Vegan Maca Bars - Introducing Try It, You Might LIke It!

I've put a new section up in the recipe tab called 'Try It, You Might Like It!' This is for all those quirky one-off things I invent just throwing things around in the kitch (sometimes literally, judging by the state of my cupboard doors). These are the 'anyone could think of it' recipes, that  may not be particularly unique or recipe-book worthy, but that rocked my tastebuds on a random Sunday.

This Coffee Shop Rocks!

And of course you know what I mean by that title! 

Yes, a little aftershock (4.6). I was getting into my pre-conception nutrition reading, camellia sinensis in hand, when the building started to jiggle and shake. This had a bad effect on my concentration.

I made nervous eye contact with the girl beside me and we both held our breath for a few seconds wondering how freaky it would get. I was thinking pretty intensely about the stupidity of seating myself directly under an upstairs gym.

I'm not sure that diving under the Coffee Culture window-side bench would be much protection if a Smith Machine came through the floor! Luckily, it didn't come to that.

I'd already been thinking about things quaky, having stayed up late fretting for all those people in Indonesia. Ugh. 

Few Words Necessary

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the earthquake that changed my city forever.

What did Christchurch people do today?

Something amazing..

Riding in The Red Zone

This is an earthquake related post, probably  most of interest to my fellow kiwi readers. I'm trying to work out how to put the Quakytown posts on a different tab, but I'm not sure that blogger allows it; all posts must show on the main page as well. If you are looking for a food or fitness post, check back tomorrow. :D

******************************************

Last weekend The Programmer and I took our lives in our hands and, along with the entire Familia Programmer (his ma, pa and sis), took a ride through The Red Zone, which is the badly earthquake-damaged Central Business District of Christchurch.

Busy Bee, Healthy Bee

For the next week, I'm going to be a busy, busy bee. There are three university assignments to get finished and it's time for another production run of Sana stuff - that's always a kind of crazy time. It is quite fun to see the new product when it's done though. It gives me a little buzz, which I guess is a sign that I'm on the right track with this whole health business / health study malarky.

I've also got The Programmer home sick with strep throat. As you can imagine, I have him on a strict regime of pro-biotics (to balance the antibiotics he's on), vitamins, healthy food, rest and no kissing. Also, no beer, even though the Rugby World Cup in on. I'm a slave-driver. 

Yesterday I had to head out to see the guys at Puraz and snapped a few pics on the way. I have to say that Merivale, being a high socio-economic part of town, is certainly racing ahead with putting itself back together after the quakes. I saw my first container shop there; it was swanky, expensive Quinns. :D If it's good enough for them, it should be more than good enough for the $2 shop.

I drove past some things that made me feel a bit sad. The Knox church:

Pre-earthquake, it looked like this:

Source

I also saw one of two tower clocks that have stopped at the time of the quake:

It's been 12.51pm on that clock since February 22nd.

After getting a bit depressed through exposing my poor wee mind to reminders of earthquake destruction, it was necessary to do some food shopping, which is guaranteed retail therapy for fitness bloggers.

I found this thingy at the Liberty Market:

It's Daikon - pickled Japanese radish.  Not sure what to do with it, I added some slices to last nights super healthy feast - fish, veges, shaved raw parmesan. I think there is some seaweed in there too. I'm feeling a bit experimental, clearly.

Have you tried anything new lately? 

Ok, back to it. Just . 2000 . words . to .go......

Rumbled

I was feeling a bit unhappy a few minutes ago, on account of being rumbled, twice. I was just in the kitchen, doing something with almonds like a normal person (more about these tomorrow)

when a .. 'noticeable' (I can't think how else to describe this one) aftershock came along and shook a few small things off the bench. Geonet tells me that was a 4.0, over in the Lyttelton area (epicentre of the Feb quake). Then I was resettling my nerves, doing a bit of pranayama, when a long, slow aftershock wiggled the house. This was not dramatic, but was long. The Programmer just Googletalked me that this was a 4.7, out in Rolleston, closer to the epicentre of the September quake last year. I think both these quakes are on the same faultline.

This increase in seismic activity is not fab. One is not amused.  

Look at that, these even made the news. As we have aftershocks frequently, the media hardly bother to report on them unless they are especially exciting and have caused a twitter landslide. Apparently 'we will rock you' was playing on the local radio. I guess mother nature loves Queen then?

