Sunday 17th September 2017

Let's start with a random photo taken with my phone this week:

When I walked out of work on Monday, there was a perfect double rainbow arching right across the sky. Here's just a tiny bit of it. It was too big for a photo so I tried (and failed) to take a video. Oh well. To be honest I was too giddy just looking at it to be faffing around with my phone at the same time. Rainbows, to me, are just magical and will always bring a small to me face. I will quite often also end up laughing. Whatever the autumnal light is doing these days, it seems to be happening all over. I saw so many photos on blogs and instragram this week of rainbows, most of the double ones.







This evening I am:
Reading
I've moved on to book eight of S.M. Stirling's Emberverse/Change series, The Tears of the Sun. I decided to read Dies the Fire again on a whim a couple of months ago and, even though it does get a bit wearing to read them all one after the other, those cliffhangers get to me and by the end of one book I'm so caught up in the story, I just want to start the next.
Listening
It's fairly quiet here at the moment. I do have the windows open so I can hear the music from the local wine festival and funfair that's happening in my town this weekend. It's distant enough to not be annoying though.
Watching
Nothing yet but I have sat down with the intention of finding something on Netflix to watch in a few minutes. Preferably something a bit mindless. I was in the library working all afternoon, only got home half an hour ago and despite having a lot to do, I really need an hour of just switched off.
Cooking/baking
Not a thing. I grabbed a Hungarian sausage at the booth on the edge of the festival after I got off the tram and ate that while walking home. One of the things I should be doing is washing salad, though, to make sure that I have easy lunches to grab during the week.
Happy I accomplished this week
Got one translation job done fairly quickly and submitted on time. Spent two days at a congress for work and actually managed to network with people I do not know at all. And, after only procrastinating a little bit, have made a good start on the massive translation I have to finish over the next three weeks. I'll need to spend at least an hour or two every day on it, as well as more time than that over the weekends but it's great to have gotten started. I didn't manage to post my sister's birthday present on time but I did wrap everything and box it up. I'll bring it to the post office tomorrow and she'll get it only a couple of days late. My niece's birthday present is in the same box so she'll get her present a few days early.
Looking forward to next week
Start my new job tomorrow so am partly nervous and partly excited about how that works out. And my back training class starts up again on Tuesday.
Thinking of good things that happened this week
Went to the podologist on Friday and got my feet done. It had been way too long. Feels soooo good. And, saw a double rainbow! Also got some good news from my younger sister.
Grateful for
Having my own place to live. Even if I don't own it, it is great to not have to share with flatmates. 

Some photos of my (messy) place

I never really did ever post many photos of my new place after I moved. And now it has already been almost a year and I'm still not quite finished fixing things up. After the initial few months of unpacking, painting some of my old furniture, etc., I needed to be just living in my space. I got everything to the stage that there was just one pile of ten or twelve boxes to unpack, all stacked up on one side of my bedroom, in front of the cupboard that most of the stuff would go into. I want to paint and/or varnish that cupboard though and decided that if I just unpacked stuff into it, I'd never get around to it.

For the long weekend this week, I've basically decided to do nothing other than read, watch films and do nothing. Things have just been far too hectic for the last while and I've been getting overwhelmed so it was time to consciously spend time doing as close to nothing as possible and leaving all the other stuff behind. I did have a small burst of energy this morning however and so I spent a half an hour moving some furniture around. I've been thinking about doing this for a while and I wanted to see what it would look like.

'Scuse the mess in most of these photos - as this was a spontaneous rearranging of furniture the photos are honest to goodness candid ones. This level of mess may be very stressful for some of you to see but for me, it's such a big improvement on how I was in my old place (and getting better all the time, actually) that it feels pretty good. And excuse the quality of photos, some even blurrier than my usual.

This is the end of the living room beside the balcony with the couch (also guest bed) and my two armchairs. I really don't need two armchairs but one is the final one from the three-piece suite I took from my parents' house and although I hate the cover (I will get it recovered one day), I really love it to sit in. The other chair is one a friend gave to me when she was moving a few years ago and needed to downsize. I'd always admired it when I visited and couldn't bring myself to refuse it. Anyway, at some stage I thought it would be nice to have an armchair in my bedroom, to curl up in and read, and to free up a bit of space here.







Here are another two photos of the rest of this room. I deliberately took them in such a way that you can easily see where one bit ends and the next begins - it's a nicely sized but not huge room and although I could do with getting rid of some more stuff, I'm not quite there yet. One step at a time.

This is the far end of the room, where I have my dining area. The other big thing I gain from moving one of the armchairs is a feeling of slightly more space so that, whenever I find one I like and can afford, I can put in a proper table without making it feel too cramped. I think. The table that's currently there is 2'x3' (60x90cm), which is fine for just me but doesn't give a lot of space for ever entertaining (I might do, one day, you never know), or using it for anything other than eating.

The nice cabinet hasn't quite been finished either and stuff is a bit higgledy-piggledy in it. I plan to paint it red but got sick and tired of painting last year and put that on hold. Also started dithering between bright red or dark red. Opinions on that issue welcome. (It's actually a fairly flimsy, pretty damaged piece that I bought for 20 euro second hand so I'm not feeling any "painting would be such a mistake for this beautiful piece of furniture" issues at all.

