Day 25 NaBloPoMo:THAT Gift-exchanging Public Holiday

It’s very odd- my Day 23 Post hasn’t appeared- what happened?

Not a lot to say today- Christmas Day- we had a quiet day. Last night there was a huge feast with friends round the corner- about 20 or so people- and the host, John, prepared enough food to keep us for a week! He’s like that- cooks a monster stack of prawns, chicken, lamb and steak, plus there is a giant ham prepared earlier by his wife. I folded after the entrees followed by the chicken and skipped straight to dessert. Dessert was an agonising choice (well, not for some, who had both), between a chocolate peanut butter cheesecake of a mango trifle/tiramisu hybrid, which was very light and tasty. Cheryl is the dessert supremo- she won’t ever let anyone bring sweets to their place! I do some great desserts, but I can’t share them there!

Tomorrow we have another feast at another friend’s house nearby. She is almost as prolific as our other friend with the huge amount of food she dishes up! I know these days which courses to skip so I can fit in the ones I like best. One year she made a traditional French bouillebaisse and it was so delicious- the best I’ve ever had, even in Marseille. I wish she would do it again, but she hasn’t for about 10 years! I always take some of my homemade dukkah and olive oil which we eat using crusty bread for dipping. You can have the recipe if you wish! It’s based on one by Claudia Roden, but mine is more anise-flavoured. We used to go olive picking with a gourmet group in winter and have our own olive oil crushed at a small commercial mill. That oil was so terrifically tasty and sort of buttery- commercial oil doesn’t hold a card to it. These days the olive-picking has been cornered by people with lots of money, so the shares to join the picking group cost too much for us. We’ve gone back to Woolies!

On the 29th we’re having our previously homeless friends around for a Christmassy feast at our place. There will be ourselves and 3 guests so we’re having a Turkey Breast Roll roasted with apricot sauce and macadamia nuts. We’ll have traditional roasted vegies and a green salad with our own pickled and spiced olives. For those olives we were allowed to pick at a commercial orchard the winter of 2009 because they had lost their contract with a major hotel and had no other market left. So we got them free, I used the fresh water method to pickle them and then froze them for a while before putting them into oil with herbs and garlic. They are mostly delicious black olives, except a few containers are still bitter from not having been leached enough in the rainwater.

For dessert we will have lemon-lime delicious pudding which is really quick and yummy, plus vanilla icecream. I have already cooked the miniature Chunky Christmas Cakes for people to take home with the, afterwards.

Spotrick and I exchanged presents this morning- mostly a big heap of rectangles. We giggle about all the rectangles under the tree every year, we’re both such terrible bookworms! Spotrick gave me Sarah Gruen’s ‘The Ape House’ and ‘Them & Us’ by Will Hutton. The latter was on my wish list and having skimmed a few chapters, it is a great read- of course not half because Will Hutton’s views on the political economy closely coincide with my own! He also gave me a very welcome laptop cushion to replace the collection of magazines (Winsletts we call them) and a heat shield pad that I balance on my lap usually. In a tiny package which was wrapped like ‘pass the parcel’ in multiple layers of bubble wrap and tissue paper, was a tiny glass perfume bottle with long glass stopper for dabbing. This came from the local university and community glass works where lots of artists rent facilities and time on the furnaces. I wish I could do that style of glass work, but I couldn’t afford the fees, so I just use my kiln. Lastly was a tube of lavender hand cream for my housewife’s hands (mainly from gardening lately, in fact).

I gave Spotrick 4 books including one that had me absolutely cacking myself in the bookshop- ‘The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo’, with principal character Lizbreath Salamander!!! rofl I also gave him a new pair of lounging trousers (happy pants?)- they are just like light cotton pyjama pants. I made them from some batik-printed dark blue Swiss cotton with a red waistband and stitching- he really likes them and is wearing them already!

So I hope everyone had the sort of Christmas/Hanukkah [or whatever you were celebrating], that you wished for- we did!

 

Day 25 NaBloPoMo: Feasting, reminiscing

It’s very odd- my Day 23 Post hasn’t appeared- what happened?

