Look!

Guess what this is.

No? Well, here's the story. A while back I was reading a post on The Simple Country Creative. This is the blog of Polla Posavec, a local West Australian artist (she's also part of my extended family just so you know). She writes about aspects of her life on a bush block outside Perth and that includes food. When I had kids at home I used make yoghurt but somehow since it's just down to Pisces and me I never seem to get around to doing. I've no idea why I stopped - it's simple enough to make - and as I've recently started getting interested in making fermented foods I had been toying with the idea of starting again. So when Polla wrote about making yoghurt using UHT milk it piqued my interest and I wondered if you could use powdered milk.

I made a few enquiries of my Facebook friends and it seemed possible so I got out my trusty Dairy-o yoghurt kit. This is basically an insulated container - that's what the slightly wonky photo is of - into which you put your jar of yoghurt mixture and then leave it alone until it ferments to your taste. It also comes with a handy heat resistant thermometer that clips on to the side of your saucepan. I have no idea how old this is but I seem to remember having it before Virgo was born so it's probably very old but being low tech it'll last as long as I can get replacement jars in case of breakages.

So yesterday was the day. I mixed up a litre of instant powdered milk according to the directions plus an extra tablespoon of milk powder (not essential but it makes for a thicker, creamier end product), heated it to between 85-90°C, left it to cool to 44°C, mixed in the starter - I used one heaped tablespoon of commercial natural yoghurt, poured it into the jar, loosely screwed on the lid and put the jar into the flask where it fermented for around six and a half hours before it reached the degree of tartness I like. Into the fridge it went overnight and this is the result.

And this is it as I ate it with a handful each of blueberries and flaked almonds. Yum.

Spoon Theory

A reminder about this came up in my Facebook newsfeed yesterday.

For those who have diseases of the invisible kind - and there is a wide range of these nasties - chronic pain is only part of the problem. An equally devastating part is what happens when you overdo things. This is where the cost of doing some activity - which for the able-bodied may seem quite insignificant - wipes you out for days. This is why those with chronic pain from any of a multitude of causes have to pull out of social activities or can't do something that seems perfectly simple - and which they managed a few days ago - today. Because it's so hard for the healthy to understand this the sufferer is seen as unreliable and lazy and this impacts on everything from friendship to employment.

You may have heard folk with these kinds of conditions refer to 'spoons'. This refers to what Christine Miserandino calls 'spoon theory', where you are dealt a set number of 'spoons' every day. Each 'spoon' represents a specific amount of energy and how you 'spend' them correlates to what you can do on that day and often for days following. Have a look at her website But You Don't Look Sick where she talks about living with lupus (one of the invisible auto-immune diseases) and if you want to find out more about Spoon Theory in particular it's at this link https://butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/  It's worth a read.

Well, Keeping On Top of Things Didn't Last Long

I'd barely clicked on Publish for my last post when the real life decided I needed a few short sharp lessons. I got sick - this happens when I try to do too much and keep going and ignore the warning signs and you'd think I'd have got this by now but, no, of course I haven't. So that meant hitting survival mode - which in my world is managing to do the washing so we don't run out of clothes and meals from the freezer then falling into bed again by mid morning and sleeping for hours for several days. This in turn meant I didn't get anything else done and there's a lot that needs to be done.

I'd recovered enough that I was thinking as I got up on Saturday that things were going to be tight but manageable. Then Real Life struck again when Pisces came into my office just after nine and said, 'Can you look at this?'

This turned out to be a very swollen and discoloured leg. He'd been having some pain for a couple of days but nothing dramatic and no swelling but now it was obviously serious. So we headed off to the Emergency Department where there were tests and examinations and then more tests and more examinations by different doctors when they decided that it was probably a DVT and started him on precautionary blood thinners.  But to be sure he had to go back the next day and have an ultrasound scan then it was back to the ED doctors. It was a DVT so he's been medicated and referred on the haematology department of the hospital.

He could have timed it better since we had quite a few hours to wait on the results of various blood tests as well as the scan results and he kept being bumped back as emergency after emergency came in but that was inevitable because the ED on the weekend is a very busy place. There were overdoses, sporting injuries - oh, so many sporting injuries, as well as all sorts of other health problems, some minor but many coming in by ambulance. ED cubicles are not the most private of places so whether we wanted to or not we now know all about the constipation problems of the lady opposite, the chest pain the quadruple bypass man was having, the back pain of another woman, that the hysterical crying of the young woman next door was because she was terrified of needles and that another man had gut pains to list but a few. You learn quite a lot sitting around in an ED I have to say.

That said, and while no one wants to spend the best part of two days hanging around in the ED - they're not the most comfortable places in the world - what I came away with, apart from a husband who has been very well taken care of and some random virus acquired from a coughing and spluttering patient in the waiting room, was how fortunate we are to be able to go to a public hospital ED, hand over our Medicare details and receive excellent treatment at no cost. We are so lucky to have this health care available.

Eeeep!

So a few weeks ago I booked a window cleaner. I've mostly done these myself but not anymore. Too many aches and pains to make it possible and that's been the case for the past couple of years truth be told. Basically in that time it's just been hosing them down outside and doing the inside when it got irritating. Obviously this couldn't go on indefinitely and when I looked at the state of the sliding doors and their attendant windows looking out onto the verandah the other day I realised I had to do something. Doesn't sound so hard, does it.

And it wouldn't be except for the fact that someone - not me I hasten to add - regards window sills as storage spaces and below them an ideal place to put items of furniture (in his study he's lined up several filing cabinets for example). This means before the window cleaner comes we have to clear the way for him. The inside 'stuff' needs to be sorted and hopefully rehoused in more appropriate places but then there's the mess that's accumulated on part of the verandah - the bit under the window, of course. Himself thinks this space should double as a storage area and no sooner do I clear it than it refills.

It's not all down the other resident, I confess. Added to his accumulations I've been decluttering and so there's quite a bit that needs to be gone from the house. This is sitting in boxes to go to recycling, the charity shop or dare I say it, the tip and is waiting on someone who can drive to pick it up and get rid of it for me.

This all seemed quite feasible when I booked the window cleaner. It's not as if we live in a hoarder's hovel. In fact so we should've been able to achieve it 'in a canter' to quote our Prime Minister when he's talking about our government's inadequate climate change plans. But I've just looked at the calendar and in the build up to the date a fortnight off we have two lengthy medical appointments - both will take up around half a day by the time we factor in travel and waiting times, Pisces has an overnight hospital stay, I'm booked to go to a writer's meeting which will again take up most of half a day and which involves some time intensive preparation beforehand, we're meeting up with family for lunch before one of my nieces heads back overseas so that's likely to stretch out beyond lunch, there's a whole day extended family reunion and somewhere in there Virgo is due to give birth so there's likely to be child care with Miss Three and a Half for who knows how long.

As I said, 'Eeeep!'