Rising Sun In Falling Rain

The Japanese Garden in the Clingendael estate shuts for the season today, and it's absolutely gorgeous weather outside for the closing ceremony. 

Alas, I won't be joining the hordes clamouring for one last look before the gates close to the public until next Spring. My new-found not-hate of small crowds would undoubtedly be stretched beyond its still amorphous borders, and I wouldn't be able to hold myself responsible for all the loud sighing and tsking I'd emit (the extent of which the noticeable signs of my disapproval would manifest). I'd be thinking loud “GET OUT OF MY SHOT" and “PERSONAL SPACE MEANS NOT HAVING TO PUT UP WITH YOUR ELBOW OVER MY FACE JUST BECAUSE YOU WANT TO TAKE A PHOTO FROM THE EXACT SPOT I'M STANDING ON RIGHT NOW, BUT YOU HAD THE MISFORTUNE TO ARRIVE AFTER I DID AND COULDN'T WAIT TEN SECONDS FOR ME TO FINISH" thoughts, though. (Welcome to Throwback Thursday Japanse Tuin October 2014: Sunday version.)

I did, however, set my alarm to go off early on Friday because Wunderground.com told me just before I went to bed that it was set to be a clear and sunny morning not six hours from when I finally laid down my head to sleep. Huzzah! Waking up to clouds and a little drizzle those few hours later was pretty much par for the course, but never one to be deterred by a little rain (societal behaviours may differ between Scotland and the Netherlands, but the rain stays the same), I set out to hopefully catch the garden before it got too busy.

I wasn't the only person with that idea, of course, but there were few enough of us that I felt I could take my time to just meander about the pathways, absorb the very special atmosphere, and take some photos without feeling rushed. I'm still amazed how much this little phone camera seems to prefer working on dull days than on sunny ones. I wonder if its components were sourced in Scotland...

An Autumn Colour Treasure Hunt

Accompanied by my trusty John Steed umbrella, I left the house to meet a friend for lunch just as it had finished drizzling outside. The forecast was dull, dreich, and disheartening, so, true Scot that I am, I was armed and ready for any rainy eventuality.

But Mother Nature, being her normal capricious self, had other plans, and halfway through the meal she swept away some clouds and invited the sun to peek through, naughty matron that she is, and gave me itchy feet into the bargain.

I wasn't intending to go for a walk today, mainly because, meh, drizzle and grey skies are not really conducive to expending ambulatory energy, but on being presented with a bright blue sky and even brighter orange leaves (the first photo on the page) just as I left the café, I realised that my brain had already decided to go on an Autumn colour treasure hunt.

So away we went, Moeder Natuur and I, across the city, capturing seasonal riches where we found them, and we came back with quite the haul...

Oh I Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside

Yesterday I:

• walked 14,000 steps, or just over, up to Scheveningen, along the beach, past the pier, and back via Madurodam. It was a bit of a dreich day, but I fancied a decent walk and going up to the beach and back is a favourite route if my aim is to get a fair amount of miles clocked, and this extended version is just over five of those on foot. Yes, it's not the most scenic route, except for the mile or so along the beach front, but it's simple and on a day like this when nature is taking some 'me' time and not caring so much about the wants of humanity, it's ideal for a good leg stretch without having to worry if there's enough juice left in the phone battery in case of emergency photo-taking. Okay, I took one photo, but there were extenuating circumstances: Many, many boats.
  
  
  
  
  
