21 for 2021: another thing done

Week 20/2021: Week of 17 May 2021

What did I want to do better this week?

Afternoon exercise. 

So, how did that go then?

. . . . . . . . .

21 for 2021 update

This week I did some more work on my resume (thing 18). I think I’m happy with it now, as I don’t have any need for it in job applications right now, so I’m calling it done. I’ve made six-monthly appointments with myself to review it as part of a regular catchup with myself to check in on how I’m going with all things work. How super organised is that?!

This is an idea I got from Katherine at People Flourishing, who has been a wonderful help to me in the past with my resume and applying for jobs.

I also did some work on my websites and blogs (thing 13). I’m trying to make them more consistent in terms of style and with the stories I tell about myself. 

I didn’t start a new chapter of the Change Journal but I’m still working on Habits (Chapter 7), Clarity (Chapter 8) and Pitch Yourself (Chapter 9).

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. 

I cooked Alice’s “Blend and Snap” Celery Soup (page 418) this week. Any recipe that talks about Elle Woods is already a winner in my book and this proved to be the case in practice.

One thing I love about this is that there’s no pre-cooking prep needed. You just cut up celery, leek and some herbs, blend the lot with some stock and put it on to cook. Blending everything with my stick blender was the most intensive part of this cook. Otherwise it was all pretty easy and I had time to make a side dish of zucchini fritters. (This was easier than it sounds. It was grated zucchini mixed with eggs, salt, pepper and nutmeg, and fried.)

Celery soup garnish

I think what made this soup was the garnish, which is made up of the chopped celery heart, cranberries and pine nuts. Without it, the soup would have been nice but not super tasty (perhaps not having had the celery salt the recipe called for contributed to this), but the addition of this crunchy, tart extra, really lifted it and put it firmly on the “will make again” list.

It tasted better than it looked

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I’ve been reading my friend’s book so I can give it back to her. The funny thing about this is that she asked if she could have it back for a few days if I hadn’t finished it so she could use it in something she was writing. I said I’d take it in for her because I was dipping in and out of it and still had a long way to go, so that she could get what she needed from it and then give it back so I could finish it. Our catchup got postponed, and later in the week she messaged me to tell me she had just received a late birthday present from a family member, which was. . . .  the same book. So there is now no rush at all for me to finish it now. 
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. One hour on Sunday afternoon. I’ve almost finished the first one I wanted to get done this year. I asked Kramstable to quality check it for me. He picked up a couple of errors so I’ll fix them next week and hopefully this one will be done and I can move onto the next one.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum but we had to spend most of the time going through some government forms and I didn’t get a chance to ask her any more questions. Not to worry, I still have a lot of notes to write up. One of the things I’m doing in my spare time is an online course about research skills, which is primarily about field interviews, but I’m finding a lot of helpful advice in there about getting information in other contexts such as meetings and even chats with my mum. One of the things they strongly recommend is to take time after your interview and document as much as you can in the words of the person you just spoke to. I haven’t been doing this either with Mum or at work, so I’m going to build that in to any future meetings. 
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week I worked on Module 6. This module is about obtaining information from people, so it fits really well with the material in the research course, including things like active listening and observing the person you’re talking to.

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 18
• Things completed to date: 3 (1, 18, 20)
• Things I progressed: 7 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 13, 17)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 6 (6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 16)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

One of this week’s photos from my Hobart Street Corners project

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

Over the last two weeks, I have been working through the book Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad. This is difficult, confronting work but it’s necessary. I’m learning a lot and I’m facing a lot of things that I need to address within myself. 

What was the best thing this week?

I skipped my yoga class this week and went to Kramstable’s debate.I don’t usually go because yoga is on at the same time but this week I wanted to see him speak. When we got there, we found that the opposing team had forfeited so there was going to be no debate. The adjudicator said that he was happy to step in as the negative team and debate the kids single handedly, then a couple of parents said they’d like to debate as well, so it was on. 

It was interesting to see how much more relaxed the kids were with their speeches when there was no “competition” pressure. Thanks to one of the parents, I now know there is less chance of getting a blood clot from the covid vaccination than there is of getting attacked by a shark on a plane. I never quite found out if this was an airborne plane or one that had crashed into the sea. 

I got the casting vote as to which team had won, so I called it for the kids and everyone was happy. 

An afternoon walk

What I’m reading this week

• Me and White Supremacy by Layla F. Saad
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
• gulp! The seven day crash course to master fear and break through any challenge by Gabriella Goddard
• Stamped: Racism, Antiracism and You by Jason Reynolds and Ibram X. Kendi

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 5): 5
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 5):
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 4
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 6
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 6
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 3
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 4

21 for 2021: week 19 review

Week 19/2021: week of 10 May 2021

What did I want to do better this week?

More than one afternoon’s exercise in the week.

So, how did that go then?

I did two days . . .

I also did the City to Casino seven km walk on Sunday, and then walked back to my sister’s house afterwards, for a total of almost 13 km for the day, so I’m sure that counts as well.

Chilly start to the City to Casino on Sunday

21 for 2021 update

I didn’t work on a new chapter of the Change Journal (thing 4) this week. I’m working on the habits chapter (chapter 7), and pitch yourself (chapter 9) in conjunction with my resume review (thing 18). Really, this should just be a couple of hours work, a final check and hit publish. But I always seem to take so long to get to the final stage that I feel happy with on things like this.

Same goes for the behind the scenes work on my website (thing 13). It is taking far too long! 

