Beans, beans are good for the heart

We just ate four beans from our garden! Tasty!

I also put a bet on a horsie at fixed odds - 13-1 - that has now come in to 7-1. Them odds are looking good.

And now I am looking for prescription swimming goggles on line, and Hugo is putting the small furry critters to bed.

Hurrah, an update

Greetings and salutations, dear readers. My goodness life has been busy, and as I get to write all the time now for actual monies, the blog falls between the cracks a little, as I don't need it as much.

Mind you, I still need it some. It helps to empty my head out of all the random stuff floating around in it (some would say my head is an empty vessel at any rate) like knowledge of King Henry VIII's wives and which sort of cows produce milk with more beta casein A2 in it. You know, the useful stuff that everyone needs to know. Not. It doesn't even work for trivia nights, since the sort of stuff retained by my brain isn't the sort of stuff anyone else would think of making questions up about.

My latest piece of trivial knowledge, which will now clutter up my head until the grave shuts up the story of my days, is that the words above, below etc are a special grammatical thingy called a locative. My knowledge of grammar is largely instinctive, based on what I think sounds right (having been brought up in a house where everyone knows dead languages except me), and I KNEW that it was not correct to say (as an example) "refer to the below table", and I'm constantly correcting it in things I'm editing, to "refer to the table below". On aksing my Sibling Unit, I discovered that this is because above/below are locatives (pronounced lock-a-tives) and always come after the object they are locating. So HA I say to all the people who have questioned my edits. I shall now be able to assume an air of superiority and explain in a most smug manner that a locative is always placed after its object.

In other news, my PU#1 invited me to go with her to Paris next year, for the French Open. How cool is that? We will cheer for Liezel, and eat French food and stuff. I am currently downloading French lessons for my iPod, to brush up my skills which currently consist entirely of being able to ask "Where is the pen of my aunt?" and locate a hand-puppet call Bijoux above, below, on or at the table and also up le tour Eiffel (anyone who did French at school with me will remember Madame Love's mad hand puppet - Bec was also posting about this recently). Mind you, I did French for seven years. Says a lot about the quality of my educational experiences, imo.

So anyway, a week or so of tennis with cultural experiences between, and then another week in France, and then I am planning another week in ye olde Englande to see my aunts, cousins etc (probably on my own as PU#1 has to work). Am saving pennies for money to buy croissants and delicious French fashions - I saved a considerable amount of money on Monday, for example, by not buying two Alannah Hill tops. I also saved considerable money today at lunchtime by not buying Birkenstocks (owing to them not having the pair I wanted, but I digress). If I continue at this rate I will have saved 1000s by the time I go. Hurrah!

So, I shall listen to all the French lessons, and probably make people on the train think I am (even) mad(der) by repeating the phrases after the teacher. By the time I go I will be able to say all sorts of useful things, like "Do you have this skirt in black?" and "Does this dress come in a smaller size?" and "How much are the shoes?". Also "Which way to the Louvre?" and "Donnez-moi un pain de chocolat". Oh wait, I can already say that last one...

Saving the world Friday

'Pologies for the paucity of postings of the past period. There's been too much going on at work, and I don't like spending too long on the intertubes at home, because there's other more fun stuff to do. Like talk to Hugo, play with furry critters, etc.

I'm just eating my lunch as I type this, including a tomato salad made with home-grown tomatoes and basil (zero food miles! other than bringing it into work on the train), roast carrot, roast garlic, asparagrass (as we like to call it) and a sausage. Mmm... and last night as Hugo cooked the dinner, I made and bottled some raspberry sauce. The raspberries came out of (you guessed it) the bin at the organic greengrocer, and were very squashed and somewhat mouldy, but I picked the mouldy bits out, cooked it all up, and am planning to make peach ice-cream tomorrow to eat with the sauce. I just walked up to the market to buy the peaches, cream, milk, eggs, vanilla bean and a few random things like saffron (planning to make a puree of cauliflower, hazelnut and saffron next week some time - we had one at the 100 mile cafe, and it was delicious), mixed nuts, a cob of corn and some more asparagrass (just since it was delicious, and local - I checked).

Apart from pulling food out of dumpsters, we've got rid of a shower screen and a kitchen cupboard + random bit of laminate this week on freecycle - hurrah! - and scored some left-over glossy white paint for the woodwork in the bathroom from Aunty Em (yet to be collected, but then I'm yet to get motivated to paint anyway).