It is not very helpful that today's little shakes come in the jetstream of another alarming prediction by The Moon Man. He is suggesting that the earthly and cosmic configuration of end of Sept 2011 might be right for a whopper. Awesome.  And for those who say that he is often wrong, I reply, he is not wrong often enough for my liking. 

There is only one thing for it.  Shopping. I feel an urgent need to restock the emergency supplies, preferably before most people finish work because there will probably be a little panic.  But first. Icecream.

A little word about my healthy icecream alternative. If it did not taste as good as regular icecream, I would just eat something organic and with few ingredients. I actually like these home-made ones far better, and I can alter the flavour to match my mood.

Essential ingredient: frozen bananas.

I tend to whack them with a heavy glass bottle before the food processor has a go at it.  Otherwise you get chunks of banana, which can be good or bad, depending on what you are aiming for.

The smashing activity also rids the body of unhelpful earthquake stress hormones.

Today's effort involved the following ingredients:

• 100g frozen banana
• 2 dsp unflavoured Sana WPC (**product placement alert** :D yes, but, I love it... BCAA's, calcium, protein and all that other good stuff). It is the addition of the whey that adds the creaminess, although you could leave it out and add more avocado for a vegan version.
• 1/2 small avocado (healthy fats!)
• 1/2 tsp maca (superfood!)
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 2 tsp raw honey
• 2 tsp water

Blend for about a minute, or until it is smooth and icecreamy. If you overdo it, it will just become a smoothie instead. Mine was a little overblended as I thought I heard another aftershock coming and got a bit distracted.

And now I am seriously departing to take part in the mass emptying of the canned food shelves.  If I didn't believe it was impossible, I'd think that food shops pay someone to cause aftershocks. It is certainly good for their bottom line. 

And my question for you today (and it's a big one, so you know it's important): are you disaster ready? 

Foodie Finds

I just got home from a fantastic lunch to celebrate my Grandfathers 82nd birthday. That's a lot of years, but he still goes dancing every week, maintains a large garden and flirts with my Grandma. Something keeps them young - maybe the veges, maybe the naughty sense of humour, who can say?

Apart from hanging with the NZ fam, I'm putting in a serious effort toward an essay on Cyclothymia. This is one of the Bipolar disorders, and is also the condition that a doctor once suggested I suffered from, so I might learn something about my crazy brain.  Or not. Judging by the number of my friends that were on the happy pills, I feel that particular doctor was overly keen on prescribing antidepressants to adolescents. Perhaps in medical school, it was not well known that teenagers are supposed to be moody and lazy?

Last semester my study mojo was lacking, which I blame on the relentless, distracting aftershocks. After a break in Europe, I am a little behind, but at least I'm feeling the study-groove, man. This is the last semester of my undergraduate degree and I'd like to finish in a blaze of glory, rather than just sliding into graduate status with a half-arsed effort.

I started the day with some superstar leftovers:

I tried to make a pancake with leftover roasted pumpkin from last night, but it fell apart in the pan.  The ingredients were: pumpkin, cinnamon and eggs and it still tasted fine. I plopped some raw honey and greek yogurt on the top. There may also have been an espresso on the side.

I've been making a few foodie discoveries since I came back from Liechtenstein in the mood for pizza and strong cheese. I was not hopeful to find unpasteurised Parmesan in Christchurch, but lo, it found me while I was being nosy about earthquake repair progress at the Arts Centre. Canterbury Cheesemongers is the place for actively practicing cheesoholics. You can sample the cheeses, ask all sorts of cheesy questions and spend a months cheese budget on 200g of delicious, fragrant, imported, raw Parmesan.

$16. This is not a typo.

My other nostalgia-driven discovery was the Purebread pizza bases, which are made from fermented grains for ease of digestion.

They are a bit crumbly and need to be kept in the fridge or, preferably, the freezer. However, when baked, they are thin and crispy, just like a real Italian pizza base. Now all I need to replicate pizza in Verbania is some warm weather (pleeeeease). Today has been hail and rain. Fore-casted is snow. Yes, snow. Also, if the Moon Man is to be believed, earthquakes. Snow and earthquakes. Tomorrow may be especially exciting for a Monday!  

((brrr))

I slept in today, neglected my morning duties and was duly punished. Usually the first thing I do in the a.m. is feed the cats and arrange for their warmth and comfort on these currently frigid days.  That is, I light the fire or turn on a heater like a well trained slave. It's the only way to have a peaceful morning. Four whining cats is not a noise that can be ignored for long. 