And this is the middle part, which functions as my work space. You can see the table (the stuff on the table is mostly stuff I moved out of the way to be able to move the chair), and the edge of the will-someday-be-red cabinet. Next to that is my writing desk (with red floor protector for the chair to sit on), and beside that you can see the armchair. That should all give you an idea of the amount of space.

This is the corner of my bedroom that I decided to put the chair in. After my initial dreaming / getting carried away thoughts on doing this I did actually measure and realised that it would barely fit in that space.

However, since I was still toying with the idea several months later, I decided it was at least worth trying.

This is the still-unpacked side of the bedroom, on the other side of the bed. As happens, over the course of the last six months or so the neatly stacked moving boxes seem to have attracted a layer of stuff on top.






I know I'm going to be fairly busy for the next couple of weeks but I think once we get into May, with hopefully less rainy weather, I'm going to move these boxes out to the balcony and paint/varnish the cupboard before unpacking it all. There has been a bit of a change of plan though and it's one of those things that proves yet again how you sometimes have to live in a space for a while before making final decisions on things.

Did I ever post a photo of the lovely built-in cupboards here that I immediately designated as jar storage? Here's one (or three, actually) I took last year before I'd even unpacked all of my jars.
Over the winter, however, I realised that these cupboards back onto heating pipes of some kind next door. I put a thermometer in them for a while and they were regularly over 20C, which is just too hot for decent food storage. So, now I'm thinking the jars will go into the cupboard in the bedroom, and the material, yarn, and other crafting supplies, currently still in boxes, will go into these built-in cupboards in the hallway.


Even more reason to varnish or paint that cupboard really well - at the moment the wood is completely porous so if a jar ever leaked (it happens), I'd never get the stain or smell out of the wood. So, that's the plan for now. We'll see how it works out.

One final photo now, of the living room after moving the blue armchair into the bedroom. I'm not entirely happy yet and suspect I'll end up moving this chair around a bit until a find an angle that I like. Or maybe I'll give up on having the footstool there at all (although I do love to use it).




By the way, in case anyone is wondering, the couch could go lengthways along the wall rather than the window (I'd need to shift the desk an inch or so to the left to make space) but there is not enough room to have a chair opposite it without blocking the door out to the balcony. No "after" photos of the bedroom or the other end of the living room yet though. I want to wait, live with it a while and maybe even get photos of a neat and tidy space to show you. So that's it for now. Would love to hear what you think of it all.

Sunday 5th February 2017

Time is rushing by. I know they say that that happens more and more as you get older, I just didn't think I'd feel it or notice it quite this much. I'm trying hard not to overwhelm myself with doing things (especially since I already have so many things that it would be really good to get done, at home for example, or getting fit!) but it's actually kind of hard. For such an extreme introvert I end up wanting to do an awful lot of things that involve me interacting with an awful lot of people. Still, I'm trying to do my best to not volunteer for everything that comes my way.

As well as all of that stuff, I've been doing some online courses, as well as attending public lectures in the university here most weeks. There are so many interesting things to learn! The course I'm doing at the moment is on Greening the Economy and it's a five-week course. I've just sent off my week 4 assingment so it's just one week left now. I have to admit I have struggled with having deadlines and that much reading to do. And I was dreading this week's assignment but I managed to cobble something together in the end. The final week just has a quiz at the end so I'm not dreading next week at all. The quizzes are not that difficult really. Although I don't think I've managed to get full marks (10 out of 10) yet, I've usually only gotten one or two answers wrong. As usual, about half the time that's partly down to me slightly misinterpreting the question. I should work on that.

The assignments for each week were to write about something green from the point of view of an individual (week 1), a business (week 2), and a city (week 3). For week 2 I chose to write about a shop that sells loose products and you can bring your own containers to be filled.

I bought almonds, red lentils, and chickpeas, just to try it out

As most of the stuff is organic, it is more expensive than a standard supermarket but compared to an organic supermarket it's slightly less expensive. And wow, so fantastic to get home from the shops and not have to immediately throw out a ton of packaging. I really hope it stays around (it's only in its first year of business) and I'll do my best to shop there for the things they do sell. I spent some time chatting to the owner and she seems very passionate about local food, too, so where possible she tries to get stuff in from local sources and is building up a network of new sources all the time by going out and letting producers know what she's looking for. Forcing myself to go and find this shop also means I found one of the best parts of Heidelberg, where the weekly market has mostly organic and regional stuff on sale. Score!