I'm so excited about the long weekend! Pete's having a BBQ on Saturday - I'm going to take the peach ice-cream and the sauce - and that's pretty much all we've got planned (other than a swim on Sunday), so lots of relaxing at home for us, no alarms, no deadlines, nothing strenuous.

Some more greenery

In case you all didn't get enough yesterday, I've discovered a couple of cool things today. One is this extra-cool website from the UK designed to help people stop wasting food. I LOVE being able to use up leftovers, and have a whole collection of recipes that use up all sorts of leftovers (including a large collection of recipes to use up sour milk or cream, which since I can't eat dairy probably isn't that useful, but includes a lot of tasty things, like chocolate cake or pancakes). The website lets you click on the food you have left over, and gives you recipes to use it up.

We've really minimised our food waste. The bunny and the guinea pig eat any scraps (they even love banana peel), the worm farm eats things they won't eat (like tea bags, corn husks, etc), and we seldom let anything actually get beyond the point of human consumption - in fact mostly I think "Oh, I might eat that cold sausage that was left from last night's dinner" only to find Hugo has already eaten it. But I do still love doing things like cooking osso bucco one night, and then using the left-over sauce to make the world's tastiest sausage casserole the next night (mmmm) - although that's really a winter dish(es).

I also discovered this funky knit shopping bag on knitty (which is one of the best knitting sites ever, and also has a pattern for magic cast-on socks, that don't have a seam in the toes). I'm thinking actually it would be easier to knit the bottom bit, then pick up the stitches around it on a circular needle and knit the rest of the bag on the round.

If you're looking for more green reading, I just found a green Australian blog.

And if you're starting to think of Easter already, god help us all, there's a gorgeous blog entry on Craftastica on how to dye your own eggs using vegetables.

It's Friday, it must be time to save the world

What with the (very stressful) tennis this week there has been scarcely a moment for world-saving. I have managed to fit one or two things in, however, around working and cheering loudly (LOUDLY!) at the tennis.

FREECYCLE is my word de jour. I put our old shower screen on it - who knew anyone would want an old shower screen? I was going to put it in the hard rubbish. But lo, someone wants it and is coming to take it away next week. Saved from landfill!

My other word de jour is EBAY. I sold the old fridge, and although the left-over river pebbles, the furry stools and the chairs haven't sold yet, 47 people have looked at the pebbles, and 4 are watching them. Go figure. But anyway, trash (or as I prefer to think of it, other people's treasure) is being removed from our house! The chairs are going despite the fact that they're comfy and functional, because Pete very kindly gave us two beautiful old club armchairs, in gold velvet, that belonged to his grandfather. He is getting a couch that belonged to his mother. So it is all a virtuous circle of furniture recycling. And if the chairs don't sell I will give them to someone as well (although since we only bought them a couple of months ago, I thought I'd try to sell them again first, especially as I seem to be having a perpetual financial crisis since the new mortgage payments are twice the size of the old mortgage payments!)

Also this week, on the theme of saving things from landfill, I have discovered the joys of the rubbish bin at the organic greengrocer's. On Tuesday I asked them if they had any scraps for bunny food, and they kindly told me I could go out the back and (as they put it) root around in the bin. And root I did! I uncovered many outer leaves of Chinese cabbage, several partially-gnawed on by rats ears of corn, several peaches, ditto, and then - miracles - an entirely un-nibbled, perfect organic peach. So I fished that out too, washed it very thoroughly, and ate it. A new experience for me, eating something from a bin (although the bin did only have not-too-nasty vegetable matter in it). Tasty. And then on Thursday when I went to get more bunny food (as well as human salad ingredients) I found an almost-perfect avocado. I wasn't going to buy an avocado as they were imported from New Zealand, and I generally don't buy imported foods (with the exceptions of coffee, some tea, chocolate and spices), but since there was one in the bin with only a small hole that may or may not have been caused by a ratty sampling it then deciding avocado was not to its palate... well, saved from landfill and delicious in our salad! Also another load of bunny food, and the corn is particularly appreciated by the bunny. It likes to rip up the outside husk and toss the ear in the air, as well as gnaw on the kernals.

Bunny is cute, but he's definitely going to the RSPCA to get the snip once the tennis is over. Hopefully that will calm him down a bit and he'll stop chasing poor Jules around. Julia is getting fatter and fatter. Fairly sure there are three piglets in there - you can really feel them now (although she's getting increasingly resistant to being picked up, not surprisingly). Bring on the piglets, I say!

I really would like to get some stuff done around the house over the weekend - although I don't know if it will happen - involving paint scrapings, tile scrubbings, tidyings, etc - but it probably won't happen. Oh well, we live in squalor... have a world-saving weekend, all!