About half an hour after the designated feeding and warming time, the harassment began. Monty has figured out the perfect attention getting technique. He perches on the bedside table and starts swiping progressively larger objects on to the floor with his paw. As I was exhibiting more than usual amount of laziness he just started with a pile of books which hit the floor with a dramatic thud and evoked the 'aftershock' reaction - heart pounding, wide awake, ready to go.  This was after I'd already been awoken at 1.30 a.m. by a real aftershock (hence the compensatory sleeping in).  At least, after last night's Baptiste yoga session, I was able to get to sleep, quite a novelty.

Apart from yoga, exercise for the last week has been a bit of mad jumping around playing Wii Just Dance II and some running around getting things organised for my trip. I think that the amount of boxes I'm hoisting counts as 'weights' and running up the escalator at the mall counts as 'cardio', so I've got it covered. ;)  The box lifting is due to rearranging the storage area so that someone who isn't me can locate product.  I'm not sure that 'find it by psychic ability' is something the team can be trained to do. :D

Cold weather may not fit my disposition, but winter cooking is something I look forward to. Tonight's effort was a chicken done in apricots and chardonnay.

I had to drive to the trippy hippy organic shop to forage some dried apricots and was so distracted by activities at the old St Martins New World site that I nearly tail ended someone. I will be sure to get down there with a camera tomorrow. In spite of aftershocks, things are racing ahead with the deconstruction. In fact, there is hardly anything left on the site.  Empty lots where there used to be recognisable buildings are common in Christchurch at the moment, so I'm just x-ing my fingers and hoping the the construction phase is going to follow right along after the demolition. A new supermarket is just what the community needs to make us feel reconnected to the barely remembered reality of a life outside of earthquakes. I don't think I'm unusual in craving normality. Just boring old normality - supermarket, city coffee shops, water that doesn't reek of chlorine, roads that don't udulate, an uninterrupted night of sleep. All those things that are so normal I never thought of them as great things. I do now. 

In less than a week I'll have all of those things for a whole month (eeeee!), albeit, on the other side of the world. I'll also have warm weather (aaaaah!) and no torture-cats. Perhaps by the time I get back, The Programmer will have them sorted out.  Or they will have him fully trained using their unique interrogation techniques. It could go either way...

A little bit rockin'

Hello! Sorry to be AWOL for a few days. Let's just say that the last week of my exams was not exactly calm. We lost a few...

That was Tuesday night's little effort, courtesy of hard partying Mother Earth. About 11pm (when I was sitting in bed, still attempting to cram toxicology principles into my brain), we experienced an unusual and strong aftershock. It was very loud and rumbly, sort of like the approach of an underground jet engine. It hit strongly in a very specific direction, the angle of which shunted the cups off the shelf. Of course.

Once he released his grip on the TV (disclaimer: I have no proof that he leaped to save it, only suspicions..), The Programmer came wandering into the bedroom and we had one of those peculiar conversations that pass between Cantabrians these days:

Him: "Sounded like the Greendale fault to me, it definitely came across the plains" (it was)

Me: "I'd give it a ... 5.2" (it was a 5.3)

Him: "I'm surprised the power is still on" (some were not so lucky)

Me: " mmm hmmm" (already on Facebook, checking out who is freaking and who is chilling..).

That's how attuned we have become. It's like some primal instinct has awoken. We can hear the different sounds between faultlines and can pretty accurately assess depth, distance, richter scale reading and likelihood that the power is out somewhere in town.  As a psychology student, I am impressed and intrigued at the hidden abilities of the mind. As a resident of Quakytown, I'm a bit 'meh' that I had to be personally involved in such a discovery. Needless to say, I do not feel that my exams this year will deliver a string of A+'s. However, I put in a fair effort in exceptionally trying circumstances and last night we had a dinner party and broke out the organic wine and the wii.

Someone was a bit too enthusiastic with the wii-mote while playing wii-tennis and the lightbulb got it in the neck.