This evening I am:
Reading
I have been reading course materials all afternoon but am finished now. This morning I read another chaper of Jonathan Bardon's Hallelujah, the story of a musical genius and the city that brought his masterpiece to life. For evenings I've got a Georgette Heyer romance on the go.
Listening to
I had Joe Dolan on earlier while I was in the kitchen, then listened to some of Messiah while I was studying, and currently I have a piece on in the background that we've just stared learning in choir. It's a fun piece from an opera called Zar und Zimmermann (Tsar and Carpenter).
Watching
I want to watch a film this evening but haven't decided what. I'm really not sure what I'm in the mood for though so may need to go through my small cupboard of DVDs to see if anything jumps out at me.
Cooking/baking
I'm still on a smoothies and soups kick and I started the blood sugar diet last Monday (planning to just do it for three weeks before switching to 5:2) so it has been a full week of cooking at home. Today I made a new soup, from my Low-Fat cookbook it's a spiced cauliflower soup. It involves turnip as well, which I really don't like much, and I wasn't sure if cauliflower soup might be a bit strong-tasting. It's not too bad actually, although I may put one or two portions in the freezer to spread it out a bit. I have other soups in there I can substitute, even if they do have potatoes in the them (not part of the blood sugar diet). While that was cooking I had lunch, which was a big salad, pickled onions (to finish off the jar), and lamb steak. It was sooo good. Dinner will be in a little while and will be the last of the spicy carrot and lentil soup from last week. I may treat myself to some fruit and nuts later, too. That will tip me over my calorie allowance for the day but I think a treat on a Sunday evening might be a good thing to incorporate. Still staying on plan and just exceeding the calories.
Happy I accomplished this week
I am really pleased that I have stuck with the blood sugar diet for a week already. I managed to work around times that I was going to be out and about for a bit longer by switching my smoothie to those times and having it with me. And I finally finished filing the stuff that was on my table. It's amazing what an incentive it was to want to get a couple of more things crossed off my January to-do list before I had to transfer them to February. I also remember to phone the electricity supplier to give a reading as I've been here eight months now and that's long enough to get a better estimate of how much I'm actually using (compared to the person who rented here before me). I contacted four more places to cancel subscriptions and/or change my address. And yesterday I went to an informal training afternoon hosted by the local chapter of the Translators' Association of Germany and learned about some software and apps that can be useful. Oh, and last week I also oiled my two wooden chopping boards. One was new and recommended doing this so I did the other smaller one I had at the same time. I bought that new one the week before christmas so I am glad I finally did it.
Looking forward to next week
Another lecture tomorrow evening, the last in this series. On Tuesday evening I'll go to a meeting to meet other who are organising the March for Science here. I've said I'll help out with that (see note up above about not getting involved in everything and feel free to laugh now). On Thursday I'm gonig to lunch with my boss and another colleague. We're going to a Thai place so although I won't stick to blood sugar diet that day, it's a relatively healthy choice. Must remember to ask them if they offer brown rice. I'm pretty sure they don't but if people don't ask, no-one will ever start to offer it.
Thinking of good things that happened this week
Lost weight, and more than I was expecting to. Had a good rehearsal at the smaller choir (larger choir is on a break between semesters and the smaller one is a pretty select group that you have to be invited to and I wasn't sure if I was really good enough). Found out that my current electricity consumption is very low apparently. So instead of paying 40 euro a month (they do a final reckoning once a year then, based on actual usage), I could be just paying closer to 10. I've left it at 20 for now, as I want to switch to a different tariff that uses only renewable energy and it'll be a bit more expensive.
Grateful for
Good friends. Good sleep. Waking up clear-headed (another benefit of the blood sugar diet).
Bonus question from the Occasional Nomad: Do you have a favourite flower?
I love carnations. Especially if they are a variety that hasn't had the scent bred out of them. It's such a lovely scent (they smell a bit like cloves) although even without a scent I still find them beautiful, just somehow simple and cheerful. I do also love peonies, although I only really remember becoming aware of them about six or seven years ago. In German they're called Whit Roses. Speaking of roses, I like them, too, although I'm not expert enough to be able to name any particular favourite. I have lots and lots of photos of roses that I've taken over the years though. I also love lilac. And finally, magnolia. In fact that reminds me that I should go and find a magnolia tree somewhere near where I live or work now. Watching the progress of a magnolia budding and flowering every spring is a real treat. The flowers are short-lived but when they're gone, the leaves that are left behind are an amazing colour green. Actually, in the sets of markers that I remember from when I was a kid (they held about 30 colours, if I remember correctly), my two favourites were a kind of a yellowy-lime green very similar to the colour of magnolia leaves, and a light purple, just the colour of the lilac tree we had in our garden. 

 

Sunday 15th January 2017

It's too early to say that the dark days of winter are behind us but, after someone else commented on it a couple of weeks ago, I have to admit to having taken to checking the sunset and sunrise times on a weather app I have on my phone on an almost daily basis. It is definitely helping me to know there is a minute or so more daylight today than a few days ago, for example. Even if you can't really see the difference. Still, we are almost up to five o'clock before the sun sets and I think it is also helping me to remember to look out the window and enjoy the sunset - I have a tendency to be so firmly in my little world of hibernation that I nearly forget that it isn't actually just permanently dark out. And today's sunset was really beautiful.