  (I also like walking this route, because it takes me through the shopping arcade at the pier which houses my brother's favourite chocolate shop. Well, a shop that houses his favourite chocolate. Ach, it's probably his favourite chocolate shop, too! (The Swiss brand Lindt, for those of the wondering persuasion.) I like to have a look in there when I pass to see if I can find anything that he wouldn't be able to find at home, because surprising him with something he's never seen before made from his favourite brand is cool and unusual. He's not very... shall we say excitable when it comes to receiving gifts, so presenting him with something new from his favourite sweetie brand is worth its weight in gold-wrapped Lindor.) Which takes me to my next bullet point:
• didn't buy any chocolate for myself. And there's a cinnamon-coriander variety of Lindor just out. I am sure you will understand the will-power that had to be exerted for me to leave the shop without handing over a significant portion of my grocery budget to be the custodian (even if only for a few short days) of such chocolate perfection.
• kept within my calorie limit. Thanks in part to, you know, not purchasing the Cinnamon Lindor of The Gods. 
• had excellent hair. It's naturally long and straight, but I wind it up in a bun when it's damp to give it a bit of movement, and yesterday those waves were vintage Hollywood (ish) and behaved almost impeccably when I went out. (My hair is my only vanity, at least when it doesn't look like I've been dragged through a hedge backwards, which sadly happens more often than not.) Yes, it was partly because there was hardly any wind for a change, because normally when you live this close to the North Sea, Wind Happens. Every day. Sometimes gale-force, very, very occasionally the gentlest zephyr's breath. Usually it's on the blustery umbrella-mangling end of the scale, so yesterday I was surprised to find the breeze lightly caressing my hair around my face, instead of whipping it about like I was an extra in Hurricane Chasers III - The Attack Of The Mane. It was a good hair day.
• worked-out. I hooped for half an hour or so, then made my triceps complain that it was Sunday, and surely that's supposed to be a day of rest. Mwahahahah! No chance! I am a mean muscle-mom! 
• let all that positivity be completely eclipsed by a cute man giving me the once-over with a snide smile-snort as he saw me walk out of the chocolate shop at the beach.

Why do I let people do that to me? What I really mean is, why do I let these people into my head? I will probably never see this guy ever again. He deserves not even a pinhead-sized plot of my brain real-estate. Yet...

Just before that I was feeling pretty okay. I was just over halfway of a really good calorie-crushing walk, it hadn't rained although I brought my trusty black umbrella that makes me feel like a female John Steed (the ORIGINAL Avenger) just in case, my hair was all Rita Hayworth (redhead version), and I had left the chocolate shop after not buying anything, feeling a little virtuous in the knowledge that I didn't actually need anything there, and WHAM! Stupid head thinking that a stranger's opinion of me was more important that my own self-acknowledged awesomeness. And not only that, I let this stranger's rudeness take hold, and grow pervasive confidence-draining roots into my self-esteem. Shame on him, but shame on me, too.

Seeing a fat chick walking out of chocolate shop is quite the stereotype. I get the inherent need to judge. I don't like it, but I've been alive long enough to know how humanity works at a base level. But you know, you can think mean thoughts without letting the meanness show on the outside. You can make snarky assumptions about me and my (presumed) lifestyle without inviting the world to share in your exaggerated sneer. There's no need to mock me so openly just because you've snap-decided that the reason I look the way I look is because I'm lazy and greedy, or whatever your particular chosen cliché is.

But, underneath this disquiet, I have to realise that I can't change this man. Amongst other personality traits, he has been conditioned by society to treat certain things with contempt, and for that I can't fault him so much. I do fault him for his methods in displaying his conditioning, though. You don't have to act like a dick just because you don't like something, or don't understand something, or are uncomfortable when faced with something that confuses you.

What I can attempt to change is my own reaction when faced with emotional ineptitude in the behaviour of others towards me. It's something I do try to do, but not always successfully, and although it doesn't make a dent in the surrounding layers of ignorance, I can try to use a more positive reaction to repair some of the cracks in my own armour, and instead turn them from blemishes into beauty marks.

• Yesterday I let myself be brought down. 
• Today I'm going to bring myself right back up again.
  

Man Does Not Live On Bread Alone

Or at all. I'm forever on the hunt for a decent bread substitute. Yes, yes, I know: don't waste my time trying to find GF substitutes for old favourites, because I'm just setting myself up for a disappointment of epic proportions. Certainly the “bread" I found in the bio/gluten-free section at the supermarket only really deserves the irony-quotes, because it certainly doesn't deserve the appellation bread. The bread mixes are okay if hell is freezing over, but I'm slowly, finally reaching that end stage of GF grief: acceptance that I'm never again going to enjoy another slice of thick, white, doughy bread that smells like childhood, and tastes of comfort. Preferably slathered in Lurpak by my Gran thirty years ago when all this was much simpler and my stomach upsets were treated with Milk of Magnesia and a lie down.

