Friday, August 6, 2004

AAARGH, despite my good intentions, it's been ages since I was in here. I'm not even sure that I want this background, but waa more concerned in getting something up than in what the background was. I can always change it later. No excuses. I have been somewhat down and have also had an extremely sore shoulder which has made life miserable some days. That's apart from life in general which hasn't helped either.

Still, at least the shoulder kept me from ironing! However, it was a bit better yesterday and just as well. I ironed ten shirts. There are more to do, but that's a start. I realised my husband was buying more shirts rather than ironing them himself. He needs shirts like a hole in the head.

I've been dithering around as to food. Nothing particularly over the top, but then, nothing particularly wonderful either. I made a lovely vegetable curry which my husband hated. he just pushed it around the plate and ate only a couple of tablespoonsful. Very annoying. He didn't even ask where the meat was. I made the curry paste from scratch and it had a load of vegetables and chick peas and lentils in it. Very low GI which is what he has been told to eat, so what does he do? Buys more of the packet breakfast cereals. I told him he might as well eat the box as that.

I've had a good lunch. A bit of leftover pea and ham soup, two slices of toast with a scrape of butter, two kiwifruit and half a pear. The half I ate was delicious but the secod piece was all grainy so I ditched it. Dinner is a stir fry with hokkien noodles.

Will catch up a bit more later.

Monday, August 9th

The start of yet another week which roll around so quickly.

I've just done something which I haven't done for a very long time. Shelled peas by hand from fresh! I usually keep some frozen peas, because sometimes the quality of the fresh green vegetables isn't wonderful and they are quick and esy to use. But shell from scratch? Absolute years since I did that. We went to a greengrocer in Five Dock, a fairly Italian suburb, on Saturday. I had potatoes and onions, but not much else at home. The peas looked really fresh, so I bought some. They were fresh, they look lovely now I've shelled them. Shelling the peas made me really nostalgic. Both my mother and my grandmother required me to whistle as I did it when I was a kid. I think they figured that if I was whistling, it was hard to actually eat them at the same time. Then I was rationed- I could eat one pod for every twenty pods I shelled. As is obvious, I loved raw young peas. I can still eat them straight from the frozen pack.

The peas are to go with a tiny lamb roast. There were two roasts in a mark down pack. I'm cooking them both and will make some gravy. Hopefully the second roast and the leftover gravy will make a shepherd's pie tomorrow or Wednesday with lots of mint and parsley and gravy. I'm also planning on a lot of other vegetables too. Carrot, potato, kumara and pumpkin. I think it would be over the top to do cauliflower cheese, although it's tempting. I think I might be taking nostalgia a bit too far!

I bought quite a lot of other vegetables incuding an enormoous bunch of baby broccoli and a bunch of silverbeet just about as big. I think I'll make some spanokopita with that, although I need to buy some feta cheese for it. I have the eggs and filo pastry and will spray that rather than use melted butter.

Quite unexpectedly we went to mum's on saturday night. I dug out some scotch fillet from the freezer and that was BBQd. Very nice too with some salad and hot vegetables. She got a big surprise. It's not hard for my husband to visit his mother, she's only four blocks away but mum is nearly two hours by awkward public transport and close on an hour by car. We don't get there very often. I also took her a container full of the pea soup I had made. Enough for two lunches. She loves that but would never make it just for herself. There's more nostalgia at work here. She used to always make pea soup and homemade sausage rolls for cracker night when I was young. Great combination.

Number one son and his wife have just returned from Sri Lanka where they had three wonderful weeks on their third trip there. All they can talk abut is the fantastic local food they ate. Seafood BBQs on the beach, done specially for them with lobster, prawns, crab and fish all caught that day. They stayed a week in the jungle and had a great time there too. A week in Colombo where they've previously been only a night or two and a week in the montains. They are just about ready to plan the next trip, although it's a couple of years since the last one. It would be nice to be on Peter's salary, but he has worked very hard and very long hours to get where he is with his own handpicked team as well.

Wednesday, August 11th

Another lovely but very dry day here. Morning was vey chilly, particularly aound 4:30 am when I had been awake since 2:00 am. My pot of violets is drooping badly, so it's standing in a bucket of water for a good soak. The wind is very drying here.

I had just managed to doze off on the lounge, covered with my down sleeping bag, a bit before 7:00 when my husband clomped down the stairs. As I was still awake at 11:30 last night, I haven't had much sleep. I was going to do some complicated knitting but have decided to leave it for another day. I don't want to find I've made a mistake several inches back and have to undo it.

Yesterday I was sick of being in this place so I went out early. I sat in the sun on the station and had a big billboard behind me which was a very effective windbreak. Lovely. I went to Beecroft where there is a tiny craft shop which sells good wool. I didn't find what I was looking for, but bought some more of the self striping Opal sock wool from Germany. I think it's June where there is a picture of the socks I made myself from this in a blue Nordic type stripe. This lot really is like opal in its colours. Dark mauves and purples with a flash of deep red. I never thought I'd be knitting socks, but they are very comfortable and quite easy, provided the directions are followed properly and stitches counted. They are also very warm.