It was a great night and just what I needed. I felt so revived this morning that I decided to tackle the HTML involved in adding a navigation bar to the blog. I'm using one of the oldest blog templates that blogger have and so new things have to be added the old fashioned way. The alternative would be to upgrade to a new template, but, oh, the pain of having to re-customise. After four hours of breaking and fixing the blog, and chewing my nails down, I've got the beginnings of a navbar and a feeling of success. Now I just have to link those links (sounds like a song title, doesn't it?) and make it actually do something useful. For now I've just hooked it up to the Sana recipe page, just so there was something less revealing of my status as a programmer than 'insert link here'. :D

Quaky Cat

As my resident Quaky Cat, Razzy is quite a good indicator of aftershock frequency. He won't come inside for about four hours after a shake. Therefore, the pic above indicates that it's been at least four hours since a decent rumble. Progress! It probably helps that it's damn cold outside, and quite cosy by the fire.

I have some more quake pics for you. The first two show the impact of the 13 June aftershocks, and reinforce the wisdom of all those cordons that are keeping people out of buildings. 

Pic 1: The local cycle shop after the Feb quake:

Pic 2: The cycle shop last Tuesday:

Aftershock = earthquake, right?

There is also further damage to the local church hall. Looks a bit 'deconstructed', doesn't it? Quite angular and maybe even a little bit arty?

The below pic shows what I was talking about in terms of damage being specific to certain types of houses - mostly those with brick walls. Here you see two houses on the hill that are 'completely munted', and yet the two behind them are still occupied and appear to be undamaged (although you can't really tell until you go inside and look for cracks).

In other quake developments, I have some exciting news to share:

They have started pulling down the old supermarket and word on the street (i.e. a nosy call to the New World HQ) suggests that we are getting not only a new supermarket (drooool) but also a spanking new mall. It's beginning to feel like moving to a new city... without the hassle of actually moving. We stay put, the earth moves around us. That's just how we do it over here in Chch.

CRAMMING

Building at the Arts Centre - taken 27th May 2011

Today I am doing something that I try not to do.. cramming for an exam. Specifically, the Nutritional Biochemistry exam on Friday. I've also got a Community Psych exam on Saturday, but I feel ok about that one. Nutritional Biochemistry is an exam of many, many short and medium length answers, no multi-choice and not many clues as to what will actually be in it. It's pretty much, try to memorise the study guide and take it from there.

Naturally, I'm also trying to get my head together after yesterday's serious little shake up, which the media has been all day breathlessly reminding us has been upgraded to a 6.3 on the richter scale. Yes, a free upgrade! yay?. We also had four or five quite decent shakes through the night. Of course, I had a moment today, forgot about it all and went out to 'get a few things' from the supermarket. Bad idea.  Not only was the supermarket in its usual post-quake state of packed full of panicky people trying to take the whole shop home with them, but also there was a 4.2 aftershock while I was waiting at the checkout. Several people abandoned their shopping and fled, pushing and shoving their way through the crowd. The rest of us just shrugged. I guess we are just resigned to it, or have had our panic buttons pressed so many times that they don't work anymore, or something.

Tired of reporting on quakes, the media is now trying to get the country revved up about whether Christchurch should actually be rebuilt. Comments are running hot and fast on news sites, with about 30 percent of respondents seeming to think that it's all getting a bit costly and that perhaps the earth around Christchurch is entering a centuries long phase of shimmy shimmy. The consensus seems to be either a) move the city or b) abandon it. I told Sistasana about it on Skype and she said 'do they think this is a Hollywood movie?'. You know... everyone packs their things into a bag and makes a mass exodus.  Looks good on screen for sure.  The reality is not so simple, really.  Where are you going to put 500,000 people? And just try selling a house in Christchurch right now.. any takers?  In my own mind, I am on the pro-rebuild side of things, but also feeling less attached to the old buildings that are progressively crumbling with every big shake. Unfortunately, the future is not going to look much like the past if we are to be clever about this rebuild.

This building below is the Christchurch Art Gallery, which has acted as Civil Defense HQ since September. I hated it when it was built. Critics called it 'The Tutu'. I'm currently feeling quite affectionate toward it.

It is massive, it is fronted completely in glass, it is new and, as far as I know, has has come through all quakes without so much as popping a window. This goes to show that, if the buildings are made to suit the ground, they will be fine. As for quakes continuing for decades or centuries... well, that's not what usually happens, but nor is such a consistent run of big quakes so.. you never know; you just never know. 