Complete lack of logic

I just came across this article in the Age. It starts:


With ingredients such as high cholesterol coconut milk, clarified butter and sugar cane, the traditional Malaysian diet may be among the most unhealthy cuisines in the world.
But chefs in food-mad Malaysia, which touts itself as an Asian gastronomic heaven, are reinventing local cuisine due to a sharp jump in cases of obesity, diabetes and strokes in the Southeast Asian Muslim country.

Ok, let's get this straight. The traditional Malaysian diet (i.e. the one they've eaten for ages) is high-fat. But there's been a recent sharp jump in cases of obesity and various diet-related disease. Logic dictates, Captain, that if they've been eating this for ages and yet the obesity epidemic is recent, that the obesity epidemic IS NOT BLOODY WELL CAUSED BY THE TRADITIONAL CUISINE!!!

How hard is that to understand, for god's sake? Why, oh why, do children not get taught the rudiments of logic at school? The standards of journalism in this country, etc, etc. Sorry, I will stop ranting.

Further on in the article, "Experts blame rising affluence, a sedentary lifestyle and a growing trend of working mothers for the rise in health problems. "Generally people are eating more and eating higher-caloried food," said Tan Yoke Hwa, President of the Malaysian Dieticians' Association."

Grrr. Apart from the fact that anyone who blames "working mothers" for their children's diet without mentioning the fathers deserves a great big slap, yes, hello, people eating higher-caloried food and exercising less is clearly responsible for them getting fatter. But want to know something? I'd bet my bottom dollar it has nothing to do with the traditional cuisine, which for hundreds of years has NOT caused an obesity epidemic, and everything to do with the introduction of processed foods and soft-drinks containing high-fructose corn syrup. Oh yes, look - a report into the increase in consumption of soft drinks across Asia suggests everyone has "adopted Western consumption patterns, notably in regard to fastfood chains and carbonates". World-wide, we drink an average of 77 litres a year each of softdrink, and in 2005 the Australasian market for softdrinks increased by 8.1% volume compared to a global average of 4.7% for soft drinks overall in the year.

And yet the article trumpets the use of braised tofu over meat, and soy milk over (delicious, nutritious) coconut milk?

No mention of fast food and Coca Cola.

Wtf is wrong with people?

Ah, tennis

Just back from the tennis, where Liezel and Cara played v well and won v convincingly. And luckily for me, quickly, since I made it back to work before 4pm and therefore will be able to leave more-or-less on time, since I was in early and worked through lunch.

It is *rather* stressful watching though, even when they're winning, and I must remember not to wear rings as I do myself injuries while clapping. I also decided that the ideal garment for the tennis is really a floor-length, very long-sleeved white linen kaftan, teamed with a huge floppy hat because this would keep the sun off every pale bit of me, minimising the need for repeated applications of sunscreen, and linen is so nice and cool. I'm thinking perhaps I could embroider GO LIEZEL on the front and GO CARA on the back. No, not really.

But I am toying with the large kaftan idea. Really. It was awfully hot sitting on the court today, and it's only 24C - if it gets to 40 later in the tournament - or even the mid 30s - it's brutal sitting there in the sun.

I heart roast carrot

There's just nothing like the way it goes all lovely and caramelised, unless perhaps one considers roast parsnip, which is also pretty darn tasty. Lunch today consists of a smallish piece of steak, fried onions, garden salad with an olive oil & vinegar dressing and roast carrots. Yum! A lunch like this, unlike a sandwich or other carb-heavy meal, doesn't leave me feeling drowsy and dopey in the afternoon, but rather full of (as it were) beans. I try to make sure that my plate of food (actually a bowl, since it's easier to eat at my desk, and also means I don't eat too much as the bowl fits less in than the plates from our cafeteria) is about 2/3 veg and 1/3 protein, and since there's always salad and a hot vegetable I tend to get both for some extra variety. Variety is, as they say, the spice of life, and plus is a very important part of the paleolithic diet. Hunter-gatherers tend to eat upwards of 30 different foods a day, whereas people on a standard Western diet eat less than 20. So far today I've eaten 13, but I may get a fruit salad later when I head out to the tennis so that will up the count, and then dinner of course.

