february catch up

 Item number 19 on my 100 things to do in 2013: Blog at least three times a week.

Number of posts in February: five.

That doesn’t quite add up, does it?

I’ve started writing several posts and either never finished them, or decided I didn’t want to publish them after all. Or I’ve thought, why would anyone want to read that, and given up.

Not really what I had in mind when I wrote the list and decided I wanted to blog more often.

Now it’s the start of a new month.  It’s time to review the past month and (possibly) get inspired to blog again.

So what’s happened?

Project Life

I’m pretty much up to date with this and just have a few more photos to print for February, and then I should have a few layouts to share. I also managed to finish not one, but two layouts in the “in progress” album. Progress indeed.

Food

These are the posts I’ve been struggling with. I really don’t know what to write without looking like I’m trying to justify myself or defend what I’m doing. 

That looks so stupid now that I've written it down. I don’t have to justify making healthy changes to my life. Quitting sugar is the way I decided to start. There are a lot of opinions about whether sugar is really so bad. I don’t know the answer to this one. 

Anyway, the quit sugar thing has really turned into quitting a lot of the processed food with added sugar, which is what I’ve been trying to do (see Item 1 on the list). So I haven’t followed the Quit Sugar program completely. I’m still eating small amounts of fruit (which the program says to cut out, and reintroduce later on when you’ve broken the sugar addiction if you want to).

Apart from that I’ve been sugar-free, other than a couple of meals that other people have cooked that have had an ingredient that contains sugar, for six weeks now. I’ve politely refused desserts, have been into coffee shops and ignored the cakes and haven’t so much as even looked at the 85% chocolate in my fridge. (It’s there for me to test whether having not eaten sugar for an extended time changes the taste of that type of chocolate – whether it actually will taste sweet to me.) And I haven’t really felt like I’m missing out or depriving myself.

One thing I’ve noticed is that my coffee has started to taste quite sweet now from the lactose in the milk. I’ve never had sugar in coffee, so this is quite a strange sensation. 

I’m happy with how things are going at the moment, and I’m continuing to read about food and trying (most of the time) to make the best choices for me. 

Exercise

As soon as I read that exercise can make you fat I gave up exercise.

Well not really, since to give up something, you actually have to be doing it first.

Ha.

But seriously, I have been doing some form of exercise most days, even if it’s just walking to work. At the start of the year my goal was to be walking 15,000 steps a day and to get back into yoga. It’s still my intention to do both of those things.

I bought a yoga DVD a couple of weeks ago and have been getting up earlier most mornings to do one of the routines. Juniordwarf has been joining me, which is fun. 

Next Month

I do want to blog more often. At least, more than five times in the month.

Related: does anyone have any regular link-ups that they participate in that are fun? I did Wordless Wednesday once and then promptly forgot about it . . . 

quitting sugar aaargh

 If I ever had any doubts* about whether I was addicted to sugar, they are well and truly gone now.

Last week I was feeling pretty good about cutting out sugary treats. I’d had a few headaches, but these were minor and didn’t last long. I didn’t find it too difficult to refuse sweet things and I didn’t really want them anyway.

This week is a whole other story. And we’re only two days into this week, so I’m a little scared as to how bad this is going to get.

Last night I felt like I was getting a cold. I had a sore throat and felt a bit congested. I wondered on Twitter whether this might be a sugar withdrawal symptom. Sarah Wilson (who wrote the 8 week I Quit Sugar Program that I’m largely following) suggested that yes, this could be part of the detox and suggested drinking more water and eating more veggies.

This morning, I felt lethargic, irritable, cranky (oh wait, that’s just my normal state) and headachy. I knew that if this had been a normal work at home day, I’d be having several of the shortbread biscuits (that Juniordwarf and I would have made on the weekend) throughout the day. 

Not today though.

I did, however, just want to eat and eat. And eat. And eat. David Gillespie (author of Sweet Poison) replied to my tweet that this could be the stage where things start to turn ugly and recommended non-sweet food treats to get me through it.

Vintage cheese and coffee. 

Not together, obviously and, sadly, not with my favourite crackers. It turns out that for all the ‘bad’ stuff they don’t have, they do have sugar, so for now they’re off limits.

Cue home-made water cracker recipe (do you feel a recipe blog post coming on?).

So I went through the day feeling hungry not that long after I’d eaten, headachy and with a horribly dry mouth and metallic taste. According to Sarah Wilson, it’s all part of the detox.

