Shoshiplatypus

What’s On Your Workdesk this Wednesday?

Continuing with my tiny carpets. I haven’t managed to do much, but I’ve completed the pale blue and made a start on the cream, and I filled in the lower lozenge with red. I also discovered yet another mistake!! Fortunately they really don’t show in the finished work but I think I am going to redraw the design and put them all right.

Devastated

I am really upset. On Friday as I was getting into bed I thought my little finger felt a bit odd, and looking down, found to my horror that the ring I always wear on that finger had gone missing. It was my great-grandmother’s wedding ring, and was so tiny that it would only fit on my little finger! I have turned the place upside down, trying to find it, without success. We did go out earlier (more on that later) and I thought, great, the first time I’ve gone out for simply ages and on the very same day, I lose my ring!! I rang the shop and they very kindly said they would look, and reported back that they hadn’t found it. I think I would have noticed the strange feeling on my finger earlier if I had lost it then. We went back the following day and had a good look in the car park, and I’ve searched in the road outside our house too, and in the car, all to no avail. I think it must be in the house somewhere, unless (worst case scenario) I flushed it down the loo… The trouble is, Friday is my busiest day domestic-wise, with laundry, clean bed sheets, hair washing and showering, fitting new stoma bag for Kermit, and with all that activity there was plenty of opportunity for it to drop off. I am still hoping, and praying desperately, that I will find it. It is very precious to me. I have several rings that I wear all the time, including four generations of wedding rings – my own (of course); Mum’s, my grandmother’s, and finally, my great-grandmother’s.

I don’t know very much about her, but I remember Mum telling me that she was a very elegant lady who never left the house without her parasol to protect her complexion! She must have had very tiny hands. I can imagine her bowling along in her carriage, twirling her parasol and waving graciously to her friends in the park! I do have some pictures of her. Her name was Anita Wilhelmina W., and my great-grandfather’s name was Ernest Taylor W. I have two lockets that belonged to them – the smooth plain gold one has my great-grandfather’s monogram, ETW, in silver, and it probably hung on his watch chain. The photos inside are of two ladies: the one on the left is his sister and my great-grandmother is on the right.

The other locket is very much more ornate and belonged to my great-grandmother. If you look carefully at her photo above, you will see she is actually wearing this self-same locket! The photos inside are of my great-grandfather and my grandfather, Ernest Stanley W., as a baby.

He looks so dashing with his mutton chop whiskers! Unfortunately the clasp on this locket is broken and I am hoping to get it repaired.

I cannot believe that I have been careless enough to lose this precious ring. I am grieving over it.

New Furniture

We have finally bit the bullet and decided to change our sitting room suite. We bought the red leather 3-piece suite when we moved to our old house which had a much larger sitting room. When we moved here, it was clear that there wasn’t really room for all that big furniture so we moved one of the chairs into the flat, but even so, a 3-seater settee takes up one whole wall and most of it ends up covered with my clutter! The seats are beginning to flatten a bit after so many years of sitting on them, and it was time for a change.

Having found out so much more about veganism and the various ethical considerations, as well as my primary reason for going whole-food plant-based (health and weight loss), I was beginning to feel a bit uncomfortable having leather furniture, so this time we are going for fabric. We looked online and made a shortlist, and on Friday afternoon popped down the road to our local DFS and had a look. We made our decision, but my hubby said he didn’t really want red again, so we chose the charcoal grey that was on display in the shop. We’ve gone for a 2-seater settee and one chair, all powered recliners. They tell us it will take 8-10 weeks but it may be much sooner than that, depending on how many orders they have.

My hubby has already found someone who would like our old suite; we have decided to keep his manual recliner in the flat and get rid of the other two pieces.

On Sunday my hubby pulled out the settee and tipped it up so that I could clean underneath (what a lot of dust and fluff and gunk – mostly cat fur, surprise surprise) – I also found a missing crochet hook and my favourite nail scissors which I thought were long gone, but unfortunately, no ring.

One benefit of all this is that I have at least moved the wool boxes and most of the junk out of the sitting room. It was on its way upstairs back to my studio, but unfortunately, another disaster happened…

Stairlift broken down

On Friday evening, right at the beginning of a bank holiday weekend, my stairlift gave up the ghost. I can manage the stairs but it takes a lot of effort and it makes carrying things up and down a bit of a pain. Why do these things always have to happen at weekends, or at the worst possible moment? I remember it breaking down when I was in the middle of my chemo and I was really struggling with the stairs then, as I was feeling mega-poorly. Grrrr. Anyway, yesterday I managed to phone through and the man talked me through a procedure to get it working again, but the engineer is coming out soon to fix another minor fault.

Food

Recipe of the Week

Sweet Vegan Cashew Dessert Cream

This is a delicious, easy to make, non-dairy substitute for sweetened whipped cream. Its main ingredient is cashew nuts which need to be soaked before blending. A high-speed blender is best for this, but a Nutribullet-type blender or food processor ought to do the trick. An ordinary blender probably wouldn’t be powerful enough to pulverise the nuts into a smooth cream.

The recipe states that the cashews need to be soaked for several hours in cold water, but you can get much quicker results by soaking them in boiling water for about half an hour. This is what I did the second time I made this, and it was fine. Medjool dates are the sweetest and juiciest variety to use to sweeten any vegan dish. I buy them whole, so I have to remove the stones before blending.

