reading
Have you read Trent Dalton’s Lola In The Mirror? This follows his chart busting book Boy Swallows Universe and is equally disturbing and intriguing. It is the story of a girl with no name, because when you’re homeless it’s best not to have a history. This book has it all; it’s funny, it’s sad, it’s violent and at the same time, quite beautiful. It focuses on homelessness,friendship, optimism and lucky breaks. It highlights the important role drop-in centres play in the lives of the dispossessed, the kindness of strangers and the cruelty of friends. Not really an easy read but certainly a good read. The story is based in Brisbane like Dalton’s other books.
The second book I’ve been reading is John Boyne’s The Heart’s Invisible Furies. He also wrote The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. When I finished reading Claire Keegen’s book, Small Things Like These, a story based on Irish Catholic nuns, I was determined not to read another book about the church and it’s impact on people. The cruelty was too much for me. The church doesn’t shine in this book, either.
The The Heart’s Invisible Furies begins ‘ Long before we discovered he had fathered two children by two different women,….Father James Monroe stood at the altar of the Church of Our Lady, ……and denounced my mother as a whore.’ I kept reading. This book was also hard to read at times. It covers 70 odd years of the main protagonist’s life and the many changes within the Catholic Church and the Irish people. There’s a happy ending 727 pages later but the Church would not agree!
While we’re thinking about books, I found these interesting comments about reading and the connection to better mental health and physical health in the March edition of The Australian Women’s Weekly. The author of the article, Eva-Maria Bobbert lists five advantages of reading.
MENTAL HEALTH Research shows a good book can lower stress faster than any other relaxation methods.
EMOTIONAL HEALTH Apparently reading can help with everything from grief, heartbreak, loneliness and poor self confidence. Stories about overcoming adversity can be inspirational.
HEART HEALTH and LONGEVITY Want to lower your blood pressure, psychological distress and lower heart rate? Read a good book. A twelve year study of more than 3000 adults found regular readers live about two years longer than non readers. Apparently, reading for more than 3.5 hours a week results in a 25% reduction in mortality.
SLEEP HYGIENE Reading a good book before you go to sleep can distract distressing thoughts making unwinding, slowing down and falling asleep easier.
COGNITIVE BENEFITS Do you remember Dr Seuss saying, ‘The more you read, the more things you will know?’ MRI scans indicate reading resulted in increased brain connectivity for several days afterwards. The more engaged you are with a book, the more areas of the brain that are stimulated and may result in greater intelligence.
So there’s five good reasons to enjoy a good book!
food preparation
Until I had eye surgery on my eyes last year I always wore contact lenses. So nothing prepared me for the pain of dicing onions without the protection of contact lenses! Ouch. I tried sunglasses, safety glasses even goggles but nothing was really working. Research recommended putting onions in the fridge 60 minutes before preparation, which actually works, but I kept forgetting. Needed another solution or we’d have to give up using onions.
Found a solution. It’s a multi cutting device called a 4 IN 1 Chopper Plus. It has two dicing blades of different sizes and 2 spiralizing blades, too. All the chopping happens under the lid, so no onion juice in my eyes. It’s really fast to totally dice an onion. Then I just empty the base into the frying pan. No tears. Such a relief. Spiralizing carrots is fun, too, and the springy curls look so pretty in a salad. It’s easy to almost instantly turn four really big potatoes into chips. So I’m really pleased with this new device! Bought online.
Fast, tear free diced onions and an easy cleanup, too.
Chipped potatoes in about a minute, added rosemary and sea salt, into the oven. Result = great, evenly cooked chips. A bit of a treat for us!
No dicing required, but I needed more freezer room over Easter, so out came the two ham bones from the Christmas hams. After my son sawed them to fit in the slow cooker, I added half a packet of split yellow peas, covered the bones with water and let it cook for 8 hours. Smelt good, tasted great. We ate Pea and Ham soup for four days. It was very good.
What to do with a surplus of red onions? I find they don’t keep well in this never ending hot weather, so used this Martha Stewart recipe to pickle them (here). Four ingredients, only a few minutes to pickle and delicious on just about everything. Apart for the sensible suggestions on the recipe site I really like these pickles on a thin slither of percorino romano cheese.
Four ingredients, red onions, salt, sugar and vinegar.
Let the pickles cool. Bottle and keep in the fridge. Try not to eat them all at once.