Shoshiplatypus

What’s On Your Workdesk this Wednesday?

Working on the cat throw. I decided to join the first column of squares, just to see how it went. I discovered a lovely pattern online for crocheting squares together; I really didn’t want to sew them, and I thought a more decorative joining might be fun, too.

I began by adding a narrow border of double crochet (English crochet terminology – this is single crochet in the USA) worked in black. While doing this, I had to ensure that I had exactly the same number of stitches on each side – in this case, 33, in order for the joining to work correctly.

The great advantage of this particular pattern is that you can join the whole blanket continuously, without having to stop and cut the yarn and work in your ends. The pattern includes a “map” showing the direction of work. In the next photo (photobombed by Lily, also occupying my lap as I was working), you can see the first step, which is to create a series of loops with chain stitches along the edge of the square, with a larger loop going around the corner.

When you come to the point of joining the next square, you create the loops on that one as you work more loops of chain stitch to join the two squares together. Removing the hook from the stitch and pushing the hook upwards from below the loop on the other square and then picking up the stitch again, you get the loops of chains to create the braided look.

Working in black, the attractive twisted braid design doesn’t show up very well, which is a pity. On the pattern, you can see how nice it can look.

Here is the first column of 8 squares complete, laid over my hubby’s chair to show how it will look when the blanket is finished. With the added borders and the fairly wide joining stitches, this is making the blanket that much bigger all round, which is great. The final border around the edge of the whole blanket will also add a bit more. (More photobombing by two sleepy girlies!)

You can see the ball of yarn still attached, ready to continue its journey throughout the whole blanket. I have a separate ball for working the initial black border around each square.

This is a very enjoyable part of the whole project and it’s very satisfying to see it beginning to come together. Still quite a bit of work to do with the embellishments, though.

Food

A new machine…

A new kitchen machine arrived this week – the Tribest SlowStar vertical slow juicer. The same manufacturer made my Soyabella soya milk making machine. When the parcel arrived, I feared for the contents, given the state of the outer box!

The damage had extended to the inner box as well, but fortunately the contents appeared to be undamaged.

Unboxing the juicer

Here it is, fully assembled and ready to make juice.

The line-up of my machines on the counter now.

I’ve had to rearrange my wall cabinets a little in order to accommodate the mincer attachment, which won’t need to sit out on the counter as it probably won’t be used as frequently.

The SlowStar is the only juicer of its type on the market that has a mincer attachment. This can be used for macerating vegetables for making non-meat balls, sauerkraut, fruit sorbets, banana ice cream (basically just frozen banana put through this machine) and other things. I heard of one person who swears by this attachment for grinding his coffee! Coffee aficionados do say that a slow grinding is better than a high-speed blitzing for extracting the best coffee flavour.

Many years ago I had a centrifugal high speed juicer which was an absolute pain to clean so eventually I got rid of it. This type of juicer is usually frowned upon because it juices very rapidly, causing oxidation, which destroys many of the nutrients in the process. A slow juicer works on the principle of slowly crushing the food with an auger, which is a large screw-like apparatus. The juice emerges from the machine from one outlet into a jug, and the pulp from a separate outlet. These juicers are much easier to clean than centrifugal ones.

One of the advantages of a vertical slow juicer is its small footprint on the kitchen counter. All juicers have their pros and cons and there is no absolute best machine on the market, because it depends on what you are looking for in a juicer.

As I have said previously, I normally prefer to consume whole fruits and veggies rather than process them into juices or smoothies, but I came across a very interesting video recently when searching for a labour-saving way of squeezing nut milk from the pulp after blending. With my rapid muscle fatigability, I do find this very arduous and it’s the worst part of making your own non-dairy milk. Soya milk is the worst because the Okara (soya pulp) is quite fine and I have to press it out in a thing called a Vegan Milker which is a tall cylindrical meshed tube with a plunger. It’s easier than the nut bag but my least favourite part of the process, and the pulp comes out wetter than with a bag – both almond and soya. The video was a review of several different juicers, to discover the best for making nut milks. On the video, the pulp comes out extremely dry, but not very well ground up. He added an additional step, blending the nuts and water first (as I always do in the Vitamix anyway) and then putting it through the juicer, and he was getting fantastic results.

