Welcome to Monday Musings…I am back from my break to Australia its a tad cold as its Autumn there but the days after a cold start were warm and sunny we didn’t have any rain…it was lovely to be able to raid my daughter’s wardrobe now we are the same size in clothes so I borrowed a couple of sweatshirts/hoodies…
It was lovely to go for long beach walks and just chat and admire the scenery we then finished with a lovely hot drink…the bougainvillaea flowers (seen in the header image)are in full glorious bloom everywhere… the name stands for passion. To the Victorians, a gift of bougainvillaea was meant to ignite passion. In other parts of the world, bougainvillaea flowers stand for welcoming visitors, peace, and free trade…a beautiful flowering bush of bougainvillaea always makes me smile and everywhere we went they were in full glorious bloom…
On arrival in Australia, we were greeted by our darling daughter and our two grandsons who were a tad smaller when I last saw them and now they are fully grown young men…after settling down and unpacking in our eldest grandson’s beautiful home we had something to eat, a welcome shower and then sleep…after our long journey…
The morning came and we were taken to our daughter’s home in Dongarra where we experienced a spot of pulling cray pots never in a million years did I expect to see my darling girl setting up the bait in the pots, grappling with ropes and swabbing down the decks once the crays had been pulled and the new pots with bait dropped back into the ocean we were then treated to a beautiful rock lobster breakfast cooked on the boat within 30 minutes of being caught ..it was so beautiful and fresh…amazing…
Donna going out in the small skiff to bring the cray boat in so we can get on board the boat easier…
It was a wonderful experience and a first as any crays I have eaten before this was actually Yabbies…I thought crays were just big shrimp but how wrong was I …it is a beautiful rock lobster…
You live and learn…
My first attempt at a video so it isn’t professional just how it happened…
That’s all for today your first snapshot of our holiday to Australia…next time I will take you on a walk and show you some of the beautiful scenery we saw on our visit to Kalbarri, the roos and the Sky Walk…
Thank you for joining me today I hope you are all well and happy…Normal service on this blog will be resumed soon xx
Welcome to my weekly roundup of posts just in case, you are like me and find a roundup helpful especially when the week has been busy…Starting with Monday Musings where my muse pinpoints anything exciting or unusual I have read, seen or experienced during the last week it could be anything that piques my interest…we are now in May and our temperatures have taken a hike upward it was 44C yesterday and predicted to be the same today…to say I am melting and only want cold drinks and ice cream is an understatement…a cup of tea is most certainly not on my agenda…
Monday Musings:
Last week Monday Musings was a mix of invention and the ancient art of Buddhism…the idea of 3D dissolvable vaccine patches is fantastic all you need is a printer a step forward for outlying areas and for anyone with a needle phobia…then I shared a Buddhist practice where anyone who passes away and has no family are tended by volunteers… Thai volunteers exhume the bones of the nameless dead, who have no one else to care for them, the remains are washed and laid out to dry then they perform a ceremony on the remains to aid the deceased in their spiritual rebirths…it is a beautiful ceremony performed with love and respect…
Where I shared one of my favourite recipes for using up cold rice…whenever I make these and take a bowl if we are going out they just disappear they are such a lovely snack with all the different textures the crunch from the lettuce or white cabbage the heat of the chill and the ginger and the lovely rice balls they are truly a beautiful bite of food…
Potato peels make lovely crisps and are far healthier than the processed nasties as you are in charge of the salt and the fat which is why they can be a tad healthier if you air fry them but they are also delicious if you cook them in the oven which I have to at the moment as I don’t own an air fryer…
Coke and other sodas the amount of sugar and other things make them one of the unhealthiest drinks and I’m not talking about the odd glass of Coke but that is all some drink and drink bottles of this every day…
Thursday Thoughts…the start of another month…May is National Walking Month-(UK) big smile- as you know I love to walk…walking is a fantastic way to keep active and maintain a healthy heart as it is fun, flexible and free…
When you think of mummies Egypt always springs to my mind..the pyramids, the Pharaohs and their Queens however this particular very well-preserved mummy was found quite by chance in China…
The Lady of Dai is one of the best-preserved mummies ever found. The condition is owed to the fact that her body had been swaddled in 20 layers of silk and she was found in 80 litres of an unknown liquid that was mildly acidic with some magnesium in it. She was placed within four layers of coffins, which were within an airtight, clay-lined burial vault 12 meters underground.