I did try my hand at 'dinner rolls', but they turned out so much more like dense cornmeal scones, that I'm not going to give you the recipe I used, out of respect to the author of said poor recipe that I no doubt mangled horribly. If I finally get the timing/mixing/petition the right baking gods and they finish up even a tiny semblance of the pictures on the recipe, then believe-you-me, that'll be written up faster than you can say “she really needs to invest in at least one more un-chipped plate if she's going to keep doing these weird recipe posts".

I've been playing with the sweet breads, but have gone wrong as many times as right. Partially, I'm sure, because I haven't yet accepted that they're not bread, they're really cake. IT'S ALL LIES! SWEET, CAKEY LIES!!

A wrong effort was a rustic-type carrot, banana and walnut bread that ended up the weirdest of textures. All entirely my fault, I'm sure. I still can't quite describe it. It was tasty enough, because you should know me by now, if I didn't throw out the monstrously bad Travesty To Cake-Dom, then something a little chewy. glutinous, compacted, just as weird as that walnut carrot thing was stands a very good chance of being finished off within a fortnight. My standards remain rather low in regards to things that don't make me ill. I can eat it without doubling up in toxic agony? Then it's fine by me. It tastes of rubber? Meh, worse things happen at sea.

Things have gone well, though, like banana bread, and zucchini bread. Okay, peanut butter banana  bread - you NEED to make this. It's one of my favourite things I've made to date. And now I'm looking for it online, I can't find it any more. I think it was on asweetsimplelife.com but the site has been down for a few weeks now. If it's not up soon, then I'm posting this recipe as is, because it is pretty wonderful.  The photo isn't pretty wonderful, but it shows the first one I made and I was so pleased it came out looking bread-like that once it had cooled I took a quick pic to show my sis, before I finished carving it up, scarfing down a slice or two in culinary ecstasy, and storing the rest in the freezer. So good. SO GOOD!  But you'll just have to take my word for it until I either find the recipe online, or truly suffer for my art and work up a post with another loaf. The things I do for you.

The zucchini bread (I'd call it courgette bread, but although I never usually use the Americanism/Italianism normally, it feels right when it's a bread, somehow. Yeah, okay. Cake.) was something unexpected. Of course, I didn't just make any old zucchini bread, I made Double Chocolate Zucchini Bread. :: cough double chocolate courgette cake cough ::

Tasty, tasty bread/cake. Yes, I may have used fifty per cent white choc chips in with the dark. Because I could. 

But then I came across this: Savo(u)ry Gluten Free Zucchini Bread from Gluten Free on a Shoestring. It is a thing of wonder, delight, and if I can't have wheat bread ever again, this'll help ease the pain!

You need:

280 grams basic gluten-free flour

3/4 teaspoon xanthan gum

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt (kosher or otherwise)

75 grams (80mls) vegetable oil

2 eggs at room temperature, beaten

75 grams (70 mls) plain whole milk yogurt

170 grams grated zucchini (courgette)

75 grams Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, finely grated

60 grams sharp white cheddar cheese, grated (I left a few small chunks in the mix, not for aesthetic reasons, just because I couldn't grate it all without adding a little human flesh to the batter.)

I don't have a blow-by-blow photo-story for you, so here's a quick run-down of the procedure:

Dry stuff in a bowl and mixed together, wet stuff in another bowl and combined 'very well'. You then have to add half the dry stuff in with the wet stuff, followed by the grated courgette and the cheeses, and mix all that up together, and once that's all nicely combined, you mix in the rest of the dry ingredients. You then scrape the (thick) mixture into a prepared pan (I use a basic bread/cake tin), place it in the centre of the preheated oven (oh, yes, you need to preheat your oven to 175C) and bake it until it's lightly golden brown on top, and a toothpick has been prodded and come out clean. Around 35 to 40 minutes.

I took heed of the warning not to slice it until it was cool. I learn. Slowly. But I learn!

Sloppy (Almost) Seconds

“Nic finds there no better indicator that she had her meal too late than attempting to do her normal evening session of strength-training including bent-over rows, triangle presses and kettle-bell swings.