Not a lot to say today- Christmas Day- we had a quiet day. Last night there was a huge feast with friends round the corner- about 20 or so people- and the host, John, prepared enough food to keep us for a week! He’s like that- cooks a monster stack of prawns, chicken, lamb and steak, plus there is a giant ham prepared earlier by his wife. I folded after the entrees followed by the chicken and skipped straight to dessert. Dessert was an agonising choice (well, not for some, who had both), between a chocolate peanut butter cheesecake or a mango trifle/tiramisu hybrid, which was very light and tasty. Cheryl is the dessert supremo- she won’t ever let anyone bring sweets to their place! I do some great desserts, but I can’t share them there!

Tomorrow we have another feast at another friend’s house nearby. She is almost as prolific as our other friend with the huge amount of food she dishes up! I know these days which courses to skip so I can fit in the ones I like best. One year she made a traditional French bouillebaisse and it was so delicious- the best I’ve ever had, even in Marseille. I wish she would do it again, but she hasn’t for about 10 years! I always take some of my homemade dukkah and olive oil which we eat using crusty bread for dipping. You can have the recipe if you wish! It’s based on one by Claudia Roden, but mine is more anise-flavoured.

 

We used to go olive picking with a gourmet group in winter and have our own olive oil crushed at a small commercial mill. That oil was so terrifically tasty and sort of buttery- commercial oil doesn’t hold a card to it. It made the dukkah taste even better [not strictly possible]. These days the olive-picking has been cornered by people with lots of money, so the shares to join the picking group cost too much for us. We’ve gone back to Woolies!

On the 29th we’re having our previously homeless friends around for a Christmassy feast at our place. There will be ourselves and 3 guests so we’re having a Turkey Breast Roll roasted with apricot sauce and macadamia nuts. We’ll have traditional roasted vegies and a green salad with our own pickled and spiced olives. For those olives we were allowed to pick at a commercial orchard the winter of 2009 because they had lost their contract with a major hotel and had no other market left. So we got them free, I used the fresh water method to pickle them and then froze them for a while before putting them into oil with herbs and garlic. They are mostly delicious black olives, except a few containers are still bitter from not having been leached enough in the rainwater.

For dessert we will have lemon-lime delicious pudding which is really quick and yummy, plus vanilla icecream. I have already cooked the miniature Chunky Christmas Cakes for people to take home with them afterwards.

Spotrick and I exchanged presents this morning- mostly a big heap of rectangles. We giggle about all the rectangles under the tree every year, we’re both such terrible bookworms! Spotrick gave me Sarah Gruen’s ‘The Ape House’ and ‘Them & Us’ by Will Hutton. The latter was on my wish list and having skimmed a few chapters, it is a great read- of course not half because Will Hutton’s views on the political economy closely coincide with my own! He also gave me a very welcome laptop cushion to replace the collection of magazines (Winsletts we call them) and a heat shield pad that I balance on my lap usually. In a tiny package which was wrapped like ‘pass the parcel’ in multiple layers of bubble wrap and tissue paper, was a tiny glass perfume bottle with long glass stopper for dabbing. This came from the local university and community glass works where lots of artists rent facilities and time on the furnaces. I wish I could do that style of glass work, but I couldn’t afford the fees, so I just use my kiln. Lastly was a tube of lavender hand cream for my housewife’s hands (mainly from gardening lately, in fact).

I gave Spotrick 4 books including one that had me absolutely cacking myself in the bookshop- ‘The Dragon with the Girl Tattoo’, with principle character Lizbreath Salamander!!! rofl. I also gave him a new pair of lounging trousers (happy pants?)- they are just like light cotton pyjama pants. I made them from some batik-printed dark blue Swiss cotton with a red waistband and stitching- he really likes them and is wearing them already!

So I hope everyone had the sort of Christmas/Hanukkah [or whatever you were celebrating], that you wished for- we did!

Where can I claim my reward?

