Oh, Sweet Mystery of Life ….

Posted on May 13, 2013 by thecontentedcrafter

You know how I’ve made this life style change in as far as food goes …… well, there’s been an interesting outcome – apart from all the benefits I’ve mentioned in another post and I’ve made a discovery!

And just to remind you, this is what I’ve done: 12 weeks ago I gave up on sugar and wheat. This meant I had to make all my own food to ensure I wasn’t taking in all those hidden additives and I also haven’t eaten any fruit the whole time. I’ve been very wary of high sugar vegetables too – potatoes have rarely made it to the plate for instance – concentrating instead on leafy greens, home-made sprouted seeds and the like.

I’ve loved it, and the results have been so spectacular that I have no intention of reverting to my old habits. I have been pleasantly surprised by the fact that I haven’t missed my old friends – bread, buns, fried chicken, chocolate, ice-cream, fries, crisps. Pasta and potatoes have been replaced with brown rice, quinoa and lentils. .A staple foodstuff has been chicken soup the way grandma used to make it, and my daily diet mostly consists of my old friends those cheese and oat cakes mentioned in another earlier post and a variety of salads.

On two occasions in these twelve weeks I found I wanted something sweet – and wandered over to inspect the fridge, the freezer and the pantry. Finding nothing, I drank a glass of water and, getting out of my own way, forgot about it.

But after the initial detox period of eight weeks you are supposed to gently reintroduce fruit back into your life. I’ve been slow to do this for a couple of reasons. One is I’m scared. I don’t want to undo the good that has been done. I don’t want to live in a sore and painful body again, I don’t want to risk regaining the inflammation and weight that has so miraculously disappeared. So for three weeks I conveniently forgot to purchase some fruit from the market and carried on as usual.

But I found a yummy and healthy sweet recipe – something for those times when you just want a little something extra – and thought I might have a go at it. In place of sugar it uses pear syrup, so I duly went on-line and purchased a bottle of organic pear syrup, guaranteed to be nothing but and therefore free of those nasty things that scare me.

When it arrived I took the cap off and removed that little plasticky cover from the top. It had a film of pear syrup on it. I ran my finger over that plasticky cover and put my finger in my mouth.

A few moments later I removed myself from the ceiling and, holding the top of my head firmly in place, gathered my wits about me and said to Orlando “Wow!”

My palate was buzzing with flavours and sweetness and layers and layers of summer memories. It kept on buzzing for at least a half hour. The taste in my mouth would ease back and then zoom up again. I gave myself over to the extraordinary sensation of experiencing a natural sugar high. I wandered if this is what it is like for a heroin addict – you know the effect of that first shot that they try to recreate by using again and again. [Have I just discovered the cure for drug addiction? You can only use once every three months if you want the high!]

So this is my discovery: ‘Sweet’ is not found in our daily intake of sugar in all its disguises.

This is my suggestion: Remove sugar from your diet – and all those nasty pretend sweeteners also – live your life for three months, then stick your finger into some natural fruit syrup and taste it. Then you will understand what ‘sweet’ is.

I tell you, an orchestra will play, violins will soar through your palate, cellos will hold the base-note, and a soprano will trill her high C’s through the top of your head!

And I know you will join with me and holler “Wow!” as you remove yourself from your ceiling…….

.Now go listen to the other post – it’s all in there!

Thanks for dropping by and have a great day…………

Home Is Where The Heart Is

Posted on May 3, 2013 by thecontentedcrafter

I am very proud of myself – I have remembered the reason I started this blog and have now taken photos of three journal pages – not to mention the half dozen or so photos of cards that are now on Orlando’s pinterest page! My photography skills are questionable, but I am thinking that if I keep at it I have to get better, so now I am keeping the camera ready to go, on the table at all times. [I’m also following KBT’s advice and trying for shots in the morning light] It appears to be a good thing to do as I snapped a photo of Orlando watching the latest antics of Maru on You Tube through the TV screen yesterday morning. He was sitting up tall and straight and blinking furiously and warbling at him in a friendly kind of a manner as Maine Coons do [they are on the whole very chatty in a non-annoying kind of way] hoping to get the cat’s attention and have a new friend……. so cute!!