This evening I am:
Reading
Course materials for an online course I've started. I actually signed up for this a few months ago but missed the starting few days for one reason and another and decided to give up before I even started and just wait for the next time round. It started again last week and so I've spent some time going through the introductory module yesterday and today and now am reading some of the extra materials they linked to. It's all about sustainability and the green economy and so far it's very interesting. The book I'm reading at the moment is one a friend bought for me recently by Jonathan Bardon. It's called Hallelujah, the story of a musical genius and the city that brought his masterpiece to life. As you might imagine, it's about Handel and the premiere of Messiah in Dublin and I'm really enjoying it. Especially as it'll only be another few weeks before I head off to sing Messiah in Halle again.
Listening to
When I haven't been listening to lecture videos for my course I've had Beethoven on in the background (5th and 6th Symphonies in case anyone was wondering).
Watching
I finished rewatching Jericho yesterday and really enjoyed that as I realised that I never got to see the last three episodes before. It has made me want to re-read Dies the Fire again, too. And maybe World Made by Hand as well. I'm planning on watching a film this evening but haven't decided what yet.
Cooking/baking
I made a huge pot of vegetable soup earlier, so I'll have some of that for dinner. I also made and tried chia pudding for the first time today. Well, I say made but really I just put some chia seeds into a cup of milk and left them in the fridge overnight and had that for breakfast this morning. Wasn't a huge fan of it. I think I'll try just adding a few to smoothies instead.
Happy I accomplished this week
I got my bullet journal started and have even made some progress on getting some things on my to-do list done. In order to do one of those things I cleared a space in the kitchen that became a kind of dumping ground just after I moved in. Once I had that cleared I could move the stuff that was stacked on the floor. Baby steps but sometimes I need to live with a mess for quite a while before I change it. And having lived with the mess I really appreciate the new non-mess an awful lot. I also brought back some DVDs to the library on time and handed over the book that I bought for them. They have a great scheme coming up to christmas where they put up a huge poster with details of books they'd like to have and you can tear off the little tag with the details and buy the book for them. You get a donation certificate from the town hall for your tax return and a small-town library gets to improve their selection of books a little. And I'm very happy that I've managed to keep on top of the washing-up again this week. I may leave things lying but it all gets done and cleared at least once a day.
Looking forward to next week
There's a lecture on in the university tomorrow evening that I'm going to try and get to. It's about citizen's rights for minorities in Europe so should be interesting. And next Saturday I'm going to join the Heidelberg version of the global women's march. Is anyone else joining in their local march?
Thinking of good things that happened this week
It snowed on Friday evening and night and things looked picture pretty. And then it had mostly melted from the streets and paths by morning, leaving just the pretty to look at white on the distant hills and on rooftops, while allowing everyone to walk around normally without slipping or sliding. And I had some good chats with my boss on a few different topics. We also got the paperwork started for extending my hours to 30 per week from April.
Grateful for
The fact that even though we might be close to the edge, the apocalypse hasn't actually happened yet and I get to live my life in warmth and relative security. Also, chocolate. I don't think there's ever really a week where I'm not grateful for chocolate. 

Another recipe attempt and some brain unloading

Recipe first. This involves the pork fillet that I bought at the beginning of December and have had in the freezer. Inspired by Two and a Half Men's recent post and feeling like there's a good joke about how their loin was bigger than mine but not finding it, I decided to try to do something with it. I don't have a meat thermometer though and wasn't going to be able to use that method of timing the cooking. So I read through a couple of books, thinking I might do it in the slow cooker but rejected that in favour of amalgamating a few things from a few different places, memory included. And I've added meat thermometer to the list of things I need to buy.

So, I've lined a dish with some tinfoil, oiled it with a small amount of olive oil and put a good layer of sliced apples on the bottom (two fairly big Boskoop apples). I chopped and fried and onion in some butter and sprinkled that on top of the apple, adding five cloves of garlic that I roasted yesterday but didn't finish eating with the rest of the veg. Waste not, want not. Then I poured some olive oil into one of my little yellow bowls (probably about a tablespoon, maybe a bit less) and added herbes de provence, probably about the same amount. I rubbed that all over the pork and laid the pork on top of the apples, onion and garlic. I poured about a mugful of water over the apples and then wrapped the tinfoil loosely over the whole lot. Well, tightly sealed but not tightly packed, if you know what I mean. It has been in the oven at 190C for twenty minutes and I think I'll check it in ten minutes or so.

Since the oven was on anyway, I also roasted 200g of unblanched almonds for ten minutes. I bought a kilo of almonds months ago to try making almond butter and have slowly but surely been eating them but never actually making almond butter. Really want to try it out once and for all. Not least because it's one of the ingredients in these genious ginger cakes and they sound delicious.

Otherwise, I just really wanted to post something. I miss blogging (I first of all wrote writing there but that's not entirely accurate) and amn't sure why I've been so sporadic in doing it recently. I don't quite feel up to any kind of every-day-challenge but I want to try and make a bit of an effort to do things I enjoy more.

I had a very lazy break over the holidays and have done exactly the same this weekend, including on the bank holiday on Friday. It's a bit funny really. It's not the kind of lazy lying around that is just being lazy. I really feel like I need it to unwind. Even though it seems like there are probably better, more active ways to unwind. When I finished work just over a year ago I spent weeks not doing much  and wouldn't have done anything at all except that I had to (sorting out stuff with social welfare, tax office, and doing translation work that came in). It was March before I really started to feel like I was getting over work and starting to actually do something every day, like going for long walks and really looking for a new job. It almost feels like I found a job too soon now. I could have used another four or five months I think. Recovering from overwork and chronic overstress takes a long time. And having to go through an extremely stressful time like I had during the move just took so much out of me. If I hadn't had those few months inbetween, I don't think I would've managed it.

