Last night Miss M had a sleepover at Alex’s house, which she’d been looking forward to for the last couple of weeks. In the way only a small child can, as I was leaving, she decided she didn’t want to stay, had to come home with me, and would be broken hearted if I didn’t take her. I gently disengaged her vice like hands from my arms, wiped her tears away and told her she’d be fine. I knew as soon as I was gone, she’d be having a ball. I was right, because when I went to pick her up after I’d been to the market this morning, she opened the front door and said “Mummy! Why did you have to come and pick me up so early? I want to stay here!”
She was also extremely irritated we had to go and look at another house this morning, but since it turned out to be the best one we’ve seen yet, maybe she can forgive me. Just maybe!
Before I left to shop, I set up a batch of baguette dough to rise, and now they’re done and cooling on the bench. The best buy at the market today appeared to be pumpkin, which is lucky because later this week, I’m making roast pumpkin, black eyed bean and sausage soup. With the sausages from the Spanish deli, and black eyed beans I’ve had in my cupboard for ages. Oranges were also plentiful, and I’m planning on making an orange cake later this week, but more traditional the Claudia Roden one. One of my great aunts used to make the most gorgeous orange cake, covered in a thin layer of icing with just a little bit of orange zest in it. For some reason I’ve been craving that cake lately.
For the rest of this afternoon, I want to relax, eat, and read, since last night I was given a huge cache of my favorite Phryne Fisher books and I can’t wait to make my way through them.
Today I’m loving: my pink beanie, $2.50 from the el cheapo shop in Victoria Gardens. I’ve hardly taken it off since I bought it last week.
With a gorgeous 42 year old Liz Hurley on the cover, and free lipgloss (the red is AWESOME) if you buy it from Coles, what’s not to love about this month’s New Woman magazine. The cover promises a 7-day Hollywood diet that works. It’s on Page 106.
Subtitled “It’s the seven-day diet putting a smile on Hollywood’s famous faces. Eat the foods you love and get trimmer thighs. What’s not to love?” Hey, they stole my intro line!
Basically, this diet is the brain child of Dr Susan Kleiner, apparently the most talked about eating plan since Atkins. She’s studied the effect certain foods have on your brain chemistry, and focuses on the ones that raise your levels of serotonin - your body’s feel good chemical, which is the active ingredient in many anti-depressants. Her book “The Good Mood Diet: Feel Great While you Lose Weight” (only available in the States, or from Amazon) is compressed into this terrific article, which should kick start your feel good plan.
One of the things I loved most about this diet is the mandate to have a cup of cocoa every night. Woo hoo - I’m living like a Hollywood star and I didn’t even know it. The downside is she says you need to make it with a sugar substitute, but I choose to use nature’s sweetener, rather than one tinkered together in a lab. You should also eat nuts every day, three servings of dairy a day, eat regularly to stop blood sugar plummeting, and eat 40 percent carbs, 30 percent protein, and 30 percent fat at each meal - in other words, a balanced diet.
There are four days worth of diet planning, and you can get the other three by logging onto the New Woman website.
I like this diet, but one of the reasons I like it so much is I’ve mentioned several of the ideas in my Top Five health newsletters. See, this is a quality site you’re visiting!
I give this article (and the free lip gloss) *****, and I’m considering buying the book.
I’ve got some fantastic risotto resting on the stove, so I thought I’d just pump out a quick post in the five free minutes I’ve got.
I’m feel quite proud because today I finally wrote an article I’ve had brewing for ages in my brain. That would be this article, which is great if you’ve had a baby in the last three months. I submitted it to two sites providing free content to websites and ezines, so it might even get published somewhere.
I also dipped my toes into the scary world of finding a business mentor today. Business is good, but I feel like I could use some direction from someone who can kick my butt and show me a different perspective on the way to do things. Hopefully a little more showing than butt kicking, but hey, either could work.
Tomorrow marks Miss M’s last day of actual holidays, so next week, life goes back to “normal” again. Whatever that might be …
Today I’m loving: the awesome free (red) lipgloss from this month’s New Woman magazine. Look out for two new reviews tomorrow.
