Shoshiplatypus

What’s On Your Workdesk this Wednesday?

I’ve been making good progress on tiny carpet #3. The border is now complete.

I was about to embark on filling in the background with the dark blue thread, when I happened to be watching something on TV that featured oriental carpets. I noticed that the plain background of a large one was a bit variegated, presumably due to the fact that the fibre in question had come from different dye-baths. The result was somewhat random and very pleasing, so I thought I would try and emulate this effect. I chose some more dark blue colours from my stash and began embroidering them in a fairly random way.

At this stage it didn’t look up to much, but beginning to fill in the main dark blue background, the effect is becoming more subtle and interesting than a flat, single colour. So far I’m pleased with the result.

Plans for future projects

I’ve also been thinking about some new knitting and crochet projects. When our new furniture arrives, I shall definitely be wanting to make at least one throw, and following last week’s WOYWW, I think I’ve more or less decided on the Persian Tiles pattern from Ravelry that Lynne shared.

While browsing around on Ravelry, I found an absolutely brilliant designer (her Ravelry shop is now closed but she’s open for business on her own website) – mouth-wateringly gorgeous designs, especially of her various shawls. I’ve bought the Royal Peacock shawl pattern with a view to incorporating this, with some adaptations, into a cardigan similar in shape to one I showed you some time ago on my “fashion” slot.

This cardigan is an interesting shape with a normal top part, and a sideways-knit flaring bottom part. I have been wondering how to design such a thing, and when I saw the shawl, I thought this semi-circular piece would fit the bill perfectly.

I want to make this with a peacock theme. It’s all still just in my head and isn’t even at the drawing board stage yet, and I need to concentrate on a few more UFOs before embarking on a major project.

Food

Recipe of the Week

Vegan Broccoli Salad

A very tasty, hearty salad. To bulk it up a bit, and in order to introduce some nice whole grains, I added a portion of cooked millet. Toasted until golden brown before adding the water, it has a wonderfully nutty flavour. This is the first time I’ve cooked it like this and it was great – it came out absolutely perfect, with all the water absorbed, no sticking to the pan, and easy to fluff up with a fork. Definitely a grain to add to the arsenal!

For the salad, I put in a whole red onion, finely diced, and also a red pepper, and I used a mixture of dried cranberries and raisins. I roughly chopped some blanched almonds and then dry-toasted them in a heavy pan. A delicious slightly sweet salad with lots of fruit and nuts!

Harissa Roasted Vegetable Hummus Wraps

I’ve already done this as a recipe of the week, but I made it again last week. It’s a delicious recipe. I made a leafy green salad with added tomatoes, cucumber, chopped walnuts, hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds, dressed with a creamy tahini dressing.

I also made a big pot of butternut squash soup – a new recipe which I shall feature on “Recipe of the Week” in due course, and some more Saddam Hussein soup, both for the freezer. The butternut squash soup required an apple, so I popped into the garden and plucked a couple off the tree since there were none left in the fruit bowl – you can’t get fresher than that!

Nutrition

Supplements – are they necessary?

There’s a lot of confusion surrounding the issue of nutritional supplements, and it’s not made any simpler by the aggressive marketing by the manufacturing companies, who will always push the benefits of them in order to take your money and make more profit for their shareholders. This is always a difficult problem, and it’s made even worse by the fact that many scientific studies are sponsored by agriculture, the food manufacturers and also the supplements manufacturers, and their results are frequently skewed. It is always important to check one’s sources when investigating anything like this.

One of my favourite nutritional experts is Dr. Michael Greger who does a vast amount of research into the latest published papers on a wide range of subjects. Along with most of the medical heroes of the whole-food plant-based nutrition world, he is not affiliated to any company or government agency, and will give an honest, science-based opinion on these matters.

