Dear Diary...

Recovering Carnivores

“Some of your recipes have meat in them, so you’re not really a vegetarian.!” Don’t you just love when people don’t read things properly and immediately start being judgemental.? I did not say I was a vegetarian, I said I was on a new vegetarian diet… emphasis on the new… plus I also said the recipes I post were for inspiration and that I was notoriously bad at following instructions… apparently, I’m not the only one.!

Bear and I are actually recovering carnivores… before August 2019 if it didn’t have meat in it, we weren’t interested and if there was more than two vegetables in it, it wasn’t happening. Now we eat MOSTLY vegetarian meals at home, although there are instances where I might add fish, or chorizo, or bacon if I can’t get the vegetarian equivalent. Or we go to his Mom’s and she’s made something with meat in it.

We’ve told her we eat mainly vegetarian at home, but we’re not about to insist that she cook only vegetarian for us. She’s been cooking healthy balanced meals for over 50 years and there’s no reason for her to stop. Our diet is our business, not something to push on to her to respect and adhere to when we don’t have food allergies or hangups. She gets enough of that from Bear’s ex-wife who is vegan and insists everyone around her is too.

We didn’t suddenly develop morals or ethics or any other holier than thou reason to cut our meat intake. It was a purely selfish, aesthetic reason and I’m in no way ashamed of that. I planned on gently easing us out of it, knowing that if you go cold turkey, you just crave what you’re told you can’t have. I did it with chocolate, coffee and with trying to lose weight in decades gone by. Never successfully. So I planned on gently easing us out of eating so much meat, but it was easier than we thought and within a month we barely ate any.

Now we eat healthier and more thoughtfully and these days it’s a very occasional fish or salami addition to a mainly vegetable dinner, bacon less so because I found a very tasty vegetarian substitute made with soy. It doesn’t look or taste like bacon, but it’s a much lower calorie alternative to the 375 calories per 100g we were eating previously. We asked the children if they minded having meat only occasionally and told them I’d happily provide burgers, chicken wings or meat based meals as they wished.

Both kids said they were happy to have vegetarian meals as they ate meat a lot at home and only ate the same vegetables with every meal, so a different variety was most welcome. Now when I find recipes I like the look of and they contain meat, I omit it or substitute it with chestnut mushrooms, which are heavenly.

Kyuss, Briam and Obnoxious Brits…

This morning I woke to the sound of screaming. Always a joy. So in retaliation, I got up, went downstairs and put Kyuss on Spotify and cranked up the volume until I could no longer hear them. Kyuss is my go-to ‘fuck you’ band when it comes to my neighbours. Heavy bass beats that make the furniture bounce gives off just the right level of obnoxiousness to let them know I’m sick of their crap.!

This morning started around 10.45am… yeah, I know, not good. It’s not like I have a ton of stuff to do anyway. I did all the housework yesterday, so today is chore free other than dinner. Bear’s at college currently, due back around 2pm. He has a political meeting at 8pm tonight, so there’s another 3-3.5 hours of free time… *sigh* I might ask him to download ‘Manifest’, so I can watch it while he’s out.

Last night we watched The Last Jedi, I keep getting that one confused with Rogue One, no idea why… just old I guess. It’s not like they’re helping putting the first three movies after the second three movies, and adding in stand alone movies like Rogue One and Solo that while part of the overall story have no bearing on the chronology. No wonder I get confused.

Tonight’s delight is Briam, which is basically roasted veggies in passata with feta cheese. A traditional and very popular Greek dish. Last night Spain, tonight Greece, tomorrow.. THE WORLD.!! Ahem.. okay, maybe not… that would involve a lot of veggies, a lot more prep and hours of cooking… I’ll just stick to Italy. Italy’s lovely, so I’m told.. and so inspirational.. and doesn’t seem to mind when other countries steal it’s cuisine and pass it off as their own.

Take us British… we go abroad, somewhere exotic and complain about the foreign food.!! “Why can’t I get proper British food.?” We cry, “Like pizza, pasta or curry.!” No wonder we have a reputation for being dumb and obnoxious. We are.! You don’t hear the Dutch whining for Hutspot the second they set foot in Australia, or the French demanding Ratatouille on their hols in Barbados…

Chores, Mental Health Training, Cod and Chorizo

Yep.. today was chores day, although it almost wasn’t, having had just less than 6 hours sleep and finally dragging myself out of bed at 10.10am with a headache and a growling stomach. Easing the growling also eased the headache, and I ventured forth to fight off dust bunnies and towel lint and stray hairs, usually mine, that somehow seem to end up stuck to the stair carpet. Luckily they’re easy to spot due to the glittering… 😉

I hit the shower and woke my brain up finally, just in time for Bear to return home after his morning training. He teaches what’s called aggression training, which involves learning how to not show fear when confronted with an aggressive patient, alternative ways to handle aggression in patients, communicating calmly but firmly with an aggressive person so that they are fully aware of who’s in charge, but are not threatened by the knowledge, and interacting with an ‘aggressive’ person so that you learn to calm your own instincts to be aggressive back and stay in control at all times.

