Sunday cooking and catch-up

I didn't do any shopping this week, determined to cook using stuff I already have on hand. I invited people over last Thursday for raclette so I still have plenty of cheese and bits and pieces leftover from that. Trying to think of something to do with the jar of courgette slices in oil sitting in the fridge, my eye fell on the large packet of chickpeas I got from the Turkish supermarket a while back and since I also remembered the remains of the curry paste in the fridge, I decided on chickpea curry.

I soaked the chickpeas overnight (400g, as I checked my WW book and saw a portion given as 100g dried for 4.5 pts) and after getting back from the pool this afternoon set them to boil. I also sliced the last of the potatoes from the other night and fried them up with a few dried tomatoes and some cheese. So that was lunch while the chickpeas were cooking. Later on I sliced a red onion, a yellow onion, five cloves of garlic as well as a just over an inch-long piece of ginger. That all went into some olive oil to fry off for a bit while I rummaged through the spice cupboard. I wasn't following any particular recipe, just had a quick flick through a few cookbooks for inspiration. I added some mustard seeds to the pan, followed by a small amount of ground cumin, some tumeric, a couple of curry leaves and the seeds from four cardamon pods, which I smushed up a bit with a pestle. Then in went three teaspoons of the curry paste and a few minutes later, a tin of tomatoes. I then added the chickpeas to the whole lot and five or six spoonfuls of the cooking water, as 400g of chickpeas is really quite a lot. I'm wondering if WW really intended that 100g dried is a portion or if it was just given as 100g is a convenient amount to list. I left it simmering and it was only about half an hour later, while talking to my sister, that I remembered that the whole point of the exercise had been to use up the courgette slices. So, back into the kitchen and in they went (minus as much of the oil as I could manage to leave in the jar). Just had a small bowlful and I have to say, it's very, very tasty. Looking forward to eating it over the course of the week. In fact, I've just gone back for a second small bowl and put the rest into Tupperware and it only fit into three containers - really two and a half so it looks like portionwise, I wasn't too far off after all. I'll spread it out by having the half portion with rice. In fact, if I were to eat them all with rice I'd have five portions - we'll see how the week goes.

I haven't really felt much like blogging this week. Haven't even really felt much like reading blogs this week, which is unusual but I'm just going with it. The visual journal idea has fallen by the wayside, too. I have gotten some stuff done though. I've been making a big effort to try to get things under control at work. I seem to have lost the ability to just keep everything on track, my head just hasn't been the same the last few months. I know grief can do strange things but it genuinely feels like I'm kind of broken. My memory is completely shot.

So, rather than waiting for myself to get back to normal, bearing in mind there's no guarantee that'll ever happen and that it doesn't seem to happening now, I spent some time a couple of weeks ago writing out lists of all the stuff I need to do on a daily, weekly and monthly basis. There are a lot of tasks that I need to do which don't take a huge amount of time if I do them daily but build up to enourmous loads if they're ignored (or forgotten about!) for a few days. And other things that we don't necessarily get reminders about but which it is very important to take care of every few weeks.  So far, it's working out fairly well although it's bringing back to me just how much is involved in my job. There are so many little things that might only take a few minutes but of course a few minutes multiplied by twenty starts to build up into much larger chunks of time. And this is just all of the background stuff - my main tasks of dealing with what correspondence and other stuff that my boss and the staff I work for need still have to be done too. To my list of stuff, I've added clearing ten old emails every day. This is working out really well. I've completely cleared my sent items, except for stuff I need to still keep an eye on, which is about seven emails. And by the end of next week, I should have my inbox completely cleared. I do still have some very old emails that at some stage just got moved to a temporary folder - they've all been dealt with and just need to be moved to the appropriate place or deleted so once I've finished with my inbox I'll keep going with that and finally get them all dealt with, too. Honestly, I'm kind of thinking ahead to the end of the year and wanting to make sure that I leave everything in order when I move on.