It is generally stated that if you are eating a healthy diet, supplements are not necessary. A lot of the confusion comes from the modern fashion of concentrating on macronutrients such as protein, carbohydrates and fat, rather than simply on food. This tendency has led to a similar emphasis on the micronutrients – vitamins, minerals etc. It is a mistake to focus on single items and blame them for all the ills of the world – for example, there’s a battle raging between those who say fat is the big bad wolf, and those who say it’s sugar, to the exclusion of anything else. Similarly, it is a mistake to concentrate on a single item as being the universal panacea for health. There’s a lot of talk about vitamins, and the dangers of deficiencies of various micronutrients, and people end up spending their hard-earned cash on supplements, not realising that there can be as much danger in overdosing on these as there is in being deficient in them, and half the time, they are simply peeing their hard-earned cash down the toilet anyway! The body is a great self-regulator and will generally expel any excesses in order to maintain its equilibrium.

There is, of course, a danger in becoming deficient in various micronutrients if one is consuming the standard Western diet which is calorie dense but lacking in nutritional value. All the goodness has been refined out of convenience foods, so people then try to regain the lost nutrients by taking them in pill form. These micronutrients are much less efficiently taken up by the body in this form than when they are bound to all the natural phytonutrients found in whole plant-based foods. If you eat a whole-food plant-based diet which is diverse, so that you are consuming foods from the essential groups – whole grains, legumes, green vegetables, roots and tubers, fruit, nuts and seeds, you will be getting all the micronutrients you need. There is also something else going on when you eat these whole-foods – there is an enhanced benefit from the combination of these foods working together in concert which is not as yet fully understood. This is another reason for eating as diverse a variety of whole-foods as possible. It also provides the optimum food for a diverse gut microbiome – the more diverse, the better for our health.

So it appears that generally speaking, the taking of dietary supplements in tablet form is unnecessary. There is one exception, however, and anyone embarking on a vegan or whole-food plant-based diet needs to be aware of this. This is Vitamin B12, which is not present in plants. People eating animal products will get all they need of this micronutrient essential for brain and nerve health, but vegans should take a B12 supplement. The mammalian body is not capable of synthesising this substance which is created by bacteria in the environment. In the old days when most people were eating a diet largely consisting of plants with occasional meat added in, it wasn’t a problem, because they obtained their water direct and unpurified from wells and streams. Nobody is suggesting we should go back to drinking water from such sources these days,  just to get our vitamin B12, because there is a real risk of contamination, and it is one of the benefits of modern life that our drinking water is now much safer (what they add to it is another topic!). People who eat meat are also getting many of the things that the animals themselves consume; farm animals will often be consuming faecal matter along with their food, and dairy can be contaminated with this as well (more reasons for avoiding such things!) and they will be absorbing the vitamin B12 into their systems, and so into the animal products that people eat.

The recommended dose of Vitamin B12 supplements that exclusively plant-eating people should take is 2,ooo micrograms per week. We are taking this in the form of 1 1,000 mcg tablet twice a week. Alternatively, you can take a smaller dose daily; either is efficacious. There are also certain foods that are fortified with Vitamin B12, such as some breakfast cereals, Marmite, and nutritional yeast, but it is best to supplement on top of these, just to make sure you are getting enough. I mean, there’s a limit to how much Marmite you can consume, isn’t there, and in my case, it’s minimal!!

Pantry labels

Last week I promised to show the latest stage in my pantry revampification. With the arrival of my new large storage jars I was able to go ahead and make up some more labels. I’ve also transferred some things into new coffee jars as they have become available. (Since it’s only my hubby who drinks this instant coffee, it takes a long time to free up each jar!) I still have one or two gaps requiring the medium-sized coffee jars but unfortunately Tesco isn’t selling those (if they are even still available).

My pantry is designed so that nowhere is anything more than 2 items deep on the shelves, so that everything is visible and easily accessible. To show everything, I first photographed each shelf with just the back row of jars, and then replaced the front row and photographed that.

Top shelf, back row. No new jars here – just the ones I had before.

Top shelf, front row. The new jars now contain soya beans (largest one), brown rice, brown lentils and green lentils in the smaller ones that match the jar containing the whole almonds. These shelves contain mostly legumes, with some grains, nuts and seeds in the larger quantities because they get used the most, and dried fruit.

Lower shelf (marble slab), back row. Nearly all large and medium coffee jars, with one or two oddments. Once I get enough jars, I will make the labels for those.

