Short day, friendly food, crunchy

I only have to be in the office for three hours tomorrow because the firm's Christmas party starts at noon. Free food and drinks and a short working day. Awesome. 

Luke and I are going to a 100 per cent FODMAP-friendly restaurant on Saturday for dinner. I will be able to eat EVERYTHING on the menu at Foddie's in Albert Park (I will try not to order everything, however). Gluten-free stuff is fairly common these days - I've even seen gluten-free options in country bakeries - but meals without onion and garlic (which contain fructans) are much harder to come by.

Luke made the crunchiest ever crumbed chicken drumsticks for dinner. Delicious. 

  

Return of Luke, you never know unless you ask, more crunch

Footpath rainbow (from refracted sunlight)

Luke is home! He got back last Tuesday night.  He had lots of photos, some presents for me (including a glass octopus) and a beard.  I quite like him with face fuzz, but it prickles me when we kiss. He shaved it off before going back to work anyway. 


Later starts

You might have got the impression that I'm not a morning person because I stay in bed as late as possible on work days and I'm always in a rush to get to work. You would be right, but that might be about to change. No, I'm not becoming a morning person - I'm starting work an hour later!  My working hours are now 10.00 am to 6.15 pm. THIS MEANS I DON'T NEED TO GET UP UNTIL AT LEAST 8.20. EIGHT-TWENTY!

I'm hoping the later start will have me getting up early enough to eat my breakfast at home, getting ready at a leisurely pace and resuming my habit of walking to work...but we shall see.  

I didn't even have to ask for the later start. I had thought about it earlier this year, but discounted it because I didn't think it would win support, but last week my boss suggested it to the other secretary and me. (She's starting earlier and finishing earlier so there will be a secretary on deck from 8.00 am to 6.15 pm.) I guess it just goes to show you never know unless you ask, eh? 


Added crunch

There's a new variety of gluten-free Weetbix on the supermarket shelves and it's tasty. I only found out when I opened the box I bought yesterday and it looked different. I thought I'd bought a gluteny variety by mistake, but not, it's just got rice puffs and sunflower seeds added for a pleasing bit of crunch. 

Holidaying at work, marshmallows, cereal love

My boss is away this week. He's in Fiji, and we're having a little holiday as well. He's a good boss and a nice guy so it's not as if we can't stand having him around, it's just more relaxed when he's away. 

My other boss brought in a cake for the team today and some homemade marshmallows for the few of us who can't eat the cake. How thoughtful. 

I sneezed in the lift as I left work tonight and the other woman in there said "Bless you". 

I am loving the gluten-free Weetbix. I thought about them as I neared home tonight and it put a spring in my step.  I had a bowl for a snack when I got home. Yum. 

Yum, sun and lots of leaves

The anticipation of my first taste of gluten-free Weetbix got me out of bed a little earlier than usual this morning and it was worth sacrificing some of my Sunday sleep in. As gluten-free substitutes go, these are a triumph. Just as good as the original. Yum. I had them for breakfast and for an afternoon snack with cold milk. Next up, mooshed up with warm milk. I think I might need to stock up on them (especially as my local supermarket doesn't sell them). 

It was another beautiful winter's day - one of those ones that starts off icy cold and clear (so they said on the weather report; I didn't get up that early) and turns into utter perfection: blue sky, barely a cloud and sun warm enough to coax you into baring your forearms (even if only for a little while when I was out walking). 

I made the most of the sunshine with a lengthy stroll in the Botanic Gardens. I took some photos, of course. 

 Reflections

 Blue sky and bare branches

 In the herb garden. 

 Heart-shaped leaves

Enormo-leaf in the glasshouse

 More bare branches

 Fern Gully 

 Upside down fungus on the Fern Gully Rest House

 Spring is coming! 

Leaf

 I don't know what this is - the beginnings of some kind

 of flower. And leaves

More leaves

Weetbix, cracking, sunshine

Mission accomplished! I haven't tried them yet. I'm making myself wait for breakfast, even though I'm the "breakfast cereal is anytime food" type.  I almost can't wait to get out of bed in the morning. I bought them at Coles in Prahran, which has a pretty good health food section, although these are in the normal cereal aisle. 

I saw the osteo today. He cracked my neck on both sides, which hasn't happened for a while. I like having my neck cracked...well, not so much the cracking, but the way it feels afterwards. The release. 

Today was a beautiful, blue sky winter's day - a vast difference to yesterday, which was our coldest day of the year, with rain and hail and even snow in parts of the state that don't often get snow.  