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. This week I chose onion and the dish was ‘The Any Kind of Onion’ Tarte Tatin (page 286). Let me begin by saying I had no idea what a tarte tatin is. I’de seen people make them on Masterchef but I didn’t really pay that much attention so I had no clue. Apparently it’s more of a dessert, but Alice says, “if you think of it like an open-faced pasty or upside-down vegetable tart, it starts to make a lot more sense”. Okay. (But why not just make a pie?)

The main thing I would note about this recipe is that it uses a lot more sugar than I would normally use in a dinner dish, and I have to be careful with this, which I forget sometimes.

As I did with the mushroom pie a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make a second dish from the book to go with the tart. I chose Salt and Vinegar Kale Chips (page 360) and, scoff all you want, I like kale. I also like quinoa and I like avocado as well. I just don’t sip lattes. Whatever. Haters gonna hate. I like kale. Especially when its coated in olive oil, vinegar, salt and chilli flakes, and baked.

The problem with this was that the kale had to be cooked in a 140 degree oven and the tarte/upside down pie was already cooking at 200 degrees. Round one of kale chips = completely burnt. I ate them all anyway. They were very crunchy.

Just a bit burnt

Alice says that people complain that the kale chips can lose their crispiness and go soggy within a day. Leftovers? Who in their right mind would leave these left over? They are so good. I’m counting down the days to next time there’s kale in the fridge.

Back to the pie. I mean tarte. I cooked it in my controversial (don’t ask) Le Creuset skillet, which can go into the oven, and I’ll admit to having been a bit anxious about it cooking for 60 minutes when at 30 minutes the pastry already looked pretty well done. But I stuck to the recipe and it didn’t burn and it came out looking nothing like the picture in the book. Not a resounding success but not the overwhelming disaster I expected and it didn’t taste too bad either.

Looks odd, tasted good

I’m sure there are others who would do this recipe a lot more justice than I did. I might have to try it again to see if I can do it better!

I think this what the kale chips were supposed to look like

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. One of the things on the list is to read books I have borrowed from other people and give them back. I’m reading one of these books.
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I spent two hours on one of these videos on Sunday and it’s almost finished.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum on Thursday and talked a bit about what it was like to be a young mum in a small country town in the 1970s. 
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week I started module 6. 

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 2 (1, 20)
• Things I progressed: 8 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 13, 17, 18)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 6 (6, 7, 10, 11, 14, 16)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Murray Street, Thursday morning

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

I had two training courses this week, which was a nice change from work. I went to the 26TEN Plain English Writing workshop on Tuesday, which was a good overview of Plain English, most of which I was familiar with but it was great to review what I knew and pick up on things I hadn’t quite grasped. And I learned a couple of new tricks for communicating more effectively at work.

These workshops are excellent and 26TEN runs them across the state at various times during the year at no cost, so if this is something you’re interested in, it’s worth doing. 

The other workshop I did was Aboriginal Cultural Awareness presented by the government’s Aboriginal Employment Unit. This was interesting and built on understanding that I had already been developing on issues relating to Aboriginal people in Tasmania. One exercise in particular was really intense and clearly showed difficulties Aboriginal people can face in accessing basic government services. 

The challenge from this is to build what I learned into my work. I have a lot to learn. 

What do I want to do better next week?

That afternoon exercise thing . . .

What I’m reading

• On Writing by Stephen King
• Me and White Supremacy by Layla Saad
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
• gulp! The seven day crash course to master fear and break through any challenge by Gabriella Goddard

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 3): 3
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 3): 3
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 4
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

21 for 2021: week 18

Week 18/2021: week of 4 May 2021

21 for 2021 update

This week in the Change Journal I tried out the Eisenhower Principle chapter, which I am familiar with but don’t think I’ve ever actually used. It’s a way of prioritising things according to their importance and their urgency. I’ve seen it used to organise things in a long term way as well as to prioritise things on a daily basis. (James Clear has a good explanation of it.)

One of the ideas it promotes is to try and focus most of your time working on things that are important but not urgent, so that you work on them before they get to the urgent stage and you start to panic. However, we also know that many things that crop up on a day to day basis might be urgent but they aren’t really that important in the long term. And there a lot of things we might do that aren’t urgent or particularly important, such as excessive social media scrolling, which we (by which I mean I) spend way too much time on when we’d be better using your time on things that are important. 

Chapter 6 lays out an Eisenhower matrix for each day of the week so you can have a go at prioritising your tasks each day according to their importance and urgency.

I had limited success with this as a daily planning exercise and I think it would work better for long-term planning. I see it more as a way of identifying the things I want to be prioritising and the things I would be better off limiting, and then developing my daily to-do list from that and giving it a way of identifying the top priority things (a la the Circle technique). Something like that anyway. Because, for example, I’m not going to put “check twitter” in the not urgent/not important box of a daily list, but it is something that in a long-term big picture view would go in there.

I’m sure that makes no sense. So I’m calling that chapter done. 

I did some work on my resume (thing 18) this week. Due to a recent reorganisation in my team this week, I started a new job this week, which is going to give me some new challenges and, I hope, more of an opportunity to use my strengths and skills. As a result of that, I’m not sure I need to apply for a new job this year, so I’m taking that part of thing 18 off. I’m only going to apply for a new job if something irresistible comes up. I’ve been putting off saying my resume is finished because there are a couple of statements in there that I’m being overly picky about wording and it‘s holding the whole thing up.

I think I just need to do it and be done with it. It’s not like anyone is going to see it right now. 

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable.

This week I cooked with fennel, which is anther vegetable I don’t think I’d cooked with before. The recipe was called Fennel Cacciatore with Free-form Polenta Dumplings (page 72), and it’s Alice’s twist on chicken cacciatore. It’s another simple dish, which involves browning the fennel pieces mixing in some olives and garlic, then cooking with tomatoes for about 45 minutes. Alice says you can add chicken if you like or, as I did, cut up some pork and fennel sausages, cook them and add to the sauce.  