I think that there is going to be a polarising of citizens; those that can live with the uncertainty and those that can't. Those that can't (e.g. the ones that made a stampede in the supermarket) should certainly leave, rather than lose their mental health. I think I'm ok with it for now, although I would never say that it's ideal to always have your internal quake sensor primed to duck for cover, not that this helped at all in yesterdays biggie because I was crossing the road.  The ground moved violently, with a deafening roar and I collided with a car that was stopped at the lights. Or, we collided with each other as both the car and myself were being shunted around. There is a nice bruise forming on my right hip but I didn't really feel it at the time as I was cranked on adrenaline and erm... cracking up with laughter at the guys in a nearby truck that were whooping it up with the 'yeeeehar's and wooohoooo's'. All from the comfort of a stranger's car bonnet mind you...

On a business note, I've checked all the stock and everything looks fine. It will be business as usual tomorrow, although today we did not dispatch due to traffic congestion.  Onward.

And then.. an hour later...

This.

Groan...

Seriously.. this is messing with my study schedule...

Yes, yes...

Time to take a break and clean up all my books that were just dumped on the ground.

Really Mother Earth? Just ask yourself please; Was that necessary?

A gentle reminder..

A few days ago the media gently delivered some oh-so-calming news to the shattered nerves of Cantabrians. They were very subtle about it:

It seems that a bunch of seismologists broke out their earth analysing gear and excitedly concluded that NZ is even more fault-ridden than anyone had previously thought. They told us that the fault that moved on Feb 22nd had, until then, not so much as shifted a butt cheek to relieve pressure in 50 million years. That would make us kind of unlucky then.

To conclude, we were given some pretty depressing statistics about the likelihood of another big quake and then reassured that earthquake forecasting is still a very inexact science. Wonderful.

Right on cue, this morning Mother Earth delivered a nice little reminder that she is still in the mood to act out:

That's a 5.5 at 9am (and just to add drama, there was just another jolt *right then* as I'm typing). This morning's quake was a bit alarming because it was quite long and seemed as if it might be building up to something. The rafters were creaking. It was a 'cat scatterer', which is my barometer of quake size. The EQC apparently agree that it was more than decent.

In spite of the fact that I feel acclimatised to my quaky city, I still found it hard to focus on a major Health of Communities assignment that is pending. Ironically, it is about earthquake recovery in my suburb. My motivation was already flagging a bit due to making a serious attempt at cutting back my excessive caffeine consumption.

We decided to head out, grab a caff'd espresso (ahhhhhhh, instant mood adjustment) and do some serious shopping:

Yeah, that's me. Perfect Housewife.
(for sure, The Programmer does not love me for my housewifery skills).

We also took stock of our earthquake supplies. It's easy to get complacent and as we have been drinking our filtered water as fast as we can filter it (the R.O. system is ultra slow), I'm devoting the next few days to stockpiling the H2O. I hope that everyone in Christchurch has learned about hoarding water. Don't worry if people think you are nuts, just do it. Even if you develop a water hoarding disorder, this will only make you the most popular person in your community if we get another biggie.

We also stocked up on firewood, batteries for the torches and things that make life less trying if the power goes out, like wine (essential post-quake nerve settler) and chocolate (essential post-quake pick-me-up). Sorted.

Hello Kitty!

Now and then, it hits home how different things are since the earthquakes.  In my pre-quake past, the most important part of visitor preparation would probably have been a serious attempt at cat-hair removal in the guest room. Today, the prime subject of discussion was how to ensure that we don't get someone accidentally squished in a serious aftershock.

The Programmer got busy, conducting test shakes all around the house to see what might break loose and coming up with such things as - the brace:

And.. the band:

In Quake#2 everything came out of that high cupboard and some of it was... for example, an enormous amplifier.  I wouldn't want that to land on Kek while she's sleeping.   If that happened she may take revenge by posting drunken party pics of me on her blog (!). OH, the humanity.

Apart from securing any potentially wayward gear, it was important to Hello Kittify the area where Miss J will hopefully sleep. Naturally, I'm deluding myself because she always ends up in our bed, but it's surely worth a crack. 

Just in case you were distracted by the enormous belly of the real kitty, here are our new cats, which fortunately don't require feeding or de-sexing:

Being an Aunty is an exercise in all things Hello Kitty, Strawberry Shortcake, Princess Lillifee and...Lady Gaga (?). However, as well as keeping up an extensive knowledge of said items of pop culture, an Aunty must also be adaptable and ready for split-second changes in what is cool to the 5 y.o. young woman. There is definitely a chance that Miss J will be over those things in a week and on to the next thing.. probably gothic art or programming computers or something.