Along with the physical symptoms, I’ve found that if I’m not actively concentrating on something, I’ve started to obsess about sweet food, and I think about cakes and lollies and biscuits constantly. I even hallucinated that the eggshells I could see through the plastic compost container were mini-muffins waiting to be eaten. 

I’m not really sure if I actually want cakes or lollies or biscuits. I don’t think I do. If someone put a peppermint slice in front of me, I don’t think I’d eat it. But I just can’t stop thinking about them.

All of this is happening while I’m still eating berries in my morning smoothie. There will be a point where I cut them out too (at least for the detox period) and, based on the last two days, I’m a wee bit terrified of how complete withdrawal is going to make me feel.

I honestly didn’t think I was *that* addicted to sugar. But what’s happening now suggests otherwise.

I just have to keep telling myself that every minute I get through this is a minute closer to when it will stop. I have to believe that there will be a point where I won’t want sugar and I’ll feel great. There are a lot of people who have done this and said it's worth it, so I'm hanging in there.

* I did. I didn't think that the occasional more often than not cake/bag of lollies/chocolate bar some most afternoons was something I would have to withdraw from.

quitting sugar - week 1

 

I survived Week 1 of my quitting sugar experiment and I’m keen to continue.

My aim for last week was to avoid sweet treats like cakes and lollies. My main problem was snacking on lollies and cakes after lunch – either picking up something on the way back to the office, a sneaky trip to the vending machine or sometimes, for a special indulgence, a visit to the bakery for a peppermint slice with my afternoon coffee.

This was a habit that had crept up on me recently and last time I let it continue for any length of time, I ended up being the heaviest I’d ever been, this time 12 months ago. So, regardless of anything else, this was a habit that had to be brought under control.

Week 1 wasn’t too bad. Some of the things I noticed were:

• my morning berry and banana smoothie tasted incredibly sweet, which I’d not noticed before. I’ve cut out the banana and am experimenting with substitutes. This will be important if I get to the stage where all fruit is cut out.
• not having a sweet snack in the afternoon made no difference to my post-lunch afternoon energy slumps. I need to investigate this more and possibly tweak what I have for lunch.
• I got more frequent headaches, mostly in the afternoon and evening. Yesterday’s was the worst and the longest lasting.

Although there were times I felt miserable, I didn’t always feel like I needed to cheer myself up with something sweet and when I did, I didn't have anything. I also avoided eating cakes and lollies that people offered me, TWICE! without making a fuss about it, which I was particularly happy with.

Juniordwarf had got some lollies from a trip to the lolly shop with his grandmother (I have to start working on her now . . . ) and he offered to share them with me. I was delighted at his sharing attitude but had to decline, telling him that I didn’t eat lollies any more. He seemed to accept that as something people do. 

Week 2 is going to be more of the same. I’m also going to start paying more attention to food with added sugar and start to cut that out as much as possible.

One thing I noticed when reading food labels is that the food that contains a lot of sugar also includes other highly processed ingredients that I don’t really want to be eating, like hydrogenated oils. So this sugar-free thing is also going to be a big step towards my goal of making sure my diet consists, as far as possible, of unprocessed or minimally processed food.

At this stage I don’t know if complete elimination of sugar (or for the purpose of this experiment, fructose) is necessary. There are arguments and counter-arguments and more counter-arguments, and there is a lot of information out there and a lot of questions. Is it the elimination of sugar that has improved people’s health, or is it the general improvement in diet due to removing a lot of highly processed foods? Do those people who benefit most from a completely sugar-free diet have an intolerance to fructose that the people who don’t benefit don’t have? 

What I’m doing is trying to find out how my body reacts to elimination of sugar (fructose) and then re-introduce small amounts of sugar in its natural state (fruit, for example) and see what happens. (As I understand it complete elimination is virtually impossible, but that foods with a higher proportion of fructose to glucose that can cause problems.)

It’s early days and, as I said last week, I’m keeping an open mind and trying it to see if it has any effect on me. 

So far, the effects have been headaches and, if my bathroom scales can be relied on, one kilo lost.

quitting sugar

I've tried to write this post several times, but I can't get it right. So I'm just going to cut it right back and go for it.

I am taking steps to remove sugar from my diet.

I've done some reading and I'm getting a clearer understanding of the chemistry behind what happens when we eat sugar. Some people claim that the fructose part of what we call "sugar" is incredibly bad for us to the extent that they believe sugar is poisoning us. Others think that view is completely over the top and that there is no need to cut out sugar at all.

From what I've read, a lot of what the sugar-is-poison crowd says makes sense. But that doesn't make it right, so I'm keeping an open mind about it all.