The recipe also calls for what she calls free-form polenta dumplings on top, which I found a little bit dry, and I imagine you could also serve it with a creamy potato mash.

This was another for the “will make again” list.

Regular projects

There are several things on my 21 for 2021 list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. How about ten minutes reading one of the books on that list?
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I spent a couple of hours on one of these videos on Sunday afternoon.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum on Thursday and talked some more about her school days. 
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week, I completed Module 5. I was supposed to attend the live workout on Thursday morning but I managed to mix the time zones up and tune in an hour after the actual start time. That was 3 am, and there was no way I would have got up for that! I only managed to get up at 4 because I woke up then anyway. But I missed it, and went for a very early walk instead.

Ursula enjoying the wet weather this week

21 for 2021 week 18 summary

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 2 (1, 20)
• Things I progressed: 7 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 17, 18)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 7 (6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s the final flashback to my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 17 December 2011: The unchristmas tree. Coming up to midwinter (okay, that’s a few weeks away . . .), it’s a good one to finish this series with.

I think that means I probably should have finished sorting out my websites to coincide with the 10-year blogiversary (thing 13) but I haven’t. It’s a small matter of getting some words right. (See above comment on my resume.)

What I’m reading this week

• On Writing by Stephen King
• Dæmon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling by Philip Pullman
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 5): 5
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 5): 5
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 6
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 1 (er . . . )
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

What do I want to do better next week?

See that number one next to the number of days I did some physical activity in the afternoon . . . ? That.

21 for 2021: week 17 update

Week 17/2021: week of 26 April 2021

I  had a lovely day out with my sister and her friend at Mt Field National Park on Saturday, which was great because I could forget all about my to-do list and concentrate on  not rolling my injured ankle clambering over large rocks on the Tarn Shelf. Did I succeed? No, I did not. But I can still walk, so I don’t think I did too much damage.

I still have a tonne of photos to sort through, so here are just a couple of them.

21 for 2021 update

This week in the Change Journal I worked on chapter 5, Digital Detox.

I don’t know that I learned that much from the exercise other than that on a bad day, if I was on social media and email and watching TV as much as I was that day every day of the year, I’d spend the equivalent of 43 days a year doing that.

43 days!!!!

Actually, this is a bit misleading, because I don’t normally watch TV and I have been lately because I watch Masterchef with Kramstable, and I check the Twitter feed about the show on my phone at the same time, so a lot of the time I counted as being on social media was double counted as TV time as well. If I hadn’t been watching TV, I might not have been on the phone either.

 The idea of the chapter is to track your usage over the first four days of the week, to track your non-usage over the last three days and then work out how much time you’d save over a year by not going on the phone. I found that difficult, to actually track the times I thought about picking up my phone but didn’t do it, especially as I was out and away from the journal for most of the time so didn’t have any way to record near-misses. I sort of get what it was trying to do but it didn’t work for me. 

I know what my main triggers for wasting time on the phone are. They are being in between tasks, not being sure what I should be doing or not really having anything to do. I know that on days I have a lot to do and I just sit down and do it, I spend a lot less time on the phone. 

So I found this chapter more of a reinforcement of what I already knew, rather than something new.

Also, I completed 66 days of the habit of doing the pre-work routine (thing 20), which is part of chapter 7, so that thing is done. I’m also working through the journalling chapter (chapter 24).

I did some more work on my resume (thing 18)

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable.

 This week’s dish was Carefree Cabbage Curry (page 456). I’m not a huge fan of cabbage. In fact, I reckon it’s up there with Brussels sprouts and we already know what I think of them. However, Alice says, “Often, when cabbage gets braised, it is shredded, grated or chopped in some way where you lose the beauty of its folds and undulations. Here, the rich golden marinade and equally shimmering gravy only serves to emphasise the grandeur of this brilliant Brassica.”

Wow! What a description. It’s a love letter to cabbage, right? Writing like that is almost enough to turn the most ardent cabbage hater. 

Almost.

For this dish, you cut cabbage into wedges, marinate it and then cook it in what is a very tasty curry sauce. (Note to self: you have run out of Kashmiri chilli.) It’s actually nice.

Marinating cabbage. It’s a thing.

There, I said it. There is a cabbage dish I liked.

I think having the cabbage as such a big chunk bulks it up a bit so you don’t feel like you’re missing out by not having any meat in it. I can imagine I’d make this again. 

I even had nigella seeds already

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I didn’t do this on Satirday as I was out but I did read a bit from one of the books that’s on the list during the week.
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I worked on this for a couple of hours on Sunday afternoon.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I didn’t get much of a chance to talk to my mum this week, but I got her to identify some people in some old photos
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. I finished lesson 3 of Module 5.

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 1 (20)
• Things completed to date: 2 (1, 20)
• Things I progressed: 7 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 17, 18)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 7 (6, 7, 10, 11, 13, 14, 16)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 11 November 2011: eleven, which is about how I spent 11/11/11. Sick on the couch at home, it turned out.

I took a photo every hour that day for the 11Eleven project, which seems to have now disappeared. I don’t know if the book ever happened but I’m pretty sure none of my photos would have made it in!

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

I went to a webinar on age discrimination in the workplace, which I found very interesting. One of the panelists asked why we have this constant fixation on chronological age, and said that focusing on age to categorise older workers is deficient and limiting. I found Kay Patterson, the Age Discrimination Commissioner, a real inspiration at age 76. This is all going to be relevant to my work in the coming months so it was a useful and thought provoking session for me.