These are kind of small steps but they are giving me back a measure of feeling in control. This weekend, for the first time in a long time, I didn't spend most of the time thinking that it really would be better if I could go into work for a couple of hours to clear some of the backlog and get ahead a bit. Yesterday, I got the washing done and then I met a friend in town to go to an exhibition of Alexander Calder's sculptures. I'm not much of a one for modern art and yet for the third time, I found myself heading for K20, the only art museum I've actually made it to in the five years I've lived here. Go figure. We also walked around the normal collection and saw some really lovely stuff (as well as some really, scratch-your-head-how-is-that-art kind of pieces. Cough, Joseph Beuys, cough.) I got to finally make a note of one piece which I really, really like, even if it is modern art and looks so simple a kid could have done it. It's called Gamma Gamma and is by Morris Louis. I did get given out to for standing too close to it though. Oops. The Mark Rothko pieces I've seen there before weren't on display but there were two huge pieces of just blocks of colour, which were actually knitted pieces over canvas. So simple but the sheer size and the depth of colour were amazing. They're the kind of pieces you could look at a photo of and think it's nothing special but when you're standing in front of them really are breathtaking. Can't remember now the name of the artist. It seems I'm destined to keep having to go back to check names of artists.

At least my BahnCard got me a discount and my friend told me about a special ArtCard you can buy which gives you admission to all of the museums and galleries for a full year. It costs around 55 euro and I'm going to get one and we've agreed that we will go together once a month. She made the point that a lot of the time what she uses it for is when she's arranged to meet someone and is ten or fifteen minutes early. She can go and wander around for the few minutes she's waiting - not enough time to justify paying in, but if you can get in, enough time to soak up a picture or two.

Otherwise, my take the stairs challenge is going pretty well. I didn't do much else this week in terms of movement though. I did two mornings of stretching and then my back was a bit sore so I didn't want to exacerbate it. I was wearing my older boots and orthotics as I'd had to leave in my good shoes to be fixed again. I got new soles just a few months ago and one of them started to come unstuck. It turns out that I'd worn almost through the insoles so there was no resistance or something like that. So now I have new leather insoles (32 euro) and they re-fixed the soles (free). I got them back on Friday morning and by Friday evening felt such an improvement that I walked home without any problems. So it seems like it wasn't the stretching doing my back in, it was just the old shoes. Must remember that because I know I've noticed it before. I walked home from town on Saturday as well and then this afternoon I went swimming. Just for half-an-hour but it really felt good. I love being in the water. Along with a nice conversation with my brother yesterday evening, staying in bed late reading this morning, keeping on top of the washing up and getting some cooking done, all in all it has been a very nice weekend. Hope everyone has been enjoying theirs, too.

Visual journal - 19th January 2014

Dinner - A Girl Called Jack's carrot, cumin and kidney bean balls with passata and lettuce in a wrap. Very good!

Made a giant pot of leek and potato soup - lunches taken care of for this week and a couple for the freezer

Take the stairs challenge

The lovely Sarah over at Live to List posted at the beginning of January that she was challenging herself to take the stairs in January and I decided to join in. I live on the fourth floor with no lift so I do those stairs every day anyway. But there are also stairs up from the underground station near me and when I moved here I was walking up them every day but since then have gotten used to taking the escalator instead.

Of course, I then started the year with a cold, which was particularly bad in terms of coughing and not being able to breath properly. So I gave myself a pass until I was better. And then promptly forgot all about it. Luckily she posted an update last week and so I was reminded and thought I was better enough that I'd better get on with it. And then that evening there were no stairs for me because I ended up walking home. But I wouldn't have done that either if I hadn't been thinking about moving (I'm not really far enough along that I'm calling it exercise yet, for now it's just movement). On Wednesday I did take the stairs, so that was once at the main train station and once at the underground near home. Thursday and Friday I walked up the stairs from the underground near home and on Thursday I even did two flights at work. I normally do take the lift at work, where I work on the fourth floor, as I'm so often carrying piles of stuff but this time I had just one small file with me after collecting a signature from someone on the second floor so I just walked. I'm keeping track of this on my food tracking blog, because I suspect that much like tracking food, if I don't write it down I'll keep forgetting to do it. But I'm pleased with my progress this week anyway.