If you don't know what they are, they all involve bending double and throwing weights around while trying very hard not to prompt a repeat performance of dinner."

To be fair, I thought the forty minutes on the elliptical trainer might have helped a little before moving onto lots of leaning all over the shop trying not to drop the hand-weights on important parts of my anatomy like my head and my nose, but, alas, I was proved otherwise. Instead of helping aid my metabolism and get things moving from um, higher up to lower down, I merely succeeded in giving myself indigestion and an impressive ability to burp along to some of the most popular hits of the Eighties. I have much to learn in the ways of waste management. I do, I have discovered, know most of the words to the songs on all six volumes of Essential Eighties Classics, so there's that.

I used to work-out on the trainer in front of the telly, if you'll remember from a previous post, but had to start listening to something, anything through headphones, because the poor behemoth started falling apart slightly; even with gentle handling (or at least gentle handling once I realised that for much of its life with me, I was over the recommended weight for use) and careful applications of WD40, my valiant, brave, and slightly doddery Sir Domyos EL5500 had started rhythmically clicking and whirring as I turned the pedals. As much as I appreciated its worth and faded glory, the noise drove me mad, even through the headphones connected to the telly.

The next stage was to start working through the hours and hours of classical music on my MP3 player, but although there are good roistering numbers, movements, even complete works (boy, those late Romantic and early Modern composers must have had ears of steel to cope with such extended periods of rambunctious cacophony) suitable for inspiring a long-term depletion of energy, there were still enough slower, quieter sections that didn't really blend well with the external syncopated sounds of an asthmatic, peg-legged pirate walking up and down the deck of a hollow iron-clad ship. 

And so I turned to the popular music of the nineteen-eighties. And marvellous they are too, not only in initiating inspiring gasp-a-longs, but also in drowning-out the ever-more penetrating swan-song of Sir Grinds-a-lot. Who was also a pirate in his hey-day. Obviously.

But unfortunately neither Bonnie Tyler, The Pet Shop Boys, nor The Clash could really do much to help with my tardy tea-time troubles (you can prise my love of alliteration out of my cold, cadaverous claws), so I had to approach my hand-weights with even more care than normal. 

You'll remember the Wii-boxing self-punching saga? (Or, :: cough :: all of them?) Well, you can imagine that having not so strongly attached, and much heavier things on the end of my arms had already inspired in me great feelings of fear and awe, so adding to that a general need to keep certain soft and digesting parts of my anatomy out of weight's reach, while also making sure that any bending over wasn't completely stomach-emptyingly efficient rendered the general calorific depletion of the evening's workout rather less than usual.

Have I learnt my lesson? Will I remember to keep a good few hours between eating and any exertion whatsoever? Yeah, probably not. I have, however, leant that tricep kickbacks are really quite good for helping release trapped wind!

Jessica Smith TV

I've mentioned the YouTube videos that I used for workouts maybe only a couple of times, which is, in the whole scheme of things, a massive oversight considering the extraordinary effect it's had in helping me in my struggle to lose weight.

I can't remember any more when it was exactly that I first turned to the internet for help, but I know it was after I started with the 5:2 intermittent fasting, so it has to be after the Summer of 2014. 

I don't mean to make it sound like it was an awfully long time ago for something so recent, after all, it's only really a year since I started using these videos, but because I can't really admit to enjoying making myself feel sore, tired, and sweaty on a daily basis, the time hasn't really flown by. So yes, it feels like longer than it really has been. Yah, boo, sucks to be me.

But I am in danger of rambling off onto different subject paths, (as is my wont in real life; I can follow my own stream of logic aloud and not realise I'm doing it until I see peoples' faces glaze over in confusion. It is a thing.) so I'll bring myself back to the subject at hand, and that subject is Jessica Smith TV.

I first asked (although I suspect, given the context, 'begged' is more the verb we're looking for) the internet for help after a particularly gruelling Wii session that included lunges and squats, both of which I couldn't do (and I still can't lunge) because my knees were screaming at me to stop after the merest suggestion of bending and bearing weight. Every tendon, every ligament, every muscle connected with this joint were in cacophonous harmony; shouting out together that this movement would only end in tears. And possibly tears. (Ah, English. I love you.)