It was my guest from hell in July that really threw me for a loop and, since that visit was unfortunately timed for just before a really busy period in my new job, it took me a few months to get over it, even as I tried to really, consciously, fight it and not just let myself be dragged back down into a hole of depression. It's hard to explain really. I suppose the analogy of a piece of elastic fits to a certain extent. After years and years of being stretched too far, I just can't bounce back to where I was before. And I have less stretch in me now, too. My head is, for the most part, however, pretty clear. It's not quite the same overwhelming, grey cover on my brain feeling of depression - so I'm hopeful that I really have made strides forward and am now getting to a stage of needing to just look after myself a bit, cherish myself a bit and allow myself the time and space to realise and accept that in between depression, long-term overwork and stress, and being able to lead a more normal life, there's a whole lot of space and I can't just go from one to the other. I have to keep focusing on the amazing and positive changes I have made in my life in the past year and keep moving in that direction. Even if I'm not there yet, I'm much closer than I used to be so even though it feels like I'm letting time just slip past me, I need to be kind to myself and give myself this time that I obviously still so desperately need.

Sunday evening 6th November 2016

Haven't done one of these for a long time but it's eight o'clock, I've just watched a film, and am feeling nice and relaxed and in the mood for something easy and friendly. These Sunday night chit-chat used to be hosted on a blog that I haven't read for a long time but even before I stopped reading it, she had stopped doing them, I think. So now I just see them on The Occassional Nomads and that's about it. Still a fun way to pass a half-hour or so, I think. And I need to get better at remembering the good things happening during the week as well. I've really been trying hard to add to my "little things" page and this is kind of like an extension of that.So, let's start off with a picture, even if it's a few weeks old now.

Still a work in progress but I'm so happy that I painted these shelves. And the tall boy.

This evening I am:
Reading: Otherworld Nights by Kelley Armstrong, a book of short stories based on the characters from her 13-part Otherworld series. I read the first two or three when they first came out or not long after and then kind of forgot about them until a couple of years ago when I was delighted to find out there were 13. Well, I think there were 11 at the time and then I just had to wait for a while. There are five books of short stories, too, and I'm enjoying this one. Good reading, nice escapism. I picked up a Maeve Binchy book at the library the other day, so that's next, I think.I finished Radical Homemakers yesterday and will have to pull together some thoughts on that and post soon.The short version is: highly recommend it.
Listening to: Nothing at all, it's all quiet here.
Watching: I got a couple of DVDs out of the library on Friday so today I watched Long Way Down, a film about four strangers who meet when they all decide to kill themselves by jumping off the same tall building on the same night but don't, as one after the other, they've been interrupted. Some funny moments, a cried a little bit at one point, but not overly sentimental. And it is a a great cast. Yesterday I finished rewatching the BBC series of Pride and Prejudice (yes, the one with Colin Firth). I haven't watched that for years and years and had forgotten how good it is.
Cooking/baking: Not much. I made some kind-of-quesadillas earlier (think toasted cheese sandwiches with Thai sweet chili sauce but made with wraps instead of bread) earlier and have some vegetable and lentil soup that I should heat up to finish off. One thing I dislike about my new place is that even though the weather is cooling down nicely, my tiny kitchen is in the middle of the building so it stays fairly warm all the time. Great for my heating bills but not so great for being able to store food, or leave a pot of soup out overnight. Will need to get in the habit of bringing stuff out to the balcony for the winter.
Happy I accomplished this week: Quite a lot on this list this week when I think about it (which is kind of the point, I suppose). I started bullet journalling, with moderate but at least some success. Including actually taking out some crayons and drawing a bit on the inside cover. I also finished emptying a moving box which I had been dreading and kept putting off as it was full of little bits and pieces. Very pleased to have that done now, though. I also got a nice box and gathered all of my Weight Watchers stuff in one place. It was interesting to actually look through it all again, especially my weigh-in cards (I was 98kg, which is about 15.5 stones, or 215 lbs) the very first time I went, which was in my final year of school. How I would love to be that weight now. I may never go back to Weight Watchers but as an historical record of my life, it is really interesting. In particular, all of the tracking diaries for weekly eating, of which I have a lot. Really want to go through them in detail at some point to try and pinpoint some of what has worked well in the past for me. I forced myself to take a deep breath and just go to the monthly dinner of the local chapter of the association of translators on Wednesday - I actually had a pretty good time (and stuck to my plan to eat cheapest thing I could find on the menu and just have one drink) and felt like I'd made some good contacts. And, last night, just before I was about to go to bed, I noticed an email had arrived to my work (translations) account. I opened it and it was a request for a really urgent translation that needed to be done today. I replied immediately and got the job, so spent my afternoon bringing in some much-needed cash. So glad I didn't just leave it and think it could wait till Monday. And finally, the new frame I ordered to replace one that broke during my move arrived and I immediately put the picture into it and hung it up. Place feels a little bit more like home with every small step.
Looking forward to next week: Not a whole lot, I have to admit. But I'm not dreading anything either, so I'll take it. That's all that I really want at the moment - things on an even keel.
Thinking of good things that happened this week: Well, most of this is covered up above I think. Two other nice things were going out to lunch with a couple of colleagues one day and having a lovely meal. We have tentatively agreed to go collecting elderflowers when spring comes around and to have an afternoon making something with them. And yesterday one of the women from my local choir phoned just to make sure I was alright, as I missed rehearsal the last two weeks (I was away the week before last and then at the translators' meet-up last week and the person I told had forgotten). And my friend who normally phones me on Thursday morning wasn't able to but did manage to catch me for a few minutes in the afternoon, which was lovely.
Grateful for: Good friends.
Bonus question: Oh. Well, until Laura posts her chit-chat later on I won't know what this question is. But if anyone has a question, on anything, feel free to ask in the comments!