I'm just having a bit of a food thing at the moment - I feel so good about eating properly again - I did have a couple of minor lapses on the weekend, including making blueberry pancakes for breakfast on Sunday (but I did, at least, make them gluten-free) but overall I've been very careful and BOY do I feel so much better. I actually woke up this morning at about 6.15, completely awake and ready to go. Last week at some stage we had the TV on, and there was an episode of Extreme Makeover on - that show has to be the ULTIMATE in trash telly, and I will not even attempt to give a feminist perspective of it, other than to say it's all wrong (but way too entertaining for all that). Anyway, the episode featured "Heather, a 33-year-old nurse and aspiring actress". Now, Heather is a year older than me, was a tad on the flabby side, and admittedly didn't have much of a chin, but the thing that really struck me was how utterly unhealthy she looked. Her skin! It wasn't that she had acne or anything, but her skin! It just looked like she'd been dead for several weeks and that possibly rather than an Extreme Makeover Heather needed CSI. I'm pale, but when I look in the mirror, I look ALIVE, I hardly have a wrinkle (not unless you look very closely!), my skin looks healthy and I don't yet have a single grey hair, let alone premature baldness. And she was going bald. BALD. She had hardly any hair left on top of her head. I was wondering why she looked so terrible at 33 (I will admit, the thought crossed my mind that it was possible my hair, skin and teeth were all going to collapse in a heap over the next twelve months) but then the program revealed that she's a vegan. Everything fell into place. No wonder her skin looks like a cadaver and her hair is falling out. No Vitamin B12. Probably not enough sulphur (meat is the best source of sulphur). Likely to be lacking in the lovely fat-soluble vitamins etc we get from traditional nutrient-rich fats (butter, lard, tallow, etc). Mmm, lard. Too many anti-foods - margarines containing dangerous ingredients (transfats, plant sterols, inedible oils like corn oil and cotton seed oil), high fructose corn syrup etc - and foods that actively rob the body of nutrients - processed grains and legumes, for example, which contain alkylrescorcinols, alpha-amylase inhitors, protease inhibitors, lectins and phytic acid, all of which could be called "anti-nutrients".

Knowing all this, I looked at this poor unfortunate vegan woman and thought "Now, if you just ate a healthy diet you wouldn't need all this surgery or a hair transplant, because let's face it, even if you don't have much of a chin, if you're glowing with health you look attractive".

Ok, rant over for today :-)

Partay, dude

You may have noticed the teenager who chucked a party while his parental units were in Queensland in the 'papes recently (see here if you missed the palaver).

Ah, memories. While of course there was no MySpace where I were a lad, the best parties were certainly those with no parental supervision and lots of gatecrashers. And of course (as with Corey Delaney The Unrepentant), you never TOLD your parents that you were going to hang around the house and hold a party while they weren't there. It was always "Oh, I'm going to stay at Jane's for the weekend, and we're going to go to the movies on Saturday and then make pancakes on Sunday", whereas the actual truth was that you were going to go off to Jane's on Friday arvo after school with a bag of clothes in order to allay parental suspiscion, and then come back later with a bottle of OP rum and as many random people as you could round up.

I remember one weekend when my parental units were away for the weekend I held a party, during the course of which:

• we all got very drunk
• candle wax was somehow dripped from one end of the house to the other
• the entire back lawn was sprayed with a chemical foam fire extinguisher and turned a virulent orange colour by the time my PUs came back, which rather gave the game away.

I also remember another time when we famously attempted to have a party, only to be busted by a friend's mother, who had grown suspicious of our mutual "I'm staying at her place" story and came to see what we were really up to, which was drinking tequila shots and smoking cigarettes, with (shock, horror) boys. Busted.

But if you read the comments on the Age article, you'd think that most people had never been teenagers. They clearly all hatched from an egg, fully formed, as adults.

Photos

This is a salad made from things from our own garden - tomatoes, nasturtium, celery and loose-leaf lettuce. It was SO tasty!
New bunny - Theodore Rabbit - back view. He's a (mostly I think, since he's not actually the right colour to be a pure bred one) Himalayan, and I'm not getting too attached to him before we take him to be desexed.
He likes dandelion leaves, as you can see, and his eyes are only red because of the camera, he actually has dark eyes. He's quite handsome - lovely coat, but small ears and he's rather eensy because Himalayan bunnies are. But apparently is full grown.
We usually get a load of grass with seeds and dandelion leaves etc most days, and the cat thinks it's tasty as well. This photo turned out a bit dark, but if you look closely bunny and pigsy are on one side eating grass, and kitty is on the other side eating grass.

Mondayitis

This afternoon is truly dragging... this morning when I got in to work, though, I found an invitation in my blog comments to join this collective Melbourne work - I op therefore I am - which being a lovely mixture of bad pun and the joys of the op shop, how could I resist?