He also teaches Mental Health First Aid training, which teaches people to understand and identify mental health issues and substance use and respond in a way that’s helpful and guide a sufferer/user to the right kind of help. Impressive stuff. It explains why he’s so good at his job. For the past 3 years he’s been studying practical Nursing at college, so that he can do more than just basic First Aid at work and is capable and qualified to deal with any health issue that arises.

As my mother said the first time she met him, “good to know my daughter’s in the right hands…” 😮 Thanks Mum.! She’s always said I needed a therapist, what she doesn’t seem to grasp is that I need one because of her. :[ 😀 Anyway, tonight is cod and chorizo with cannellini beans.. a hint of Spain and a lot of red peppers.. The quiche btw is delicious… next time I’ll use store bought pastry and a deeper dish though.

Adiós por ahora

Quiche and Controversy

Yesterday ended with a soul-crushing defeat and a rather fine beer. The Houston Texans after an amazing and exciting start, leading 24-0… lost 31-51 to the Kansas City Chiefs. Damn.! 😦 Not that I’m a huge fan, but I’ll support anyone playing against the Chiefs. The Tomahawk Chop and chant is deeply offensive and I find, borders on racism.

The beer however is completely innocent and devoid of controversy, and as named, God-like in it’s yummy hoppy, toffee, marmelade-iness… This one’s going on my To Be Repeated list… there are very few craft beers not on that list, but believe me there are some I wouldn’t touch again if my life depended on it… Yeuch.! 😦

Walhalla brewery in Amsterdam struck gold with Wuldor, made with British malts and named after the Old Norse God of archers, Ullr, son of Thor… apparently. They have a whole series named after Gods and Daemons that I’m going to have to work my way through. 🙂

Today I decided to make the quiche that I was going to make yesterday, having never made one before and it might be a while before I venture to try it again… pastry and me have a serious dislike for each other, no matter how hard I try to get it right, it never is. I’ve tried different recipes, different temperatures of water, different times of refrigerating and still it splits, crumbles and flips me the bird.

So I’m buying ready-made, ready-rolled pastry from the store from now on. Then I can’t be blamed if or when it goes to hell in a hand basket. I never have any problems with anything else while cooking, just pastry. It’s been going on for at least 30 years and I still haven’t learned to just let go and move on… some things are just not meant to be.

It being a Monday, I’m supposed to be cleaning up and straightening the kids rooms, but I’ll do it tomorrow, I’d rather just sit here and listen to Spotify and try to figure out how to get that damned quiche out of the pan.!

Post.NL and other completely inept courier services

This morning I found a response to a tweet I wrote on Friday about the arrival, finally, of my little grandson’s Christmas present, which was sent on December 16th by Dutch postal service Post.NL. This poor guy has far more experience than I with their blatant lack of professionalism and thanks to his blog post I’m never using them to send internationally again. Once bitten and all that…

Bear and I sent a box of Lego Duplo to our little grandson in England on December 16th from our local Post.NL post office, whose wall poster proclaims that Post.NL will get your Christmas packages to their destinations in two to five working days. ‘Brilliant’ we thought, ‘that means at the latest it’ll be there on the day before Christmas Eve’.. perfect.

Except that proclamation is a complete LIE.! We sent it with Track and Trace, and kept an eye on where the package was every few days. On December 16th it was at the Post.NL depot. On December 18th it was STILL at the Post.NL depot. Huh.! Shouldn’t it have been moving by now.? Apparently not. On December 2oth, STILL at the depot… and on December 24th… and on December 27th… and on January 1st.

By this time I’m incendiary and about to embark on a murderous rampage, swearing an oath to decapitate every stupid, inept, unprofessional, moronic postal worker, their manager’s, bosses and CEO’s… Bear meanwhile is on the phone enquiring politely whether they could please get their heads out of their asses and explain to him where our package is and why it appears to still be in Eindhoven.

He was cordially informed that was because it still was in Eindhoven and they are far too incredibly busy to get to it straight away but they’ll try to find the package and get it sent as soon as… It was New Year you know.! 😠 Bear thanks the smarmy attituded b*tch and hangs up… while I’m intent on reaching across time and space and slamming her dumbass face into her desk with a great deal of force… Who me, intolerant and overly aggressive.?