[Maru’s ears are back as he’s just realised the water has got his tail!]

But that’s not why we are here. Back to the page you are about to see.

I follow a couple of great artists on You Tube Claudia Rossi and France Papillon both are really inspiring and have great videos – France regularly and Claudia now and again. You will find them by just typing their names into the YT search engine.

I’ve been playing with a theme of ‘happy houses’ for some years now – I used to paint smallish canvases with individual houses or groups of them – all slightly wonky and looking very happy and pleased with themselves. All the canvases sold and I never took photos of them. When I saw Claudia’s journal page of houses a few months back, I decided to have a go too. A chance to move from working with paint alone into mixed media with a familiar theme. I didn’t feel brave enough to stay with my original style working in such a confined space as a journal page so I pretty much copied what I remembered seeing in her tutorial.

I sprayed the top half of the pages liberally with Dylusions in shades of blues and purples and the bottom half in yellows. I used a mask to create the full moon and stars, a white gel pen to outline the moon and stars and a Tim Holtz stamp supplied the curve of birds across the face of the moon.

The houses were cut from card which I had coloured with a two or three shades of Tim Holtz stains and then dry embossed with one of my favourite embossing folders which features a woodgrain on one side and brickwork on the other. I think it’s a Spellbinders.

I cut out the window shapes, attached some tracing paper and scrawled in the dividing lines and the window frames with a Sharpie. The doors were made using left over scraps of paper from the ‘scraps’ drawer.

I ran a ton of red stained card through the die cutter using a narrow lace die and layered them on top of each other, cut to roof type shapes and bunged ’em down on top of the house rectangles. .

The fence was added in and the little flowers were also used as they had been annoyingly sitting around for years and I needed to use them up once and for all!

Voila – light filled houses on a moonlit night!

Thanks for stopping by ~ and have a very happy day!

Link

It’s been a while since I posted – if you have read previously and are waiting to hear more about the new life style, all I can say is it is going well – I still spend more time in the kitchen than I have for years and am still experimenting happily with recipes both old and new.

More important though is how I am feeling [within my body and health and well-being generally]. At the end of week five I am pleased, proud and happy to report that all is going very well…… for the first time in over a decade my body is pain-free, the inflammation has subsided substantially – I can now touch my toes while keeping my legs straight – something that had eluded me for some time! And I feel good – that ephemeral feeling of general well-being and ease within the physical translates into a sense of greater contentment.

I’m sprouting [mostly alfalfa and a seed mix known as ‘Energy‘], making yoghurt, cheese and oat cakes [ see a previous posting for the recipe]

and chicken broth [which becomes a yummy soup].

Did you know that when you put a dash of cider vinegar into the water it helps to pull out more of the vitamins and minerals from the chicken so that your broth becomes an even more potent cure-all. There is wisdom in the old-wives tales and folk medicines!

My window sill is full of fresh herbs and regenerating bits and bobs such as celery and spring onions and my freezer is full of pureed pumpkin, chicken stock and soup, spicy nuts [for a quick pick-me-up snack] and bags of activated walnuts and almonds just waiting to be added to the next meal.

I’ve even made my own salad sprinkles – a tasty mix of various activated nuts and seeds mixed with dried karengo [a nutrient rich seaweed] and crisped coconut flakes. This has been a great favourite and even though summer has given way to autumn, and salads are being replaced with hot dishes, I feel confident they will be just as tasty sprinkled over vegetables!

Now, just in case you think I’ve become a health nut, let me hasten to reassure you, all the old cravings for comfort foods are still being satisfied. Why just last night I prepped up a couple of parsnips and sweet potatoes and rubbed ’em down with some oil and peanut butter [homemade, she said proudly] popped them in the oven with good sprinkle of salt and enjoyed myself some hots fries and watched a movie!! It was just that kind of night!