I'm looking forward to visiting some of our local op shops soon and blogging the results! And there's some lovely stuff on there already - check it out.

Weekend bits

Well, Monday agane (ho hum), and another weekend disappeared faster than you can say "oh crap, why is the alarm going off?"

And we have a new bunny, by name of Teddy. I'm fairly sure the children who owned him previously named him after a teddy bear, but I shall stretch the etymology and claim he is named Theodore, after Theodore Roosevelt (same as teddy-teddies). I'm still in two minds about it, but he's quite cute, and at least he's been rescued. I'll post a photo tonight - I took a super-cute one yesterday of him, Julia and the cat all eating the same bunch of grass I'd just brought in for them.

I'm feeling a little bit motivated to tidy up. I've put the black bar stool that's cluttering up the kitchen (we each got a new one for xmas from my PUs) on freecycle, as well as the old shower screen (doubt anyone will want it, but I thought it was worth a try before putting it in the hard rubbish - someone handy could perhaps make a cold frame from it or something). Tonight I'm planning to put our old fridge and two stools with fuzzy faux fur seats on ebay, and the river pebbles we didn't use in our shower (because we had too many), which should get a few things outta the way. We also have a bag for the op shop sitting by the front door, including the old xmas lights and some decorations I don't think I'll ever use as well as some clothes.

We ate several wonderful black russian tomatoes from our garden over the weekend, with home-grown basil (zero food miles!) - yum!

I went at lunch time to check out thermometers at the Australian Geographic shop - they have a very cool one that you put indoors, and it has an outdoor sensor, so you can tell indoor/outdoor temp and humidity. $39.95. But not buying yet as Marylou said she thought she had one somewhere that she's never used and she's going to hunt it down for me, hurrah!

The time has come, the walrus said

As you can no doubt tell from the title, we have a few things to cover today. Let's start with the saving-the-world stuff, since it's Friday.

It was 41 degrees celcius yesterday in Melbourne, with an overnight low of 30C. As you know, we don't have aircon, which really is one of the most evil things you can possibly have, environmentally, particuarly right now in Melbourne. Don't believe me? Or choose to think that since you do other things to be green, your aircon is okay? Or think you "need" it because you have young kids**? It's quite probable that they'll need to build a new COAL FIRED POWER STATION because of the peak demand caused by your airconditioner. All that carbon will be YOUR fault.

I digress, but it's making me angry. Very angry. We don't "need" aircon in Melbourne - not if we have young kids, not if we don't like the heat, not if we think we're green in other ways - not at all. We stayed cool enough yesterday and last night without aircon, and our bedroom is upstairs, so it does get warm. This is how:

• we have external blinds. Stopping the sun before it hits a glass window can reduce the amount of solar heat getting into the building by 85%
• we have a ceiling fan in the bedroom - lying under a fan you feel very cool, even when it's really hot - and if we're extra hot we have a spray bottle with which we spray ourselves. The resulting evaporative cooling as the fan hits the moisture cools you without cooling the room, which is clearly much more efficient. Because we're utterly indulged and clearly far too affluent, we use certified organic rosewater from Perfect Potion, but a squirty bottle of water works just as well.
• we have curtains, including blockout curtains on the west-facing spare bedroom window, and have put bubble wrap on the bathroom window (although I'm planning to put a shutter on it when I can afford it), which also faces west. All the curtains are shut during the day.
• if it's cooler at night we open every door and window in the house to get a cross-breeze through.
• in the living room (downstairs) we just have a pedestal fan, which is quite adequate for the cooler downstairs.

So, before you think about installing aircon, you should at a minimum install external blinds, thermally-lined curtains and make sure your doors and windows are properly sealed. Then see if you can deal with the temperature. Then you should think about adding insulation to your roof (I'd suggest wool), and in the walls (you can have it sprayed into existing homes), having the windows double-glazed, and installing ceiling fans. Once you've done all this, if it's STILL too hot - and it won't be, at least in Melbourne - install a sunlizard. And if you still think it's too hot, well, suck it up. You'll adjust. And the more you selfishly use your aircon, the more you're actually warming up the whole planet. And you totally don't need to turn on the aircon so you can still sleep under a doona in the middle of summer.

Right, moving on.

