Becoming Isis, putting Osiris back together

I've got to stop clicking on Warren Ellis's "Conan! What is best in life?" posts. Seriously. It's been years. I should know better by now.

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Homemade ice cream is still one of the best things ever. Nom.

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It's been so nice dogsitting the last week and a half. It's like a trial run of having my own dog. The Dog is very sweet and looked after me on Monday when I had a bit of a round of depression and wandered around the house crying at not very much at all. Since then she's tended to follow me around more than I noticed her doing before. I've moved one of her beds into my room until The Family gets back because it seemed nicer than having her curl up on the floor by my desk.

She's been seriously a bit crazy the last couple of days, though. Very hyper. And every time I pick up my keys she goes nuts, then runs to the front door and goes nuts some more. Apparently the only time I pick up my keys is when I'm going to take her for a walk. (Not sure this is true!)

She pulled like crazy for the first half of her walk today, which was very naughty and made my shoulders ache. I looked forward to letting her off the leash, and then the walk home, by which time she's sufficiently tired that she walks at a sensible pace.

We went to the further-away park today, where there are usually other dogs to play with. She was Queen of the Park today, with her retinue of two. They were completely fixated on her, and she'd play for them for awhile, then come over to me for some pettings, then run off for some more playing.

I'm sure I'll miss her undivided attention once The Family get back and I drop down in the pack hierarchy four places. :) I'll also be sad when I move out and I have to leave her behind. I've loved all the dogs I've lived with, and I still have fond thoughts of my ex's family's dogs. Miss them both, especially the lurcher.

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Chris has very kindly given me another Steam game. Unfortunately for me, my laptop's with Raven as it and my mobile had a serious disagreement ending in some sort of hard drive problem in my shiny laptop.

On the plus side, this means that I have a bit more time in the evenings since I'm not immediately eaten up by the computer. Weeell, I do when I don't get home at 7.30 and spend 45 minutes walking the dog before even starting dinner.

So, between getting costochondritis last year and going from 6-7 hours of exercise (mostly yoga, but also morris) per week to getting literally none, and the fact that Steph and I really really like our food and were treating ourselves a bit too much, I've put on about 10 kg in the last year and a half. I've actually moved into the "obese" range by about 2–3 kilos – just enough that I feel it, but it's a small enough amount that most people think that I'm being neurotic.

Steph and I are thus trying to eat better, and more Fuhrman-friendly. The main aim is to get the most bang for your buck (nutrition per calorie) possible. Part of that is cutting out refined grains & flour, and minimising unrefined grains and flour to only one serve per day.

One of the recipes I'm making for dinner this week is cabbage nori rolls (surprise, babe! It's not actually sushi). And since I apparently ordered half a red cabbage instead of 500g of red capsicum (rassa frassa stupid cookies resetting), which Steph won't eat, I decided to give them a trial run for today's lunch.

OMG so good. I love cabbage, especially red cabbage, and this is just so nomable. And quick and easy to make. Especially since I left out the baked tofu (too much bother for lunch when I'm this hungry). I didn't use the sweet corn either, but did put in some pickled roast red capsicum, which works well since lots of sushi has a pickle of some sort in it (I like the bright yellow one). I also didn't steam the carrot, since I like crunch and it's more Fuhrman-friendly that way. I also added some alfalfa sprouts for added virtue, and because we had them in the fridge. Those sprouts go off quickly. You can technically eat them with soy sauce and everything. I didn't because it was delicious as was, and also because I had two-thirds of my daily recommended intake of salt at breakfast with my miso soup. If you're interested (and likely to make it yourself), I found that 1/4 of a medium-sized cabbage made about three nori rolls. I sort of chopped the cabbage into strips, but I think it would be better if it was more shredded.

Joys of red cabbage: it leaks purple. Things that are now purple include: my fingers (though some of that may be from the 5 cherries I had for "breakfast"), the knife, the chopping board, bits of our sushi mat. I also discovered that red cabbage steaming water does NOT turn purple. It turns bright blue, like "am I pregnant" or "not menstrual blood on this pad at all, but see how absorbant it is" blue.

Yum. Totally having for lunch tomorrow.

(Copied almost verbatim to Reynard's Feast, because I need to get that beast moving again.)

So, Steph and I are going to a ball tonight, which is a story that I don't have all the words for right now, because I'm tired and with low blood sugar because there was NO MILK when I got up this morning, so I had no muesli ...

... anyway. It's organised by her work, and its a (HORRORS) buffet, which means heaps more options for "normals", but anyone with different dietary requirements (coeliacs, vegans etc) is completely buggered. There's no "special plate for table 5" with a buffet.