What I know for sure is that sugar is in a lot of processed foods, and one of my 100 things to do this year is to further reduce my consumption of those products, so a reduction in sugar will naturally follow.

But I'm also interested to know if total sugar withdrawal will make any difference to my health, my weight and generally how I feel. Some people say it has significantly improved their health, whereas others have said it's had little effect.

So with that in mind, I'm setting myself a goal to cut out sugar (the sugar in question being fructose) as completely as is reasonably possible. I'm not sure how far I'll get. I'm just trying it to see what happens. I'm sort of following an 8 week program that was recommended to me called I Quit Sugar. It recommends the try-it-and-see approach to start with.

This week I'm tackling a really obvious source of sugar: the afternoon lolly and/or cake break. Regardless of your views on sugar, I don't think anyone would seriously argue that regular snacking on lollies (or peppermint slices) is good for me. And in my quest to cut back on processed foods, it's something I would have got round to doing anyway. I'm just going to start now. No time like the present.

I intend to do a blog post once a week on how it's all going and will probably spend a lot of time on Twitter complaining about how badly I want chocolate bullets. So if you want up to the minute news, follow me @realsleepydwarf.

And I can report that Day 1 was a total success. 

Smoky Baked Beans with Chorizo

Last year Slabs, Juniordwarf and I went out for breakfast after spending a night in Hobart, and I ordered a dish of baked beans with chorizo.

I loved it and wanted to find out how to make it myself, so I looked for something similar online. The recipe I found was this one from the website www.myrecipes.com

I meant to cook it last time we went camping, but my laziness got the better of me. Every so often, Slabs would remind me that I wanted to cook baked beans, and I'd think about it and put it off a bit longer.

This weekend we went camping with Lil Sis and Mr Tall and while we were making the list of meals we'd need to bring food for, I somehow committed to doing the baked beans for breakfast today. So I no longer had an excuse.

Because the recipe uses dried beans, I needed to soak the beans on Wednesday night then cook them on Thursday so they'd be ready to take with us on Friday. After having done this, I strongly dispute the recipe's claim that you only need 20 minutes "hands on" to do it. But that might just be me - I normally need to take the time a recipe gives me, double it and add another half an hour to get an accurate time.

Anyway it was worth all the work. They were delicious!

Here is the recipe:


450 g dried Great Northern beans (I'm not sure what these are. I used haricot beans.)
1 cup diced dry-cured Spanish chorizo (The recipe says "be sure to use firm, dry-cured Spanish chorizo and not soft, raw Mexican chorizo".)  
4 cups chopped onion (I've never measured onions in 'cups' before, but it was about 8 small-medium onions.)
8 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
4 cups water
2 tbsp chopped fresh oregano
2 tbsp chopped fresh thyme
1 1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp ground cumin
1/2 tsp smoked paprika (smoked paprika is brilliant - it makes the dish. I don't think there's a substitute. You must use it!)
1/2 tsp paprika
2 bay leaves
2 tbsp brown sugar
3 tbsp tomato paste
3 tbsp molasses
1/4 tsp crushed chilli (Don't be shy! Use more if you like chilli.)
2 1/2 tsp red wine vinegar
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp chilli powder (See comment about crushed chilli above.)
1/2 cup chopped green onions
2 tbsp chopped fresh flat-leaf parsley

What to do:


1. Sort and wash beans. Cover with water to 2 inches above beans. Cover; let stand 8 hours. Drain.

Beans pre-soaking

2. Heat a large saucepan over medium heat. Add chorizo; cook 4 min or until fat begins to render. Add onion & garlic; sauté 10 min or until tender.

Onions, garlic & chorizo ready to go

Add beans, water, & next 7 ingredients (through bay leaves); bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 45 min or until beans are just tender.

Herbs & spices - look at the glorious colour of the smoked paprika!

3. Preheat oven to 180°C.

4. Stir brown sugar & the next 3 ingredients (through crushed chilli) into bean mixture. Bring to a simmer.

5. Transfer to oven dish; bake at 180° for 1 1/2 hours or until beans are very tender & sauce is thick. Remove from oven; stir in vinegar, black pepper, & chilli powder.

The final stages of cooking

Discard bay leaves; sprinkle with green onions & parsley.

Another week in January

I feel a lot less structured now I'm not doing a post a day, so this is just another random 'what we did over the last week or so' post.

It feels weird to be doing it this way.