Also along the saving the world lines, this is a list of the foods with the most pesticide residue - if you can't afford to eat all organic, at least think about eating organic for these:
1. Peaches
2. Strawberries
3. Apples
4. Spinach
5. Nectarines
6. Celery
7. Pears
8. Cherries
9. Potatoes
10. Raspberries
11. Sweet bell peppers
12. Grapes (imported)

Although, skip the imported grapes entirely. Grapes are pretty easy to grow, actually. Even my PUs have managed it, and most things in their garden are entirely dead (I once bought my PU#1 some of those cutsey plant markers you use to show what herb is growing where - only these ones said "Dead plants" and "Weeds") or noxious weeds, or have grown by accident (there's a tree up the back that appeared from nothing - it's quite pretty). But their grape vine flourishes, and produces grapes, and all you have to do to ensure they ripen to an edible level without being eaten by birds is put a plastic bag over each bunch before they ripen, and tie it on. Some time later, voila, best grapes you ever tasted.

My third topic for today's very long autorant is the credulity of people on the interwebs. Why is it that people believe everything they read online. Children with cancer who need emails forwarded, CFLs bursting and requiring EPA cleanup, missing persons, etc. It's all clearly rubbish. And a source of scientific data is NOT "A woman I spoke to once had it on good authority from some scientist", as in this comment on an Age blog

“A woman I spoke to once had it on good authority from some scientist that the fumes or residue of Domestos used in the bowl and on toilet seats will gradually kill ova. I personally believe the epidemic of "sub-fertility" (meaning unexplainable, according to the specialist I was seeing)amongst gen x and ys in particular is due to chemical interference with our bodies.”

Ok, Domestos is probably not actively good for you (although it's just diluted bleach, I'm pretty sure) but really, someone you spoke to once who may or may not have once met an actual scientist at a cocktail soiree IS NOT A REPUTABLE SCIENTIFIC SOURCE.

Oh, and if you need a Friday afternoon giggle, check this out

**Because all over Asia and Africa where it's hotter than here all parents have aircon because they have young kids. Oh wait...

Tasty

One of our new year's resolutions was to be better about eating healthy food. We're always pretty good with our meals, but a few too many treats had been creeping into the diet, and I'd been slack/a little too tempted when it comes to the foods that I'm intolerant to (dairy protein and gluten) and the foods that I just don't feel great while eating (other grains). But after a bit of a rocky start, I have now eaten very well for four days, and the difference in how I feel is amazing.

For me, eating well is vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs and nuts. Nothing processed. No grains, no dairy, no legumes and nothing that (in theory) couldn't be eaten raw (like potato). Doesn't mean I eat everything raw, just that it should be able to be eaten raw.

The amount of energy I have is most astounding. Last night I got back from stitch & bitch at about 11pm. Having done various bits around the house, I was not yet sleepy, so went to bed and read my book. H got home at midnight and I was still reading. Went to sleep soon after that, slept - for the second night in a row and most unusally for me - more-or-less straight through the night, and woke up this morning not feeling tired. It's miraculous, almost, because if I was eating grains, dairy etc, I would be completely fucking exhausted from going to bed at midnight and waking up at 7am and going to work. Seriously. Instead, thanks to the wonders of the species-appropriate diet, I feel good! Not to mention, heaps less irritable.

I must remember though to eat more snacks. I usually eat a piece of fruit on the train on the way to work (NOT a banana - people who eat banananananas on trains will be first against the wall when the revolution comes. The smell!), and then eggs, bacon and tomato when I get to work, but I've slacked off about having a mid-morning and mid-afternoon snack, which I really need to get back into the habit of doing. We have, however, started a new habit of eating some salad (some of it picked fresh from our garden!) after work before dinner. Snacks don't have to be big, but they have benefits - they stop you from getting too hungry and deciding you need to eat unhealthy crap. They boost your metabolism - after eating, your metabolism is temporarily at 1.5 times normal base metabolic rate, so if you spread your food out into more bits throughout the day you actually burn more of it up and keep your metabolism from slowing down if you're losing weight (and I am, I hope, shedding some of the mince pies I stored over xmas!) And they're tasty and a good way to make sure you're getting your recommended amount of fruit and veg (since I eat usually around twice the recommended servings I don't need to worry about this, but most people do - particularly the menfolk, I believe I've read that under 3% of men get the recommended 2 fruit/5 veg a day).

And they keep you from getting irritable due to hunger - a problem for many, including me.

Plus, tasty.

I don't know why, but the other effect eating like this seems to have on me is that I can regulate my body temperature much better. The last year I've been quite slack about sticking to the (I hesitate to call it this, because it summons visions of restrictions and calorie counting, neither of which I do, but there you go) diet, and it hasn't worked so much, but the two years before that when I was being careful about it, in winter I could walk to the station wearing nothing but a t-shirt in the mornings, and in summer I found that I wasn't nearly as affected by the heat. I am about to test whether this is working yet (it did take a while for that to kick in, if I recall) by venturing out into the extreme heat to get some chicken for tonight's dinner (which I will then put in the work freezer so it stays cold on the way home).