Here's the menu (Typos are theirs, not Steph's, who emailed it to me):

Tasmanian Oyster Tower - mounted on creushed ice, lemon wedges, five dressings
Platters of 'Nori' Hand Rolls - tuna, crispy chicken, pickled vegetable
Hickory Smoked Turkey Breast - curried water chestnut salad, cranberry jelly
'Sumac' spiced Calamari Salad - on smokey babaganosh, baby cress
Baby Gem & Tandoori Chicken Caesar Salad - coddled egges, shaved reggiano
Roasted Plum Tomatoes - marinated in aged balsamic dressing, buffalo mozzarella, vigin olive oil & basil
Soba Noodle Salad - Milawa three seed mustard mayo, spring onions, grilled pancetta
Wild Rocket - jinki blue cheese, toasted walnuts, pached 'nashi' pear salad
Mixed Salad Leaves - wild cresses, champagne vingerette
Blackened beef & Singapore Noodle Box - cripsy shallots & coriander
Smoked paprika scented salmon - dried tomato & olive crushed southern
gold's char-grilled spring onions lemon & basil dressing

Traditional self-saucing chocolate pudding - whipped navilla bean cream
cold set raspberry cheesecake - raspberry salas, Persian fairy floss
'Sharp' possets lemon & lime
Strawberries rubbed with toasted coconut, Yarra Valley clotted cream

For those of you paying attention, Steph and I can eat ... the mixed salad leaves. And probably pickled vegetable hand rolls. That's it. We'll probably be able to eat the roasted plum tomatoes, providing the mozzarella hasn't been melted over them. For dessert ... well, if the Persian fairy floss is a separate dish, and not part of the cheesecake (hard to tell – is it bad formatting, or culinary design?), we can have that.

I suppose those of you who aren't vegan would be saying triumphantly here, "I bet you just wish you'd eat like a NORMAL person, instead of expecting people to make a fuss over you!" and I'd say, "Not really," although I might add in my head that it might be nice if a few more people ate like us.

Steph and I try to be accommodating. If we're going over to someone's place for dinner, we'll usually offer to bring a salad or something, partly to help out, and partly because it's nice to know that you'll be able to eat more than white bread, tomato sauce and lettuce for lunch*. This doesn't really fly with balls, especially since we've paid $55 each for the privilege of watching the fish in a wall tank.

Plus I'm tired and cranky, and just in the mood for a big bitch, but there isn't another food-freak in the office at the moment. Well, there isn't anyone in the office at the moment, but that's just points on a technicality. I shaved my legs for this, dammit. They feel weird in my trousers.


* True story.

Today was hot, yet I wanted to have stuffed (roast) capsicums. Using the oven on Hot Days is verboten in this house (understandable, I know). So, what to do?

What I did was bake them. I created no extra heat, and used no extra electricity or gas.

( Want to know how? )

Argh. I'm stinky, but it's not yet safe to shower, because I didn't get up at 6 (I got up at 7, I'm not that much of a lazybones), so there won't be any hot water until about midday. I'm not sure I can stand it much longer. I may have to risk the sudden Ice Age 1 1/2 minutes in.

Ah, I love The Age. It has good articles in it (even when they're nicked from The Guardian). Mostly, though, I love the weekend magazines and the "A2" (or whatever they call it these days) supplement during the week. You know, the arty sort of stuff. OK, I do end up reading a selection of articles on the website, especially now Steph emails them to me (admittedly I'd frequently read them all when I was working at the nursing home). It's everything I might read a women's mag for, without, you know, the stupid. Now the Age website has blogs on it. It's great. Steph sent me a link to this post in "Chew on This", one of their resident bloggers. It's about the relative cost of veges. Kind of interesting, but blatantly obvious if you happened to think about it. I suppose part of the aim is to get people to think about it. Some interesting comments, though. Steph's commented, as has daharja (see "Leanne" towards the bottom). And check out Moron Gordon. You still need full-fat meat and dairy my arse. That's not what the research I've done has suggested. It's not even what his comment suggests! Just tacked on at the end, apropos of nothing. Even I commented this morning (as a response to Gordon), but The Age reviews comments before posting, so I don't know when/if it's going to be up (it was very civilised. I may post it here if it doesn't get approved). Gordon really got my back up, though. Fine, be a meat eater. Just don't claim that being vegan is somehow a lesser dietary choice. Pretty much the only thing we're deficient in is B12, and that's due to the crappy quality of our soils – it's a microbial by-product, hence why meat and dairy still contain it. It's from the animals' guts. Even human gut passengers make some B12, just don't rely on it as your sole source.

I'm a bit worried about next week. We were away last weekend on a morris dancing trip (check out Steph's journal, earlymorningair for photos), and before that we were out every night, right back to Sunday, except for Thursday, on which night we packed. Next week we have morris dancing on Monday, potentially dinner with my family Tuesday, Steph and I are hoping for a date Wednesday, Thursday we're having our Friday night swim, because Friday we have Nat's birthday (at Veggie Bar. YAAAAAAY!). Then Saturday day we have the Britannia Morris Men's ale (yearly footup ... no, wait. That doesn't translate into non-morris speak either. Yearly party) and Saturday night my best friend Jess's birthday. At least on Sunday we just have a Litha practice with Hedda and Liam. Then on that Monday, we'll have morris dancing again. Argh! At least we'll be home again on the 21st. I may have to put a note in our Google calendars. It will read: "VERBOTEN. No leaving the house." Busy, busy, busy!