I searched for exercises to help bad knees, and this is one of the first examples that was listed: "The Best Lower Body Workout for Bad Knees" by Jessica Smith:

Yes, perhaps not quite the answer to my not-really-concise question, but there was something in this video, perhaps the tone of her voice, perhaps the feeling that she knew we were hurting yet didn't make us feel useless, perhaps the presence of her cute little doggy, that hit a chord with me. She works in a tiny space, yet doesn't let that stop her pushing you hard. She gives a great commentary without sounding too peppy and American. (Sorry, Americans. I love you and your up-beatèdness, but it does jar rather against my Scottish pragmatism for certain things. Having someone shout "git on wi' it, ya big lump o' lard, or yi'll aye be a fair disappyntmint tae yirsel'!*" instead of "Yes, keep going, that's right, only a few more, don't you feel GREAT?" is not a comparison I've been able to make as of yet, but don't think I won't try it out to see if I can prove myself right if I do ever find a hardened Scots workout instructor online. You know, this might be the niche in the market I've been looking for... "Och, dinnae dae whit ah dae, dae whit ah sae, ye bowsie numpty!"** "Aye, bend doon like yon bauchelt wifie, an' howk up yir haund-wechts ower yir lugs!"***)

*Get on with it, you large person, or you will always be a real disappointment to yourself.
** Oh, don't do what I do, do what I say, you well-padded idiot.
*** Yes, bend down like a crippled old lady, and pull up your hand-weights above your ears.

Once I'd managed to grunt my way through this first video, I decided, instead of limping for the hills, to see what else this not-too-peppy dog-lover had on offer, and I was immediately (read: the next day, once I had control over my leg muscles again) taken with her wide range of walking exercises. 'Walking exercises' sounds a wee bit you're playing at exercise, but in reality they can be exhausting, and range from simple routines (this is the first one I tried):

to mashups of walking and yoga, walking and weights, walking and dance, walking and intervals, walking and step aerobics... More than enough for me to be getting on with. Over the months I've managed to progress onto more intense workouts, including strength training:

barre/strength mixes:

cruel and unusual blends like kick-boxing ballet:

to delightfully comprehensive (read: I'm not sure I'm supposed to bend like that) stretching routines:

and I've found Ms Smith to be quite the agreeable online workout taskmistress. (In a 'I wish I didn't have to workout at all, but this'll do until I've miraculously lost fifty pounds and am promised life-long perfect weight-maintenance by a now-contrite, formerly weight-bestowing guardian spirit' way.) I guess I should be glad that there's over three hundred free workouts to choose from so far, plus a new workout added to the list pretty much every week, because I think I may be waiting a wee while yet for that guardian spirit to make an appearance.

How Do You Solve A Problem Like Polenta?

I stocked my cupboards up with a load of things of which I'd either never heard, or had never used before, after I made my decision to try a gluten free elimination diet to see whether it was wheat that was causing me all sorts of bleh. An overzealous shopper on this occasion, my basket at the local health food shop was laden in record time. Laden probably due to panic, certainly intrigue, and possibly something to do with a bogof deal. Actually it was buy one get on half price, but bogohp isn't as fun to have on the page. But stock up I most certainly did, with:

Corn flour I'd heard of as a thickener, but it is apparently also something you can use to make cakes and muffins, or used in a mix with other flours. (Bear with me. Plain flour, self-raising, and wholemeal were pretty much all I was aware of up until this point, and now they were being thrown out of the equation, I realised I was standing at the bottom of a very steep learning curve.) 

Brown rice, white rice, and the ever-popular but illogical-sounding glutinous rice seemed interesting and not too scary. The ordinary rice flours seem to be a staple in a lot of baking recipes, and the sweet rice flour looks like it could be really good fun given the right recipe!