The coffee shop where I have had coffee in the past,(long past), had just been taken over. It didn't look very inviting so I stopped at the local Michel's. Most of them have quite decent coffee. I had a tandoori chicken wrap made with mountain bread and lots of salad for an early lunch. Considering all the other things Michel's sell that I could have chosen, that was a very healthy choice and quite nice. From there I caught the train to the city and went to Tapestry Craft in York Street. From there to home and I was getting off the train at 2:00 pm. The city was freezing. York Street was like an enormous wind tunnel, funnelling an icy blast from Town Hall towards Wynyard. I went back to the station via the Queen Victoria building, just to get out of the wind.

As time was tight last night I didn't make the spanokopita. Instead I made a sort of shepherds pie with lefovers from the roast and the gravy I had made. I was fed up with trying to judge having the vegetables at the right stage to eat when my husband arrived home. As I said, we were pushed for time, so I grated kumara, carrot, parsnip into the pie. Finely chopped onion and added that and also about half a punnet of tiny tomatoes which I had bought at the weekend. Covered the lot with mashed potato and put it in the oven on a low heat. When he rang to say he was leaving, I turned the oven up to brown the potato. Not genuine shepherd's pie, but very nice. There's enough for another meal if I make some salad.

Tonight we are eating at a newish Thai place in Summer Hill. I've been there twice with my best friend as she knows the owner. Husband hasn't been there at all and seems jealous. I can mention all sorts of food and he'll tell me the best places in the city and suburbs, but I'm one up here and he doesn't like it. They do have individual dishes, but they also have a list of about six sauces which can be had with beef, chicken, pork or seafood. Each dish is about $15.00, quite cheap for Sydney mains, but twice as dear as our little Vietnamese place in Burwood. The food is good. I'm a bit hesitant about going there with him as I have enjoyed going there with Gail and having it sort of "up my sleeve." We'll see.

Monday, August 16th

Monday yet again. Another week flies by. I'm feeling a bit better today although my voice still sounds terrible. I don't know where I caught it from but I have had a massive cold and felt quite rotten. It's just beginning to lift. As a result I haven't done much for the last few days except mope around the place and do some knitting. Here's a picture of what I was doing. The pattern is called 'waves'. It looks quite complicated but is really quite easy once a couple of repeats are done. I've started the second sock. The wool is superfine and very soft and the colour is a bit mintier than it shows-almost the colour of the page background. I like my little bronze frog too which usually resides on the edge of the goldfish pond

I made some really nice pumpkin and tomato soup on Saturday for lunch. My husband had a friend here to help him with a few chores around the pace which involved heavy lifting, moving big ladders. Stuff I couldn't do. Bob lives alone and has always had a hearty appetite. He polished off two enormous bowls of soup and several pinwhirls of fresh bread. Homemade bread dough rolled out into a rectangle. I spread it with some pesto and chopped semidried toamtoes with herbs. Roll it up, slice and bake. Very yummy, especially with the soup.

There was a big morning tea at church yesterday and someone brought a lot of stuff from bakers Delight where her daughter works. I saw Norm eat quite a few different breads etc. I suggested when we arrived home that perhaps neither of us really needed lunch. He was very surprised but finally agreed. I had a couple of small pieces of a cheese and bacon loaf at church. He had that and some cape seed roll and a capeseed and apricot and...and... and so on.

It's very cold and quite miserable here today. I'm planning on real comfort food for dinner. Braised steak and onions, lots of vegetables including mashed potato for him and some yummy cauliflower cheese. I have to use the potatoes somehow. He went out for some milk and came home with abut a dozen plastic shopping bags full. The green reusable ones were in the car. One of the things he bought was a huge bag of potatoes. I'm not a potato fan and a 2kg bag lasts us for quite a long while as I try to have a variety of carbs such as couscous, pastry, rice, pasta, as well as potatoes. He would eat potatoes and those other things as well. If my mother made anything with pastry, she never cooked potatoes as it really si a bit of an overkill. Not for him. When I do this, he invariably asks for potato as well. Not forthcoming usually. I'm thawing some skirt steak for the meat dish. It has a much better flavour for pies etc than many other cuts and is tender when cooked carefully.

I'm off for some hot soup and possibly also a ginger and lemon tea to warm me up.

Monday, August 23rd

It was my birthday last Friday and I was given a surprise party, just family, on Saturday at mum's. Two DILs conspired to get me there and didn't ask MIL. Their excuse to my husband was that if we had to pick her up and take her to mum's for "afternoon tea," then the surprise for me would be spoilt. Mind you, that was really just an excuse. LOL. These flowers were given me by Mya who is just four. She and her father stopped the night at mum's on Friday to help get things ready. Mya picked the flowers from mum's garden and very proudly gave them to me when I arrived. There was lots of yummy food and I must admit I pigged out on some white castello cheese. I love the stuff but don't buy it. A few times when shopping it has jumped into my trolley, but I've put it back o the shelf.