As a sufferer from depression and pretty much unemployed for 2.5 years, I have been feeling a terrible lack of opportunity to be rewarded- either with money or something else I favour. People tell me (and I have started telling myself) not to WANT things. I really do have what I NEED for basic sustenance- sufficient food, a roof over my head, clothing, warmth, a partner, sex, 3 cats and friends. But despite telling myself to concentrate on how lucky I am (ie. think Haitian kids, one of whom I sponsor through World Vision), I have this terribly human trait of WANTING stuff/experiences/different stuff. Well now the people in the labs, those white-coated loonies of popular folklore, have discovered that our brains need enough of a particular substance to actually FEEL rewarded by anything. Not surprisingly, this substance is serotonin, the stuff that your neurons like to bathe in regularly, so you don’t feel depressed. These guys (along with a host of others) found that serotonin was the vital part of the brain’s REWARD system.
Now, how can we get more rewards? Do things and eat foods that increase the free-floating serotonin levels in the brain. There is a lot of bullshit, “natural”, nutrition and New Age claptrap around, but the truth seems to be that foods containing plenty of tryptophan (trip-to-fane) are the go. These are mostly tasty proteiny things like, lean red meat, turkey, chicken, nuts, cheese, beans and pulses (eg. lentils, chick peas). As part of a normal diet, we need to consume these with a little carbohydrate (which is hard to avoid, given the composition of most food)- the more complex ans slower to burn in our systems, the better. So- no added sugar, but good complex carbohydrates such as in vegetables, grainy breads and some fruits. Traditionally they say chocolate and bananas increase serotonin, but they’re better with some protein as part of a meal, not an EXTRA snack on the side! Appropriate fats are good too- mono-unsaturated oils like olive oil, omega 3 and 6 oils like fish oil/some nut oils, and recently some authorities have recommended pure cold-pressed coconut oil (which I find good). There seems to be little about dietary coconut oil, except as an antioxidant- by which the scientists mean that the components of coconut oil roam around our blood stream “scavenging” those things called “free radicals” which seem to age us and may play a role in the beginning of cancer. So even if the virgin coconut oil is not yet proven to help with depression and reward experiences, the mere thought that it’s doing you good may help anyway!
Now, I’m no medical authority, so don’t call me to account for this one, but there were recent reports that a pediatrician (children’s doctor) in the USA was treating her prematurely dementing husband with coconut oil and getting promising results. There is nothing in the conventional medical literature as yet, but I’m waiting with interest.
However, leaders in the field of cognition in ageing caution that there is no clear or longterm proof of the worthwhile use of various oils and other substances in slowing brain decline.