Of course all of this activity required quality fuel:

Mid afternoon snack:

Ginger!  Woohooooo. I love these R.A.W bars by Ceres organics. For a start they are NZ made, although some of the ingredients are imported - which is not surprising seeing as NZ isn't exactly renowned for its almond or dates industry. The packet is completely comprehensible - dates, almonds, ginger.  No E numbers, no agave and yet sooo delish.  By the way, I'm not being paid to say this, and I didn't get any free bars.. although, come to think of it, Ceres, I certainly wouldn't say no. What does a blogger have to do to get a free sample these days? Beg shamelessly? I ask you...

After that, it was more mad activity and then..

Dinner, which I admit, wasn't all that photogenic. If it was a contestant on NZ's Next Top Model, this would have been elimination week:

Standard Sara fare - spicy NZ lamb (organic, animal welfare, makes your wallet cry), 'golden' (turmeric) cauliflower and a little basmati rice.  There was no training today, but I think I made up for it by (carefully.. with spine-centred mindfulness..) basically redistributing and cleaning the whole house.  Housework-ercise is a totally valid way to get your daily activity. I'm not saying it's the most fun way, but there is no point in having the guilts about missing yoga when you did six hours of scrubbin' and grubbin' (or, in my case, shinin' and whinin'?).

Disclaimer: When I say 'I', I mostly mean The Programmer and Mamasana who did the bulk of the lifting. I was primarily in charge of the scrubbing and cleaning dept. which I managed with an attention to detail and respect for the looming deadline of tomorrow.

Speaking of which, stay tuned for some very happy pics. :D Now that the rooms are ready, I'm all excited about getting some visitors and may not sleep...  

Little sisters.. creating chaos where there was... already chaos?

"Oh my god, I just scared the baby, his little legs are going like mad!".

That was the moment last night, via Skype, when my sister finally checked her ticket and realised that she  had her travel dates out by a day. Out in the wrong direction - as in Eeeeeek, I'm supposed to be on a plane in Zurich tomorrow morning!.  She must have squealed loudly enough to alarm little 2 month-old G (Force). I also went immediately to oh-my-gosh-ville, because that means the infiltration of small, high-energy relatives begins on Friday, not Saturday and I don't, in fact, have good Friday - when The Programmer is off work, to get shit ready.  


I can't judge really. I once checked a plane ticket in Palermo, Sicily and realised I was supposed to catch my flight back to New Zealand the next day, from Rome.  Yeah.. that was a costly lack of forethought... but I digress..

There is some rather serious organising to do in the next day, including actually finding a second spare bed.  Stay posted.  I'm sure this will be amusing (maybe can make one out of the box the TV came in?).

In spite of the panic, there was still other stuff on the to-do list. First thing this morning I rang the vet to see if Monty really needed to get re-plastered. Yes, they said, he does. If he doesn't, the bones could heal in the wrong position and he'll have a permanent limp. I have to say, I have never seen a cat less amused about anything. He spent several hours trying to get it off, but obviously the vet did a super-duper catproof, bombproof job this time. The Programmer devised a plastic wrap so at least we can let him outside to do his business in the usual cat way. He refuses to use any indoor 'catbox'. The cast has to stay dry for two weeks.. and the weather is not complying.

"one is not amused.."

So, before I go racing off to try and turn chaos into order in the house foyer, let's talk about dinner.

This is an aged beef, pumpkin and broccoli mix, tossed with a sour cream, red wine and mushroom sauce. It was yumminess.  What I did with the meat was:

• Cut it into medallion sized pieces and salt/peppered
• Seared the pieces in butter and olive oil then removed them from the pan
• Added to the pan:
• 3 cloves crushed garlic
• Chopped fresh thyme, marjoram, oregano
• 1 cup beef stock
• 1 cup red wine
• Then returned the meat to the pan and slow-cooked for 1.5 hours.

• Then removed the beef again, added four large, sliced portabello mushies, turned up the heat and let the liquid boil and reduce a bit and the mushrooms soften and absorb some liquid.
• I then took the pan off the heat and added about 100g sour cream. This makes the sauce. Stir it to mix but do not let it sit without stirring or it will curdle.
• Meat, plus any other veges into the bowl (one a bed of rice or noodles if one needs more carbs).  Stir the sauce through it. I didn't use much sauce because I already ate.. quite a bit of fat at afternoon tea time (70% Green and Blacks chocolate.. ). It's all the balance of the day, I tell ya.