Mum gave me some lovely moisturiser and some money. Peter and Sarah gave me jewellery from their latest trip to Sri Lanka, Bec and Tim have given me a voucher for a pedicure and manicure at the salon where Bec works, while Mark and Sam renewed my subscription for Saturdays to have the Herald delivered. I really appreciate that on a Saturday. From my sister I received a pack of footcare products which will be good and my elderly aunt managed to fluke the right day for a scarf to arrive in the mail. When I first looked at it, I didn't think I liked it, but wore it on Friday night and it looked good. Now I need to write a thank you note before I forget about it. I have also been given a new Samsung printer as my trusty HP Deskjet died after about eight years good service. So I have been blessed with lots of lovely things as well as my wonderful family.

Sam had prepared burritos for a surprise dinner after the afternoon tea. Chicken and beef had both been marinaded the day before and were very nice. Apart from the castello, I really didn't overeat. A couple of wines and lots of salad with the burritos. I'd been out to an Italian restaurant the night before and had chicken and a few vegetables there, so really not too bad overall.

I finished them quickly because I was watching some of the Olympics. I found channel 7 coverage to be really frustrating. They slotted a few live bits in and then other stuff, so it was hard to distinguish what was happening from what had happened. However, I enjoyed the swimming and the diving in particular.

No predictions about updates. My husband has just come home early from work. I think he thinks he has pneumonia, that's what he's acting like, but really doesn't seem ill to me at all. Dear, dear, it's just after 8:00 and he's just gone back to bed after struggling to eat his dinner. Doesn't look good for tomorrow.

Monday, August 30th

I just realised that the background for this month was intended to be temporary. Now I see it's time to choose something for September and this one is still here. Too bad, I'm not changing it now. Timne gets away and I've been slack in updating both this journal and my blog this month. Too much going on in life and in my head and family too, I think.

We spent all of Saturday at my sister's place at Maroota. She is planning on divorcing her husband. They've been separated a long time and she is doing up the house so she can sell it for a good price. it's on 25 acres, part bush and part orchard. A small quarry returns a couple of hundred dollars a week to them and there's a permanent spring fed creek. At the moment the dam is empty as it's been so dry. I like the house, it's lowish and quite long. A big family room, separate lounge and dining rooms, 4 bedrooms and a study. I wouldn't mind living there but it would be totally impractical for us. There was a family working bee with a lot of painting being done. BIL has been living there by himself for several years and has totally neglected it. There were white ants in a couple of walls which had to be replaced. She's also had some landscaping done. The three grandkids had a wonderful time. They played happily outside all day. Made themselves a pretend campfire and also hauled a lot of dirt in a couple of Tonka trucks.

Mya who was four only at the beginning of the month, looked at Mum's watch. "It's three o'clock," she exclaimed. Actually it was 12:15. but Mum's watch is very small and it's quite difficult to tell the big hand from the small one on the watch's face. Then it was 4 o'clock and 5 o'clock. Really just another five minutes each time, but I was surprised she could even get that far. One bright little button, that one.

I did a bit of gardening and pulled out dead bits from teh wisteria which was badly scorched in the fires 18 months ago. Then my arm gave out. Actually, the place was saved three times in three days in those fires, although they have never been in danger in teh25 years before that.

I had a very small lunch and was careful in what I ate, although I succumbed to a small piece of chocolate cake. We are having vegetable curry tonight with a tiny tim of chickpeas in it and a lot of other vegetables. I'll stir some really fresh beans and fresh peas through just before serving.

We went to the large fruit shop in Burwood yesterday. I haven't been there for years but have seen it's always busy. I got a lot of bargains. A huge bag of very sweet peas,$1, and the same for some Brussels sprouts. Two bunches of rhubarb which I love, cost a dollar. Several other things for the dame price and a few other vegetables as well. All good quality. I'm tired of trying to find decent fruit and vegetables. I'd rather pay more and get a bit less but better quality. I also like to have a variety in the house, particularly of green vegetables, and I try to buy lots of different coloured things too. Deeper colourss are supposed to be more healthy. I now have quite a selection and that feels good.

I'll have to be up and dressed early tomorrow. we have a roofer coming to quote on getting the roof fixed where some tiles were dislodged in teh lst lot of very strong winds a couple of weeks ago. It's too high for my husband to get up to by himself safely and I think it needs a professional to do the job. We rang the insurance company and they have no problems. We were told to get a quote and they would organise a cheque. It's right over our new bedroom cieiling. There is some sarking there, but that keeps out only light rain, not a heavy downpour. It has to be fixed. The roofer will be here just after 7 o'clock and as he'll have to climb right past my bedroom window, I'll have to be up and dressed.