When it’s NOT Manflu

This was supposed to be a recipe for grain-free, nut-free banana and berry muffins. Maybe next post!

After nearly two weeks of being weak and coughing, getting a bit better and then worse again my darling wonderful husband admitted it was time to go to the doctor.

Once we got there the doctor told him the good news that he had influenza, either type A or Swine ‘flu, that it didn’t matter which- the treatment was the same, rest and fluids, he could expect to be bedridden for at least another 3 weeks and suffer post viral fatigue for a few months after that. Not the best news at the best of times but given the plans we have for renovating and moving in the very near future it left me a bit glum.

I also confess I get a bit cross when he is unwell, my husband does some crazy things and somehow I am certain that it is his rather cavalier  attitude to safety that has caused his illness or injury (to be fair this is really only a perception but if you had seen the accidents he has been in and the way he approaches some things you may have sympathy for me).

Then yesterday his lungs started making bubbling noises (well just the right one really) and he got weaker, then he started struggling to breathe a bit. But refused to let me take him to hospital on the grounds he was too weak to sit take the sitting waiting at Emergency. So I called the government medical helpline on 1800 022 222 which was a good idea as they recommended he got straight to hospital and organised and ambulance. All good until HE SAID HE WOULD REFUSE TO GO. Luckily it seems that paramedics are used to this recalcitrant sort of behaviour and when the two women arrived a few minutes later to assess him they took his vitals and sternly explained they were going to take him in which he agreed to (to my mild surprise) on the grounds that having him here was making my life more difficult. Oh well, whatever gets us there in the end.

Now he is in hospital being treated for pneumonia, on oxygen and intravenous antibiotics and staying for the night at least.  We are waiting for blood tests to confirm he doesn’t have sepsis. I had to insist he stayed the night- he wanted to come home!

I found myself annoyed that there was a blowfly inside, it was let in by the very prompt and efficient paramedics as they stretchered my husband away to receive prompt, government funded health care. despite the occasional blowfly we are very fortunate to be able to tap into resources like this when it is needed. I am very grateful it isn’t needed more often in my family.

I am pleased he is getting the treatment he needs but I miss him already as I haven’t had more than 3 days away from him in total in 7.5 years of marriage!

Tomorrow it’s back to school, trying to muddle through decisions I normally make with my missing other half and finding out more about his current condition.

If you are worried about a health condition please call the helpline and they can advise you if you need to get some immediate treatment. It may have been a life saver for our family today.

Crio Brü CHOCOLATEY Fudge (grain free, can be vegan & nut free)

Ok see it? It tastes better than that, it is amazingly indulgent and rich, doesn’t taste like a compromise but it has a lot of redeeming features. It uses coconut cream instead of cream so you get coconut oily goodness, almonds because they are awesome and Crio Brü because it tastes amazing, it full of antioxidants and lifts chocolatey things to the next level.

If you want to make this vegan or dairy free just use dark chocolate which doesn’t have dairy. If you want it nut free omit the almonds- it will still taste crazy good!

I make this for a chocolate hit, I nearly always find I have chocolate in the house but THIS IS BETTER THAN CHOCOLATE so I tend to make this fudge with chocolate instead of just eating it these days!

OK you probably want a recipe rather than me telling you how great it is right?  It’s really easy:

1 can of coconut cream (the big ones, not the silly little ones) refridgerate it  so the cream floats to the top and solidifies- alternatively live in Tasmania like I do- this is coconut cream’s natural state here!

30 g Crio Brü of choice

200g of chocolate melts (DARK please)

100g almonds

50 g shredded coconut.

Take 3/4 of the solidified cream from the top of the can, (the watery stuff you can use in smoothies, the rest of the cream freeze in ice cube trays, handy to have goes off easily in the fridge)  add the Crio Brü and heat to boiling point, I use the microwave, you may use stove top or Thermomix also- just heat it to boiling and keep it there for a couple of minutes.

Add chocolate melts to the coconut cream.Crio Brü infusion and stir until melted, Whilst you are doing this you can toast the almonds, easiest in your microwave but can be done in the oven too.

Add almonds and coconut to the chocolatey, coconutty ganachey stuff (*drrrrrooooooool*), Stir well and pour into a small pyrex tray lined with baking paper, or cute little patty pan liners would be nice too.

Leave it to set for longer than you can bear in the fridge (a couple of hours sorry).

Enjoy sparingly and mindfully (seriously it is rich stuff!)

Jessie XX

P.S Do I need to write a post about Crio Brü? I think I might have to

Baby Friendly. Lazy Sunday homemade bench cleaner.

Hmm. Maybe not pretty, but it works well!

I ran out of bench cleaner. I forgot to buy any when I was at the shops so armed with the empty bottle I made my own with things around the house.