Buckwheat flour initially confused me because the uh, 'wheat' in the name, but research (aka Mr Wikipedia) told me that it is actually a relation of rhubarb (this world of ours is a strange, strange place) and not a wheat or grass at all! It's one of the flours I read that you can use instead of almond flour, which is excellent, considering you need to take out a second mortgage to be able to afford enough almond flour for anything more than a couple of cup-cakes. 

I'm exaggerating. But only just. Note: I didn't get any almond flour. At eight euros for a three hundred and fifty gram bag I'm as well just buying a couple of boxes of inordinately expensive GF choc chip cookies from the local supermarket.

Anyhoo, if you'll give me a second to climb down off my high horse, I'll continue...

Chickpeas (garbanzo beans,), although new to me in flour form are loved be me in bean form, and I presume they can be used in much the same way as buckwheat flour - they seem a very similar texture, but of course that might mean nothing until I've used the chickpea flour for myself, which I plan to do in some Indian recipes I found online.

Coconut flour was a no-brainer simply because I love coconut. I have since come to, if not appreciate, then be aware of its fickle and thirsty ways, and I appear to have amassed quite the stock-pile in my cupboard. (It was the main ingredient of my first ever cake. Not the Idiot Cake, but the Travesty To Cake-Dom. I have learned much since then.)

But polenta, or corn meal (coarsely ground as opposed to the finely milled corn flour). It was there beside all the other meals and flours looking for all intents and purposes like it belonged with them. It was gluten free, bogohp, and although I'd heard of it, and was positive it would be a positive addition to my GF stash, I just wasn't sure how that would come to pass. And stayed not sure.

So those two bags of polenta have just languished there in my cupboard since July, waiting for me to remember I had them. Waiting, in fact, for me to find a cheap Kindle book on Amazon by Mark David Abbott called 'Cookies: Gluten Free, Dairy Free, Refined Sugar Free' (not an affiliated link, nor have I anything to do with the author) in which I found some lovely sounding recipes, including Orange Polenta Cookies. Ding-Ding-Ding! 

Orange Polenta Cookies

160 grams polenta

55 grams brown rice flour

48 grams almond flour (I used buckwheat)

1 tsp GF baking powder

50 grams coconut oil

50 grams palm sugar (I used light brown sugar)

grated rind of 1 orange

1 tsp orange juice (I used a tbs, but that's because I was squeezing the thing by hand and it may or may not have gone everywhere...)

1 egg

(optional couple of handfuls of white choc chips - not part of the original recipe, but I fancied them and thought white choc and orange would go nicely. And because chocolate.)

Like most of the (albeit beginner) recipes I've tried before, you mixed all the dry stuff together, then all the wet stuff together, then chucked them all together (I am now suffering from semantic satiation. Together together together) to make a dough. The recipe suggested using a food processor. I laughed in the face of such presumption and whipped out my cheap, plastic bowl and trusty wooden spoon.

The dough then had to be covered in cling-film (I have yet to be convinced that anything involving cling-film can possibly be less than a three-man job; one to hold the box, one to gently pull the fragile plastic from the box to the length needed, and one to carefully coax a tear across the width without letting go of the edges while simultaneously fighting the wrap's inner compulsion to fold up on itself in an intricate and intimate manner. I went through two metres of the stuff just to have enough to work with), rolled it into a log and let to set in the fridge for half an hour.

But Behold! A wrapped and submissive slab of polenta dough, and included in the deal, a still-life of my trusty heart-shaped measuring... things, which are marvellous in our eyes.

After thirty minutes you then carved it up into slices and bunged it in a medium oven (180C) for ten minutes.

Final instructions were to leave them on the baking tray(s) until they were cool. 

The nomming part was self-evident.

I have to say the gentle warning about the texture wasn't needed, and in fact I'm reminded of a coarse shortbread. The orange gives a lovely tang, the white chocolate a hint of decadence, and the biscuit itself isn't quite as crumbly as I expected. I may not have waited until they were cool to sample one :: cough :: so that expectation was placed at an unnatural low anyway. But they passed the I Don't Know What To Do With This Weird Ingredient test with flying colours, so I feel a little more hopeful that polenta's future will be spent out in the light with the rest of the cool GF flours instead of stuck in the dark corner of my kitchen cupboard pining away, forgotten and misunderstood !