This week Sally would like to show you how your role in your immune system’s efficiency is critical and possibly life-saving.
You only have to look at stats and information on how health services are struggling to know that we can and should help ourselves as many lifestyle diseases are preventable…Sally has the knowledge and loves to share how we can help ourselves and unless we do we will become one of the statistics..so please click the highlighted link below it will take you to Smorgasbord Magazine…See you there…the kettle is on xx
Thank you for joining me today as always I look forward to your comments…I have no objection if anyone adds a link to their comment if it is relevant to the post however I do not allow link-dropping…I have been quite nice about this but in future, I will send you to spam as it seems my request is being ignored…
A personal request from me…I would be so very grateful if any of you will add little 6yr old Lenny to their prayers and send positive thoughts he has been diagnosed with High-Grade Lymphoma you can imagine what a shock this has been for his mummy and the rest of my family as he has to have intensive chemotherapy and stay in hospital for at least 6 months until the treatment is finished…I just can’t believe how cancer is rampaging through our family…I am more than shocked and wonder whose next,,,
Thank you again for joining me today I hope you are all having a lovely weekend xx
Welcome to Monday Musings where my muse pinpoints anything exciting or unusual I have read, seen or experienced during the last week it could be anything that piques my interest…Last week I was on a bit of a rant so this week I thought I would tone it down a little -smile and today is May Day…historically in Europe and the UK it is associated with rural pagan festivities…
Traditions often include gathering wildflowers and green branches, weaving floral garlands, crowning a May Queen (sometimes with a male companion), and setting up a Maypole, May Tree or May Bush, around which people dance. Bonfires are also part of the festival in some regions…
Science never ceases to amaze me and sometimes it also scares me…this is one of the advances that amazes me… first seen on acflory@wordpress.com...its brilliant idea for anyone who has a needle phobia or who lives in a remote place…or is housebound…mobile dissolvable vaccine patches…
Thai volunteers exhume the bones of the nameless dead, who have no one else to care for them, the remains are washed and laid out to dry then they perform a ceremony on the remains to aid the deceased in their spiritual rebirths…
Dressed all in white the volunteers carefully and respectively clean all the bones…The bones are then all laid out neatly to dry in the sunshine…
They are then taken to the temple where Thais make merit and add gold leaf to the bones then they are buried again to rest eternal and go forward to the afterlife…One way for Thai Buddhists to show their respect for a person or concept is to make merit by affixing small squares of gold leaf onto images of Buddha or other sacred objects…in this case, it is placed on the skulls of the deceased who have no families of their own…
Even the act of making gold leaf earns merit for individuals. Sheets of gold are pounded to .000005 of an inch. The leaves of gold are made by two poundings with wooden mallets. It takes about five hours of hammering to complete one pouch of gold leaf. Then the job passes to the delicate hands of young girls to slice up squares of 2.5 centimetres and put them on waxed paper and stacked in booklets ready to sell.
Postage-stamp-size booklets of gold leaves are always on sale along with incense, flowers and candles at temples and shrines for use as daily offerings.
Making merit is something practising Buddhists do…Merit-making is important to Buddhist practice…it is a beneficial and protective force which accumulates as a result of good deeds, acts, or thoughts…
I think it is a lovely ceremony to make merit for those who have no family…
Thank you for joining me today as always I look forward toy your comments and appreciate any shares…xx
Welcome to Monday Musings…where my muse pinpoints anything exciting or unusual I have read, seen or experienced during the last week it could be anything that piques my interest…as most of you know waste and particularly food waste is high on my agenda as are highly processed foods and particularly the fact that I still see peoples shopping trolleys loaded with highly processed foods …I ask why ..is it because they are cheaper? is it because of peer pressure or kid pressure? or is it because they themselves grew up on that same diet? so many questions whirl around my brain…
I look around and see and know so many people with cancer and lifestyle diseases that could be prevented or if not be less severe…I see and hear that health services are struggling…
But most of all I wonder why people don’t see that they themselves can break that cycle..most of my blogging friends know that and do look after their own health…its the rest of the population that don’t and I alone cannot reach or change that so what is the answer…do I say sod it I’m all right Jack so pull the ladder up …Some say that originates from the British Royal Navy where the last person up the ladder would say “I’m alright Jack”.
