Moving

Blogs.

Clearly I'm not very good at them. I haven't posted here in a few years but unemployment does strange things to a girl.

Since my last post I have left Canada, moved to England and completed a Masters. Now though it is time to move again. Packing up my life and shipping it all back to Canada. Finding a job. Cleaning. More cleaning.

Lots is going on here and I am slowly going to start documenting things again. Next week is graduation, and after that we are taking a weekend to explore Norfolk.

Anyways, this is the reactivation.

The influence of documentaries

  So a few weeks ago those of us that were contract staff were temporarily laid off, and in an attempt to fill my time I watched food documentary after food documentary.  Well you watch enough of them and they are bound to get in your head.

  Hungry for change and Vegucated back to back are what did it I think.  With a few TED Talks thrown in for good measure. I finally hit a level of guilt and frustration about my eating habits and I knew I had to change something so I am "weekday vegetarian" which means that I can have meat on the weekend if I want to, but Monday to Friday, it's all about the beans, legumes and greens.

  I don't have a problem with eating meat, and my general philosophy was that growing up and living near a Mennonite farming community that the meat I was getting had lived a good life, but I know that's not the case for most farmed animals.  Julian who a) requires more calories than me and b) lives for bacon and meat sweats, so his pledge was to be a better omnivore.  Eating more parts than just the prime cuts.

Dancing Weather

The weather almost everywhere is unseasonably warm.  The last week of March is approaching and rather than wondering whether to dress for thunderstorms or rainstorms people are walking around campus in shorts and bikini tops trying to get their tan on.  After being the cranky pants who walks around talking about how this is global warming and unnatural and aren’t any of these people just a little bit concerned?  I got the flu.  Stuck in bed, hacking out a lung 100 degree Fahrenheit Flu.  I couldn’t go outside, I could barely roll off my effin couch to make my way into the bathroom and even doing that would work up a sweat.  It’s been 3 or 4 days now, I’m feeling a lot better even if my lungs still aren’t on board with the whole ‘healthy moving around’ thing yet.  I put on my headphones and I realised all my music was summer related from last year, or from my trip to New Zealand last year.

This is weather that I normally embrace, I live in Canada, unseasonable? Yes. Un-enjoyable? Only when being a killjoy. 

So I’ll stop being a killjoy,  I’m going to go outside and play frisbee and chase my boyfriend around a field after a soccer ball like I did in highschool when I was young and stupid and lived every minute with extremes!  (I’d say with joy and love but would be overlooking the natural teenage tendency to fall into utter despair when things don’t go exactly as planned).

This is dancing weather, this is bbq weather, this is living life with frisbee in hand weather.

There are 4 weeks of class left, I don’t have a job, and my sister is trying to plan her wedding.  Right now I am wired on cough meds and wishing someone here would run around outside and dance with me.

May I have this dance?

Falling off the internet

I avoided my computer this weekend.  I pretended that like some bad disease it would suck me under in terrible ways I couldn’t and wouldn’t understand.  Sometimes being on the computer and internet for school is too much, and then we go and have social media, and blogs and podcasts that we want to listen to and they all require the internet and I wonder how I got on before my family got the cursed thing when I was in grade 7. 

This weekend I got to remember. They were/are called books.  I used to read all the time. I always had a book on the go, I would often even be reading them while watching TV which baffled my family a little.  I devoured a new one this weekend and realised I’m getting slow, I used to finish a small novel this size in a day, two tops and here I am on Monday still trying to finish a book I started Saturday afternoon.

I fell off the internet this weekend.  I got no school work done, but it felt great, and I can’t wait to do it again.

Before…

Before I ate wheat.  I was addicted to bread, pasta, baked goods, cereal, couscous.  It was in multiple meals in large servings, it was my snack it was everything.  So in December I tried a detox, I gave up wheat (and a bunch of other things) and then I slowly re-introduced things I had gone without and saw how my body reacted.  The answer is that my body DOES NOT like it when I eat wheat.  It now tells me in no uncertain terms each time I eat wheat that I shouldn’t, I get zits, I get upset stomachs I get sluggish and gross feeling.  So I tried to keep wheat out, but I haven’t been doing a very good job.  So I’m going to try and be better about it, because  I think it is tanking my immune system as per being plague ridden.

So I’m sick, which means that I’ll be home a bit. So I’m going to set some goals.  Here are the before photos of the areas I want to clean… providing I don’t you know curl up into a ball and pass out.

Culinary Disaster

So I tried to make a lava cake thing tonight.  It tasted AWFUL!  It seemed really simple, I halved the recipe to save on some butter, and baked it in little spring form pans.  I bought raspberries and blueberries to serve it with, thought about making whipped cream, (but am glad I didn’t, it would have been quite the waste).  It was to be the end of a great valentines out.

The end result was sugary and gross.

I usually have great success with baking and new recipes.  However this was just a disaster.

I find myself asking was it the cocoa being old?  Was it the flour?  Did I not mix the sugar and eggs long enough?  Not clarify the butter right?  I have mastered angel food cake, cream puffs, breads and pretzels but this simple recipe seems to have eluded me.  So for now I ditched the left overs and will not try this recipe again.  Though maybe I’ll keep my eyes out for a new version with less sugar.

It also might be time to buy new cocoa.

Grateful continued

I haven’t been updating with everything I am grateful for.  I guess I’m not very good at staying on top of things here on the blog. 

I am overall feeling more positive.  Though I still catch myself in strange dark moments, where things seem bleak and I don’t know why.  Today I am grateful for the simplicity of things like red lentil curry, and wheat free cinnamon crunch granola on plain yogurt. 

For flowers on the valentines day weekend, and for home made muffins (I might have made a lot of these).

For taking the time to have coffee with my sister, for the creator of black bean chips (and the chips themselves), for a cat that knows just how to suck up to her owner caretaker.  For ravelry and the world of awesome people it opened up, for loose leaf tea that makes a galaxy in your cup when you steep it right (the key is you aren’t supposed to use a disposable tea bag… just a strainer or you filter out the sparkles)…

I need to find something amazing for my swap partner on the Pi/Pie Swap… I mean more awesome than what I already have.