exercise
I go to the gym twice a week. I occasionally remind the sports physiologist who did my initial assessment and supervises my workout that my goal was to feel healthy and flexible, not to prepare for the next Olympic games. She just laughs and ups my weights and repetitions.
Image Pexels. Not me but I use this equipment at the gym. I don’t look like this super fit person!
Although I usually exceed my daily goal of 13 000 steps I am now more conscious of how often I am in the cardio/peak fat burning zone. An hour at the gym twice a week exceeds this goal. An hour of yoga each week offers no zone points but is wonderful for flexibility and relaxation. The recommended amount of time in the cardio zone for a week is 150 minutes.
blooming
Spring! Our flowers are wonderful. The roses have all recovered from chili thrip and are in full bloom. Roses, ranunculas, hippiastrums, alstromerias, geranium, nasturtiums and arum lilies plus clivias ar all flowering now. I have yellow and orange nasturtiums growing together and found I now have yellow nasturtiums with orange centres and stripes. The bees have been busy.
I also cut back the 22 year old spring onions for the second time since I planted them. They get a bit straggly after about ten years so I cut them down to the white bits and they’ve all regrown. Sweet, healthy little spring onions. So handy to add to so many things. Still picking snow peas, too, and a few tomatoes.
driving gloves
No, I am not going on a long journey, nor taking up rally driving! My husband recently came home after a long drive on a hot day and said his hands felt burnt. He decided to get some driving gloves to protect his hands during the heat of summer. As a fully paid up member of the melanoma family, I wanted some, too. I’d tried cotton gloves but they didn’t grip the steering wheel very well. Although I uses masses of sunscreen all the time, I also wash my hands a lot, so very little sunscreen remains.
Bought online, our gloves arrived quickly, fitted perfectly and do the job well!
painting
When we lived in China I learnt about the Chinese style of painting from a man we called The Master. Typically, he trained Chinese students to be artists. It was like an apprenticeship where he loaded his brush in a particular way, then the student copied. He’d make a mark on the rice paper, again, the student copied. This was very much the approach he took with his three or four “gweilo” women, too, which was very different from the way we were used to painting.
Until the last thirty years, Chinese painters often did an apprenticeship with a master, a recognised artist, then graduated to their own works, mostly in very traditional styles. These were often annotated with comments about the leaves, the mountain or other subjects. Recently I’ve seen a lot of Chinese artists’ work online and it is very different from the traditional themes and styles. Bold colours and often social commentary feature. I wonder what The Master thinks?
Last week I began a Chinese and Japanese painting course. I have worked with this tutor before, drawing from nature. She is very talented! Unfortunately, whatever I learnt in the past has disappeared. My bamboo leaves were fine, my bamboo stems not so good. Needs more work.
eating
Despite wanting to eat simple food this week I jumped at the opportunity to make Authentic German Frikadellen, German meat patties. Why? I’d accidentally bought bolognese mince, a mix of beef and pork and had no idea what to do with it. It’s just what this recipe required, so I gathered all the ingredients. We also had the required two slices of white bread bought to make curried egg sandwiches for visitors and promptly forgotten about lurking in the fridge. No waste! The only thing missing was marjoram, a spice. I try not to buy spices I’m unlikely to use again as I don’t think they last very long so I’d have to throw the remainder away. Tasted good without it, anyway.
Soaked the bread in milk for a few hours, then began the process. Fried the onion and garlic, added it to the other ingredients. My husband blended the mix by kneading everything together, as suggested in the recipe. We shaped nine quite generous sized patties from the mixture and browned them on high heat, then left them to cook through on a gentle heat. It was not included in the recipe online, but I used the pan juices to make gravy to serve with the patties.
We ate these wonderful patties with spicy Chinese cabbage and potato salad. A dab of mustard on top. We’ll have these patties again.
reading
Richard Osman has written three books The Thursday Murder Club, The Man Who Died Twice and the latest one The Bullet That Missed. It’s another wonderful tale about the inhabitants of an old peoples’ home who like to solve murders. All a bit improbable but very entertaining. Apparently he’s already working on number four. Good.
Do you have an author you really enjoy and eagerly await their next book?