It was also the title of the 1959 comedy film I’m All Right Jack. It also appears in the lyrics of the 1973 Pink Floyd song “Money”, and is the name of a 2019 song by UB40 which satirises people who do not care about the less fortunate…
Somewhere along the line not only have we become a throw-away society but an “I’m alright Jack” society and that makes me really sad…
Well, I’m not going to break the habit of a lifetime I’m banging the waste drum…
Greenhouse gases resulting from rotted and otherwise wasted food account for around half of all global food system emissions, according to a new study…we need to eat less meat and compost more instead of landfill…
Some great ideas I didn’t realise about emails and pasta water I already use …I use it when I make a real carbonara with no cream but the way the Italians make it they use pasta water, egg yolks and parmesan to make the carbonara sauce …it is also great for adding to stews and casseroles, steam vegetables with, water your plants, make rice, cook beans there is no reason on this earth to throw pasta water down the sink when water to many is a life saver…we need to conserve what we can before it comes home to roost as it will one day maybe not in my lifetime but it may affect my children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren…please click the link and give yourself a pat on the back if you are already doing one or more and if you can even only do one more every little helps…I have to believe that or I would give up…
Finally, I have always stated I would never be a vegetarian or a vegan…veal I have never eaten as my grandad who was a cattle farmer explained why we shouldn’t and I never have…
I came across this post when I went to thank this person for following me…I haven’t eaten meat since…just the thought makes me heave..my son told me I shouldn’t have watched it as I knew that meat was killed for my food so why watch it…but I did and I can’t unwatch it…I am just so glad I know an organic farmer and have had a tour…
I agree we make the choice to eat meat plus we do need a balanced diet…what they do to prepare meat for the supermarket shelves is legal…HOWEVER…I drew a comparison as there is so much publicity about the killing of cats and dogs for food and the circumstances surrounding the killing of the animals HOWEVER if you watch this video tell me how different what is done to prepare meat for our consumption compared to the killing of cats and dogs …apart from being legal…
Aren’t these cute? For many OF us one or more of these are eaten regularly don’t we owe it to them to make sure that however short their lives are that they are happy and well cared for and we can enjoy our food safe in the knowledge that they were not raised on hormones and the like as this also affects our health just look at the stats …
It also brings me to this point and I don’t condone either of the two I have spoken about above…the French eat horse meat…I would not… however, if I was born in France then I may well have done…in some countries, cute little guinea pigs are eaten here not so cute rats are eaten …I think my point is obvious … I am happy to hear any comments as long as they are polite your views may differ from mine and that is fine happy to hear them a good debate is healthy…
If we choose our meat wisely we can eat meat…I have found and had a tour of a local organic farm as I don’t trust the supermarkets to tell me the truth when they quote organic…
This video is graphic however if you eat meat surely you want to know that the animals are treated kindly…and not just cruelly slaughtered…
If you are still here and reading I thank you as all these thoughts have been churning around for a while and once I started well you know the rest it all poured forth…as always I appreciate your comments and any shares xx
Welcome to Monday Musings…where my muse pinpoints anything exciting or unusual I have read, seen or experienced during the last week it could be anything that piques my interest…
Soy sauce…I use it almost daily…Soy sauce is one of the oldest condiments in the world. It’s believed to have originated during the Western Han Dynasty in China, over 2,500 years ago, a byproduct of fermented soybeans and wheat that have been mixed with brine. Known in Chinese as jiang you, soy sauce’s manufacturing process slowly spread across Asia and was readily adopted by various different culinary traditions, and now is one of the most used condiments in the world…but is all soy sauce equal?…
Not if it’s made in wooden barrels and aged correctly…it has no chemicals and an exquisite taste…it is also recommended that once you refrigerate your soy sauce however most Asians don’t refrigerate soy sauce probably because they use soy sauce in almost everything on a daily basis and a bottle is used fairly quickly thus it doesn’t spoil …
As I make what condiments I can then I spend that little bit more on things like soy sauce to ensure I get a better quality and a sauce not brewed quickly and chemically…
Boxing now is highly regulated and over the years there have been some epic matches ones that tales are still told when the men are reminiscing down the pub…However, on April 17th in the year 1860, the first “world championship” boxing match took place…
Not in a grand stadium like New York’s Madison Square Garden but in an open field in southern England…The contenders were 25-year-old John Carmel Heenan, the all-American champion, and England’s “Titch” Sayers, 34, who was described on posters as “the small, clever little ring general”. He needed to be. Weighing 149lb, Sayers was just 5ft 8in tall, while 6ft 2in Heenan tipped the scales at 195lb.