And very pleased at my weight loss - at my heaviest last April I had reached a point where stairs were starting to sometimes become a problem as my knees were hurting. Thankfully, the weight I regained between September and December didn't tip me back over into that 'knees hurt' weight but it was definitely one of the thoughts that helped to get me back to trying relatively quickly. I shouldn't have weighed myself until the end of the month but I was actually starting to worry a bit about whether I was even heading in the right direction because while I have done well with food planning the past week, there was also quite a bit of chocolate and the time while I was sick wasn't spectacular in terms of healthy eating either. So I was thrilled yesterday to step on the scales at see a THREE kilo weight loss. Only one more kilo to get rid of the regained weight. And an overall weight loss of 7 kilos since April. Taking the stairs might not seem like a huge deal but it's small things like that which can contribute the most, since they're daily occurrences.

The next thing I want to incorporate into my day is some stretching exercises in the mornings. I've intended something like this over and over so often but never done it. I even bought some weights last year and the only thing I've done with them since is stub my toe on them (and that more than once!). All just seems sort of overwhelming, when would I find the time, etc., etc. So, I decided to have a CD all lined up and ready to play and the idea is that when I get up first thing to go to the bathroom, I have to stop on the way back to the bedroom, press play and for the duration of the first song to some stretching exercises. I've chosen my Putumayo French Cafe CD (which I used to use as my housework music) as the first song is 3 minutes and 37 seconds long, which is about as much as I want to start with and it has a nice upbeat tempo and feel. We'll see how it goes. If I'm still inclined to head back to bed for another few minutes afterwards that's allowed but at least I'll have done 3:37 of movement.

Edited to add that really, one day what I want to do this full thing (and that part's just the warm-up!) - I have the record (yes, vinyl!) and the video (used to be my mum's but she was about as good as I am now about doing stuff like this) and it's just one of those things that has been in the back of my head for such a long time!

Visual journal - 18th January 2014

My favourite part of the market - potatoes! Now if they only sold roosters.

Visual journal - 17th January 2014

A glimpse at my diary (a paperblanks week at a glance one)  . Not much on this week. The numbers to the left of the day/date are where I am in my monthly cycle. When I first got my period, aged 12, my sister told me it was important that I keep track of the days and, apart from a few years when I was on the pill, I always have. Added to that in the last year or so I now also take my temperature every morning and write it on the right of the page. Very useful and interesting information to have, can highly recommend to any woman not doing this to start it.  In the space for notes, you can see my shopping list for tomorrow - just tried to cobble together a meal plan for the week and that's what I need to get. 

Visual journal - 16th January 2014

Guess where I spent an hour and a half this afternoon?

And then, since I was near home slightly earlier than usual (no way was I going back in to work the way I felt when leaving the dentist, not just for the ten minutes left of the "official" day) I stopped into a shop near me to see what their sale was like and found these. Yes, I know that especially coming home from the dentist I should be rejecting all things chocolately but it's Cadbury's Fingers! And dark chocolate ones, too. This shop is the strangest place, mostly sells clothes and household stuff but also gets in random "international" foods from time to time. 

Visual journal - 14th January 2014

As a result of the fiasco that was the privatisation of the Irish telecom company in 1999 and the subsequent sale of their mobile phone division to Vodafone, I automatically received some Vodafone shares in 2001. And since about 2002 have done absolutely nothing about that. With three house-moves since then, it's no wonder they lost track of me either. It was on the agenda for this year anyway but with the coming sale of the Verizon portion of Vodafone, I've pulled it forward and got the folder out this evening. Will be phoning tomorrow to see what they can do for me. At least I'm well-sorted enough now that I knew exactly where all this stuff was!