Sunday evening

I used to do these Sunday night chit-chat posts every week but then the format changed, I think they went away entirely for a while and then I kind of stopped reading the original blog that started them and I got out of the habit. Laura over at the Occasional Nomads has been doing them for a while though so this evening (well, it's nearly midnight so it's almost Monday morning!) I thought I'd join in. It's a nice way to round off the week, look ahead to the next week and have something to post when you thought you had nothing to say.

A cowl I knit for my sister's birthday last September.
Never got around to posting about it and it's not worth its own post really, so here's a photo.

This evening I am:

Reading: Cooked by Michael Pollan. I've been reading this on and off for a couple of weeks. Interrupted last week to read Out of the Shelter by David Lodge, which I really enjoyed. I've read three of his books now, all quite different but all very enjoyable so I think I'll be adding more of his stuff to my reading lists in the future. Next up I'll be reading Burial Rites by Hannah Kent, which is this month's book club book.
Listening to: At the moment very little. It's late and just the occasional tram or car passing outside. If we were to talk about what CDs I've been listening to this past week, I've been switching between the Dixie Chicks, Bach's Mass in B-Minor, the soundtrack for Nashville and a recording of my choir from a concert we did last November.
Watching: I've been watching thirtysomething, which I almost never got to do when it was originally on television. Really enjoying it. Need to get to the library this week and see what else they have. Want to watch thirtysomething again though; so many things happened that I wanted to comment on or talk to someone about.
Cooking/baking: I've done no cooking or baking this weekend. Have parsley roots to use up though so will make oven chips out of them tomorrow, maybe with some sweet potato.
Happy I accomplished last week: Got some forms filled out (after multiple phone calls with the social welfare office for a week) and submitted. Had a productive day that day in general. I cut my hair (without making a mess). Had an interview on Friday and one way I prepared was by travelling to the place it was being held on Thursday to make sure I could find it and knew exactly where to go. After the interview I contacted a friend on the spur of the moment and we went for dinner and then into town for a few drinks and had a good time. And this morning, finally managed to meet up with the friend who is also now my accountant and got some things cleared up and a plan in place to get my taxes done soon.
Looking forward to next week: Happy Birthday Handel! Every year I travel to Halle to perform Handel's Messiah with about 400 other singers from around the world. Including several from Ireland who have become very good friends. I'm really looking forward to it. It has become such a special time each year.
Grateful for: Having managed to (just about) earn enough money translating to keep me going during unemployment before payments from social welfare kick in. I didn't intend to be out of work for this long (four months now) but I needed the time more than I realised and I am so glad I've been able to take it without have to settle for a job I hate.
Bonus question - what social media platforms do you use: Well, I blog, obviously. Also use twitter and instagram but don't really post often on those, it's more to follow other people. And retweet what they're saying. I do have a pinterest account but just use it to pin things I want to find again and not really to interact with others. I'm not sure if whatsapp counts as a social media platform, since it's more of a messaging platform but I do use that a lot. Not just to exchange text messages with people without charge but recently also to keep in touch with my group of friends from school. It's nice to have the group interaction there a bit.

So that's my Sunday evening. Didn't quite make it to the end without crossing over into Monday but sure what's a few minutes between friends....

Using up vegetables

I'm really making an effort to use up all the veg I'm getting delivered every week. I think I'll have to take a break for a couple of weeks soon, but for now I'm getting through things and, most importantly, not throwing anything out. Of course, I haven't helped myself by making the mistake of ordering 1 kilo of Chinese cabbage last week instead of 1 Chinese cabbage. Chatting to my sister the other evening about that, she mentioned a recipe that involved stuffing cabbage leaves with mince and rice and cooking in a sour cream sauce. So I've spent a fair amount of time yesterday and today down the internet rabbit hole that appears when you type golubtsy into the search engine. Not to mention typing "is it possible to freeze cabbage rolls".

I did stuffed cabbage rolls before to use up some veg that I'm not fond of (turnip!) by mixing it with something I do like (potatoes!) and stuffing the whole lot into cabbage leaves and baking it all under a cover of cheese. Enough to make anything palatable. I was sure I had posted about that, complete with photos, but all I can find is a mention of it in this post. So I can't check exactly what I did. Pity. I really need to get back to blogging this stuff. It might not be the most interesting read for others but these are the kind of records that are a huge part of the advantages of blogging.

So, this week I had ordered the Chinese cabbage specifically because turnip and parsnips were both in my veg box. I can change anything I want to each week but I do try to just take what they're suggesting as that's usually what they have most of.

1 peeled + 1 unpeeled black radish, 3 parsnips, 1 small turnip

However, I'm really not much of a fan of parsnips or turnip and thought that mashing them with potatoes or sweet potatoes and stuffing cabbage leaves with them would be a good idea. I also got some black radish this week, which I've never cooked before. It's supposed to be a bit more like horseradish or daikon than like the small red radishes, which seems perfect for my purposes.

Black radish, turnip, parsnips, carrots, onion and garlic

I'm currently roasting the radish, parsnips and turnip along with 3 carrots, an onion and 8 gloves of garlic. I've just seasoned with a bit of salt and plenty of black pepper. I think I'll add some nutmeg to the mash at the end but I might end up adding my favourite chilli/smoked paprika mix instead. Time enough to think about it tomorrow when I make the finished dish. I bought 300g beef mince to add in but am thinking I might leave out the rice that seems to be traditional.

