This week have been experimenting with this variation on my normal lunch. I usually have up to three jars of marinated olives and capers in my fridge, decanted from an unhandy 1.7 kg bulk jar too big to fit between the shelves. Since the marinade is tasty and too good to throw out after the olives have been fished out, I now use it to marinate tofu.
If you’re going to try something like this, you’ll need the firmest tofu you can get. Slice it in half centimeter thick slices … I do about three slices a time … and from there into half centimeter cubes. Tip them into the jar with the capers, peppers, and remnants of olives. Stir, and rest in the fridge. I usually can’t resist trying them after two days.
My Lunch:
I always have a plate of lightly steamed leafy greens … some people would say ‘sweated’ greens … but I dislike applying sweated to food. I do it in the microwave, just pile the greens on a plate, and microwave for 45 seconds.
I’m on a diet where I need four and a half cups of cooked greens per week. Instead of fussy measuring I eat steamed greens twice a day every day and call it done.
When I have a quarter of a green apple for my fruit course that day, I slice it and microwave along with the leaves.
Next, I have a heel of bread from a gluten free, mixed grain and seeds loaf spread with ripe avocado. On top the marinated mix, drained, but as it comes out of the jar. Sliced jalapeno peppers, capers, a couple of little cloves of garlic and a tablespoon of the now marinated tofu.
After I read an article recently on how to make the perfect coffee1 I started to experiment on how to make ‘my’ perfect coffee. Coffee and I have had a troubled relationship for a while now. In my youth, say my 20s to 30s, I regularly drank up to 3 espressos for breakfast. I got into the espresso habit while traveling overseas. In many places cow’s milk was not available.
When middle age hit, I had to cut back on the amount of caffeine everyday as my heart and brain became more and more intolerant of its effects. For about six years, I could only drink green tea2 with only two or three tea-leaves in teapot.
Finally, I entered a time of falling over. Six falls with various injuries such as a broken wrist, and six months later a broken thumb. A General Practitioner stopping by my bed in hospital, told me to drink one cup of coffee a day, to wire me up, he said.
I started that and it works. The only time I have fallen since, was when I was unable to take the cure due to gastric illness. Another big plus is the taste. I love my long black.
However, now that I am in my seventies, I’m becoming intolerant again. It’s so frustrating to have to give up drinking coffee socially. If I have it at 11 AM, when most coffee meet-ups happen, it’ll interfere with my night’s sleep. Like, I don’t sleep that night!
A long black, with between 105 to 240 mgs of caffeine per a 250 mls mugs is way too strong for me now. It’s useless me buying them. A waste of money. I can only drink half or less and have to throw the rest away. At home I used to make myself a plunger coffee daily, with 8 grams of strong ground coffee. And that’s off the menu too now.
So I’m experimenting. Rather than decreasing my intake until I hit the sweet spot, I decided to work up from a lower than necessary level, to also re-establish my sleep pattern.
But, 2.5 grams of coffee does not make a very satisfying cup. [I decided to start with 2.5 purely based on the measuring spoons I have.] Then I read about a coffee and cocoa mix. How the cocoa flavanoids have a good effect on platelets, a blood component, and the caffeine content is lower than in coffee. Since I definitely need more platelets, having lost most of mine during chemo, I was looking for a way to add cocoa to my diet without sugar. So that’s my drink for the present.
2.5 grams ground coffee, 2.5 grams cocoa powder in a mug. Add hot water. Stir. Allow to brew. Don’t stir before drinking. The coffee grounds sink. Very mellow.
A couple of days ago I read someone else’s post on this, describing how you can ‘say’ whatever you like without anyone ever really knowing you. It’s what you ‘do’ … maintains the theory … that will identify you.
I don’t know yet if it’ll work. Can but try, in the words of one of my characters. I have several typical days, and since it has been raining here for about a week, I can only describe a typical day at home.
I wake but do not roll instantly out of bed. One of my eyes will never open right away, I have to lie there and think a while, convince it of the day. On blue-sky days, my bedroom is striped with light–due to vertical blinds–after sunrise. But, all this week, the daylight stays grey.