Well, yes actually, they’re two of my better qualities, along with a marked lack of patience when it comes to the inept. If, as a courier service, you promise people a certain time limit, keep to it.! Don’t tell them you can do something, when you can’t. Christmas is an annual event, and has been for centuries, if you haven’t got your shit together by now, there’s not much chance you ever will, and you need to bow out as gracefully as possible and make room for the courier services who are capable of getting the job done right.! Not that there is one. 😦

Not BS people with lame excuses and lies, and get an attitude when they have every right to be full on furious and intent on killing you for being the pathetic excuse for a courier service’s customer care assistant that you are.! DHL are no better, they still haven’t delivered a box sent from Utrecht on December 10th… although UPS did manage to get a package to me from Northern Ireland in four days and that included the weekend… for everyone else they’ve been a massive pain in the ass too, as has Parcel Force.

Finally on January 2nd, Track and Trace showed that our package had finally been sent to England… it hadn’t arrived there, it had just been sent… 15 days late. It arrived on January 3rd and then sat in the depot until the 6th when it suddenly appeared in London, then in Richmond, North Yorkshire on the 9th and finally delivered on the 10th by RoyalMail. I’m still not impressed.

It takes 10 hours to swim the channel, 96 hours to walk from Dover to North Yorkshire. 106 hours is around 4 and a half days. I could have delivered that present a full twenty days earlier than two Countries postal services did using vans, trucks and a ferry.!

Goulash Soup

Continuing from earlier, the visit to Bear’s Mom means I don’t have to cook. So there goes quiche. I might make it anyway, tomorrow, and keep it for lunches for Tuesday and Wednesday.

As expected Mom had made waffles, pretty little fan shaped ones that were lush with coffee. She’d also made Goulash soup, which had me wondering for a moment if I was going to like it… I’m not a fan of Goulash usually, but it was so good, I polished off 3 bowls and 2 warm bread rolls with butter.

Then she gave me a BIG box of white chocolate swirls that she’d received as a gift from her husband’s friend’s daughter. Both Bear’s Mom and her husband have heart issues and now in their early/mid 70’s are trying to avoid sugary things so she passed them on to us. They won’t last long once Bear opens them, so I’ll have to keep them hidden away and ration him.

We’re both still trying to get back to our pre-Christmas weight, so all this chocolate is not doing us any good either… but we’re suckers for chocolate, so it’ll probably be devoured, we’ll regret it and promise ourselves no more chocolate… and in two weeks time there’ll be more she wants rid of… 😀 Well, someone has to deal with it for her… 😉

The Goulash soup is made with topside of beef, potatoes, carrots, mushrooms and red onions in a thick tomato sauce and seasoned with paprika and a little cayenne pepper. I had it in Germany once, where it was made with pork. It put me right off the stuff and I haven’t touched pork since either.

Tonight I think we might start Star Trek: Voyager… Bear has a gleam in his eye that tells me he’s looking forward to ogling Seven of Nine… He has a thing for subtly sarcastic women… 😀

A Visit To The Mommy

Today started too darned early, especially after the late night we had watching the last two episodes of Star Trek: DS9. I think I finally fell asleep around 1am, and was awake well before the alarm went off at 7.30am. Bear got up to supervise the kids breakfasting and readying themselves to go home, and I followed shortly afterwards, hiding in the shadows to avoid the bright light my eyes and brain were just not ready for.

Bear left around 8.30am and I managed to brush my hair and make some breakfast, leaving the coffee until he got back over an hour later. Still didn’t make me feel any brighter, I’m really not a morning person. I’m not really an anytime person. I’m just as lethargic in the evening as I am in the morning, and if I sleep in late, bear with a sore head is a very apt description. Around 1pm I took myself off to the shower, so I was clean and presentable enough to visit his Mom this afternoon.

I haven’t showered since Wednesday. I know.. it’s gross, but I have little energy and zero motivation these days. It’s like I wake up and my brain says “You have 23 minutes of energy for today, use it wisely” and I never do. By 2pm I want to go back to bed, although I know I won’t sleep, despite almost falling asleep on my chair or the sofa. And if I do, I won’t sleep at night.

A visit to Bear’s Mom will be nice though, she’s quite a character and so funny, and the reason he’s not only glued to the Internet, but a massive Sports fan. It’s all her fault. 🙂 She’s also a great cook and you know every time you go there’ll be cake, as well as something homemade and delicious to eat, and on occasion a ton of chocolate or cookies, usually on birthdays, at Easter and Christmas, and during Carnival season… So round about now. 🙂

I have quiche planned for tonight, not sure that’s wise though, we’ll probably be so full from Mom’s it won’t be necessary. We shall see. Bear has a dinner planned for Thursday night, with his ex-colleagues, he’s put it on the calendar, but hasn’t said a word to me about it… I even mentioned doing fish on Thursday, and he said that sounded nice… Hmmm.! :]

Sleep… Glorious Sleep

Eleven and a half hours sleep seems to have done Bear’s youngest daughter the world of good. She bounced out of bed at 9.30am this morning raring to go, so Bear has taken her to her Volleyball match. Poor Bear, he didn’t sleep that well and looks as tired as I feel. Nearly three hours of driving is not going to do him any good. Hopefully the remainder of the weekend will be a little more restful.