JBPM: the final day

And the clouds moved in

I just realised today is the last day of the month and thus the final day of JayBloPoMo. It's kind of a relief to be honest - it's been hard some day to come up with stuff to write about - but I don't intend to stop now.

The most gleeful thing today: I discovered Sanitarium - the makers of Weetbix - are now making a gluten free and FODMAP-friendly version. I love Weetbix and am thrilled that I can eat them again. My mission this weekend will be to find some. 

I thought I'd lost my favourite work pen, but I found it today near the photocopier. Woo!

JayBloPoMo: day 2

I found half a gluten-free sandwich in the kitchen at work this afternoon.  I know! Who doesn't get excited about a left-over sandwich? It was surplus catering, not just someone's uneaten lunch. There's often food left over from partners' meetings and the like, but this is the first time there has been gluten-free sandwiches in the offing. I'd already had lunch, but I helped myself to it anyway.  It wasn't disappointingly bland, but that didn't completely cancel out the small thrill of finding it.

A guy from the finance department at work came to collect a big cheque from me (no, not one of those novelty giant cheques). He and I have swapped offices - he's in my old building and vice versa - and we spent some time discussing the pros and cons of both workplaces. Sheepishly he opined that the toilet paper is better quality in his old office - my new office.  I  can't say I've noticed.

I had a good night's sleep and a very productive day at work. That doesn't happen every night/day. 

I will post some photos here at some point. Baby steps. 

Making stock and invincible summer

I made  lemon chicken soup for dinner tonight...well, actually I started making it last weekend when I made the stock, which involved roasting a lot of chicken bits and pieces, frying vegies and hours of simmering, and took most of a day to make. The soup was nice and it's gratifying knowing I made the whole thing from scratch, but I'm not in a rush to make the stock again. Thankfully I have enough in the freezer for one or two more lots of soup. (I used rice in the soup, rather than orzo  pasta, to make it gluten free.)

I also made bread to go with the soup...or what the recipe calls bread, but it's really more like damper. You couldn't make sandwiches out of it, but it went well with the soup, and it was quick and easy to make. It's FODMAP- friendly bread because I'm doing the FODMAP diet again to work out the triggers for my food intolerance symptoms. The FODMAP diet is pretty easy, but eventually - probably in a few weeks - I'll have to make YET ANOTHER attempt at completing that confounded full elimination diet. At least I'll be able to use the bread recipe above when the time comes.

I blogged this quote I found on Pinterest a while ago:

Once in the midst of a seemingly endless winter, I found within myself an invincible spring.

I like the quote, but I've recently discovered it's probably a tweaking of this quote from Albert Camus:

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

This is from Camus' The Stranger. The full quote is:

In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer. And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.

I like this a lot more.

Sunny Sunday, zebra plant, culinary capers

I emerged from my darkened boudoir* this morning expecting to be greeted by a gloomy Sunday but, to my delight, the sun was pouring into my flat and the sky was blue. A gleeful start to the day. 

I put a chicken in the slow cooker then headed into the city. I went back to Vic Market to buy a little potted succulent that caught my eye when I was there with Luke yesterday, partly because my mum had one when I was a kid (incidentally, that's my mum and dad in the photo behind the plant). 

I asked one of the men at the stall what the succulent was called and he said it's a haworthia attenuata, commonly known as a zebra plant or washboard plant. Then he asked me if I knew what a washboard was - no doubt thinking a *cough* young whippersnapper like me would have no idea - but he was wrong. Ha! It's a musical instrument! Just kidding - these days it's used as a musical instrument by bands with a country flavour, but once it was used to scrub dirty laundry clean. 

I had planned ahead how to get the zebra plant home safely - I took with me the little bag made from newspaper that I got in Clunes in April. It did the job perfectly. 

I got my nails done again, this time a dark slightly iridescent blue. I keep looking at them. It's such a novelty for me to have painted nails.  The manicurist liked my newspaper bag and said my zebra plant was cute. 

I bought some bright pink gerberas and then headed for home. 

I never seem to have a vase that's just right...

When I came in the door of my flat, it smelt like chicken. I'd forgotten all about it! Yum. The chicken, which we had for dinner, was just the beginning of my Sunday culinary capers. I also stewed some rhubarb. I'm allowed to have a small serve of rhubarb every second day on my low-allergy diet and I always look forward to it. I have to wait for tomorrow to sample this lot. 