I was also interested to see Hobart Council’s Crowther Reinterpretation Project in Franklin Square. This project provides local artists with the opportunity to respond to the statue of William Crowther, a public figure in mid-19th century Hobart.

The first project is called “Truth Telling” by Allan Mansell, and it considers Crowther’s treatment of Aboriginal man William Lanne (King Billy) after Lanne’s death, including decapitating his body.

There will be four temporary artworks involving the stature over the rest of 2021. While I was aware of Aboriginal people’s bodies having been desecrated in the name of white people’s “science”, I didn’t know about William Lanne’s particular story, and I think this project is a good opportunity to, as the project description says, “acknowledge, question, provoke discussion or increase awareness about the story of Crowther and Lanne”. These are important stories that we need to learn about.

What was the best thing about this week?

The Tarn Shelf walk.

What I’m reading this week

• On Writing by Stephen King
• Dæmon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling by Philip Pullman
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 4
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 4): 4
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 4
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 4 work days): 4
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

A threesome of vegetables

Thing 2 of my 21 from 2021 list is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. Some of these cooking adventures have been long enough to make a whole post about them rather than talk about them in my regular weekly 21 for 2021 posts.

This was definitely the case with last week (week 14).

 I had planned to cook two recipes on Tuesday. Originally, I was going to cook the One-pot Whole-roasted Cauliflower (page 84) but I didn’t know what to serve it with so I thought the Not Mushroom for Error Pie with Duck Fat Pastry (page 318) would be a nice side dish. It’s not really a side dish. It’s a main course that you serve with a side dish like, say, salad leaves. Not an entire roasted cauliflower.

I’m glad I read the recipe earlier in the day so that I knew to start the duck fat pastry in the afternoon. It is by no means true that I picked this recipe simply so I could have some duck fat at home to cook potatoes in at some point down the track. Besides, you don’t have to use duck fat. You could use extra butter, or you could totally cheat and buy a shortcrust pastry. Not for me, I love smearing my hands with duck fat. Really. Gross. I think this is the first time I’ve ever cooked with duck fat. So many firsts with this book!

Duck fat pastry

I had a combination of button, swiss brown, shiitake and oyster mushrooms for the dish, as well as dried porcini mushrooms, which I decided to soak and throw into the mix rather than grind up to have porcini powder, which is the actual ingredient in the recipe.

Mushroom-a-rama

Mushrooms cooking

At the same time as I was doing this, I was getting the cauliflower ready for roasting. I had a similar dish at the Agrarian Kitchen a few years ago. It was the first time I’d ever been served an entire cauliflower and, after that, wanted to make it myself. It’s really not difficult. The recipe calls for par-boiling the stem and base for 10-15 minutes so that you can cook it for less time in the oven and not overcook the top, which is a problem I always have with things like cauliflower and broccoli.

Undercooked stems or overcooked tops. What’s worse?

Mushrooms continuing to cook with onions

The main thing I hadn’t planned for was that the cauli needed 30 minutes at 240 degrees and the pie needed 45 minutes at 200 degrees. 

Oops.

Left-over pastry mushrooms. Sort of.

I ended up setting the oven at 220 degrees and cooking the lot for 45 minutes, which cooked the pie nicely (though I had forgotten to allow for pastry shrinkage), and then I cranked it up to 250 for a few minutes to try and get some more heat into the cauliflower. The leaves were beautifully charred, as was some of the top, but it probably would have benefited from the higher heat for the whole time.

Pie goes in

Pie comes out

Next time, I’ll make this with something else that doesn’t need an oven and do it properly. And I’ll probably make a salad to go with the mushroom pie.

Roasted cauliflower

On Saturday, I made Seventies Dinner Party Sprouts using Brussels sprouts (page 440). Alice says that this dish is highly unlikely to have ever featured at a 70s dinner party, since back in those days, green stuff was “boiled into oblivion”. I despise the vile things. Probably a hangover from my 70s upbringing and the aforementioned boiling. Kramstable, on the other hand, loves them (I blame Andy Griffiths), and so there are dinner nights when everyone else gets broccoli and he gets sprouts. At least he knows no one is going to steal them, and he can have them all to himself.

I never thought I’d ever cook these

This recipe involves a marinade that Alice says is genuinely handed down from the 70s as a lamb marinade, so I decided to make a lamb dish to go with the sprouts. In this case, a lamb shank shepherd’s pie from Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar for Life book, which involves slow cooking lamb shanks all day and then making up the pie, topped with puréed roast sweet potato, to go in the oven just before dinner time.

Soaking in the marinade

The sprout recipe was easy. Make the marinade, trim and halve the sprouts and drop the into the marinade, then roast them for about ten minutes until the outer leaves are a bit charred.

Cooked!

I still don’t like sprouts but these were much nicer than any other way I’ve had them.

Classy plating

21 for 2021: week 13

Week 13/2021: week of 29 March 2021

This week, I started the last of the five habits in chapter 7 of the Change Journal (thing 4). This habit relates to a challenge I’ve started this month with Trina O’Gorman to write for at least 15 minutes every day. Trina is running the challenge on her instagram feed, to see if writing every day has any affect on people’s sense of wellbeing. I’m using some writing prompts I’ve been meaning to write to for a while now and kept putting off, and have committed to handwriting my responses every morning for 20 minutes. It’s a bit like Julia Cameron’s morning pages ritual but with guided prompts rather than unassisted stream of consciousness writing, which I have always struggled to do.