Taking the children back early tomorrow means we have to provide lunch for them to take to their Musical practice, so I’m planning on making them pasties to take, something they can eat cold that’s still nutritious and tasty. Tonight I’m looking at making Mexican tortilla casserole. I LOVE tortilla chips and I haven’t made it for the kids before. I know they’re going to love it too.

Yes, my life is an endless round of cooking meals… that was the agreement Bear and I made when I moved in. He hates having to make small decisions, like what to eat every day, what to watch when we sit down in the evenings (although he’s getting better at that), and what to wear to formal occasions, he finds that kind of thing too stressful. If I left him to it he’d eat cheese and sambal sandwiches every meal and wear jeans and rock band tee’s everywhere.

So I choose and make the meals and he deals with the ‘important’ things. 😉 No other chores today, as I raced around like a mad thing yesterday, cleaning up and vacuuming ready for the kids’ arrival. The youngest seems to be doing better today too, although he’s commandeered the sofa and is glued to YouTube on his laptop with his headphones on… unsociable little git… he reminds me of me… 😀

Stupid Neighbours and Sick Kids

Today started with a screaming row at 7.15am and a headache. I had the headache, the neighbours had the screaming row, which is why I had the headache. What the hell they had to fight about at 7.15am is a mystery, but it went on for a while, before one of them stormed out the house, slamming the front door.

A couple hours later they were at it again. Most people would realise there was a major issue in their relationship after screaming at each other constantly for seven years, on an almost daily basis. If he’s not screaming at her, she’s screaming at the kids, usually the older one, who screams back just as loud. Me thinks there are one too many alpha females in that house.

Thank God for my calm, laid back, mostly drama-free relationship. Even the kids talk about their issues instead of creating hell and acting out like petulant toddlers. Talking of the kids, their mother informed Bear that they have been off school sick all week, the youngest only going in to school today. Bear’s picking them up around 4pm this afternoon, so I’m going to make sure we have enough lemon and honey and Paracetamol at the ready.

Thankfully, since July I haven’t been ill, although I seem to be developing a bit of a cough this last week or so. No sniffles, bugs or viruses, which for me is a big thing, usually I get everything going around and spend weeks on end ill with something, only to get it again as soon as I’ve recovered. That hasn’t been the case the past six months. I’m thinking it’s the new vegetarian diet, all those vitamins and proteins boosting my immune system. God knows it needs it.

Sick kids means a very quiet weekend, the fortnightly visit to Bear’s Mom won’t go ahead this weekend, as she’s had heart issues over the past year and had to have stents put in. The least amount of strain on her health, the better. The elder child’s Volleyball match won’t be happening either… not that I’m bothered about that, it involves Bear driving an hour and 20 minutes each way and sitting around for 2 hours while they warm up, play the match and get showered and refreshed afterwards.

After two weeks of mostly early shifts and some very late nights, he could do with the rest.

Music & Minecraft

Finally, a decent night’s sleep.. although I woke up with hip and back pain, as the quilt is so heavy on my feet when it hangs over the end of the bed. Leaving Bear to sleep on, I crept downstairs and started doing food prep. for the pasties I’m doing for dinner. Bear is out at 12pm for a political meeting, and then back for a little while before going off again at 2.40pm for work. He finishes at 11pm.

Having done the housework yesterday, there’s little to do until tomorrow when the kids are coming for the weekend. Well, I say weekend… they’re being picked up around 4pm, so will be here from 5.15pm until 8.30am Sunday when they go back because they have Musical Practice at school at 11am. Not sure what they’re performing this year, they haven’t yet said.

Right now I have Foo Fighters and Tool playing on Spotify, I love music, especially rock of all kinds, with the occasional rave and acid house track. I don’t mind Rap and HipHop, but it’s been a case of ‘growing on me’ over time rather than a personal liking for it. I can rock to the Foo’s anytime.! 🙂

Today I’m sure I shall mostly be playing Minecraft, once Bear is at work. There’s just the one load of laundry to do and that’s pretty much it for chores today, so the rest of the day is mine. I like Minecraft because I can choose which mode to play in, easy, peaceful or survival, the latter of which means fighting monsters and spiders and building up a game score.

The middle mode means no monsters or spiders, and I can design and build whatever takes my fancy, which strangely happens to be medieval towers… maybe I have a subconscious Rapunzel fixation… weird. Meanwhile, on to pastry making, so I’m not stressing to get things done in time.