It works a treat so I though I had better share it in case it helps you out of a similar fix! As a good side effect it is baby and eco-friendly as well as cheap, grease cutting and helps keep germs in check:

1 cup of water

1/2 cup of double strength apple cider vinegar (I didn’t have any white vinegar and didn’t think Balsamic would be a good cleaner!- you could probably substitute cheap white vinegar but use 1 cup)

1/2teaspoon of lemon essence

1/2 teaspoon of peppermint essence (make sure both are clear not lurid colours!)

1/2teaspoon concentrated dishwashing liquid.

1 empty surface spray bottle, well cleaned (in case it had odd chemicals which would cause a reaction).

Mix it all in the bottle and use anywhere you would use surface cleaner. I found it very effective for those leavings that children smear on things (I am never sure what they are made of… I don’t remember feeding them generic grey smeary stuff!)

My kind of lazy; cheap, easy, eco-friendly and I didn’t have to brave the shops.

Hello and Welcome to the Show!

Welcome Cake!

I have moved! Well not me exactly but my blog,( I will be moving but that’s a whole other adventure!).

I am over here and looking lovely because it was time for a blog overhaul, The Dull Roar Philosophy has become much more than just the least waste and money , it is also about the least effort but the most result, it has extended to more than just thrift and eco approaches (it’s hard to blog about thrift with a straight face when you have just tweeted about buying a supercar but I promise you my approach is one of thrift, it was half price!) to looking good, feeling good, problem solving and generally juggling everything life has at you whilst staying on an even keel.

Sometimes I succeed at this and I think I am getting better so I hope you will join me as I explore keeping the bad things in life to a dull roar and squeeze the most out of what I have (hopefully gaining even more experience and happiness along the way!

The Quest for the Best.. Can Opener?

This week I got myself a present.
 It had been on my Pinterest board for years. It was the completion of a strange and overly intensive quest I had been on for years.

Allow me to take you along this tumultuous journey as I look back.

When I was pregnant with our second son I was invited to a Tupperware party a woman at work was holding. Being pregnant I went as there was going to be food which is always a clincher and I didn’t have any other kind of social offering on the horizon.
It was there I encountered the Tupperware can opener. Yes can opener. good for tins of beans and cat food.

Now it wasn’t any old can opener, it was ergonomic , it was a safety opener meaning there were no sharp edges on the can. Not like my can opener, leaving sharp edges everywhere meaning my tins weren’t suitable for…um…other things because they were all sharp and edgy.  This was a God amongst can openers. With a RRP of $60. Sixty dollars. That’s a lot of tins of beans.

So being the bargain hunting quester I set about trying to find one at a good price. I was a woman possessed  I found them on eBay for $31. I still couldn’t justify it. I kept searching, I went to another Tupperware party and won a keyring of the can opener in one of those great games you play at such parties. This only served to fan the flames of my desire (for a can opener).

I just couldn’t let myself buy it. After all it was just a can opener.
Then I decided there must be others out there, other can openers which met my needs (I don’t know if there are other can opener fixated weirdos like myself). I found The Kuhn Rikon safety opener, it cast off the shackles of the monochrome only option and came in colours and was less then $20 but I couldn’t decide between pink and red (this is a big problem in my life. I often go with both and rock the Strawberry Shortcake look). So still didn’t get it. 

Then I put the pink option on my Pinterest  “Wants not needs” board. That was over a year ago and it was the only thing on there (apparently a roller Skating helmet made to look like R2D2 is a need greater than a can opener) but I STILL didn’t buy it as the postage made it too expensive. So I struggled on with my not safe can opener.

Then I found a free post coupon for the discount kitchen ware shop and I BOUGHT THE CAN OPENER and a garlic crusher (red)-I watched a video about the garlic crusher before I bought it. 
I was so excited to hold it in my hand, i had waited so long for this. but  I didn’t have any tins to open until; “Mummy can we have baked beans for dinner?” YES! Finally my hands were shaking a bit as I turned the handle to three o’clock and wound around (not too much, could cause burrs) and used the little lid lifting pliers to lift the lid and not even have to touch it.

So gentle reader there you go. Nearly five years after I first set eyes on one I finally have my safety can opener. In case you are wondering, I don’t really eat many things from cans. All that BPA you know…

Next I want to buy a robotic vacuum cleaner. I am getting tired just thinking about this…

Winter Solstice and Baking

Just past the Solstice we sit in the depths of Winter, today was subzero overnight and sparkly with sunshine during the day. What does one do in the cold? Well this one bakes.