I’ve started work on chapter 11 (Reading), which asks you to record how much you read each day in six-minute increments. This actually isn’t much of a challenge for me because I made reading a habit last year, so it’s just a matter of remembering how much I read and noting it down each day. Since that one’s easy, I also thought I would make start on Chapter 24 (Journalling), which has spaces to record one line a day for 21 days and then two lines a day for 16 days. I already have a journal called Some lines a day, in which I write something I’m grateful for each day and then a brief highlight (or lowlight) of the day every day, so I don’t really need to do this chapter. But it’s there to be done and I had the idea of noting down the most significant insight/s from my morning writing each day in that section. So that’s what I’ll be doing for the next 37 days.

I love how everything has connected up like this!

I did some behind the scenes work on my websites (thing 13) and I think the main thing I want to do is to make sure my intro statements are consistent across all my platforms. I have so many platforms, I was thinking about making a linktree to keep track of them all.

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. This week I chose “herbs”, which is a pretty broad section of the book and is one with more than a couple of recipes. The one I chose was called Lobio, which is a kidney bean stew with coriander on page 354.

Lobio

It’s a pretty easy recipe to cook and it’s the first bean stew I’ve made without tomatoes, which I’ve always seen as a staple ingredient for bean dishes. Not so. The part that took the longest was picking off the coriander leaves and chopping up the stems.

This was a great mid-week dish that I can see myself making double the quantity of and having a week’s worth of lunches sorted.

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I’m reading one of the books I have committed to read and give back to its owner. I don’t think she’s read it yet . . . I’ve had it for long enough now, so I need to get on with it!
• Thing 7: Clear out the area at the side of the house and make a space to sit. One hour on Sunday afternoon for garden projects. The area I want to clear out is home to the gas cylinders, which have gradually been encroached on by the invasive plant from next door to the extent that last time the gas delivery came they couldn’t get to one of the cylinders. So the idea was to cut some of the plant back before the next delivery. It was one of those jobs that gets put off because there’s no rush. Well, no rush until I got a text on Wednesday afternoon telling me the gas was coming on Thursday. So when I got home on Wednesday, I had a little over an hour before my yoga class to cut back as much space as I could and hope it would be enough. I’m glad it was this week and not next week after daylight saving ends, because doing that in the dark would have been even less fun than this was. Nonetheless, I got it done, I made it to yoga on time, and the gas was delivered the next day. And I get to call this thing started as a bonus.

Gas bottle hell

• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum on Thursday. I found a book that I had got for her to write about her life for Kramstable several years ago, you know, one of those “For my grandson” books. She hasn’t started writing in it, so I thought the questions in there about her early life would make good questions for this project.
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week, I worked on the third class of module 3. 

We went to Tahune Airwalk on Sunday, so I didn’t do the things I’ve set aside time to do on Sundays.

Tahune Airwalk

21 for 2021 summary of the week

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 1 (1)
• Things I progressed: 8 (2, 4, 5, 7, 9, 13, 17, 20)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 7 (6, 8, 10, 11, 14, 16, 18)
• Things not started: 5 (3, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Not a project, a chicken

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 1 September 2011 and it’s the post I meant to do at the half-way mark of my 365-day photo project. It’s about making my blog my own.

What I’m reading this week

• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
• Writing the Story of Your Life: The Ultimate Guide by Carmel Bird
• On Writing by Stephen King

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 3): 3
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 3): 3
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 3
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 4
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

21 for 2021: week 12

Week 12/2021: week of 22 March

I still haven’t started a new chapter of the Change Journal (thing 4) but I have been working my way through the Habits chapter (7), the Clarity chapter (8) and the Pitch Yourself chapter (9).

I mentioned doing the UK trip book (thing 10) to my mum a few weeks ago and she sounded interested in seeing it. I wrote a travel blog with photos while I was on the trip on a platform called Travelpod, which no longer exists, but I was able to save all the entries as webpages so I can see them in a browser. I could just print them but it would look a bit shitty so I think putting everything into a nice photobook would be a nice thing to do. It will give me a chance to go back and choose the photos to tell the story with more distance from the events, rather than being on the trip and having to pick photos on the spot every day for the post. And hopefully do a better job editing them. So I started looking around for a platform to make the book on and trying a few test templates to see what will work best. 

This week, it rained. The chickens got wet.

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. This week I used (most of) the rest of the pumpkin from the weekend’s soup to make the Classic Zesty Pumpkin Risotto (page 168). It took a lot longer than I expected. I don’t know if that’s because the rice was so old (as in, the last time I made risotto was before we moved to this house at the start of 2017 and the rice was left over from whenever that was) or if the recipe was just over-optimistic.

Pumpkin risotto

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. One of my undone things (actually, two) is to read a book I borrowed from a friend and haven’t read, and give it back to them. This week, I started reading one of those books.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I wrote up some more of my notes and spend way too much time googling my great great aunt Annie’s family. Someone made a comment on a post I wrote on here about my great great grandfather (aka Alfred the builder) a few years ago, to tell me that his grandmother was Alfred’s daughter, Annie. As Annie was my grandmother’s aunt, she’s my great great aunt, which makes this guy some sort of cousin (I think). My grandmother spent some time in NSW looking after Annie’s kids, so I’m guessing one of them must have been the parent of this guy. I would love to get in touch with him to find out if his parent ever said anything about their childhood and knowing my grandmother, but his comment has no contact details, so I have no idea how to do so. I’m following a couple of other leads to see what I can find. It’s fascinating how the idea to write my mum’s story has turned into a quest to find out about other family members.
• Thing 11: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I did some more work on lesson 6.
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week I completed the second lesson of Module 4.

Saturday afternoon walk

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 1 (1)
• Things I progressed: 8 (2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, 17, 20)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 6 (6, 8, 13, 14 16, 18)
• Things not started: 6 (3, 7, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 29 August 2011: Dear inner critic. This is one I still battle with. Reading back on this made me cry.