I may be some time.

Stick one over your head

The Minister for the Bits of the Environment that Don't Really Matter has announced a ban on light-weight plastic bags. Hurrah!

Predictably, retailers — including major supermarket chains Coles and Woolworths — remain opposed a ban, and have the Chief Tool from the Australian Retailers Association out telling us all that we're actually too stupid to be able to use paper bags.

"I just don't think it will work. By the time you get home from the shops with your paper bag full of mushrooms, they are rolling around all over the place inside your plastic bag," Mr Evans said.

Yes, that's what happens to things in bags when you don't CLOSE THEM. Honestly, what a retard. It all goes to prove that Dilbert is right, and incompetant people get promoted to the level where they can do the least amount of actual damage.

Mr Evans seems to think that us drone-like consumers can't possibly be expected to be able to buy a pair of shoes or a lettuce at the farmers' market without a plastic bag either:

"It's just a simplification to contemplate banning plastic bags just because people see them floating in the water," the Australian Retailers Association's executive director, Richard Evans, said. "But where do you draw the line — fashion shops, local markets?"

Our local farmers' market is plastic bag free, and - shock, horror - people still manage to purchase goods!! In fact, they purchase them so enthusiastically that often the meat is sold out by 9.30am. Who'd have thought people could still buy things without being able to put them in a plastic bag? The sky is indeed falling!

Mr Evans said retailers were aware of the risks to the environment posed by free bag distribution, but a system of voluntary compliance would work best. He said some shoppers would not want to change to paper bags.

Yes, and some people don't want to pay taxes, or respect that women and people of other races are actually human beings, or keep their guns properly stored unloaded. But you know what, Mr Completely Stupid Evans? They just have to suck it up, and so will you, because you're not dealing with the sucking-the-arse-of-business Howard/Costello idiots any more, you're dealing with a Government who are doing what WE the people actually want them to do.

So, get back in your box.

Dilemma

So, as you know our poor bunny, Kevin, died a week ago. We were very sad (and thanks for your lovely comments in the comments, everyone).









We were very sad. But Julia, our guinea pig, seems very lonely without him, and although the plan had been to get another bunny (pre-desexed) from the RSPCA when they got a suitable one in, I was idly looking on the interwebs this morning and found this:



It's a miniature Himalayan boy, aged three months. His owners are moving to QLD, he really needs a home, she (owner) said they are moving in two weeks and are getting quite desperate to find him a home (otherwise, he may be taken to the vet...) He's been handled heaps, including by kids, and is apparently really friendly (like Kevin was).



Two issues. One is that bunny is in Sunbury, which for those who don't know Melbourne is approximately eleventy-three million miles from where we live. Which when you don't have a car is a logistical effort - and a half. Specially as bunny comes with two-storey cage, which would be good as bigger than current cage. But cage has to fit in vehicle. Second issue is that bunny is not desexed. This would mean another trip to the RSPCA, and I'm not sure I could bear to go throught it again if another bunny died. But with the threat of the big red syringe hanging over this bunny, perhaps at least if we took him, he has a chance?

Thoughts, anyone?



PS offers of loans of large vehicles/lifts to Sunbury etc gratefully accepted!

It's not Friday but...

Well, we got an electricity bill yesterday. I was sure we couldn't get any lower than 3.8 kWh a day, since part of the last bill was actually from before we moved in, and so didn't include a fridge running etc. But it seems we can!

The bill we got yesterday showed us using... ta da! 3.1 kWh per day. We totally rock! In a very non-energy using way. Since my aim was to get down to 3.5 kWh per day (and the average home uses 20 kWh a day!) I think we're really doing exceptionally well. My aim now is to keep it around that level - I think with the new ceiling fan we're probably using a tad more (although nothing like the amount that air conditioners use, obviously) than we were previously, but we're also being super-careful about everything else, and you don't need to use lights and stuff as much when it's summer. The new fridge will probably use a bit more - although it's hard to say as it doesn't use that much more according to the energy ratings, and they work more efficiently when 3/4 full, whereas the current fridge has been jammed to the gills most of the time, which can't have been helping (and which was contributing to the random freezing of items such as lettuce).

In other exciting news, we actually made a whole tomato salad with our home-grown tomatoes and basil yesterday - SO tasty!

