The past few weeks have been quiet with
little of interest to blog about - sorry for the absence. While I have not been working, I seem to fill
the days quite easily. The dogs and I are doing some great walks and they love
having company through the day again. I’ve been playing the guitar a little but
my shoulder/neck muscle is giving me some grief again so it makes holding the guitar
a bit difficult. I am now seeing a better physio who seems to be good but time
will tell I guess.
The good news is that we have both been
eating a lot better and finally losing weight which is a miracle here in the land of upsizing, sugar and fried everything. I
joined the Michelle Bridges program (Aussies will know this) but only to access
her recipes. These are excellent, calorie controlled and have improved a lot
over the past few years. I plan our meals and lunches for the week and enjoy
cooking different things. We have both been very disciplined and focused with
our food and the results are showing. We have been running a lot also as part
of a speed development program and it’s helping also. So far we have each lost
about 4kg which is fabulous. Clothes are starting to loosen and we feel much
better for it. I confess I am desperate for a pizza or three and a coke and some Georgetown cupcakes but I will get
that at some stage once I’ve reached my goal. So I recommend Michelle Bridges’
12WBT program if you are looking of a good way to lose weight – the recipes are
easy, tasty and quite filling despite me wanting to eat 2 pizzas.
I signed up for a 12 week cooking course but it got
cancelled. So they have a 6 week course (one day a week) which covers a lot of
things I want to do. I plan to do that starting end March and keen to learn
some new skills. I made my first tiramisu last week. It was ok but it wasn’t
the coffee flavour I expected. I’ve not eaten a lot of it as I thought the
biscuits had nuts in them so I’m not an expert at the taste. My biscuits were nut free and I could taste the
coffee but the Marsala was more overpowering. I think next time I will use Kailua as a friend suggested. Needless to say it was all eaten by my guinea pigs at work. I did enjoy
a small slab and it was very hard to stop.
This week I hope to experiment by making a Georgetown
chocolate cupcake recipe and a peanut butter slice. I’ve got a non-nut butter
made from sunflower seeds. It tastes like peanut butter and is so yummy. So the
base is made from chocolate biscuits and I’m going to crush some pretzels in
there to give it crunch. The filling is a creamy nut flavoured mix and it looks amazing.
Holocaust Museum. We haven’t ventured out much lately as Deb has been
working long hours and the weekends have been a chance to catch up on rest for
her. We did however go to the Holocaust museum as we waited until tourist
season eased. It was still busy though given cherry blossom season is here and tourists are coming. The museum certainly needs a few visits to read
everything. We spent 3 hours and it was a very large and comprehensive museum.
I liked that they covered the pre-WWII years to explain how the Nazis came to
power through long term poor democratic leadership and how they treated the
jews, gypsies and others they perceived inferior before WWII. It was unsettling
to see parallels to today’s political leaders in some countries. History shows
that people will follow a strong leader regardless of their beliefs and
convictions and if the ‘good’ leaders don’t rise and lead the way, then ‘bad’
people float to the top. It was all just bloody terrible to read, listen and look
at the information. We all know about it, we’ve all heard about it but it is disgraceful
that this persecution still occurs today around the world. It’s complicated I
know but we are human beings at the end of the day. How LUCKY we are to be born
in Australia or another civilised stable country. Deb has seen some of the
museums in Germany and said this museum was considerably better.
They gave us a card on entry – it was an
identification card that told the story of a real person who lived during the
Holocaust, and died at Auschwitz when she was 45. It puts a personal perspective to
your thinking as you wander around. The artefacts in the museum were horrific,
frightening, numbing and graphic. There was a pile of shoes from people who were
murdered, the smell was overpowering. This was of course only a tiny sample but
to think that of the number of people who filled those shoes is horrid!! And
there was a massive pile of hair. From the museum website....Before killing women, the Nazis cut off their hair. Masses of hair were packed in bags. Twenty kilos, twenty-two kilos, raw material for German factories. Seven thousand kilograms of hair, 140,000 murdered women.
The museum says, that the museum is NOT an answer, it is a question. And the question always is..... what is your responsibility now that you’ve seen, now that you know? Each individual must answer that question for himself or herself.
It’s hard to follow with something after writing about such an awful part of history. However, I will continue with a positive story about Cricket. We had his DNA tested by an easy mouth swab. We were expecting Kelpie genes but to our surprise he is mixed with a Koolie and a bit of Border Collie. I’ve never heard of a Koolie but I can see the similarities now that I’ve researched a bit. He’s 62.5% Kelpie, 25% Koolie and 12.5% Border Collie. Check out the charts with his results.
Went to a Texas steakhouse for lunch with workmates and this signed grabbed my interest.
Another quiet week ahead. I got a call today to help the chef at the Amb residence for a function on Wed night. I'll keep you posted in the next blog post.
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