What I’m reading this week

• Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words by Andrew Morton
• Wanderlust: A History of Walking by Rebecca Solnit
• Writing the Story of Your Life: The Ultimate Guide by Carmel Bird

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 4
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine(Goal = 4): 4
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 2
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

21 for 2021: week 11

Week 11/2021: week of 15 March 2021

21 for 2021 update

I’ve been working on several of the chapters of the Change Journal (thing 4) in fits and starts. In the habits chapter, I finished 66 consecutive days of yoga stretches and am continuing with the pre-work routine (thing 20) and the post-work routine, as well as starting a new habit to do ten push ups every day. That’s one of the exercises from the exercise physiologist (thing 1).

I also worked on chapters 8 (“Clarity”) and 9 (“Pitch Yourself”) and started thinking about my strengths and skills. I had one of those a-ha moments while I was reading through some career advice for my personality type. It said one thing people like me often enjoy and are good at is “extracting and explaining the basic storyline running through a set of ideas, as well as translating technical jargon intro everyday language”.
I had a look at some of the things my managers had said about me at work in the past, which included things like putting complex ideas into plain language and explaining complicated concepts for different audiences.  I thought about the work that comes to mind when I think about what work I’ve really enjoyed doing. It’s exactly the same work. It’s fascinating to realise that my brain is wired to do the type of work I not only enjoy but also am recognised for. So this is all going towards updating my resume (thing 18).

 I did some more photo work in the “unexplored areas” (thing 14), though it wasn’t particularly successful. I got my SLR photos back (thing 16) and have realised that the shutter button on the camera is broken and I don’t know whether this is going to be fixable. So that thing has come to a screaming halt until I decide what to do with the camera. 

When you can’t find a quiet room in your office to do your stretches so you have to go outside and do them under a tree

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. 

On Tuesday, I chose sweet potato in a recipe called Darl’s Daal (page 146), which is a completely different dhal to the one I usually make. It had pumpkin and sweet potato in it for a start. And lots of coconut milk. I really liked this one and there was enough left overs for lunch for the rest of the week.

A week’s worth of exercise done in cutting this pumpkin up

On Saturday, I stuck with the pumpkin theme and decided to make Alice’s pumpkin soup, which isn’t an official recipe in the book but I needed pumpkin for one of next week’s recipes so I figured soup would be a good way to use up some of what I wasn’t going to use. I also made the Hasselback Parsnips with Rosemary Oil and Salt (page 56). They were okay, but my oven is really bad at crisping things up, so they weren’t super crunchy like I’d hoped they would be.

Not-very-crunchy Hasselback parsnips

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. It’s working and it’s not working. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. One hour on Sunday afternoon. I did some work on this.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my Mum but we had other things to do and I didn’t get a chance to ask her any more questions this week. Instead, I did some work on writing up some of the notes from our previous sessions and tried to track down where my grandmother had been in between the time she left school and when she married my grandfather.
• Thing 11: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I did one of the exercises from lesson 5.
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. This week I worked on the first lesson of module 4.

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 1 (1)
• Things I progressed: 9 (2, 4, 8, 9, 11, 14, 17, 18, 20)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 4 (5, 6, 13, 16)
• Things not started: 7 (3, 7, 10, 12, 15, 19, 21)

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite posts from 2011. This one is from 7 July 2011: Here I write. I remember this time. I wasn’t in a good headspace then at all.

Views from the garden

What I’m reading this week

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Diana: Her True Story – In Her Own Words by Andrew Morton

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 4
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 4): 4
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 5
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 4 work days): 4
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 4
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7

21 for 2021: week 9

Week 09/2021: week of 1 March

21 for 2021 update

Last year, one of my 20 for 2020 things was to have a month without alcohol. I started that on 2 March 20202 and I haven’t had a drink since then. So this week marked the one-year anniversary of my last drink. We went to Dunalley for lunch at the pub and stopped at Barilla Bay to get oysters on the way. I bought a can of their Oyster Stout, which I was going to drink at home that evening. I didn’t and it‘s still in the fridge where I left it on 1 March 2020. 

I still haven’t decided whether the alcohol-free thing is a permanent change. I quite like saying “I don’t drink” but I still have some rather delicious beverages in my beer cellar that I would very much like to try. So I need to work out a way to drink them but not make drinking a mindless habit like it used to be for me.

I had some interesting work to do this week, which made the week go faster. That was nice and I actually enjoyed being at work. Well you know, apart from the noise. On the recommendation of my audiologist, I got some noise-cancelling earbuds, which are a lot more portable than the headphones I’ve been using and they’ve been making a big difference in my capacity to function and not get overwhelmed in noisy situations both inside and outside. 

I’ve also been working through a couple of non-work courses in my spare time, which are on two topics that are totally unrelated and I’m finding great joy in discovering the connections between two topics that I would have thought were completely different areas. It has been an interesting week of discovery for me. 

I’m still working through the habits chapter of the Change Journal (thing 7) with my yoga stretches, the pre-work ritual (thing 20) and now the post-work ritual. Now that I have my exercise program from the exercise physiologist (thing 1), I need to build that into my routine as well. I’ve decided there are a couple of the exercises that I will try and do every day and track them in the Change Journal, and then the rest of the program I’m going to do four days a week instead of my afternoon walk.