Then I made meringues in the microwave. Yes, the microwave! I found the recipe on Pinterest a while ago and thought I'd give it a go because it's allergy-diet friendly. It's so simple and easy. You sift 300g of icing sugar over one egg white and mix it until you have a ball of pliant icing mix. Then you put a couple of small balls of the mix (about grape-sized) on a plate lined with baking paper, and nuke them for 1.5 minutes on high. Then just watch as they spread and slowly puff up into clouds of meringues. Fun!  

I'm planning to make a variation of Eton Mess for dessert tomorrow night with the rhubarb and meringue and lactose-free whipped cream. I'm salivating already. 

I also made some bread in my breadmaker, which I haven't used in ages. It's cooling down as I write.  

All in all, quite a productive day! 

*Did you know that boudoir comes from the French 'bouder' meaning to sulk? So a boudoir is a place for sulking. I think I read that in The Etymologicon.   

While I'm being word nerdy, I'm almost finished The Superior Person's Second Book of Words and one of my favourites is 'obambulate', which means to wander aimlessly. 

Good pain, weird fruit, yummy muffins

I had my massage this morning. It was painful, but in a good way. The massage therapist said my muscles were very tight, especially my backside. Yep, I have tight buns. She spent quite a fair portion of the  one-hour appointment pummelling my posterior with her elbow. Ow. I'm going to start having regular massages. After I finish this post, I'm going to have a soak in a hot bath. 

After my massage, we went to Victoria Market to buy our fresh produce. As we were parking the car, I spotted an old sign on William Street. 

It's not as fun going to the market when I'm doing my low-allergy diet* because everything looks so delicious and tempting, but I can only eat a very limited range of fruit and vegetables. We did get a couple of weeks worth of meat though, including some lamb shanks for the slow cooker. 

We saw some Buddha's hands, a yellow citrus fruit with long fingers. I'd never even heard of them before, much less seen one. They're weird. 

* I can't remember if I mentioned I'm doing the Friendly Food diet again as part of a research project conducted by a pair of Monash Uni honours students. My dietician put my name forward to participate in the hope it might shed some light on my problem foods, since previous attempts at completing the diet have ended in frustration. This time it's only for about a month or so and I don't need to wait for my symptoms to clear up before I start the testing phase on Wednesday. They also supplied me with some snacks to make it a bit easier.  

Among other things, they gave me a dozen vanilla muffins which were scrumptious. I also got the recipe, so this afternoon I made some of my own. They're tasty. That's my morning tea sorted for the week. 

Pancakes, puddle duck, Friday

I had pancakes for dinner. Yummy. This is the second time in two weeks I've had (sweet, not savoury) pancakes for dinner and I fear...well, sort of...that it's going to become a habit. But I'm in the midst of an allergy elimination diet, so it's nice to have something that feels like a treat.

I've been on the diet for 39 days now and I'm making a lot more progress than on my numerous previous attempts. I'm almost ready to start the next phase, which is adding foods back in one by one to test for a reaction. That's much easier than the initial stage where you cut out pretty much everything that's worth eating. One 'challenge', as they call them, involves eating a lot of strawberries and for another I have to eat dark chocolate. Gotta love being told by your doctor to eat chocolate! 


Puddle duck

The river that I walk along every day to work - the Yarra - is a tidal river and when the tide is low, a section of muddy river bed is exposed underneath the Swan Street bridge. Sometimes there's tracks of webbed footprints in the mud and today the low tide revealed a series of smallish round holes full of water. In one pool sat a small brown duck.

It's Friday tomorrow. Wooh! 

Surprise bread

For the past three weeks I've been making yet another attempt at completing the RPAH elimination diet to work out what foods are making me feel crappy. I haven't had bread in all that time because there's almost no gluten-free breads on the market that meet the very strict requirements of the diet. I love bread and I miss it - and the quick, convenient light meals bread can make - so I decided to buy a breadmaker and make my own.

I got in on sale (yay!) at Target and lugged it home in the rain this afternoon. I whacked my first lot of mix in the machine without high hopes of success. I'd used gluten-free and yeast-free bread mix, but the gluten-free cycle on the machine assumes you're using yeast in your gluten-free bread. I expected it to turn out a heavy housebrick of a loaf, but I was very pleasantly surprised.

Yeah, it doesn't look great, and it didn't smell as good as 'real' bread, but the texture is almost as soft and light as real bread. It's certainly much better than commercial gluten-free, yeast-free brands. The crust is quite chewy, which I like. Pretty good for a first attempt, I reckon, and definitely good enough to satisfy my need for toast. Now I just have to try not to eat it all at once...