I found that the flavour was enhanced by the addition of 1/4 tsp of vanilla paste. The first time I made it, I added 1/2 tsp but this made the vanilla flavour a bit too overpowering – unless you want it, of course. As with the number of dates, you can adjust the recipe for flavour and sweetness. It makes a delicious topping for desserts or fruit. You could probably also freeze it to make ice cream!

There are similar recipes for making cashew cream with different flavourings, and you can make it savoury as well, to use as a dip, or watered down a little to make a salad dressing.

Chopped Kale Power Salad with Lemon Tahini Dressing

This was the recipe of the week last week. I made it again this week. Massaging the black kale with a little lemon juice after chopping it fine, it really doesn’t seem like a raw kale salad! This recipe has a sweetness to it which is quite delicious.

Savoury Lentil Flatbreads

I shared the plain version of this recipe with you a couple of weeks ago. This week, I decided to make them savoury, by adding to the lentil and water mixture before blending:

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1 tab nutritional yeast

A sprinkling of Italian seasoning (dried herbs)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

They were delicious!

Nutrition

Oil-free cooking

It is easy to cook with no added oil, and the benefits are huge. Oil is a refined product, and very calorie-dense, which means that you only need to eat a very small quantity of it to ingest a large number of calories. One tablespoon of oil contains on average about 125 calories, and it’s extremely easy to consume a lot of added oil in one’s diet without even realising it.

Understanding calorie density

One of the great joys of the whole-food plant-based lifestyle is that to lose weight and stay slim, one doesn’t have to be constantly counting calories and monitoring how much one eats. You eat as much as you want, just concentrating on food rather than worrying about macronutrients such as protein, carbohydrate and fat. The reason for this is that whole-foods are generally calorie-dilute, which means that you have to eat a lot more of them to get the same amount of calories that you would get from foods in the standard Western diet (especially animal products which are rich in saturated fat). There are complex mechanisms in our digestive system to inform our brain that we are full and can stop eating, but modern processed foods are designed to bypass this mechanism, encouraging people to eat much more than they need (all in the name of profit). The human body is designed to take advantage of rich foods which can be stored as fat during times of plenty, to draw on during leaner times when there is less food available. The trouble is, today, food is always plentiful, and we eat rich food all the time because of its easy availability, 24-7. These convenience foods are very calorie dense.

People are always saying that “carbs” are bad and make you fat. This is a myth. The leanest and longest living populations on earth eat diets rich in carbohydrates. We need them for energy, but it is important to eat the right kind of carbohydrate rich foods – complex, unrefined, whole grains and starchy foods like potatoes. These should make up the bulk of the food on our plate.

A stomach-full of whole-foods and leafy vegetables will tell your brain that you are full. These calorie dilute foods are nutritionally dense, and the high fibre content makes them very satiating, removing the desire to snack on unhealthy foods. The same number of calories in refined oil is concentrated into a very small volume, and you need to eat a lot more fatty food in order to feel satisfied, and this leads to obesity. The secret to weight loss is not calorie counting, but understanding calorie density.

Nuts and seeds contain all the oil we need, and in a healthier form, bound with fibre and all the other beneficial nutrients contained in them. They are also extremely beneficial in all areas of our health, such as reducing blood pressure, protecting against cancer etc. Refined oils and fats have none of these benefits. Small quantities of seeds and nuts chopped into salads etc. will not make you gain weight.

Cooking without oil is easy. If you have a good quality, heavy, non-stick frying pan or sauté pan, you can dry-sauté, just adding a little water every now and then to prevent sticking and to deglaze the pan. You can make wonderful salad dressings with no oil; for a creamier dressing, tahini (like peanut butter but made from sesame seeds) is a great alternative with a fabulous flavour. You can make dressings and sauces based on potatoes, beans, cauliflower, avocado… some are more rich in fats than others and you can ring the changes. Desserts made with no added processed fats can be sweetened with dates or bananas rather than refined sugars; this way you are getting the nutritional benefit from those fruits as well, including the fibre that they contain, and they are delicious.

So the best foods for us are unrefined, whole and unprocessed. Refined foods have many of their essential micronutrients removed and are simply empty calories which ruin your health.

Kitties

Ruby: “I am asleep with my nose buried in my tail. Do not disturb!” (I adore Ruby’s little nose!)

“A-hunting we will go!” There was definitely something in the rockery that held their attention.

Ruby on her favourite rock. She often sits on it and surveys her estate.

The next day Ruby had a mouse, and Lily was extremely interested. We don’t know if she managed to get it off her sister. Later, I found her sitting on Ruby’s rock!

That evening they had a spat. I expect Ruby was telling Lily off for pinching her stuff. She does get quite jealous sometimes, and we think she gets tired of being #2 kitty and likes to assert her rights on occasion. Later on they were both on my lap, happily washing each other, so they had kissed and made up.

Clothes

My final Romanian blouse. I have one further Romanian outfit to share with you which I’ll try and do next week, but in the meantime, this is my other red one. It is plainer than the first one, and has no gathering at the cuffs. The embroidery is similar to that on the blue one: a combination of pattern darning and pulled thread work, with white smocking around the neck. Seen here with my red skirt and red socks.

Some detail shots.

My red skirt is quite faded. The inside is a much brighter red and less orange. It has a couple of faded patches on the front where it got left in the sun. Last week I managed to spill a bit of bleach on the front of it, so I have decided to dye it a nice bright red again. It’s a really old skirt and I’m very fond of it, so worth doing, I think! It’s 100% cotton so shouldn’t be a problem.

Pantry labels next week! I’ve nearly finished that job. I’ve been too busy looking for my lost ring, and choosing furniture, to do much else.

Have a great creative week, everybody.