Giving things up

Yep- it will sound like another whinge, but I think I’ll write it down, just to get it out… I seem to have given up all sorts of little things to try to conserve money, since I’m rarely earning any, but it doesn’t seem to have had much effect on the home finances. Should I keep depriving myself, (and Spotrick for some of them), and try to concentrate on the longer term, or maybe cheer myself up a bit with some familiar treats? The trouble is, we seem to live in a level of constant, steady debt- it doesn’t get any bigger now, but it doesn’t reduce. I can’t see any way (other than winning the lottery or a secret surprise benefactor) that we can cut any more off it. On the other hand, if I reinstate the little luxuries of life, it will only put us into a few hundred dollars more debt over the year…hmm, but a few hundred is still more than zero. I’m quite obsessed with this, eh?!
Let’s see what I/we have given up. I gave up all my magazine subscriptions (I had about half a dozen, I guess)- home and garden stuff, craft things- nothing individually expensive; I’ve given up several items in the weekly grocery shopping- tonic water (that was good for the cramps caused by my tablets), potato crisps (noms- that was a hard one!), icecream, sweet biscuits (which were only occasional anyway), any sort of nuts other than South Australian almonds (because Brazil nuts and hazelnuts that I used to have for lunch, are imported and much more expensive than almonds), regular good red meat- we just have it about once a week now, spices in glass jars (we stick to the plastic packets and bulk buys), good wine (where we didn’t mind the price of a bottle up to about $40 in the bottle shop), all spirits (we haven’t bought any for years, actually- too expensive), soft drinks like Coke, frozen prepared savoury or sweet treats.
I don’t buy myself new clothes even when I really lust after something- before I would buy the occasional thing, maybe once a month. Now I don’t even look at clothing in shops any more, as it makes me feel rather sad. Even Target seems too expensive most of the time- for what you get, anyway. I suppose I buy 2 new tops for summer and 2 for winter, occasional underwear when things start falling apart. I replaced some jeans that split down the back (they had been $8 at Target 3 years before; I replaced them with $23 ones that are too fat in the bum and legs- but that’s what I get for being small!). Spotrick lives with 2 pairs of jeans- one pair for work that are new and an old pair for weekends- no other trousers except trackpants. He has a set of 5 black T shirts and 5 white ones- bought in bulk- plain Bonds ones. That’s his viable clothing! He treated himself to an Ubuntu T-shirt and fleece jacket last year, nothing else.
We haven’t got a digital set top box, although we may get a cheap one soon- we haven’t got cable/Foxtel/satellite and don’t really miss them although they might help our conversational inclusion! We don’t buy DVDs or download movies etc and we no longer buy an occasional music CD. Neither of us have iPods or MP3 players of any sort and never download iTunes etc.
We do have nice cameras for our main hobby, photography- Steve even has an SLR with a 200mm telephoto lens that he got in 2008. I bought a new larger point and shoot camera with a pay cheque I got for some research work and I’m quite happy with it.
Spotrick’s car has been pulled over by the police for too much smoke- he has to get the engine rebored or replaced, or he’ll have to get another car. It’s about 20 plus years old- he bought it for $3000 when we moved to our current house as we’d lived right in the city before. He tried the bus, but found it too crowded and he kept catching colds and flu and missing work.
My car is more than 10 years old now- it’s a tiny little Korean thing that’s already had a cracked head (welded) and hasn’t been serviced for two years- not good. I don’t use it much- only put petrol in it once every 6 weeks, but I’d rather use it than rely on the bus as I’m no good at carrying groceries and things- I’m too short and things are either too heavy and/or drag on the ground- I find it really hard to drag a trolley up bus steps- too heavy.
I have managed to avoid buying any of the textbooks for my uni course- I just borrow similar books from the library and that seems to work fine, even when they ask us to read specific chapters- I just fake it! I haven’t photocopied anything either- can get stuff as pdfs on the laptop and read them there.
We DO socialise with friends at a restaurant every Wednesday and eat and drink quite well, but our friends subsidise the bill so we never pay too much- they are fantastic! We used to have a group of us who went to the SA Theatre Company season of plays every year, but we’ve given up, so we just have dinner with them instead.
I’ve given up my aquarobics classes once or twice a week that I had been attending for 15 months- too expensive. Most people in the class got them cheap as they had private health insurance- but I can’t afford that either! (And I don’t really believe in it.)
I try not to turn the heating on during the day during winter, nor the air conditioning during summer- electricity bills are humongous! I never thought years ago that I would have to do this, but it’s necessary now- I just lie down in the summer and wait for it to cool down, or for Spotrick to come home; in winter I hop into bed with a book or the laptop and stay warm that way- a few mogs on the legs works a treat!
I don’t go for regular coffees or lunches with friends- just once a week for a quick lunch with a uni friend so I get a little social contact.
We don’t buy regular new seedlings and bulbs for the garden- I have grown the occasional batch of things from seed, but I’m too distracted/depressed to look after them mostly- we’ve got a good batch of chives and rocket currently but no spring flower seedlings. We got rid of most of the roses as they were spindly and hardly ever produced a good crop of flowers- but the yard is rather sad without colour and I’m not sure what we’ll do there. My garden used to be my pride and joy- photographs of other people’s gardens suffice now.
Anyway, it’s hard living a much more restricted life than I was used to for about 25 years. I know I have a pretty good life compared to alot of other people, but change is difficult for anyone. I feel under the thumb, I feel as though I have lost much of my independence by not having a regular income; I even feel a bit “imprisoned” and sometimes want to scream-”let me out, let me out”- but I guess it’s a psychological restriction and I can’t escape that without help …which I can’t get and can’t afford. So here I am.