Labels and little jars

 One of the great gifts that I have received over the years was a labelmaker.

(I could have sworn that I have whinged upon it in the past, but the delights of the deep freeze lottery must have featured more on the unblogged part of my life. I can only find one example)

The upside of a labelmaker is it's a viable option almost guaranteed to ensure that you know what is inside a container - much better than that "oh, I'll remember what that is" technique relying wholly on one person's memory.

Unfortunately for my late in the day conversion to this revolutionary concept, the corporate world of greed snuck under my radar and convinced me that the label tapes that I required to replenish last month would be most economically achieved if I bought a job lot - and the job lot had a mix of colours and the first colour chosen was gold.

My decision was made without full knowledge of how ineffective as labels they would be because that colour and my eyesight...

and yes, that label does call it Beef Not Madras Curry.

Because sometimes the old "oh, I'll remember what that is" technique works, as in the fenugreek leaves on the left 

 - but sometimes it fails, as in the Not Madras Curry Powder on the right.

I give spice mixes as gifts, as I love cooking and trying out lots of recipes (especially those from India and Sri Lanka) and a lot of my friends also love food but "wouldn't have all of those spices".

I have all of those spices. (and oh look, you get to view it in JeanieVision(TM) )

So while I made them up for Christmas, I made extra for myself.

It was nice.

But Not Madras.

The Ditch

 I got to pondering tonight about...

• The difference between the life that I led when I wrote my first ever (well second, but first "real") blog posts. I wonder who that first ever commenter was?
• The ditch between my culture and that of my husband's family's locale;
• And the distance between the start of the month and now.

Apparently there are similarities - I still whinge verbosely, we share a vernacular and it's still April. (Still?! Already!)

V is home and actually haler than he has been for some time. He now realises that the agonising pain that he had been in for the best part of this year - and the lack of energy and drive - had a root cause and was not the sum lot of his life.

The close call last week has opened the door to his heart blockage being fixed - and released him from about 5-6 points on the pain scale. He said tonight that it is easier to be happy when you're not in pain the whole time.

I have a generally very busy job and am lucky that my work can be done from home, so I could be with Paris during school holidays and work around V being in hospital and then recuperating at home.

I don't ever discuss my work on here but believe me that it has been crazy busy for the last 2 weeks and me not going on a planned trip with my dad to visit an old relative right now meant it only got to boiling point today rather than exploded spectacularly.

But then there's this...

And I have an RDO tomorrow, and the promise of a beautiful, fine, early Autumn day - and a rewarding job with my beautiful child and a ute to fill.

And V can supervise and smile.

Puzzle

 I was doing Sexaginta-quattuordle this morning. (I do it most days at varying times).

This is a word game where you have 70 goes to work out 64 five-letter words. (Although it does have an auto complete mode so technically you don't have to actually nut out ALL 64 words).

There is a technique that I have learned for this game. You can get up to five words incorrect, so the first three should use all the vowels and as wide a variety of oft used consonants as possible.

If you are lucky, you might jag one, but BEWARE! Don't go down the rabbit hole chasing a nearly got word or trying to do the above in only two words - that is the path to ruin.

I tried "great" and "could" and "spiny" but no dice - although that did point me towards the first word.

"Tough". Which is what this morning had been. 

It was going to be tough anyway as the first day back after a long weekend, key team members taking leave because of school holidays, invoicing and updating public holidays and meetings - plus enforcing screen restrictions at home with intergenerational peace negotiations and possible removal of devices looming on the getting to work on time horizon.

But I didn't end up doing any of that.

The next word that worked for my puzzle was "hoist".

I had to instead hoist the 14yo out of bed twice this morning. Thematically that fit.

My sixth word was "trunk" - which is going out on a limb in the "match life's curve balls with a word game" attempt here.

At 2am this morning, V had pain that went from the front of his trunk to the back.

The next correct word was "heart", which was indeed a bit of a word of the day, as the inability for one of the pathways in - or out, not sure - in V's couldn't pump, so that really kinked the morning all around.

"Soapy" was the next word. Hmm. Perhaps my second indicator that life doesn't emulate internet word games.

And the next was "corgi", which indeed threw it so far out of the window that I gave up.

"Angiogram" is not five letters, and although "stent" is, it wasn't one of today's words.

And apparently "vegan" is not oft thrown around at the hospital even though it is what V has been throwing around here in order to defy cholesterol and bad choices in his youth.

Hopefully though, words 14, 15, 17 and 24 all ring true for today and the future ("fixed", "rapid", "mirth", and "awake").

We will find out - hopefully - on Dr's rounds tomorrow what the moving forward plan may entail.

Kanonikos Plaki

 First, allow me to apologise to the Greeks for appropriating your cuisine and possibly misusing your language - or not. I mean, I don't understand Greek so I don't actually know how wrong - or, jagged it perhaps, right that title is.

But anyway, I digress.

In a way this dish is on the way to being another Jeanie Easter tradition - I am so easily led into making everything a set pattern - but this dish ticks all important boxes for any table which will be surrounded by a variety of requirements. This is its second year of gracing the table.

It is vegan, gluten-free, low-fat, high-fibre, and tastes delicious enough for people who are scared of the words vegan and gluten-free to delight. 

Added bonus is this year I eschewed the recipe and winged it.

The basic instructions for it (as I took no pictures) is:

Soak white beans (not, however, gigantic white beans as the resident V-man doesn't trust big beans so I didn't have any even if that fact wasn't part of the equation) for a bit and then cook until tender. 

 Put the beans and about 1/4 cup cooking water into a greased enamel bowl and put on top 1/3 chopped onion, 3 chopped cloves of garlic and about a dozen tiny cherry tomatoes from the struggling vine at the back door halved. Pour 1/2 tin smooshed tomatoes over (you can salt and pepper it too if you wanted) and do a couple of stirs but not too particular.

Place in a moderate to hot oven for about 20 minutes or however long other stuff is going on.

I didn't today but would probably sing even louder if fresh parsley or lemon juice were a final touch but was delicious and declared a winner on the cold out of the fridge a few hours later by V.

Oh look - I did take a photo - from back - beans, broccoli and  steamed beans, Traditional Cauliflower Cheese, roasted pumpkin/onion/carrot/garlic/potatoes, roast beetroot in foil and roast lamb.

The traditional Easter cauliflower

 Perhaps this is the way family folklore begins.

See, my parents are in what Dad likes to call bonus time. And of late bonus time has become a bonus in a myriad of ways including sarcasm, because the busy-ness of life has been encroaching from all areas.

Extended family health issues and work-related unspoken issues and international peace issues and bridges falling down and being a sideline party to "an adolescent and her phone" relationship and organising a road trip to see elderly relatives with other elderly relatives and I can bore myself with the soap opera that seems to surround - or at least I can spin it that way...

When in reality my life is if today is what day I will eat this and wear this and do this and watch this and from the moment that I wake up on any given day I have it prescribed and proscribed down to the timers going off advising me the next step - and writing blogs have fallen off the rigid routine.

But anyway, I went on an overnight trip to visit my folks and cook them a meal for Easter and my sister and her husband joined us.

She arrived carrying a hot potato salad and much chocolate.

I had brought frozen fish fillets from the freezer section at Aldi because I had time to do so on Wednesday afternoon - and calamari rings and carrots (is there a theme?) and corn - and (as I apologise to my sister for lack of sweets reciprocation) "the traditional Easter cauliflower".

For the Traditional Easter Cauliflower Cheese at dinner.

(Photo credit to Bush Babe of Oz)

Do you think that it will catch on?