I've just started my first piece of embroidery since year seven or eight, when we were supposed to do a sort of sampler, and I think I just mastered chain stitch. Just like any Google-enabled crafter, the first thing I did was search for and print out instructions and photos of stitches. Last night I did a lovely curly thing in outline stitch, which is like stem stitch but the other way around. Apparently, according to my stitch site, outline stitch was widely used in the Bayeux tapestry. This makes me happy.

Yesterday was a day of good food. For lunch, I made myself a wrap. I was craving the fake-chicken schnitzels Steph's sister eats, so I dry-fried one and had half in a wholemeal wrap with avocado, chickpea pate and sundried tomato tapenade spread on it, and fresh tomato, cos and purple lettuce and roasted pepper inside. Bloody fantastic. I had the other half of the schnitzel in another because it tasted so damn good. And if I hadn't been so lazy, I bet you could chuck some eggplant in instead of the schnitzel and it would taste even better.

Then, for dinner, I made a varient of Pim's "Rena's Aubergine in Tomato Sauce". I used one whole large eggplant, and fried it in water and some mushroom ketchup. Then used the half red onion in the fridge, and then I was lazy and used two tins of tomato instead of fresh (I was running a bit behind time). I was planning on making this a pasta casserole, but the only short pasta in the house was the stuff Mum-in-Not-Law bought with "Added Omega-3!" which means, yep, you guessed it, that it has fish oil in it. Still, I chucked it in a small casserole dish, and put the ground-up pine nuts and some wheat bran/husk stuff on top (what's it called? I've blanked), which is my default substitute for breadcrumbs. Absolutely delicious. Steph's only complaint was it wasn't sufficiently filling (we ate about two serves each), but that would have been solved by the pasta, or, failing that, some good ole bulky quinoa.

Then, as I was cooking that, I managed to get a apple crumble (I've been craving crumbles since Sean/Jenni served it to us at Y—— the Monday after our Penola morris trip) prepared and in the oven so it was ready after dinner. I subbed out some of the flour and put in some oats, because I wanted that texture, dammit. Then I took out some of the butter/nuttlex, since that was there to make the flour "crumby". And I used wholemeal flour, because white flour is for pussies. I also upped the apple content. It was very nice, especially when served with vegan custard. I used brown sugar instead of white, so it actually looked more like a caramel sauce. I also halved the amount of not-milk used. Overall, very, very decadent. There's even enough left over for another tonight, even after I halved the recipe! Yummyyummyyummy. It's only a modified recipe, not a brand-new one, but I might put it up on Reynard's Feast just so I can make it again. And next time, I may even increase the oats further ... I'll have to decide after I have it again tonight. Yum, dessert!

Oh, and yesterday I steamed the two smaller Christmas puddings I made Tuesday. They're my own recipe – I used the two vegan recipes I found and combined them a bit. I wanted to make sure that Steph and I have vegan treats to eat on Christmas day, and puddings are traditionally made far ahead of time. We'll probably get down to vegan rum balls and things closer to the time. I'll probably write up the pudding recipe in Reynard's Feast if they work. I have another pudding to steam today. I made double quantities of the recipe, and this will be the "full-sized" pudding for the morris Christmas. The other two are half-sized, for Steph and me as we'll probably be spending Christmas lunch apart. :(

Still, it's exciting! I bought the calico yesterday, and boiled it as instructed. The water turned this weird brown colour, which was off-putting. Still, calico-y water is good enough to flush loos with, so I tipped it into the bucket in the bathroom. The small puddings were boiled for four hours, and they went very soft! The calico was oily to touch, which I didn't expect, never having made puddings before. Still, it's just copha, so is probably very good for my hands. I'm glad I spoke to Steph's grandmother on Cup Day. She let me know about grating the copha (lard substitute) and getting the cloth wet beforehand (then I Googled and found out about boiling the fabric - makes sense, makes it sterile). The little puddings have been hanging up from the indoor clothes line all night. I just got them down. The fabric's stiff from having been essentially waxed, and the cloth around the puddings is stained dark, as it should be. They smell fantastic. After I'd bought all the ingredients (which set me back about $60–70 or so, $30 of which was the brandy), I found out that Steph's parents were planning on buying us a vegan pudding (they'd already bought a normal one)! Oh, well. It was partly the tradition (every family member stirs the pudding and makes a wish for the coming year) that attracted me, anyway. I was a little sad that Liam and Hedda ended up not being very interested, as they don't like pudding. Still, maybe they'd like MY puddings! ;)

Steph looked askance at her parents' pudding after she saw mine. "You can tell it hasn't been cooked in the fabric," she said. I'd noticed the same thing. That pudding's calico was pristine. A little poking showed plastic underneath. Hardly environmentally friendly, and NOT the way Steph's Nan used to make!

I should probably put the big pudding on soon. I have to boil its calico first. I want to get it on early, though. It'll be bigger and will require longer cooking. If only the various recipes I read could agree on a cooking time! Or at least on a cooking time per weight.