The baguettes were so awesome, I had to bake more yesterday - I think I’m addicted. It’s been an uneventful couple of days, apart from an insane dream which meant I woke up thinking I’d murdered someone (thankfully not), and a cancellation which would’ve meant two extra hours sleep this morning had I known about it last night. But I’m not bitter!
I discovered today making hummus isn’t as easy as it first might seem. Tahina tastes hardcore, even in a smaller amount than the recipe suggests, and had to be doctored enormously with garlic, salt and lemon juice. I’ll have to make sure I breathe away from my next client later. Still, Miss M ate it with gusto (on baguette), possibly thanks to the chorizo I put on top.
Not much else to report, but I’m considering changing my training style to emulate the woman in the video below. The comment section on YouTube is full of people saying their mother used her method, and it worked, but I remain slightly sceptical. She’s taken Lion Pose from yoga, and added just a little insanity. When I taught children’s yoga (and I still have terrible flashbacks!), Lion Pose was one of their favorites, because it meant they could roar, stick out their tongues, and make hideous faces … just like this lady. Enjoy. If you try it and it works, let me know.
I think I understand now how easy it is to get sucked into a random idea presented by a charismatic leader. Tragically, my charismatic leader is me. The random idea? The maniacal budget I adopted last week. It worked fabulously, so this week I was determined to continue my success. I made the most crack shopping list, worked out every meal, snack, and miscellaneous item, and with the surplus from last week (an amazing $9.65), even managed to buy my favorite brand of espresso coffee and still have almost ten dollars left over.
So today, my obsession led me to baking. I love bread. Love, love, love it. When I first started working in the fitness industry, I had a job at a women’s gym where none of the other instructors ate carbs. They’d talk in detail about their insane meals, the lack of pasta, bread, potatoes … if only they’d known I was basically existing on giant rolls made from the most wonderful sourdough bread, and would’ve preferred some kind of medieval torture over giving it up.
My initial list had two different kinds of bread, which added up to nearly nine dollars. After crunching numbers, I realised if I baked instead, I could cut my spending by about five bucks. I checked out Stephanie Alexander, found a great recipe for baguettes, which also doubled as pizza dough for tonight’s dinner, and found another recipe for an all purpose bread which I’m going to bake tomorrow (due to several hours rising time which I’d already used up with the baguettes).
There were fifteen minutes of kneading, three lots of rising, and spraying the oven with water while the baguettes were baking, but now they’re sitting on a rack downstairs looking like I just ran down to the local bakery - they’re hefty, crusty - and smell fabulous. I changed my style with the pizza on Stephanie’s recommendation, and let it sit for thirty minutes after stretching it onto baking trays. It ended up crisp, thin and light - everything a good pizza should be. I’ve been a bit “meh” about her Cook’s Companion recipe book, but after tonight, I love it!
Miss M created a great salad, adding apple and balsamic dressing to lettuce, cucumber, celery and tomato, and we ate it with our delicious pizza, and I felt at peace with saving money and being a little more self sufficient.
It’s interesting to take on the mentality of waiting to replenish things. Usually if I ran out of a staple like coffee, I would’ve just gone and bought more straight away. Instead, I waited for five days to buy some, and now I’m going to enjoy it so much more. When I was younger, on supermarket day my brother and I would swoop on the choicest things, and be told when they ran out we had to wait until next week to have them again. Miss M hasn’t ever really known that state of affairs, and she’s slowly starting to get a bit of an understanding about waiting versus just deciding you want something. It’s most definitely a good thing!
Today I’m loving: the baking flour I bought today. Finally I can get 00 easily!
Poor Miss M. Since I’ve been looking for a house to buy, she’s accompanied me on so many inspections I’ve lost count. She’s managed to remain unemotional about any of the houses, although she was quite sad when we didn’t get the first one I truly fell in love with, possibly due to my being so distraught by it.
