time and one that I've watched about 30 times.

I was 16 yrs old the first time I watched it and I still sob during the same scenes almost 40 years later!

Of course, I had to sit up in bed and watch the entire movie and it was 3am when I turned off the TV and immediately fell asleep!!

Adoring Husband made us a delicious fluffy omelette this morning with cheese and mushroom and onion and capsicum and snow peas. A great way to start Sunday.

After we cleared that mess away, I made a fresh beetroot, carrot, apple and lemon drink for Adoring Husband and then began preparing dinner:

• I browned 1.5kg of ox tail in a skillet
• Placed it in the slow cooker with celery, carrot, garlic, apple cider vinegar, himalayan salt and ground pepper and lots of filtered water, for 5 hours on high.
• I removed the bones from the cooker and took all the meat off, placing it in a bowl and then setting it aside, putting the bones back in the cooker.
• I also removed 3 cups of the broth from the cooker and put it in a saucepan with a big splash of red wine and half a cup of freshly squeezed apple juice (which I just happened to have in the fridge) and a little more himalayan salt.
• I let this simmer on the stove for about 20 minutes until it reduced a little, added some cornflour to thicken it and then added the meat from the ox tail.

I served this with a delicious cauliflower/broccoli au gratin, the sauce for which, I invented a few weeks ago and froze, so I can't share that recipe, because I can't remember it, and I steamed some snow peas as well.

Adoring Husband ate seconds, he enjoyed it so much.

In the meantime, I added more water to the cooker and the bones and vegetables are still in the slow cooker for another 7 hours. It will be a delicious stock/broth that I will freeze. I should get about 6 or 8 chinese containers out of it.

Sadly, I did not take one photo of my concoctions, but I do have plans for some more cooking tomorrow, because I didn't make AH's breakfast cereal today and I have some muffins to make for his desserts and snacks, so I will take photos tomorrow.

I feel like I achieved 'something' today anyway.

Nite all.