On Saturday we went out with my family for Slabs' birthday. On the way in to town, Slabs wanted to go and check out the Tassie rugby league. There are four teams in the competition and they play on Saturday afternoons at the Hobart Showgrounds, one game after the other. The game we saw part of was the Southern Rabbitohs vs the Hobart Tigers.

We went out for dinner at a sushi restaurant. Juniordwarf ate a little bit of sushi, some of the beef tataki and some of Nanna’s pork dish. He wouldn’t go near the sashimi, even though we told him it was salmon, which he absolutely loves - at least the smoked variety. Raw salmon was clearly a step too far for him.

He told Slabs he wanted a tie when they went shopping earlier in the week, and he picked one out and was very excited to wear it on Saturday night.

On Sunday we met our friend's Dad, who was in town for the day, and went up Mt Wellington.

Monday was Slabs' birthday. We had our version of an antipasto spread for dinner. Juniordwarf  loved it because we got to have dinner on his car mat on the lounge room floor, which he’d do every day if we’d let him.

Tuesday was unbelievably hot, and I spent most of the evening waiting for the storm to hit. It finally did, and it didn't disappoint.

Can you see the koala in the clouds?

On Thursday I was home with Juniordwarf. It was hot and we just wanted to stay inside. Juniordwarf played his Reading Eggs game (and I've now set up the clunky old eMac so he has his own account and can go straight into it). I got the chance to catch up on some scrapbooking.

And that's about it for our week. Tonight we went to the Two Metre Tall Farm Bar with some friends and I managed not to take a photo for the entire evening. Yes, some things can change!

P365 - Day 364 - the Taste (and year in review 11/12) (30/12/2011)

Today we went to the Taste Festival in Hobart.

Juniordwarf enjoyed the cups & saucers ride

More cups and saucers

Entry to the Taste

Inside the main hall

Outside the Brasserie. Nice & shady.

Ice cream

Enjoying an ale

Two Metre Tall Ale in a plastic cup?  What a crime against Ale!

Wheelie Bin Orchestra performing "We Will Rock You"
These guys were great!

Juniordwarf enjoyed the Wheelie Bins

The Winery

Year in Review (11/12)

Since my Project 365 is rapidly coming to an end, I’m going post a link to my favourite post from each month this year over the last 12 days of the year.

November: eleven

My contribution to the 11eleven Project.

P365 - Day 309 - Oatlands (05/11/2011)

A while ago, on a trip back home from somewhere, we stopped in Oatlands for lunch. We didn’t have time to have a good look at the town, but saw there were a few interesting little places that we thought might be fun to explore.

So we decided to go back and stay for a night, and we thought a wedding anniversary weekend would be a good excuse to have a night away. It was even better that Juniordwarf’s grandmother agreed to have a houseguest, so we could have a night away by ourselves.

I think it’s actually the first night we’ve ever had away from home sans child, which was VERY exciting.

Oatlands is about 80 km from Hobart, just off the Midland Highway and, according to the official tourist guide, it has the largest collection of sandstone Georgian buildings in Australia. There certainly are a lot of them, and the town has a really historic feel to it. Most of them have been well maintained, and the self-guided street tour booklet that we picked up when we arrived provides a bit of the history behind many of the old buildings.

126-130 High Street

The original Oatlands Hotel

There are some very cool topiary plants throughout the town

Oatlands Town Hall

52 miles to Hobart

Side of a building

The major attraction for us was the Callington Mill,  which is a working 19^th century windmill that produces organic and chemical-free flours. The mill is open for tours, so after lunch we presented ourselves for a tour.

Mill Lane - great street sign design

Callington Mill

We met Tony, our cheerful tour guide, who explained that because it is a working mill there are certain requirements for visitors. Firstly we were required to wear a very attractive hair net – which is actually called a snood, so there you go; I learned something – and a hard hat. Looking pretty glamorous we were. 

As well as this, we weren’t allowed to take in bags, mobile phones or cameras for safety reasons. 

Once everyone had divested themselves of their encumbrances, we headed over to the mill. I commented  to Slabs that it was smaller than I'd expected. He replied that it was a mill, not a tower - which of course it isn't. I think I'd been expecting something like the Shot Tower! This is a five level mill. Much smaller.

Once we’d climbed the four ladders to the top of the mill, Tony gave us a brief history of the mill: it was built in 1837, and closed down in 1892. A blacksmith set up a forge on the ground level and in 1913 the entire interior was burnt out, due to an explosion caused by sparks from the forge igniting flour dust that was still lingering in the mill (yes! flour dust is explosive).