This will be the primary use I shall make of this machine, but my initial experiments were far from satisfactory. The soya pulp (Okara) created by my Soyabella soya milk maker is so fine that most of it just passed through the mesh screen in the juicer. I managed to get a reasonable amount out by running the milk through several times, but the pulp was not coming out and had to be scraped out of the inside of the machine each time. Using milk from the Soyabella, this method really isn’t going to work for soya milk, which is a disappointment because I thought this was going to be really labour-saving. I am doing some further investigation online to see how other people make soya milk using a juicer, so I haven’t given up yet.

My first attempt at almond milk wasn’t much better. I used the Juice Man’s second method, blending the nuts and water in the Vitamix first, but again, the pulp was too fine for the juicer and what was coming out was far too wet. I need to refer back to the video and try and discover why his results were so much better than mine, and in the meantime, I tried his first method, adding the unblended nuts with water, and I made a great batch of almond milk accompanied by quite a good quantity of dry pulp, albeit fairly coarse. I strained the milk as it came out and put the small amount of pulp back through the machine, then squeezed it drier in the sieve and put it with the rest.

I attempted to blitz it in the Vitamix small bowl attachment, but it didn’t work. It would work if it was dry, or if it was much wetter, but the blades just forced this in-between paste to the sides where it stuck and wouldn’t blend. Back to the drawing board.

However, on further consideration, as the pulp felt quite soft and not at all gritty, I thought I’d just leave it as it is, and see what kind of hummus it makes, the next time I make some.

This method of making almond milk is a single-step method and it works extremely well. This is now going to be my preferred method, so I shall no longer be using the Vitamix for this.

I shall also be making some juices in addition to eating the fruit and veg whole. I did enjoy the green juice I made in the Vitamix recently. Yesterday I made the first juice in the machine, as demonstrated by the Juice Man on one of his videos: celery, carrot and pineapple juice. This was a brave step on my part because I don’t like celery! However, I thought the flavour would be sufficiently disguised by the other ingredients (also included was a small piece of ginger), and I was right – the celery flavour was there, but very mild, and it really was very good indeed.

You have to prep the veggies somewhat, especially ones with strong stringy fibres like celery, so they don’t clog the machine. However, I’m a dab hand with my chef’s knife so this wasn’t a problem.

The juice, served and ready to drink. The excess went into the vacuum jug that came free with the machine. The pump (front left) worked really well and it is impossible to open the lid, until I release the valve on the top. This juice will keep longer in the fridge using this method. These vacuum jugs are designed to fit in the door of the fridge.

I have also discovered that you do not have to throw out the pulp from making vegetable/fruit juices, but can add it to all sorts of things, both sweet and savoury according to the ingredients in your juice. So I shall still be consuming the fibre! I shall look out for suitable recipes for this. It would make a great addition to soups. From my juice I got a nice tub full of pulp.

I said to my hubby that it would be lovely to have the option of juicing some of the vast quantity of apples our little tree produces every year, and he thought this was a good idea. I adore freshly pressed apple juice, but it’s very expensive, and also you don’t know how long it has been sitting about, losing its nutritional benefits. It is totally different from the usual supermarket heat-pasteurised stuff, though, which has very little nutritional value and is just a vehicle for too much sugar. Who knows? We might even ferment some cider.

This machine is going to be a useful addition to the kitchen. Being a vertical juicer, it has quite a small footprint and has taken its place alongside my other machines. Watch this space to see how I get on with it. The SlowStar may be slow (a great advantage), and it is also a star!

Nutrition

Watch oot – there’s a juice loose aboot this hoose!