On Friday evening I made pork in the slow cooker and added in loads of veg, too. Two onions, three leeks, two carrots and three apples and then a Chinese-inspired braising liquid. For that I used lots of soy sauce, a splash of Worcestershire sauce, some honey, some maple syrup, 5-spice powder, ginger, coriander, cumin, small amount of spicy smoked paprika and vegetable stock. After five hours of cooking on low the meat had shrunk a lot and there was a lot of liquid left so I added in some brown rice and left it on for another hour and a half or so. I also left it to cool overnight so by yesterday morning I had a moist dish but no excess liquid. Not really what I had originally planned but actually perfect. I've just re-heated and demolished a huge portion of it for my 'brunch' and I have three more portions in the fridge.

During the week I braised a red cabbage with some onion, apples, red wine, cinnamon, some lingonberry compote, white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. That was fun. Even when I was chopping the cabbage it smelled very woody/cabbagy. I remembered reading somewhere that means it can make you particularly flatulent. When I had the whole thing cooking I suddenly remembered reading somewhere that a small spoon of bread soda will help with that. So I sprinkled a very small amount over the cabbage. Completely forgetting that I'd only just added the vinegar. And the lesson that day was that sprinkling bread soda on top of vinegar on top of apples and red cabbage will make the apples turn blue. And about five minutes later I remembered that that bread soda trick wasn't a preemptive strike against cabbage-induced flatulence but meant for cooking beans! Yep, apparently Blazing Saddles might have been an entirely different film if they'd only had some bread soda around (I cannot tell you how much I have always hated that scene but there's the link for those of you otherwise inclined). At any rate by the time I was reheating the cabbage for my second portion the next day, the blue colour was gone again. All's well that end's well. As is often the case in my cooking, it tasted lovely, even if it wasn't terribly pretty.

So, there you have it. I still have 2.5kg of potatoes to use up but I've cancelled my standing order for them so that I can do the low-carb thing for a while. I have some raclette cheese in the fridge, too, so will probably invite people over for raclette next week, which would use up most of those potatoes.

Otherwise I also still have some Jerusalem artichokes, a white cabbage, four Chinese cabbages, plenty of carrots, two leeks and a medium-sized pumpkin. If I can sort the freezer out a bit, I'll blanch most of the cabbage and freeze in it portions. It's handy to have it like that. Just cooking all the food isn't enough though, I need to sit down and do a meal plan. Somehow I've skipped that the last week or two and I should know better. First though, it's off to the pub to watch the rugby. Hope everyone has a lovely Sunday.

No-knead bread and red pork

I was supposed to meet a friend to go for a walk this morning but as it was lashing rain we cancelled and instead I sat down to read another couple of posts from the mortgagefreeinthree blog. I'm nearly finished and honestly kind of glad because I'm starting to feel a bit stalker-ish! Great blog though and I've already tried loads of things from it - good little easy enough and don't take too long projects. I'll work up to the other stuff.

2.5 kg bread flour fits perfectly
into my Tupperware
"Bellevue", 500g instant yeast
opened and promptly decanted
into Tupperware containers
and into the freezer.

Anyway, today's first post was for a no-knead crusty loaf and since I bought flour and yeast online (convinced by Elaine's recipe for 30-minute rolls that I could possibly get back into bread baking after all without too much effort) at the beginning of the month, I decided what the hell and headed into the kitchen to whip up a quick loaf. I've been reading about no-knead bread ever since the now famous NYT article, have watched youtube videos and even got myself a cast iron saucepan a while back so it was time to just take the plunge.

And you know what? This really is one of those it took me longer to find the scissors to open the yeast packet than it did to make the dough kind of recipes. Everything dumped into a mixing bowl and mixed together to a sticky dough. I used a trick I learned from the Mary Berry book that has the only yeast bread I've made up until now (Book People bargain years and years ago) - to get warm water of the correct temperature mix half boiling and half cold water together. The resulting water is the perfect tepid temperature to activate but not kill the yeast.

Now she does this as an overnight rise, bake in the morning kind of a loaf so I reckoned if I put it to rise at about ten o'clock in the morning then I'd have something lovely to bake this evening.

That's a Tupperware "Peng" bowl, don't know what it's called in
English, maybe a "ping" bowl? Note the flat lid.

No-knead bread costs
400g bread flour = 45c
Half-teaspoon yeast (internet tells me a teaspoon is just short of 3g, so 1.5g) = 1c
300ml warm water (not digging out annual bill to figure this one out!)
1 tsp. sea salt (it's so long ago since I bought salt I have no idea anymore what it cost)




I bought that particular Tupperware mixing bowl a while back on a special offer - the idea of making yeast bread has been ruminating for a very long time!

