Getting stuff done today. Healthy living and food fads.

It’s taken a long time to get around to writing my blog today. I was up bright and early, not to run but to head for the bus stop and make my way eventually to the dentist’s for a check-up. Like the rest of my circle, my dentist is now also heading for old age and decrepitude and consequently has opted to work only three days a week. This is fine but makes scheduling appointments difficult. But we manage!

I had arranged to phone my daughter on leaving the dentist so that she could meet me in her car as I walked down the road towards the bit of town where she lives. This worked well. The sun was shining and I could not make out which cars were coming towards me until she was almost on top of me. The sun was shining but it was still rather chilly. There was frost again first thing. It strikes me that we are having frost much earlier than usual. But the forecast is good for most of the week. Not really what you would call hot but more hot than cold!

Having got some shopping done, we went back to her house for lunch and then took the tiny person off for her two-years-old assessment. There was a whole list of “can she...” questions, most of which could be answered with a resounding yes. At stacking bricks, threading beads, copying lines that her mother made on paper, recognising pictures in books and even tidying up, she passed with flying colours. Clearly on track, as we expected. Apart from an inability to jump as yet!

After my daughter dropped me off at home, there was still time to go for a walk before the sun went over the hill. Since Phil had a minor operation recently we have slowly been getting him back into the routine of a daily constitutional. Every day we have gone a little farther, pulling up Indonesian Balsam as we go. We realise that it is probably too late for this year to attack the spread of this rather beautiful but pernicious weed but it makes us feel that we are doing a little to help!


And suddenly we are into the evening and finally I get round to posting today’s blog.

In the car, travelling around today, my daughter regaled me with tales of children she teaches who clearly have never been read to, in some cases barely talked to and a few who regularly turn up at school having had no breakfast. It’s hard to know what to do about cases like that. Labour is promising to look at childcare and how to improve it, bringing down costs and providing more free care for children from really poor families. Time to vote them in and see what they can do. Then we shall see what they can do.

On the other side of the Atlantic, POTUS has been amusing the UN people by telling them how much more he has done in two years than any other president before him. Apparently he was serious and did not expect to raise a laugh. The man is a master of hyperbole, if nothing else.

My daughter and I also discussed diets, as you do. She has been rather successfully following quite a strict one, and carefully avoiding the box of chocolate goodies that her partner has stored away in a kitchen cupboard. We both agreed that really the only way to avoid eating such stuff is simply not to buy it. Or, as she does with the box of chocolate goodies and as I do with the biscuits, you have to hide them somewhere inaccessible in the kitchen.

The tiny person’s eating habits were discussed at her assessment. She eats just about anything. The health visitor people were impressed. They were impressed also by the fact that she only drinks water and milk. No juice for her. Juice is a big factor in wrecking small children’s teeth. And even more so an early introduction to fizzy drinks. It’s not sweets alone. Oh, and it seems they should use grown up toothpaste, not the special children’s stuff which does not contain enough fluoride. Who knew?

Then I read this about Gwyneth Paltrow  who seemingly likes to down a glass of whiskey in the bath every day. A good way to relax, it seems. I don’t think I could find time to have a bath every day. Showers are soooo much quicker! But I never had la Paltrow down as a whiskey drinker. I thought she was one of the healthy living proponents. I would have thought that this new food fad would be more up her street.

“Aquafaba” turns put to be the water you cooked your chickpeas in. Or if, like me, you really can’t be bothered with soaking chickpeas for hours and then boiling them for hours to soften them up but buy them ready softened in a tin, then it’s the water from the tin. Of course it is. Aqua is water and faba, like the Spanish haba means bean. But if you give it a fancy name then it can be promoted as the latest foodie thing that vegans can use. Apparently it can replace egg white in recipes, even in meringues.

There you go. A little something new to learn every day.