And the gloves were off it was a brutal bare-knuckle fight that went 42 rounds and lasted 2 hours and 27 minutes then the police arrived…the match was stopped and the crowd legged it to avoid arrest…The purse was 200 pounds…
What is processed Food?
Although microwave meals, shaped and breaded meat and ready meals may spring to mind when you think of processed foods, they’re not the only foods that are classed as ‘processed… it’s not as straightforward as you may think…
Simple food processing includes:
Canning
Drying
Baking
Freezing…
Those cupcakes that you have lovingly made are processed…that can of sweetcorn you tipped into your pasta bake … also processed…thus we need to pick our processed food wisely as some are healthier than others…Not all processed foods are a bad choice… milk needs to be processed to make it safe, which is why it gets pasteurised to remove any harmful bacteria.
And your favourite olive oil needed to be processed so you can cook and make pesto with it…now we have that out of the way we get to the processed foods we need to avoid or eat in moderation…
Why? …because of the high fat, sugar and salt in them…without realising those microwave meals can cause people to eat more than the recommended daily allowances of salt, sugar and fat without realising. They can also come with a surprisingly high-calorie count due to all the added ingredients –which is why I advocate cooking from scratch where possible as then you can control how much fat, sugar and salt is in your food…
That’s not to say that all ready meals are bad for you – there are some companies out there who are trying to make their ready meals much lower in calories, fat, salt and sugar, but they still tend to be very low in other important nutrients…always check the product’s ingredients online if you are like me and can’t read the labels…
One UK study found that out of 100 supermarket-ready meals, not even one fully complied with World Health Organisation nutritional guidelines. not just pretty shocking it’s outrageous…
The easy solution is to batch cook if you have a large family and freeze portions or if you are cooking for one/two then cook an extra portion or two and freeze them…it works really well with curries, spag bol, chilli or shepherds pie I always cook more mince and then freeze portions of the mince mixture and cook fresh mash or make extra mash when I know its shepherds pie the next day I just top the mince with potato when I wish to use it…Simple and it doesn’t take long…
I am a firm believer that many of these lifestyle diseases and cancers are related to our food choices and the fact we don’t exercise enough…I certainly feel 100% better by exercising more and making sensible food choices however I still have the occasional icecream or donut as a treat its all about sensible eating …
Thats all for Monday Musings today I hope you all had a good weekend and have a productive week ahead as always I look forward to your comments and appreciate any shares x
Welcome to Monday Musings on the Easter Monday…I hope you enjoyed your chocolate eggs and hot-cross buns and any other Easter fare that you partake in every Easter we all have our Easter traditions wherever we are in the world… While primarily a Christian holiday, like Christmas, it has also become a cultural celebration centred around brightly decorated eggs, chocolate, scavenger hunts, and rabbits.
Easter Monday is a public holiday in 116 nations throughout the world, including Australia, Austria, Germany, Egypt, Ireland, United Kingdom, Spain, Ghana, Fiji, France, Hong Kong, Italy, Kenya, Poland, Russia, and South Africa. However, not all observations are directly centred around the Christian tradition.
Today in 1858 “Big Ben”, a 13.76-tonne bell, was recast at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, Middlesex, and hung in the newly erected St. Stephen’s Tower.
Since 1889 Whitechapel has been part of London and since 1965 part of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
It was also on this day in 1912: Titanic sets sail on her maiden voyage from Southampton to New York with 2,240 passengers and crew on board. The Titanic has been described as the world’s most luxurious floating hotel and was only 5 days out when she hit an Iceberg and sank in the Atlantic with the loss of many lives…this tragedy is still remembered and talked about today there have been documentaries and films made…
However, the Titanic has never been raised…
Thank you for joining me today on this Easter Monday I hope you have had an enjoyable holiday weekend and have a great week ahead…x
Retired? No one told me! 