And our guinea pig is clearly lonely without her friend. We're pretty sure she's going to have pups any day (although wouldn't it be more fun if they were called guinea piglets? Do admit!) but after that we will definitely have to get another bunny, or perhaps a quail or two, or maybe even both, to keep her company. She's not getting through our fruit and veggie scraps nearly as well as a rabbit - she really prefers grass to anything except watermelon or iceberg lettuce (which they're not supposed to have too much of), and contrary to what it says on the interwebs, she WILL NOT eat brussels sprout, orange or anything else high in vitamin c. And she doesn't seem to drink water (although of course we always make sure she has water anyway, in case).

So I'm thinking, giant rabbit/pigsies/quail palace in the courtyard, and the quail would be really cool because we could have quail eggs in our salads...

Congratulations on Your new lifestyle purchase!

I just bought a new fridge, or as the David Jones brochure about the extended warranty puts it, a "new lifestyle!"



"We are so pleased", the brochure continues, "that You have elected to protect Your purchase with Our Electrical Warranty Plan."



What Is With The Random Capitals?



Now, regular readers of my blog (all five of you) will know that I generally like to buy things second-hand, rather than new. But having had three fridges in three years, due to the old one buggering up constantly, I decided that what I Really Want is a Warranty. Which I now have, on a new Fisher & Paykel, 4 energy star fridge (the five star ones are all Smegs, and cost over $3000, which seemed a tad excessive to save about 50 kWh of energy a year over my $1200 new fridge). It has TWO veggie crisper bins - essential when you eat a diet where your bulk comes from veggies rather than grains. It's got a freezer large enough for various bits of dead cow AND the bowl bit of my ice-cream maker. It (hopefully) works properly and will not randomly freeze our foodstuffs. Which is what the old fridges did - I can tell you that the following do not defrost well: pineapple, lettuce, apples, nectarine, milk. But cooked chicken defrosts surprisingly well.



But I digress. What I really want to talk about is the lifestyle purchase aspect of the new fridge. I would like to make it very clear that I have purchased a white good, which is, indeed, white, not stainless steel (this is surprisingly difficult to do). It is not a side-by-side creation with internet connectivity and an ice-maker. It is not the size of a Landrover.



Upon looking at the fridges, you'd think everyone has a family of eleventeen children, all with voracious appetites for fresh food, rather than the average 1.7 kids who live on nothing but cheese-flavoured rice cakes and McHappy Meals. Although the enormous freezers in the side-by-side models do speak of people who eat ice-cream by the tub. But I'm thinking there may be a connection here between McMansions, driving a four-wheel-drive (SUV for my American reader(s)) and buying a fucking enormous fridge with a capacity eleventy-three times larger than you actually need. I think there may be a doctoral thesis in it. Please excuse me while I go apply for a Grant to study: McMansions, McCars and McFridges: The "White"good in Post-Structural Suburban Consumerist Anti-feminist Contexts.



kthxbye.

A sad, bad start to the new year

This is our darling bunny, Kevin, when we first got him. He was so tiny. His ears were so little and cute.

And this is Kevin on new year's eve, when we had him and Julia, the guinea pig, inside because of the heat - small furries don't cope well with the heat.
The cat thinks the small furries are quite interesting
And Kevin and Julia were getting on like a house on fire, snuggling with each other all the time, and Kevin liked to groom her, although she didn't groom him in return because guinea pigs don't.
Here, he's playing with a toilet roll - he loved to push them around and throw them in the air.

On Wednesday, we took Kevin to the RSPCA to be desexed - male bunnies aren't very good pets if they're not desexed, as they start spraying (which essentially means you can't have them indoors) and may get aggressive and are definitely prone to escape (as Kev had already proved). He was going to have a callesi virus innoculation as well. PU#2 and I took Kevin, first thing in the morning, and he was supposed to be picked up again that afternoon. But at lunchtime the vet called, to say poor little Kevin had died while under the anaesthetic, his little heart just stopped, and despite them doing everything they could to try to save him, he couldn't be revived. So instead of collecting Kevin, we collected his dear, cold stiff little body, and after we patted him and said goodbye we buried it in the courtyard (right near the house, so he'll be close to us). We both feel so sad - he was just such a sweet little chap, he always stood up on his back legs eager to see us when we came outside (or came in the gate) and he loved hopping round inside or outside with us. When you picked him up he never tried to get away, just snuggled into your neck. Julia seems to miss him too - we'll have to get another friend for her, even though neither of us feel at all like having another bunny any time soon, she ran around seeming to look for him this morning when I brought her inside, and chirping.

Our poor, dear little bunny - we'll never forget you.