In the 1970s the first attempts were made by the community to restore the mill, some Government funding was received in 1988 so that more work would be done, and finally in 2010 the work finished, completing the restoration of the mill to working order. The final stage of the work was overseen by a mill builder from the UK.

Tony then explained how the mill worked, from the smutting process at the top (a process to remove soot or dirt smut from the wheat – which isn’t actually done because the mill insists on clean grain) to husking the grain, grinding and packing it at the bottom. (I’ve probably forgotten a few steps, but you get the idea.)

The cap on top of the mill weighs 11 tonnes and isn’t actually fixed to the mill – its massive weight keeps it in place. The four sails weight a tonne each, and can be opened up or closed down depending on how much wind there is, and how much power is needed to run the mill. At night they are fully opened so they don’t turn.

Shut down for the night

It was a really interesting place to visit. I love the fact we can now buy Tasmanian milled flour that is either certified organic or chemical-free.

That was one of the highlights of our weekend. Another was our accommodation, Blossoms Cottage, which we loved.  It’s a self-contained one bedroom cottage, very quiet and peaceful and just perfect for the two of us.

Blossoms Cottage

The inside

The view outside the kitchen window

After our mill tour and checking into the cottage, we decided to visit both of the local drinking venues – the Midlands Hotel and the RSL/Bowls club. The RSL was great because when we got there we were the only people in the place, so we were able to have a good chat to the barman and play pool without shaming ourselves in front of a pub crowd.

At least one of us knew what they were doing

After dinner, we went back to our little cottage and opened a very treasured bottle of wine – a 2003 Bream Creek Cabernet Sauvignon that we’d bought on a wedding anniversary weekend away six years ago.

Brilliant!

It tasted glorious, and was a wonderful way to end a great day. 

In this case, neither of us knew what we were doing!

This is for Juniordwarf

P365 - Day 303 - spice jars

I've been gradually buying new jars to store the random packets of spices and spice mixes that are lying round in what might loosely be described as our spice cupboard.

I've also been replacing some of the old jars (jam jars, tomato paste jars, coffee jars) with the new ones for no reason other than that I quite like the idea of all the jars being the same (or at least similar).

And finally, I took great delight tonight in emptying several jars that contained completely unidentifiable spices or spice mixes into the bin. I have no idea what these were, and have a feeling I've had them for more than five years. I figured if I've had no need for them in that time, I'm not going to now. Plus they're going to be well past their best-by date.

Into the bin!

The re-jarring project will continue for a bit longer, but after that the next step will be to create some steps or something in the cupboard so I can actually see what I have and find what I need without having to pick up every jar. I'm thinking labels on the jar lids as well as the jars themselves might help here.

So that was my well-spent Sunday night. How was yours?

P365 - Day 292 - dinner

Thank you for dinner tonght, Mr Tall!

P365 - Day 290 - birthday festivities continue

My other birthday present from Slabs arrived in the mail today – a gift pack from Disaster Bay Chillies. 

With a name like that, what’s not to like?

The gift pack includes Chipotle Sauce, Chilli Wine Jelly, Spicy Kasoundi and (wait for it) Hot Chilli Wine – made not from grapes, but from chillies. 

Apparently the wine is best served chilled. According to the website:

the rich fruit flavours will enliven your palate, whilst a distinctive silky sweetness balances the heat of the chillies to leave a warm inner glow. A perfect accompaniment to cheese or natural oysters. Once opened, Hot Chilli Wine can happily remain in the refrigerator for several months.

It all sounds divine!

We also tried the cake after dinner tonight. Very yummy.

And for the final picture for today, it was so cold overnight it snowed. Lucky Lil Sis and Mr Tall went up the mountain to play in the snow, while I got to look at it from my window at work.

By mid-afternoon the day had warmed up and the snow had all gone.

P365 - Day 286 - a day in the life

Apparently it's my birthday today. I took the day off work, because I really don't like to be at work on my birthday. Last year I had Juniordwarf with me - this year he was at school, so I had a rare day at home by myself.

Here are some photos of what I did today.

Juniordwarf 'helping' open my presents.
Whose birthday is it again?

Waterfall card from the wonderfully talented Lil Sis

Coffee!

Catching up on my blog

Playing in my craft space

Wondering how I'm going to journal in all this.

Solution: put the writing somewhere else

Catching up on washing I didn't do on Tuesday

The scary shed. Who dares enter . . . 

It's starting to take shape

Time to say this is finished and to move onto the next project

Out to dinner

Well what other table would I want?

Entree tasting plate

Beer!

Not a bad laksa. I'll be back!

Cheers Mum, Happy Birthday.