Roll on to my side, sit up, swing legs over the side. Stump down the grey corridor to the kitchen. Oh wait, you expected me to at least wash my face? Yeah, I did that. Ablutions. In the en suite.
And I dressed. T shirt and shin-length pants. Slide my house-keys and rest of needs-musts in my right pants pocket. Mobile/cell in the left pocket. A few years ago, I fell over in my house and after lying unconscious for a time, had to crawl injured to a landline phone to raise the alarm. Since then I’ve worn a mobile on me at all times.
The kitchen is in the middle of the apartment. Dark on a sunless day. I make it friendlier by pulling out the slide-out range hood so that its automatic light shines warm above the benches. I get a bowl out, spoon in muesli, cooked brown rice, LSA and hemp seeds. Mix and pour on rice milk. Boil water. Dole out mineral supplements and anti histamine. Today, due to the dark, I eat at the round dining table.
While still drinking my three mugs of warm water, I check yesterday’s step score on my mobile and enter it in my exercise chart. Also on the mobile, I check the weather to see what temperatures and humidity I can expect. Then I check the weather in the town where I lived last year, the weather in Copecabana in NSW; Dover in Tasmania; Perth in Western Australia; Karratha in Western Australia; Cape York in North Queensland, Amsterdam and Singapore. All my places of interest for various reasons.
Still using the mobile I will have quick look at Facebook comments, trying not to get involved yet with anything needing research and or deep thought.
Today, after stacking the dishes in the sink, I started on my exercises. Eleven–I’m building up to fifteen– push-aways against the front door. It’s timber and the only place in the apartment that can take it. Eleven stand-ups from sitting on a chair not using my hands. Walking with half kilo weights, twelve stretches from front of the house to the back. I expect to graduate to 1 kg weights after my birthday in a few weeks.
Chart to record daily exercises
Make a cup of coffee and sit down with the laptop. Check my emails and answer the ones requiring it. I resist getting involved with newsletters though do read a couple of articles from the Fifth Estate Magazine. Do my Wordle.
Rain, rain, go away, many of my local acquaintances are saying. I also read a science article (on the weather website?) about research in Antarctica with ice cores. Averaged out over two thousand years, east coast Australia has had only two hundred wet years. That’s ten percent. Can’t get away from climate change. It’s going to get a lot drier is the forecast.
By about 11.00 a/m, I open the work of the day. MELD, part two of the Doomed series. I’m in the thick of a structural edit. I need to lose at least twenty thousand words, rewrite the first chapter, and re jig the first act. Finesse the middle fifty percent. The final act is good to go.
So, today, I read chapters 7 and 8 aloud to figure how I need to change them.
At about noon, a pathology assistant arrives. Courtney is her name. She is the only live person I talk with today. IE it’s Friday. No phone calls. I’m still isolating, as I have several co-morbidities and do not want to get sicker than I already am. I’m lucky because I don’t have to go out for a blood test. S & N come to the house. Takes ten minutes. My veins are recovering after the beating they received having chemo this time last year.
Afterwards I walk round the house for a while to start to build up the step count. I visit all the rooms in turn about twenty times. Lunch then. A frozen meal. Wack it into the microwave, 4.50 minutes. Dish up. Yum. Another three mugs of warm water. I read the two first chapters of MELD, printed out earlier, and start to mark up bits to keep and bits to cut.
Today, I do my lying down exercises after lunch. On my bed. Yes, the temptation is to doze off. Twelve air-grabs that warm up every muscle. Six bridges to a count of ten per bridge. Six legs raises, each leg, each raise for a count of ten. Twelve clam-shells, hold open to a count of ten. Doze, five to ten minutes.
Oh man. This is taking a long time. It doesn’t feel like I don’t do anything much.