Lower shelf, front row. The smallest size of coffee jars seems to be unavailable now, which is a pity. Some of these contain the toasted version of the contents of the medium-sized jars behind them, e.g. pine nuts, toasted pine nuts. These shelves contain mostly grains, nuts and seeds, with my vegetable powders on the left, and sugar (only used for fermentation – kombucha) and coconut products and other oddments on the right.

Here is the marble slab with the rest of the stuff put back – my water filter jug, and baskets of fruit – overflow from the fruit bowls out on the kitchen counter. I also use this slab shelf for bowls of cooked food still too warm to go in the fridge (or no room in the fridge, which is always bursting!).

General view of my revamped pantry.

I haven’t bothered to photograph the other shelves, nearer to the door, because nothing has changed on these since the last time I photographed them.

Kitties

Not too much activity this week because my hubby has been out a bit, so they’ve stayed indoors sleeping most of the time, the lazy lumps. Both of them on my hubby’s lap after a session of mutual washing (mostly Ruby doing it because Lily is #1 cat and thinks it’s her due to be washed and not to do the washing). Ruby lying on top of her sister, as per usual.

Lily’s funny little feet.

“Having breakfast is soooo tiring……. Time for a good long rest.”

“Ah… a nice little sun-trap. Time for another rest. All this resting makes me so tired that I need to take another rest.”

Clothes

As promised, my final Romanian outfit. This is something rather special – a wedding outfit. It’s a skirt and blouse, quite heavily embroidered. The last time I tried it on, the skirt was too tight around the waist, so you can imagine how thrilled I was to find that it now fits! I put it on just to show you, and then reverted to more normal clothes after the photo shoot. Lots of photos, so I hope you’re ready – it’s a real treat!

I bought the red boots many years ago in a charity shop. One of my bridesmaids wore them for our wedding!

A traditional bride in Romania would often wear a headdress made of brightly coloured flowers.

I used my red bead necklace as a tiara instead, attaching it with hairpins.

Now for the detail shots of the beautiful embroidery, which is mostly cross-stitch. The edges are all embellished with red crochet.

The front yoke.

Detail of the embroidery and crochet on the yoke.

Detail of the neck at the front. Unlike my other blouses, this one doesn’t have a gathered neck with a drawstring, but a simple cord to tie at the neck, and two little red tassels.

The back.

Detail of the back neck.

The sleeve.

Detail of the cuff. There is a different style of crochet on the edges here, similar to that around the neck.

Detail of one of the embroidered motifs on the sleeve.

The skirt.

The waistband.

Detail of the waistband. This has both styles of crochet.

Detail of the embroidery on the skirt. The pin-tucks have been stitched with contrasting colour.

Detail of the narrow strip of embroidery on the skirt. I love how the dark zig-zag pattern extends beyond the red strip. A simple little design, but very effective.

Finally, the hem of the skirt, complete with its band of crochet.

Gorgeous, isn’t it. My hubby was delighted to see it again, and reminded me of how he’d spotted it in a shop in Romania, and realised that this was a “must-have” purchase. Many of the other things he brought back, he purchased from street-side vendors, happy to sell their beautiful work in order to help make ends meet. Things were very tough for people in the years immediately following the revolution but at least they had their freedom at last. Despite all their terrible hardships, we found these delightful people generous to a fault, and open and friendly when we visited. In the early days, my hubby reported that people literally shared their last crust with him – hospitality came before their own hunger! They are also a highly creative and artistic people. When we were there, I took literally hundreds of photos of various design elements, not just in textiles, but in architecture, domestic decorative objects, agricultural implements and so on. Their style is unique. Sometime I must upload those photos to Flickr and provide a link.

Finally…

Thank you, everyone who so kindly commented and commiserated with me over the loss of my ring. I’m afraid I still haven’t found it, and have come to the conclusion that it’s gone for good. I either lost it when we went out to order our new furniture, or I flushed it down the loo. I’m convinced it’s nowhere in the house. However, if a miracle happens and it does turn up, of course I shall let you know!

I’ve started wearing my great-grandfather’s locket again. Here it is, on a velvet ribbon. I am wearing my cat top. I am waiting to hear from the jeweller with an estimate for repairing the clasp on the other locket.