This is one of those recipes that makes everyone think you are a culinary genius, when actually you just needed to cook something that you didn't need to babysit. :D

Oooh, aftershock. .. it wasn't a 'cat scatterer' though, so probably a .. 3.2?

Edit: It was a 3.7, 8 kms deep.  Do I get a prize for being at least a little bit right?

A guest post from the crazy cat lady (within)

Today there was an apparently quite large aftershock at 1.30pm. I didn't really feel it though because I spent most of the day ferrying felines around to their various appointments.  I just thought it was a large gust of wind that made the car sway, plus I was distracted by the yowling coming from the back.

Yesterday I made the decision that Monty had to go to the vet. Remember his sore foot? Well, it seemed to improve a bit but then wasn't really getting better. It was very guilt inducing watching him sit with his foot held up, and this feeling was intensified x 1,000,000 when the xray revealed a broken foot.  So he was in cat hospital for a day getting a flouro orange cast applied. There are no pictures of it though because he managed to pull it off about two point five minutes after getting home. Not only that, but we had been plotting heavily how to keep it dry and he foiled that plan too by peeing all over himself and The Programmer on the way home.  

He had been in a cat bag - porous, naturally, on The Programmers lap.  Also, and you need to know this, if you release a wound up and cat-pee covered cat in your house, you will have cat-pee everywhere.  I've cleaned up and am burning incense, but all I'm getting is eau de cat-pee with a slight tinge of jasmine.  Mmm. 

So, here (pic below) we have Monty wondering why the catflap is locked and he can't get out. This is when I was about to try and stuff him in that bag in the foreground - which is in itself an act that should only be attempted by a contortionist.

Here he is, in the bag, probably already planning a complex system of revenge, involving cat pee and cat cast evasion.

While I was there with Monty, the vet told me that they only had a few free microchips left, so I booked the others in and spent the rest of the day stuffing perplexed cats into bags or cages and letting the vet stab them in the neck with an enormous needle.  To be fair, only Miranda seemed to notice this and gave a little growl, even though it looked horrendous.  So, I'd say microchipping is fairly painless. It certainly relieves my mind of the anxiety of losing them permanently if we have another big quake. It also gives the cats the ability to skite about being registered companion animals. I'm sure that will impress their frenemies.

In between the cat-chipping performance, I did a 20 minute workout that was sufficiently difficult to make me realise that I need to increase my CV fitness quite a lot. I used a Tabata timer and did intervals of things like jumping squats - 20 seconds jumping, 10 seconds rest, for 15 rounds.  Try it.. it's not as easy as it sounds.

Now it is time for a nice glass of red and a stovetop tagine. That's not the traditional way to make it - however, the proper traditional way is to bury the whole lot in sand, so we do what we can.  Something with Moroccan spices in it is just what I need after subjecting all my pets to a day that will live in infamy. 

Hello Autumn!

On Saturday night we put our clocks back an hour and right on cue, the temperature has started indicating that the seasons they are a-changing. My office attire today included a warm scarf, jersey and All Blacks hat.

The garden is getting wintery. The yellow flower below is the artichoke plant indicating that it's time to harvest. These are the 'under ground' jerusalem artichoke, very good for keeping the blood sugar under control. The flavour is a 'love em or hate em' kind of thing. I find them quite delish, roasted and salted (then again.. you could roast and salt an old sock and it probably would be fab).

I've just submitted my Photovoice assignment and now the afternoon is packed with Sana stuff. April is usually quite nutty as people spend up to celebrate the new financial year. We did our spending in March, in anticipation of this :D

Lunch today was my 'go to' meal - an omelette. I peered into the fridge, saw the organic eggs and was inspired.

When travelling, I eat omelette a lot, because I can only handle croissant for breakfast and sandwiches or sausages for lunch for so long. I discovered in Prague they do a thing called 'omelette with herbs' which is what I made today. It's just got a few fresh herbs in there (chives, basil, thyme) and some salt. I even managed to flip it without turning it into scrambled eggs.

I garnished with a bit of avocado and... an espresso, just to complete the 'I'm in Europe' effect.

On the quake front, there have been an alarming lack of aftershocks. I say 'alarming' because I prefer a lot of small ones, rather than a rest and then a 'making up for it' rattler. Fingers crossed that this calm will continue. I've got out-of-town visitors showing up soon (for that exciting event I've been hinting at.. no, not a wedding..) and I don't want to have a house full of wide-eyed quake newbies. Perhaps I should stock up on the valerian and rescue remedy, just in case.