Get up. More walking in the house. Still raining. BOM (Bureau of Meteorology) says 120mm has fallen in the last 24 hours and a huge rain cloud still hangs overhead. No going outside today. I get some walking music going. It’s God Speed You! Black Emperor today. I walk about an hour more, 5000 paces plus.
Sunset despite rain
When I rest this time, I do some embroidery while I listen to an ABC podcast. The stitching is slow but joyful. The colors sing. After the podcast I catch a few minutes of news. Nothing cheerful about that with old man Putin doing his thing.
Dinner is two rounds of toast, smashed avocado and a boiled egg. A pear for dessert. Three mugs of warm water. I start to re-read The Tailor of Panama by John Le Carre (1996) which I will talk about in the future.
After dinner, I work on this. I’m not posting it tonight. I need to mail myself some photos, from my mobile to my laptop.
When I get news of a project that, if it can get up, will help resolve some of the global problems our society has got us into, I get my hopes up that we can scrabble back from the brink.
But only if most of us support the few who have it in them to think up, design, test their concept and then finance it. That’s where the majority of us can help.
So there’s this one, Moonrise Seaweed Company. A promising initiative by two ocean lovers that will help save kelp and other seaweeds, help fix carbon dioxide in a natural way and will pay for itself with the products being developed.
Have a look at the products already offered as rewards for the different pledges. Now imagine a doubling and tripling of output. Have a look at the campaign. Break into the piggy bank that you keep to help negate climate change and help this project get up and running.
One of my successful low-FODMAP lunches … two pieces of GF toast, 2 pieces dried tomato and maybe a couple of half-olives, tofu, sprinkled with black sesame seeds. Lettuce for a green and water to drink
Almost 2 months after I had the flu which last three weeks as far as I can tell, I’m still coughing due–my doctor said to an asthma flare-up. He puts it down to wood-smoke in the air and a new allergy. He prescribed an antihistamine and expected me to get better forthwith. When that didn’t happen but I’d have an all day coughing fit if and when I went outside, I bought an air purifier for in the house. It’s hard to tell if it’s making a difference, except when I stick my nose outside.
My nearest and dearest people are getting sick of the constant news, no I’m not better yet. Yes I’m still coughing. My son reminded me last call that I’ve been coughing for as long as my new grand-daughter has been in the world. A couple of days ago I researched the malady again–you get like that when you get no resolution from the medical profession. This time I discovered that a tenacious flare-up is a possible after-effect of catching the flu if you are also an asthma sufferer.
No, it wasn’t a wonky website. I think it was the Mayo Clinic. If not that one, something equally as dependable.
While it didn’t give me any hope for when I might hope to be rid of the flare-up, it did give me a bit of comfort that it exists, and people do get well again. Fingers crossed. Next, I researched inflammation. Inevitably, food intolerance came up. The wrong foods for a person can cause a lot of inflammation in their gut, and when your gut goes into a leaky-gut-syndrome, the inflammatory compounds will cross the gut wall and be carried all over the place by your blood.
All this is happening while I’m trialing the fortnightly fruit and veg boxes, with me trying out all sorts of foods I’m not accustomed to. Like the spring onions today, of which I am allowed to have 75 grams a day according to the low FODMAP diet app I have on my mobile. After six years on the diet, it’s gotten a bit onerous to be measuring every mouthful and I’ve let it go a bit. Today, though, after spring onion on my delicious lunch, I had a bad coughing fit.
So I’m back in testing mode. I’ve already cut out black currants for breakfast, of which I’m allowed 13 grams–not worth the bother if it’s going to cause me to cough for hours after breakfast. Tomorrow, no spring onions on my lunch, see how I go.
My food adventures are nothing like anything you could post to Instagram or any other site lauding the expertise of both cooking and photography.
Sludge gone chewy
My food adventures this year are the result of how COVID19 is keeping me indoors with my two co-morbidities–heart problems and asthma, with my asthma in a long enduring state of aggressive flare-up supposedly due to wood-smoke in the local air–and the resulting difficulties of getting food into the house.