I think what I’m enjoying the most about this change in life style is that it is not a ‘diet’ – it is really a chance for me to enjoy good wholesome food without the crap that factory made stuff is liberally covered in and because I use home-grown or organic wherever possible I know it is good for my body and health too. I’m enjoying finding out what my body likes and what it doesn’t like – perhaps for the first time ever I am really paying attention to the messages it sends me…….. a little later in the day, but hey, better late than never!

Now apart from all this, I’ve also been busy in the craft room – lots of stuff underway, lots more ideas waiting to be trialed in the art journal but here is a quick pic of the latest card:

Front Inside

Made for my eldest daughters mumble birthday.

I’ve also popped those photos onto Orlando King’s pinterest page if you want to have them.

Thanks for popping by – leave me a note to say you’ve been, I enjoy hearing from you!

Link

…. in the kitchen particularly……

After years of not being overly interested in spending time in that room, I have, thanks to my wonderful ED’s gift and Sara Wilson, [author of the gift, a book called ‘I Quit Sugar’] re-discovered the joys of creating tasty foods that feed the body and the soul. [I should probably also add that Sara Wilson doesn’t even know I exist just in case you mistake this as an advertisement for her.]

When I began this new adventure – about two weeks ago now – [really is that all, it feels like forever!] I decided to give up on wheat as well as sugar – may as well kill two birds with one stone I thought [such as odd saying courtesy my parents generation] – so was looking for something affordable and tasty to replace that lunchtime sandwich with.

I’m not a recipe follower, never have been, probably never will be – and as I mentioned in my previous post I was experimenting with something I call Cheese and Oat Cakes which I have been making on and off for the last forty odd years – mostly off in the last ten years – I knew though that if I was going to record this in my blog I would have to have, at the very least, an accurate record of the ingredients.

That was a challenge!

Luckily its a pretty easy recipe to remember. The proof lies in the fact that after pretty much a decade I pulled that recipe from my memory pretty much intact and started fiddling about with it. Now I’ve had three attempts at making something just right for my lunchtime taste buds. And today I got it just right!

And I was a good girl, I remembered to jot down what I was mixing in and I even remembered to take a couple of photos – well towards the end which is better than nothing!

So here’s the recipe to make 12 cakes: [I don’t know why they are called cakes – really they are more a patty-like creature. Maybe I should call them Cheese and Oat Patties from now on??] [Oh, and another aside, everything is free-range and/or organic wherever possible – but if that’s not your bag use whatever you have to hand]

Toss all this into a large mixing bowl:

3 cups rolled oats; 3 cups grated cheese, a good handful of chopped fresh parsley; 2 tsp Zesty Garlic Herb Blend*; sea-salt and fresh ground black pepper to taste.

Mix this all up enthusiastically then add in 2 eggs and about a half cup of cornmeal. [If you don’t have cornmeal use flour]. Add in a small amount of milk to make the mixture damp, but not soggy.

I use my hands now and strongly insist that a good palm full of the mixture becomes a ball – if it won’t and keeps falling apart, add in a bit more milk. You have to be quite firm with the mixture or it won’t bind. So now you should have 12 nice round balls all lined up neatly on your board. [I did, she said proudly!] I let them sit there for 10 or 20 minutes and then put my nice big heavy bottomed fry pan on the element and heated it through. I don’t add any oil as my pan cooks beautifully without it – but use a little if you need to.

I put 6 balls into my pan at a time, flattening them out somewhat so that they resemble cakes – or patties – rather than balls. Turn the heat down and cook for 2 – 3 minutes before turning. If they brown too quickly turn the heat down further. Cook the other side for 2 – 3 minutes also.

You can see in this photo there is no oil in the pan, yet the cakes are still browning nicely.

And that’s it they are done and ready to eat!

Yummy!!

Enjoy!

*A quick note about the Zesty Garlic Herb Blend, which is for me personally, a prime ingredient in the success of this recipe. It is made by Bittersweet Herbs & Spices who do a great mail order service. Find them on the web at http://www.herbsonline.co.nz

If you make these tasty treats do drop a line to say what you think.

Thanks for taking the time to read this post!