The flour I bought was from a website called backstars.de - I'm still not sure what led me to it or even to ordering stuff online but I just had a day a few weeks ago where I thought I needed to stop messing around and just get to actually doing stuff. At any rate, I got 2.5kg bread flour, 2.5kg wheat berries, 1kg milk powder, 500g instant yeast and 4 different spices (smoked paprika (sweet), smoked paprika (spicy), juniper berries and a chili spice mix (habanero, jalapeno chipotle, smoked paprika). I used that spice mix last night for dinner actually and boy, is it spicy. I had a smallish celeriac and half a large kohrabi so chopped both into chip sized pieces, blanched the celeriac and then cooked them both in the oven, along with the turkey pieces I bought yesterday. But before it went into the oven I mixed a good glug of olive oil with a generous teaspoon of the spice. I think I'll be trying to remember to keep to using it in increments of half-teaspoons in future. Just on the edge of my tolerance and that was after I added some quark to the edge of my plate to use as a dip to take the heat off. But, it's really delicious so I'm glad I bought it. And I've found a way to eat celeriac that I don't mind, so it's all good.

For dinner this evening I'm doing spiced cabbage and some of the pork belly I bought yesterday. My sister sent me this seasoning mix for red pork so I mixed up one packet of that with water as per the instructions, chopped up the pork into several strips, added a teaspoon of honey and some sliced fresh ginger to the marinade (just because - also discovered I have no soy sauce so have added that to my list to restock) and now the whole lot is sitting in the fridge for a few hours to marinate. And it looks, well, it looks kind of gross to be honest but I'm assured it will taste great. Marinading meat is never really the prettiest thing to look at. At least the colouring is natural (beetroot powder).







Anyway, back to the bread and now you'll see the special thing (or at least the special advertising point LOL) of my "Peng" bowl. With the lid on it is sealed up tightly and I like that as it means no need to use cling film or shower cap or any other kind of eventually disposable plastic. But it's not so tight that it won't come off and as the dough proves and rises the lid does, too, and eventually it will "ping" open. Here it is after three hours and not long before it popped open:

Slightly different angle than the photo above but I hope you can see how the lid has "risen" along with the bread

Since it's a no-knead, long rise loaf of bread, I've closed up the lid properly again and I'll leave it now for another few hours. But this evening, not including fuel costs (and I'll be doubling up in the oven later as I'll have the quiche to go in at the same time) my loaf of bread will be costing me say about 50c and about four minutes of my time so far. That's pretty impressive. Although, I just remembered that there was a €3.90 delivery charge - I bought eight items from backstars and it was a standard charge so just less than 50c per item if I wanted to divide it like that. Even if I allocated the entire 50c for the flour to this one loaf of bread I'm still not over €1 for the whole thing and that is a third of what I'd pay in any of my local bakeries. Really hope this is as tasty as I'm anticipating it to be!

Bits and pieces

I spent nearly two hours soaking in a cold bath yesterday evening and it was bliss. I didn't even read or anything, just dozed a little bit and felt the relief of cool seeping into my way to overheated body. And the temperatures cooled down enough to have the windows open and get a decent night's sleep, too. It has nearly reached 30 degrees again by now but I've gotten a few things done this morning before it got too hot.

I got one wash into the machine last night before going to bed and when a short summer storm (lasted about 10 minutes, rain and thunder and lightning and then it was gone) woke me at about six o'clock I had to get up to close over the window anyway and thought of it. So I just went ahead and hung up that washing and got the second lot into the machine. Glad now that I did because I wouldn't have felt like it later in the heat. Went back to bed after that and slept until nearly half-ten. A few nights of not great sleep catch up quickly. I got up then, hung up the second lot of washing to dry (half of the first lot was dry already) and then headed into the kitchen.

I've been cooking very little over the last couple of weeks so my veg delivery has been building up. And the fridge needed to be cleared out anyway, I knew there were two old jars of yoghurt sitting in the back that had been there for months so I had done part of it yesterday and wanted to do the rest today. I also wanted to make sure to wash the lettuce I got in my veg box last Thursday because otherwise I'd end up not using it at all. I ended up having to simply throw out one or two things that just were past saving. I hate doing that so will need to pull my socks up, so to speak, and just get better again at actually cooking and using up what I have.

I bought three punnets of strawberries yesterday (it's costing 2.50 for one, 6 for three at the moment) and was really looking forward to eating them over the weekend. I washed a large bowlful yesterday and sat down to enjoy them in the evening and was so disappointed. They just weren't terribly nice nor particularly sweet. Any strawberries I've had this year have been fabulous, which somehow made it even more disappointing. I sprinkled them with sugar and left them in the fridge overnight and will have them with some yoghurt today. And I'm going to just freeze the remainder I think. I can use them in smoothies then.

As for veg, once I'd gotten rid of most of what was past saving I have three kohlrabi, about half of a Chinese cabbage and half of another type of cabbage called Spitzkohl (like a pointy white cabbage), some young garlic and a few tomatoes. So I'm going to chop all of that now and saute it. I'll add in the rest of a jar of passata that I opened during the week and will use that during the week with some pasta. Might freeze half of it. Actually, I think I'll do the cabbage separately and freeze that. That'll work.

I also have a couple of aubergines, courgettes and some more tomatoes that I bought at the market yesterday. Will be using some of that in a sweet potato curry that I'm thinking of doing in the slow cooker. Have had two large sweet potatoes hanging around for the longest time and it's time to use them. The delicious curry I had at a Laotian restaurant last week reminded me how much I love it so might as well use what I have to make some, even if most of it goes into the freezer.

So, so far today has been fairly productive. I may treat myself to another cold bath when I'm finished in the kitchen.