So she’s seen rental properties, properties I was looking to buy on my own, and now properties I’m looking to buy with my brother. It’s interesting to see what attracts her to a house - the first one she loved because of the fireplace and floorboards in the front room. The second, white revolving bar stools, which I had to stress didn’t come with the house if we did manage to buy it. Last weekend we saw a house with an outdoor bathroom and toilet (super appealing in the most freezing, wet winter we’ve had in years), and I asked her if she could handle the idea of us getting a house with outside amenities.
She looked at the bathroom and said “Mummy, I LOVE this bathroom. That shower curtain is just like the one from the Simpsons”. It made me laugh, because she wasn’t even phased by the rickety nature of anything out there. She also picked out the best bedroom, declaring “this is my room”. My brother and I just exchanged looks - both of us had been thinking exactly the same thing.
Today we went back to look at the property again, with the idea of making a low offer before the auction. Miss M took one of the floorplans, and made her way around like a total pro, pointing out features and potential problems. She was right about everything.
Later we had a look at another house, similar in some ways to the first. It had a lot of the features we were looking for - three bedrooms, garden, parking, separate living room and kitchen, but was severely lacking in charm. Miss M (again with floor plan in hand) walked into each room, critiquing the colour (”hideous”), wallpaper (”this is a paint fest waiting to happen”), and the ambiance (”it smells in here, Mummy”). She did give a thumbs up to the side lane, because “we could take our bikes down here. And the bins”. Good to see she’s on top of our waste disposal needs!
When we were walking away, James and I were discussing the house. I couldn’t really put my finger on what was wrong, but I felt no connection to the place at all. There was a lot of work to be done, but nowhere near as much as the place we’d gone back to in the morning and still I liked it a lot less. I asked Miss M what she thought as we got in the car. She shook her head sadly. “Too many cons, Mummy. Far, far too many cons”. She emphasised her statement by scrunching up the floorplan. “Let’s get the one we saw this morning”.
So I’m thinking of sending her into any other properties we’re interested in on her own, as I wait in James’ car drinking coffee. She can look around, ask hard questions of the real estate agent, crunch some numbers, then tell me whether the place is worth checking out or not. I figure an eight year old’s commission could probably be paid in chocolate bars - then maybe I could sneak a couple while she wasn’t looking.
Today I’m loving: all the crosses against other people’s names on the real estate agent’s sheet.
Since I’ve just discovered how to embed a youtube video, I thought I’d celebrate by searching for my favorite cartoon character. Since I’ve always been obsessed with cartoons, it took me a while to work out what I’d go with. Until I stumbled upon this one.
There are several reasons I’ve chosen this clip:
It’s from one of my favorite movies, with one of my favorite actors - Bob Hoskins - in it.
She’s wearing one of the best dresses - cartoon or otherwise - in history.
When I was younger I aspired to look just like her, then realised her proportions are even worse than Barbie.
I love this song, and her performance of it.
She reminds me of one of my favorite clients - hi Shona!
So ladies and gentlemen, I present for your viewing pleasure, Ms Jessica Rabbit. Enjoy … then tell me, who’s your favorite cartoon character?
The hard yards of the week are done, and now I’m cruising towards the weekend. I know I’ve said it before, but I love Thursdays - even though the Monster no longer trains on Thursday mornings (now I love Wednesday for that reason). Although it’s a 6am start, I know I don’t have to go back into work again, and Friday is always a late start. Disturbing referring to 8am as late, and my previous self would be sickened, but I’ve got to go with the times.
I’ve stuck to my insane shopping budget with an iron fist, and today cooked two chocolate cakes from a recipe I totally bastardised in order to use ingredients I had on hand. It was supposed to be a dairy and egg free cake, and use margarine and water for moistening, but I only had butter, and some left over sour cream I was determined not to throw out. Clearly the no dairy thing was not going to fly. I also had almond and walnut meal left over from the insanely bitter orange cake from a couple of weeks ago, so I threw it all in, and the result is surprisingly fantastic. I’ve also been smart enough to lock them into a container away from Pilchen, lover of all cakes, especially those of a forbidden nature.