I got my eyebrows waxed and tinted today - the first time I've had the tint done. I wasn't sure about the darker colour at first - I thought they overpowered my face - but Luke noticed my haircut, not my brows, so they can't be too heavy. I think I'm used to them now.

It was nice having my hair cut after a couple of weeks of really needing a trim, but not managing to get around to visiting the salon.

Early Friday, shower, cereal

It's Friday tomorrow, but thanks to the public holiday on Tuesday, it doesn't feel like we're nearly at the end of the week. I'm glad we are.

I had a shower when I got home from work. It's amazing how much better you feel after a shower.

Lowan Whole Foods Cocoa Bombs...not the most nutritious breakfast cereal going, but tasty and gluten free. Yum.

Big glee, big book, no fart

Another gleeful day of not working. Another gloriously sunny and mild late winter's day in Melbourne, with magnolia and jasmine bursting into bloom all over the place. Another personal best in the Global Corporate Challenge - 23,470 steps so far today. I'm a perambulating machine.

In major gleeful news, I saw a new dietician today who thinks I might not need to do the extremely difficult allergy elimination diet I've been attempting for the last 31 years (not really, but it feels like it). She's fairly confident my worst food intolerance symptoms will improve by following a diet that only cuts out foods containing problem sugars (e.g. fructose).  It's SO much easier than the other diet. I can eat in restaurants. I can buy my lunch. I can eat a wider variety of tastier fruit and vegetables. I'm so happy about it. That damned diet has become my nemesis.

I went to the Chapel Street Bazaar after my appointment and bought a little green specimen vase the same as one my mum used to have. She got it when she was a teenager and kept it until well after I'd left home, but it got broken, which she is still a little sad about. I'm going to send it to her. It's not the same as having the original, but it's better than not having it at all.

I nearly bought a 1950s unabridged edition of Webster's Dictionary at the bazaar...partly because it was ENORMOUS and, as you might recall, I have a thing about big books (and words). It was in remarkably good condition for its age and well priced, but I decided it was a substandard dictionary because it didn't include the word 'fart'. Unabridged, eh? Pfffft.

You might think fart was excluded because it's vulgar, but when I was a kid we had an ancient dictionary - all yellow pages falling out, old book smell, the works -  and it not only included 'fart' but it defined it thus: an explosion from between the legs. An explosion! From between the legs! You can imagine the mirth that ensued when my brother and I read this. It makes me laugh now. It was also a little too heavy to lug home, especially with the other stuff I was already carrying. But after seeing the 1888 ad for Webster's on Wiki page, I kinda wish I'd bought it now. Webster's unabridged dictionary: a library in itself.  Maybe it will still be there when I go back. With my nanna trolley.

I bought myself an Etch-A-Sketch. But you probably know that already if you looked at the photo above. Hours of fun for only $15 at Big W. I'm practising drawing robots.

Instead of taking a known route from the dietician to Chapel Street, I walked up Williams Road and found this cool old Coca Cola sign.

Coca-Cola - Be really refreshed

  

And this fabulous ramshackle house. You can't quite see it in this photo, but the house has a name (as old houses often did). Its name is Haven. While I was looking up and appreciating the irony, I was listening to Boy and Bear singing, "Come dancing in the garden of my haven, won't you dear?". It's freakish how often the music I'm listening to provides the perfect soundtrack for what I'm doing.

It was getting towards sunset when I was walking home along the river. I stopped to take some photos of the view towards the city from a little jetty thing down on the river...and didn't stop...well, I did eventually because it was dark and I was hungry. I took 155 photos of the city,  the Our Magic Hour art installation, reflections on the water and trains crossing the Yarra. I walked home excited to see if the photos looked as good on my laptop as on my camera display.  I was not disappointed. Yay. Now to choose a few to blog...

 Part of the Our Magic Hour installation atop the Sportsgirl building

AAMI Park and the city

Sunshine, rolling, long weekend

 

Another gorgeous winter's day in Melbourne. My walk into the city this afternoon to go to the gym (again!) was very pleasant. The autumn leaves are still falling. I saw sleepy ducks and children rolling down the big hill at Birrarung Marr.

  

I have asked to take this Friday off work, which would give me a four-day long weekend (and two four-day working weeks). Can't wait. It's too hard to go away (even overnight) while I'm on this allergy elimination diet, but a day trip or two is on the cards.