What I love about this whole-food plant-based experience is that it is a journey of constant discovery and learning. I have always been against juices and smoothies, preferring instead to consume the whole fruit or vegetable, because you are getting all the fibre, and any sugars are naturally slow-release in the system because of this. However, since watching the Discount Juicers man on YouTube, I have learnt a lot more about the nutritional value of juice, and realise that it is an excellent way of getting more of the phytonutrients we need, especially from vegetables – I have no problem consuming vast quantities of fruit, but the leafy greens are the most nutrient-dense foods on the planet, and it’s quite hard to consume sufficient quantities of these. The Juice Man makes his juices mostly from vegetables, with fruit added for sweetness – the proportion of fruit being at most 40 percent. He states that although he consumes huge quantities of juice, he is also eating whole fruit and veg in large quantities, too. It’s a question of balance, really.

The machine I have bought does retain quite a bit of insoluble fibre in the juice. The Juice Man strains this out, and puts it back through the machine a second time to extract more juice from it, and then discards it. Some juicers produce a lower yield of juice from the same weight of dry produce, but it contains less of the fibre. It’s all a question of one’s personal preference – I am happy not to strain out the fibre but if I find it adversely affects the texture of the juice to a noticeable degree, I’m happy to strain it out.

Another point that came up in one of his videos is that you can juice parts of a fruit that you can’t eat in its natural form, for instance the tough skins of watermelons, and the core of pineapple. There is often great nutritional value in these parts, and they just get thrown away, whereas if you juice them, you are getting the benefit.

A juicer may remove much of the insoluble fibre, but it releases the essential phytonutrients and enzymes and makes them more readily accessible to the body. There are therefore benefits to juicing over eating the raw produce, and not just in the greater quantities that one can consume in this way. Another benefit is that you are consuming the raw, live food with none of its phytonutrients being destroyed by cooking. In its unjuiced raw form, this food may be less appetising, and in any case it would be hard to consume the equivalent in raw form without juicing.

On one of his videos, the Juice Man recommended an excellent book on the subject, which I was able to get through Amazon.

It has recipes for plenty of other things besides juice – salads, soups, salsas, hummus etc. Most of the juices are made from vegetables and I don’t mind how much of this I consume. I shall be careful to keep the proportion of fruit low, for the reasons already given. The advice when consuming fruit smoothies or juices is to take as much time over them as you would if you were eating the whole fruit. This way it gives your body a chance to keep up.

The book was written by a man in his nineties, who served in the US Navy in WW2. Just after the War, this young man was diagnosed with bladder cancer and given less than a year to live. Cancer treatment was in its infancy in those days and with the only treatment available, his prognosis was desperate indeed. He decided to approach a holistic doctor for an alternative approach since he had nothing to lose, and was put on a juice diet. After a few months, his tumour had vanished and he lived on into extreme old age, devoting his life to the promotion of juicing for health. I must say I was very impressed with this testimony and have revised my views on juicing and smoothies, although I would still advocate the avoidance of too much fruit consumed in this form, and consumed more rapidly than the body can cope with. I shall definitely be continuing to make my smoothie bowls (a better alternative to liquid smoothies) and experimenting with juicing, but will continue to consume the same quantity of whole fruit and veg as before – it will just be an adjunct, and a way to consume more of those vegetables that are the very best for our health and which are sometimes the least easy to consume in sufficient quantity to be of benefit.

Other food

I made Vegan Broccoli Salad again this week – always a favourite with its delicious dressing. This was a recipe of the week back in September of last year. I love the vibrant colours. I always steam the broccoli florets lightly because I think they are a bit too tough to eat raw, and this really brings out the colour. I also added some cooked millet to give it a bit more substance but any grain or legume would do. Millet has a lovely nutty taste. A nice addition of more fibre and slow-release carbohydrate to keep you going for hours!

The salad with its dressing added.

I also made my own version of spicy hummus wraps – another favourite. Here’s the filling. When assembling the wraps, chopped apple and spinach are added. It’s really yummy.