I had to get out of the house on Saturday afternoon, so I decided to take my SLR camera for a walk (thing 16). I picked up this camera, a Pentax Z70 with a 28-80mm lens, from a second-hand camera shop in Canberra many years ago. I went to a class to learn how to use it but found everything too overwhelming, and ended up staying in green mode most of the time. Around that time I moved to the country and, having been inspired by the work of a local landscape photographer, spent some time photographing rural scenes with it. I didn’t use it much after I got my first digital camera. I remember going through a roll or two of film when Kramstable was a baby but, apart from that, it’s been sitting in a drawer for the past 13 years or more. I still had a battery for it and there was a roll of film in it with about seven exposures left on it. I have absolutely no idea what is on the rest of the film, so I figured what better way to find out than to finish it off. The film is very expired so this could be very interesting when I take it into the camera shop to get processed.

After having gotten used to a digital SLR, I found the controls on this camera to be very minimal, and the instruction book that came with it even more so. I eventually worked out how to put it into manual mode and how to adjust the exposure and shutter speed. Before now, I’d only used it in manual mode for the class, when all of this was very new to me. At least now, having had the experience of using a digital SLR in manual, I had some idea what I was doing, even if I wasn’t sure exactly how to do it.

For my first photo, the camera wouldn’t focus. This was not going well. Then I remembered that the lens gets stuck at the extreme end of its focus range and needs a little jiggle to get “unstuck”. Right. It was so weird to hear the buzz of the film advancing as I pressed the shutter instead of the digital click, and even more odd that I couldn’t look down at the non-existent LCD screen to see what the photo looked like. That’s a habit that’s very hard to get out of.

I used up the film, it rewound itself and I’m going to take it into the shop next week to see what’s on it. I’m not calling this thing done yet. I want to go out somewhere and make photos with it for a few hours and use at least one roll of film.

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable. 

This week I chose bok choy and I cooked Alice’s Grilled Bok Choy with Peanut Sauce (page 434) on Tuesday. I have to say the amount of peanut butter I’m going through to cook the recipes in this book is pretty phenomenal, but peanut butter, yum! I’m not complaining. 

Grilled bok choy

I probably could have served this with another veggie dish but I poached some chicken breasts, shred them and serve with rice noodles. It was a simple dish overall, excellent for mid-week. 

On Saturday it was time for a fully vegetarian dish, Seven-Spice Butternut Tagine (page 160). This had a lovely combination of coriander, cumin, cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, nutmeg and pepper. As well as butternut pumpkin (squash), it had tomatoes, chickpeas and red capsicum. It was really nice with lots of leftovers. I’d definitely make this again.

Butternut squash tagine

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I didn’t do this. In lieu of this, Kramstable and I spent at least an hour trying to catch one small chicken and lock her away with the others after we’d seen a hawk in the yard. Four of the others were appropriately terrified and huddled in the chook house. One so much so that she let me pick her up and hold her for basically as long as I wanted. I had managed to lure one of the other two, who are now candidates for the most stupid birds in the flock, into the cage with food, and had almost got the last one in when the first one got back out again and refused to be caught. It was a very traumatic time as we imagined what her fate might be if the hawk returned and she was still running around the yard, but catching her seemed like an impossible task. In frustration, I decided to get some water to fill up the bowls and while I was out of the yard, Kramstable, by some miracle, had finally managed to grab the elusive chicken and we got her into the cage with the others.

The elusive chicken refusing to be caught

• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I went to see my mum on Thursday as usual. She showed me a photo of her grandfather’s house in Scotland that he had built in 1918. I managed to locate it on Google streetview, so it was cool to see where it was. I doubt the oil rigs would have been the bay in 1918 but it was cool to see the town where his family had lived for a time. 
• Thing 11: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I worked some more on lesson 5. I need to do the practical exercise. It’s been hard to photograph something in full sun when the days have been overcast and rainy though! I watched the video for lesson 6 as well.
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. I worked on lesson 3 of the third module, which explained the “empathy map”. I missed this month’s live workout on Thursday because my alarm didn’t go off, which I’m very annoyed about because I really enjoyed the last one.

21 for 2021 summary

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 1 (1)
• Things I progressed: 7 (2, 4, 9, 11, 16, 17, 20)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 5 (5, 6, 8, 13, 18)
• Things not started: 8 (3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 19, 21)

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s another one of my favourite 2011 posts. This one is from 9 May 2011: Happiness what.

I think the point I wrote then is still true today:

. . . while I’m waiting for my life to be perfect, my life goes on. I’m wishing some things were different but I’m not doing anything about them, and at the same time I’m not really appreciating the things I do have

9 May 2011

What I’m reading this week

• Personality Hacker by Joel Mark Witt & Antonia Dodge
• Me by Elton John
• The Summer Island Festival by Rachel Burton

I totally enjoyed this. It made me laugh, it made me cry. Recommended.

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 4): 4
• Days I did my post-work pack up routine (Goal = 4): 4
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 3
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7 
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 6

21 for 2021: week 7

Week 7/2021: week of 15 February 2021

21 for 2021 updateThis was my first “normal” week for about a month. “Normal” as in school was back and I was at work all week. None of those annoying public holidays to muck up my routine. Ha.

My first thing this week is the Change Journal, where I’ve been marking off two habits in chapter 7 since January —the pre-work routine (thing 20), which I have now completed for 32/66 days, and my yoga stretches, which I have done every day since 10 January. I’ve been thinking I need to make a start on the other chapters in the book or I won’t make my way through the book by the end of the year.

This week, I decided to start with chapter 2, Thanks, which asks you to note down something you’re grateful for every day for a week. I actually already do this. Every morning I note down three things I’m grateful for, and every evening I write down something I’ve been grateful for during the day in my Some Lines A Day journal. But I don’t really think about them and what they mean to me so sometimes it feels more like a chore than a meaningful practice. The Change Journal takes this a step further and asks you to write down how the thing (or the person) you’re grateful for enriches your life and what your life your life would be like without it (or them). So it goes a bit deeper.

