Saturday, 9 May 2015

Successful Saturday

These flowers have kept a cheerfulness at the kitchen table all week!
 T

 Lucy has finished her medicine and is much better now, thank you.





 And after only 4 weeks at WW I have come down a dress size, need to pull my belts one to two holes tighter AND have left behind some 7 lbs somewhere? Half a stone! Not bad eh?
I should be celebrating! Still a touch of the blues though earlier so I did some dyeing- more later.
How did I do it? Well this last week I was getting a bit bored so I decided to try new recipes .
And track everything and wear my pedometer... More of THAT in a next post, maybe.
This is a WW meatloaf for me and one for JJ and I offered the girls a tuna based version but they didn't fancy one.
Made on Sunday and cut into 5 portions I froze the slices so I;d have an easy meal when in a rush.

Such a good idea that was, it came in perfectly in a very busy 3 day week!
This was the recipe:

 I made mine with these:
 And JJ's with these:
 I added an egg each as I used a lot of grated carrot and grated onion and it needed to be glued together somehow with these freshly made wholemeal breadcrumbs:
 Later that week I had a bit of stir fry prawns..
Every morning I start with porridge, but the additions vary 
It can be pineapple, or chocolate or BLUE BERRIES!
 I cook the blueberries with water and lemon juice and then add a little castor sugar.

 Yummy. And below are the before photos of some tops that needed a re-fresh, I wanted to test a dye colour that promised a royal blue colour: called OCEAN by Dylon.
 Two turquoise tops and a white rib vest and a piece of white muslin to test the colour.
After the WW meeting I came home to brunch: SCRAMBLED eggs on seedy bread.
 Oh NO! The tops have come out more purple than blue! And some are unevenly dyed which has not happened before to me , not with Dylon in the washing machine.



 The muslin is positively LILAC?!
 This is what I used.
 And the colour on the back was the promised - and desired- hue. I had 500 g fabric only.

 Then I discovered a possible source of the problem: an old colour catcher had been left in the rubber ring seal.... Now THIS had been turned VERY BLUE!
Maybe all the blue went in here and left some lilacy blue for the tops?
 Pretty though?
 Today I tried something new in a WW handout, CAULIFLOWER RICE.
I had thought you grate it then steam it but it is the other way around.
I steamed mine in the usual way then grated it in the food -processor.
It looks odd but HEY what a surprise it is really nice. Better than the usual cauliflower- as I usually prefer broccoli.
Eaten with some feta cheese crumbled and melted into it and a Herby flavour pot from Knorr.
It disguises slightly''elderly'' cauliflower too and really I had the most pleasant surprise.
Then I also has an amazing afternoon doing database searches so I feel a bit saintly now.
Searched 4 data bases and done lots of reading and listing of useful research articles.
Almost time for bed now after a tiny dose of Grey's Anatomy, I'm on series 6 now and the crochet is coming along great too.

 This was dinner, two of each, nice and easy in the oven as I'm working so hard at the research.
 Propointed them both up and then chose...
 And with Miss Y's help I stood stirring a risotto as she's got her first GCSE on Monday and needed a treat, she loves my risotto.
 And after I walked the dogs and saw a balloon at the end of the road.

Good night.

Sunday, 3 May 2015

The Blues and Lucy's phantom pregnancy


Unbelievable day or several days now I've had the blues and especially today can;t seem to stop crying. Could be low blood sugar in my case so I've been eating loads to see if it will stop. Also grey skies and all this heavy rain are so depressing!
But WW was excellent yesterday I should be celebrating as reshaping by 5.5 lbs in just 3 weeks is really good and I fit back into some size 12 linen trousers? But no it's not feeling so good today.
Grey's anatomy on netflix has been keeping me focused and lots of crochet- 5 more rows of the above. It also has been difficult as Lucy is not well and having a phantom pregnancy which means she;s had me up all night fussing and panting and whining and making ''nests'' in our bed and under my feet wherever I sit. ( she's there this minute) She's been seen by the vet and is on medication but meanwhile she's very attention seeking and just so not well that's it's upsetting. She wants those puppies? She's all shivery and shaky and that's so sad.
So as a distraction here's an exhibition I went to in February and which I felt I could not blog about until it moved on which was after mid April.
Details:
 http://artofthebrick.co.uk/the-exhibition

The exhibition was the Art of the Brick: SCULPTURES in Lego by Nathan Sawaya in Brick Lane in February.
 
















The flat pictures were a lot less impressive then the sculptures which follow:








 I liked the more abstract texture and light and shadow patterns of these close-ups of the bricks...










 A cello?! Yes a life size cello, but not able to make music so that was kind of sad.







Creepy: a blue note singing the blues....





















 Now THIS is nice, abstract, Sharp.
 Actually I feel a tad like this now.

 Ahrg! Not feeling so good. Having a break, more to come sometime.
Not now.