My big ticket item for the week was a free range chicken, which is roasting as I type. I butterflied it with my vicious bone cutting scissors, and we’ll have it for dinner with polenta and salad tonight. Leftovers will be tomorrow’s lunch, and the pan juices will go into risotto next week. I went to the supermarket today for some boring basic staple type things, and restrained myself from buying coffee, which we ran out of yesterday, until Sunday, which is now grocery day. It’s okay if I breathe deeply, and I’m trying to remind myself I’m only drinking one cup a day anyway, so I can wait … can’t I? If only the coffee machine would stop staring at me like that!
Today I’m loving: using all the fruit and vegetables from the market, and not throwing any away for possibly the first time ever.
I’ve been looking for a way to quote a Radiohead album in a title of a post, and this seems as good an opportunity as any. Aaah computers - when they work, you love them, but the rest of the time … But to be more correct in my slagging off, it’s not the computer so much as the software. The new, updated software for this site. And I liked the old stuff so much better!
My site meter’s disappeared, I can’t upload photos the way I used to, and I still can’t use Ultimate Tag Warrior. There, that’s the limit of my complaining. But the uploading thing is really annoying, so I’ve posted my first question on a forum - HELP MEEEEE! is pretty much what I’ve said. Just in less desperate terms. Hopefully someone will take pity on me and be able to help me figure out what’s gone wrong.
In better news, one of my “This Week’s Top Five” posts has been featured in a blog carnival on health and fitness. Click this link to check it out.
I’m Miss M-less for a couple of days, which is always odd, so I’ve spent some of my free time listing things on eBay, which always makes me feel at least vaguely productive. Tomorrow I’m planning to write a spec article for a magazine, who will hopefully like it enough to perhaps publish it, so the silence in the house will be a fantastic writing buddy. Although the animals will still be here, and Pilchen is trying to convince me to feed her half an hour early. Nice try, Pilch, but no cigar. Or food just yet.
Today I’m loving: my hot water bottle. Oh, how I’m loving my hot water bottle!
Miss M is obsessed with boys at the moment. There are a couple of boys she’s keen on at school, and she wavers between the two of them depending on what day it is. Suddenly she’s also very interested in helping me find a boyfriend, despite many previous occasions where she’s declared any man who comes into my life will be chased away … by her.
Her first plan was almost a year ago now - I’ve forgotten the exact date, and I’m annoyed with myself because I should’ve written it down. I’d had lunch with my friend Stephen, someone I’ve known for years - I met him the day before I started chemotherapy, so that makes it about thirteen years. Miss M likes him, mainly because he’s just as nuts as she is. After he’d left, she made it clear she’d be happy for me to have Stephen as a special friend. At least, she gave me a subtle signal, in the form of the following piece of paper.
I’d just like to add it’s taken me more than forty five minutes to upload this photograph, but the whole post was worthless without it, so it was either do it, or … find something else to write about.
Anyway, over the weekend we were shooting the breeze, and out of the blue, Miss M said:
“Next Thursday night, we’re going to put on pretty dresses, go down to the pub and find you a boyfriend”
After I’d recovered my composure, I suggested maybe the pub wasn’t really the place for me to meet someone, and possibly my chances of picking up would be effected by the presence of my eight year old child. Undeterred, she told me if anyone was interested in me, she’d be happy to “step off”. She also mentioned I wasn’t meeting anyone at work or anywhere else, and I can’t deny her logic.
So on Thursday night, I’m going to have to find an excuse to not go to the pub with my under ten year old daughter, and I can picture in my mind exactly what’s going to happen, which is she’ll go absolutely go nuts, and I’ll have to come up with the best evasive tactics of my entire life. At least I’ve got three days to work out what they’ll be.
Today I’m loving: the panniers I put on my bike on Friday, which required ingenious installation, but are way better than I could’ve hoped. Riding without a backpack is sweeeet!