I did that every day this week and concluded that it’s a good practice to maintain as it makes my current practice more meaningful, so I’ve added my version of this into my daily gratitude journalling.

Vegetable of the week

Thing 2 is to choose a different vegetable every week from the book In Praise of Veg and make a recipe from the book using that vegetable.

This week, I wanted to try Alice’s Sesame Cucumber Whack Salad (page 384), but I didn’t know what to have with it. I thought some fish might be a good accompaniment, and there was a fish recipe in the lemongrass section of the book, Lemongrass Fish Pops with Green Mango Salad (page 110). Obviously, it has a salad with it, which includes ingredients I have never heard of and/or don’t like and/or have never cooked with, including pomelo, green mango and banana shallots.

I figured I could make the fish dish (lemongrass check) and have it with the cucumber salad (cucumber check) instead of the salad that was supposed to go with it. Slabs had other ideas. He convinced me to at least try the green mango salad (I HATE mango!), and proceeded to purchase a mango (not green), a ruby grapefruit (not a pomelo but apparently close to it) and, well, normal shallots because what in hell are banana shallots anyway?

So I ended up making the fish pops (which is mashed fish with some curry paste and spices grilled on skewers of lemongrass), with the (not-)green mango salad and the cucumber salad. It was a lot of work, and a lot of food, and I didn’t need the cucumber salad in the end.

Mashed fish squooshed onto lemongrass skewers

My verdict: This is the first recipe from the book I haven’t liked. I liked the idea of it but I didn’t really like the way the fish turned out and I didn’t like the salad. I suppose that’s to be expected if you don’t like mango or citrus. Slabs, on the other hand, said he really enjoyed it so it wasn’t a complete fail.

The final dish

The cucumber salad was really yum though, and I’ll be doing that one again, maybe as an accompaniment to a curry or, as Alice suggests, with some soba noodles and some steamed fish, so the cook wasn’t a complete wipeout.

Cucumber salad

In a rather more epic fail, I decided to make the Ultimate Cheesy Garlic Bread Bake on page 38 on Sunday night, without having noticed that the recipe notes say “Begin this recipe one day ahead”. So Kramstable and I did not have garlic bread on Sunday.

If I ever write a cookbook (ha), I am going to make sure that in the header of every recipe that requires advance preparation is a large clock symbol.

Regular projects

There are several things on my list that I have made a regular commitment to doing in the hope that this will be more likely to make me do them. I worked on these ones this week.

• Thing 5: Spend an hour a week working through my annoying undone things list. One hour on Saturday morning. I finished the last collage for 2020, printed it and stuck it in the book. That is now complete.
• Thing 8: Spend an hour a week working on Kramstable’s videos. I did this on Sunday.
• Thing 9: Write my mother’s life story. I normally go to see my mum on Thursdays but this week she had some personal issues that meant it wasn’t possible to talk to her about her story. I got her to identify herself in some photos and did a bit of internet research into some of her family members.
• Thing 11: Complete the Compelling Frame course. I don’t have a specific time set aside for this (because schedules, who needs them), but I spent a couple of hours on Tuesday working through the third lesson, and I started the fourth lesson on the weekend.
• Thing 17: Brainsparker gym*. I did the first lesson of Module 3 and learned about Fishbone diagrams

21 for 2021 summary for week 7

• Things completed this week: 0
• Things completed to date: 1 (1)
• Things I progressed: 8 (2, 4, 5, 8, 9, 11, 17, 20)
• Things in progress I didn’t progress: 3 (6, 13, 18)
• Things not started: 9 (3, 7, 10, 12, 14, 15, 16, 19, 21)

Blast from the past

Following on from my 10-year review of my blog, here’s one of my favourite posts from 7 March 2011. It’s actually the prequel to the flashback post I posted last week and the one I meant to post last week. Here is the correct link to “Pushing Papers (AKA on art and writing part 1)“.

When did I listen and what did I learn this week?

I’ve been reading the book Hollow Places: An Unusual History of Land and Legend by Christopher Hadley, which is about the author’s attempt to track down the story behind a legendary dragon slayer and the belief that there had been a dragon lair underneath an old yew tree in England. In the book, he refers to the practice of “grangerising”, which is when you take a book apart and rebind it with photos and pictures from elsewhere, including from other books, resulting in a much bigger book, or even additional volumes of the book. In one case, Christopher refers to a grangerised Bible, which ended up being 60 volumes. I kind of love the idea of making a book your own like this but, on the other hand, am horrified that people would destroy other books in order to do this.

The practice was made popular by (and named after) fans of the late-18th century print collector and author, James Granger, who, according to Christopher, didn’t actually engage in the practice himself. But the many “grangerites” did it to enough copies of his Biographical History, that I imagine the name stuck. One copy was grangerised to expand the original three volumes into 36.

And I think I don’t have enough book cases!

What did I do for the Earth this week?

I’ve been reading doom and gloom stories, feeling like nothing I do will make a difference and falling further into a “nothing will stop this” mindset, which isn’t helpful and isn’t achieving anything.

What I’m reading this week

• Personality Hacker by Joel Mark Witt & Antonia Dodge
• Burning Out by Katherine May
• Hollow Places: An Unusual History of Land and Legend by Christopher Hadley

Habit tracker

• Days I did my morning planning routine at work (Goal = 5): 5
• Days I worked on my art (Goal = 2): 4
• Days I read a book (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I did yoga stretches (Goal = 7): 7
• Days I had a lunch break away from my desk (Goal = 5 work days): 5
• Days I went for a walk or did other physical activity in the afternoon (Goal = 7): 5
• Days I shut my computer down before 10.15 (Goal = 7): 7