I've been on the diet for two weeks now and I'm finally making some good progress. Yay! At last!

New toy, motivated, tonic

I bought a new camera! Whoop! It was a spur of the moment purchase to reward myself for sticking to my allergy diet for a week. I didn't intend to buy something so expensive as a treat - the diet is hard, but sticking to it for a week isn't that big a deal. I thought I'd pop into JB Hi-Fi to buy a CD or a DVD, but I  came out with a sleek new Canon Powershot SX230 HS. I have been thinking about upgrading for a little while and it was marked down by $70 so... I can't wait for the battery to charge so I can play with it

The girl who served me at JB asked if I was going on holidays and I told her I wasn't, it was a complete impulse buy and she  high-fived me. Pretty sure that's the first time I've been high-fived by a sales assistant.

I went to the gym again today. I've been struggling for months to get myself there on a weekend, but today I did it, even though I didn't want to. I thought about how Luke gets up to exercise in the dark before work and decided I should stop being a lazy sook.

In other diet-related gleefulness, I thought tonic water was forbidden on the diet, but last night I discovered a little bit occasionally is allowed. Hurrah! I had a gin and tonic to celebrate.

Tetris, cupcakes and Bye Bye Love

I downloaded Tetris to my phone over Christmas and I'm hooked on it. I play it every night before bed. Every time I say, "Just one game before bed"....pffft.

I don't know what it is, but I've always found plugging those little coloured  blocks in to make uninterrupted rows very satisfying. I particularly like it when the blocks appear in exactly the right place to fill the gap and I don't need to manipulate them in any way...which is sort of not the point of the game, but there you go. 

I also love the sound effects. Normally I hate game sound effects so I turn them off (not that I'm a big gamer, which is probably obviious since I'm addicted to a simple old-school game like Tetris!), But the sound effects in this game tickle my fancy - there's clickety-clicks like an old typewriter (not unlike the noise of an iPod clickwheel, which I've professed my love for here before) and tiny wooshing noises. I don't know why, I just like them.

Today was Tuesday Treats day at work. Someone brings in something for the department to eat in exchange for a small donation to charity (usually Berry Street). Normally the treats are full of gluten so I avoid them, but today I thought, "To hell with it, I want a chocolate cupcake". Then later I found out they were gluten free! Hurrah! There are two celiacs in my department - it's so nice not to be the only one with dietary restrictions.

I'm still listening to Simon and Garfunkel. It's probably one of the least profound songs they perform, but I love Bye Bye Love. It's the acoustic guitar at the start, the crowd clapping and the bass guitar that get me. Here tis: (Incidentally, my parents had that album when I was a kid so there's a nostalgia factor at work here as well.)

Off to Castlemaine tomorrow! Wheeeeeeeeeee!

A delivery

I got a courier delivery at work today. I love that. Getting a nice surprise at work is almost the best reason to shop online.

I ordered a 50s style dress for my work Christmas party in a few weeks (a black tie event at a posh hotel in the city). The dress only took a week to get here from the US, it fits and looks good. Phew. Now for shoes...

I'm so glad it's the weekend. I had an intense day of formal and on-the-job training almost from start to finish today and my brain needs some time out.

I forgot to buy a sandwich at the cafe with gluten free bread. Something for Monday.

Rain, surprise chocolate, bread joy

The view from my office window turned completely to white during the rain this morning. I'm not sure if we were in the clouds or if the rain was heavy (or both), but we couldn't see anything. Eventually the city re-emerged as the rain eased.

I found a Freddo Frog in my pocket when I left work tonight. Yay! I'd forgotten it was there from lunch time. Ten minutes later I pulled my iPod out of my pocket and a Caramello Koala came out with it. I forgot that was there too. Double yay! (Absentmindedness again proves to be a source of joy...)

I was thrilled today to find a cafe near my office that offers gluten-free bread. I'm looking forward to having a sandwich for lunch tomorrow instead of sushi.

I've been listening to The White Stripes again lately. I love this old cover of Black Jack Davey.

Homemade

I made gluten-free pasties today. I was delighted to discover gluten-free pastry in the freezer section at the supermarket. Although it was very expensive, I thought I'd give it a go, just for something different.

I made low-allergy lamb and vegetable pasties - no recipe, just making it up as  I went along, which is how I do most of my allergy cooking. The filling was nice, but I overcooked them a little and made the pastry a bit chewy. Oh well. I'll know better next time.

It was nice to finally cook a meal at home at least.