Friends help and recently I’ve begun to order in a fruit-and-veg box fortnightly. All good, one would think. But I’m lacking quite a lot of groceries out of my normal diet. Canned fish. Any kind of fish. Tofu. Tempeh. Olives. Rice milk. Tomato paste. Olive oil. Oil to fry with. Coconut yoghurt.
Food additives are my curse. My gut forces me to commit to the low FODMAP diet and so I need to go down to the shops and read labels. All the above need reading. But I’m still coughing too much for a trip into the supermarket.
More doctor appointments needed. Why haven’t I seen a specialist yet? The state border between us in Northern New South Wales and South East Queensland where all the specialists live, is closed. I mean, did you hear about the sick baby that was airlifted from NSW? The parents had to by road and were denied entry. They were directed to a fortnight’s quarantine at their own expense. Can you imagine?
It’s all too stressful.
So …. when I order a bag of brown rice with ancient grains–and am not able to read the label because the way the product is presented on the website–there’s nothing for it when it arrives but to experiment. [Should’ve read the label when it arrived!]
It’s rice. I cook it the way I cook all rice. Never had a failure. A student from Malaysia taught me when we were both marooned at Waikato Uni (NZ) for the holidays a long time ago.
This time, three-quarters of the mess in the pot is half raw while a few rice grains have made it to the desired density. I study that for a while and decide there is no way I’m going to be able to separate the half-raw from the cooked. I add more water and more heat.
The result is sludge. In the days when my son still lived at home this might’ve been the point where I would accept defeat and traipse the mess out to the worm farm.
But last week I decided I didn’t want to waste my money–ten dollars for the bag–and would continue experimenting. That night, planning for dinner, I extracted three tablespoons of the sludge–pot kept in the fridge to prevent it going to beer mash–added three tablespoons of a chewy, low FODMAP flour, two spoons of curry powder, salt, bit of baking powder and an egg and stirred it all about.
Looked all right. I set it cooking in a heating frying pan, like a big pancake and topped it with tomatoes, broccoli, cooked carrot and a couple of chopped spinach leaves. Flipped it when the baking powder told me, and hey presto.
Nice meal. Enjoyed it. A couple of hours later lots of complaints by my gut. Why, I said? I gave you everything according to the diet?
Next day I thought I would try a breakfasty thing. Two tablespoons of the mash in a mug. Cocoa to taste. Brown sugar. Two tablespoons buckwheat flour. Rice-milk to help amalgamate it all. Pinch of baking powder. Three minutes in the microwave.
A very tasty and and different kind of breakfast. Ate it with a teaspoon. Debated whether to write the recipe on paper to slip into my favorite low FODMAP cookbook for future reference. More gut complaints. I put them down to the one-eighth apple I had been eating every day.
Third day. I studied the mash and thought it probably would be reaching its use-by date pretty soon. But I decided to have a go at making bread with it. A hot oven kills off all kinds of wild-life, right? The yeast mixture bubbled nicely. I drained four tablespoons of the mash thinking to use it to replace one of the two flours used in the recipe. Added the yeast mixture, and the second of the two flours. I used to love making bread in the days when my gut wasn’t the pernicketey animal that it is now.
The ‘dough’ wasn’t like any that I’d ever associated with successful bread-making before. More like a stiffish batter. Too far into the process, I pressed on. Turned the stuff into a bread pan. Topped the loaf with sunflower seeds and pepitas. Set it to rise on the stove. No rising. Set it to rise in the preheating oven. Then thought I might as well bake it. Upped the heat.
The seeds helped to form a nice crust. I ate that. The innards were not edible. Sludge gone chewy. For a while I played with the idea of frying pieces of it… frying improves a lot of foods. It’s the times I was raised. A good fry-up remains one of my favorite meals. But why was this stuff so obdurate?
Next morning, I read the label. Picked out the baddie at once. Lupins. A high FODMAP food. I decided on a trip into the backyard there and then. Mash gone. Chewy sludge gone. The rest of the packet of Ancient Grains, gone.
Rita de Heer 