 Today I have brought forth an unreasonable offering of biscotti, pumpkin pie(from a mish mash of recipes I have read ) bread from the famous 5 minutes a day recipes( I like this friendly  post about it from the Italian Dish) and sticky apple and gingerbread loaf but I didn’t have any crystallized ginger and I left out the pecans (because nuts are in league with Satan these days and can’t go to school).I have given up on sourdough again.. it is not very “dull roar” and needs a lot of care, I like the ease of mixing the dough in a lidded bucket and keeping in the fridge for when I need it a la the 5 minutes a day recipes. It makes fantastic Pizza dough too so is a Godsend and is actually easier a lot of the time than using online pizza ordering websites (why do I find it so hard?)! All this baking today has kept me busy, especially with two small boys “helping” me enthusiastically. 
I mustn’t complain though, I am keeping them busy whilst my dearly beloved juggles moving cars from service shop to service shop, dismantles two for parts, rebuilds another and paints the outside of a house (whilst the sun shines briefly on these short Winter days) and he just realised he needs to cut more firewood…oh dear I wish I could help him more but the limitations of my growing belly are rather apparent. I am attempting to stay fit and strong doing Yoga, both at Pregnancy yoga classes, from DVD’s and home practice and I am enjoying the benefits. I was going to try to tell you I am not having cravings but I just ate a whole bunch of radishes as I typed this so that would appear to be a great walloping lie!
I hope my nesting kicks in soon… the house could really do with a clean!

Seasons… turning….

I love to watch the Seasons change and I think that Summer into Autumn, particularly in Tasmania is my favourite. The Earth around us seems to sigh and slip into Autumnal colours and cooler weather and our family starts to come alive as the fierce bite leaves the sun. I am looking forward to an end to daylight savings, our boisterous boys bounce off the walls until the sun goes down regardless of the time and during Summer heat and light there is no chance of getting them to sleep early so Autumn heralds a golden age of going to sleep at the right time (praise be to deity of choice!).
We have installed a solid, fierce little woodheater in preparation for Winter (but being impatient we want o be using it now!) as we have lots of old hardwood not good for much except burning lurking behind our giant sheds. The heater and flue cost $75, the wood is free and we had to buy a sort of hat thing to seal it in the roof (it was installed by the ever handy husband) so hopefully we won’t have such ginormous (yes I know- not really a word!) electricity bills as the old 1970’s storage/fan heaters we had in situ last Winter were less than satisfactory, the air has a nasty quality to it with electric heating, the house doesn’t warm well, it costs a bomb and lets face it- we love the ambiance of the fire (and burning stuff, I love burning stuff!).
Our boys have gone retro and discovered cassette tapes. This was by necessity, they had started having music in their bedroom (a tacky cd of children’s music) at bedtime which kept them from rampaging as much until the Lincoln Imp (I’m three!) tried to find out which parts of the stereo were compatible with carrots. It turns out the CD player wasn’t. It tries valiantly to work sometimes but never lasts long…so we have had to start using the cassette player which, as it turns out seems to be more compatible with carrots. We had no audio cassettes so a few trips to the charity shops have loaded us with some already much loved tapes. I let Sir Chats A lot ( this name is hopefully temporary as he is five and I am hoping that the chatting is a phase….) choose the tapes and he doesn’t seem to like Toy Story or the Lion King but adores Wind in the Willows (he keeps calling people Old Chap a la Mr Toad!), a Beethoven string quartet tape and oddly a tape designed to teach the times tables. As the tapes only cost twenty or fifty cents each and they can both operate the cassette player I let them go for their lives!

We have Jalepeno chilies ripening which are beautiful but I don’t know what to do with them now! The boys chose the plant and we are going to have to research the recipe possibilties together ! I also have to figure out what to do with parnsips, Florence fennel and curly kale from our huge vegie box this week… I think Kale chips will be made, I hope they are as nice as I imagine them to be!
We are in fair and festival mode in Tasmania, yesterday we went to a Victorian Fair at a National Trust property and next week it is a colonial fair at another Heritage property, so lovely in this Autumn sun…

Awards

I have received an award from Sara:

And I am beyond stoked (or for those of a less Antipodean persuasion- I am delighted) and happily bestow the award on some fellow bloggers:

1.Veggiegobbler: Honest refreshing etc . This woman gets busy(in the garden and kitchen!), grows and blogs ’nuff said.

2. Cast Iron Balcony :Feminist Blogging far out of my league this one is by Helen who I am proud to say is sort of my Aunt by a complicated arrangement involving second marriages and unofficial adoptions but very dear to my heart.


3. Dave Hamilton’s Blog at Selfsufficientish Another blogger far beyond my humble attempts but I would like to award this one to Dave to let him know that his lovely blog is much appreciated and read and not just by people who want to put links to their Russian Bride websites!