Delighted yet again to find my favourite non-dairy products on the Tesco website. Last week I bought some of their own brand soya milk so that I could compare the home-made yoghurt made from it, with the yoghurt I’d been making with the Alpro brand soya milk that my hubby had been getting for me at Sainsbury’s. The latter is quite pleasant, and creamy tasting, but it lacks that nice yoghurty tang that I enjoy so much. My first batch of the yoghurt made with the Tesco milk is fabulous! A much better flavour, and it seems to have set better, too. Win win! I ordered some more this week.

Headphones to sleep in

Last week, Lindart asked for advice on how to sleep with a snoring hubby! When mine was winning gold medals for snoring for England before his obstructive sleep apnoea was diagnosed, I could think of several solutions that would have got rid of the problem… permanently… and the offending snorer too, I was that desperate! However, I managed to restrain myself.

I offered a few pointers in my comment on her blog, one of which was to counteract an undesirable sound with another sound. This is actually quite an effective way of dealing with tinnitus. I have suffered from bad sleep for many years with my ME (a very common symptom), and I have recently discovered sleep music with binaural beats – you need headphones to get the full effect of these frequencies which are said to train your brain to generate the correct wave frequencies conducive to good sleep. You can read about binaural beats here. Some people find that just listening to relaxing music without binaural beats helps one sleep better, and listening to white noise is very effective for counteracting other, undesirable sounds (like snoring) when you are trying to sleep.

There are many such soundtracks on YouTube, some lasting many hours, and without being interrupted by adverts (which would certainly wake you up again!).

Sleeping in headphones or earbuds isn’t always very comfortable. I am not usually terribly susceptible to advertising, but I saw an advertisement for the SleepBand on YouTube a couple of weeks ago and immediately fell in love with the idea. It’s basically a fabric headband with earphones embedded in it – very comfortable and safe to wear in bed. I put in an order, and it arrived on Monday. I am delighted with it! The earphones and control can be removed so that you can wash the band. The system is wireless (Bluetooth) and is charged by a standard micro-USB cable. The sound quality seems to be very good.

When I told my hubby about Lindart’s predicament, and how using another sound could counteract the snoring, he suggested running a motor mower in the bedroom all night. What do you think, Linda? I didn’t actually think that replacing one sound with another that was pretty much identical would help that much. I think I’d prefer the relaxing music with binaural beats!

I think this band will be very helpful when I have to go into hospital. It’s always noisy on the ward at night, and needing to spend quite a bit of time in bed anyway, some nice comfy headphones would be brilliant, and no cables to get tangled up with, either.

A thought just occurred to me. Do you think you could juice a binaural beet? What would it sound like? You’d have to use white beets to get white noise, certainly… but I don’t think there’s such a thing as red noise.

Two members of our family who seem to have absolutely no problem with sleep are the…

Kitties

Getting our heads together…

Two heads are better than one. Together we can solve all the world’s problems.

Ruby in my bag at bedtime again. I carried her out into the hall but she hopped out before I could carry her up on the stairlift again.

Waiting patiently for my hubby to return so they could go out and play in the garden.

On a nice sunny day, this is the next best thing to going outside.

Lily luxuriating. If you could only feel how unutterably soft this kitty’s fur is…

Ahhh… allowed out at last!

The other Lily

Last week I received my welcome pack from guide dog sponsoring people. It contained a nice little album to put the photos in. The photos were the same ones on the website, that I posted previously. I also got my sponsorship certificate. In the package was my fridge magnet, which now has pride of place on the extractor hood (the only magnetic surface in the kitchen!) alongside my hubby’s Ginger.

Clothes

Another Norwegian jumper for you. I love this one with its touches of dark red and minimal amounts of brown and green.

Spring has sprung in our garden

How lovely it is, to see the daffodils and primroses out at last! I adore the spring!

And now, in true Shaz style…

And finally!

A friend sent me this video compilation, entitled “No Social Distancing.” Warning: extreme cuteness overload!