We don't need superfoods, we need common sense!

Last night I watched some of Lateline which had a panel of three discussing sugar, soft drink and health. This morning I came across the following article:

The sugar conspiracy | Ian Leslie

				The sugar conspiracy | Ian Leslie The long read: In 1972, a British scientist sounded the alarm that sugar – and not fat – was the greatest danger to our health. But his findings were ridiculed and ...
				View on www.theguardian.com	Preview by Yahoo

It certainly is a long read and I admit I scanned quite a bit of it. In doing so I found a name I was familiar with - Professor John Rudkin. When Jim ran the Slimming Clubs (bought out by Weight Watchers), he had a team of consultants working with him, including Rudkin. Rosemary Stanton was his dietician.

When Jim was first diagnosed with heart failure, doctors encouraged him to lose weight. So we moved to a low-fat diet. In our case that wasn't a problem from the sugar point of view as we cooked most things from scratch, avoiding processed foods to a large extent.

A year or two later, after another hospitalisation, we discovered that in avoiding fat we had included too much salt in his diet. Not added salt in cooking, but salty foods - pickled herrings, olives, for example. The salt was causing fluid retention throughout Jim's body, ultimately making it hard for him to breathe!

Looking back over the years, we often followed the advice from government sources for a while - the evils of eggs and butter for instance, both subsequently back on the good list.

What we need is a balanced approach, with awareness of fat, sugar and salt. Everything in moderation (with the possible exception of red wine!).

I don't think taxing soft drink will have much effect. People still smoke, don't they?

But watching the 'sugar film guy' spooning sugar onto his chicken does show people how much sugar (or worse, artificial sweetener) is put into cook-in sauces. And even more into sports' drinks.

The escalation in obesity is frightening, but I wonder, who is the next John Rudkin? Who is currently being vilified for daring to question accepted food beliefs?

I searched followed a link to an Australian dietary standard recently, only to find that it was no longer accredited. But there was no updated standard, that I could find!

We don't need superfoods, we need common sense!

The Golden Age ... and I don't mean Shakespeare!

A couple of weeks ago I attended a performance of The Golden Age - a play written by Louis Nowra in 1985.

The Golden Age - Synopsis

I found it interesting but also challenging as the "Lost Tribe" characters no longer spoke English but their own language based on Cockney, Irish and convict slang. Unlike at the Opera, there were no surtitles but the program did help a bit, but not that much.

Why "golden" I have not determined. Grim would have been a better description.

One by one the tribe members died, much like the Aborigines in Tasmania before them. These people were totally inbred, having been cut off from so-called civilisation for three generations, as their numbers dwindled. Their predecessors had gone mining, deep in the South West Wilderness.

It wasn't comfortable theatre and saddened me when the tribe were locked away in a mental asylum to hide them from the mainstream population.

We watched one young student, who had found the tribe, fall in love. His friend's father, a doctor became the translator for the tribespeople. But integration was never an option. And the doctor's obsession with observing behaviour and coping with his emotional response to their lives in incarceration by drinking himself insensible was unhelpful to the tribe's plight.

Much like the Government tries to silence anyone who dares speak out about the conditions in which we are holding asylum seekers in offshore detention.

Eco from the past

Over the weekend I saw online that Umberto Eco has died aged 84, but it was only this morning when I read a newspaper article that I realised that he was born in the same year as Jim.

I always found Eco's writing impenetrable, but much admired Sean Connery's performance in the film of The Name of the Rose.

And that reminded me how Jim had revered Joseph Conrad as a writer and had been amazed when he realised that Conrad's life had died just eight years before his birth.

As a teen, Jim had applied to join the Merchant Navy. In his 60s he asked his mother whether she had ever posted that application. "No" was the immediate and firm response. She had not wanted him to have a life on the ocean waves.

I sometimes wonder where Jim's imagination would have taken him, had he been allowed the opportunity of such a life.

Last night's dinner

Before - Looking good

After - Yummy

Ah! Frangipani!

As I walk along Railway Parade I pass under two or three frangipani (Plumeria). Native to Central and South America – at least the northern countries thereof – frangipani has a strong and beautiful scent. For me, it’s one of the key signs of summer in Sydney. 

Wikipedia states:

Frangipani (Plumeria)

The genus “Plumeria” is named in honour of the seventeenth-century French botanist, Charles Plumier, who travelled to the New World documenting many plant and animal species. The common name “Frangipani” comes from an Italian noble family, a sixteenth-century marquess who invented a plumeria-scented perfume.

Frangipani is related to the oleander family. We mainly see white ones (pictured) but there are also pink and pink and yellow plants to be found.

If you want to propagate it, you simply cut off a piece 300 millimetres long and leave it on the ground in the sun for two or three weeks, preferably in winter. This allows the sap to dry out before planting in potting mix. It will take root within weeks.

Sometimes I collect a few fallen flowers, carry them carefully home because they bruise easily and place them on our bathroom windowsill. Althouth they only last a few days, the fragrance is wonderful.

Putting the right foot forward or starting out...

After reading a recent post by CompostWoman, I decided to get back into writing, or, perhaps I should say, start writing! So I was thinking about blogging as I set out on my morning walk.

 Firstly, I took a picture of the garden bed that’s sprung up in the Brenan Street verge, at the bottom of the Housing Commission and close to the bridge over White’s Creek. It’s only been there a few weeks, but already the plants are up and thriving. Must be the fresh soil and constant watering.

Next, I noticed the flow of the tide. The water was flowing quite fast up White’s Creek, under the bridge. When I get to the park and cross Johnston’s Creek a few minutes later, the flow is much slower, but not because the tide is slowing.

My walk is, as almost always, from our home in White Street, along the streets to the harbourside park. The goal is the second of two enormous Moreton Bay figs that mark the end of Glebe Point Road. So, my walk each morning (or nearly every day) takes in three suburbs – Lilyfield, Annandale and Glebe.

Edible flowers

Here's a photo I took yesterday of part of our edible garden. Beautiful peppery nasturtiums - flowers, leaves and shoots - all good for Spring salads.

And please enjoy the jigsaw!

Click to solve jigsaw

Oh happy day!

Today I went to see my physio again. Actually, I've been going every week, since 7 April - the night when I'd sat at the PC too long, sent my foot and leg to sleep then stood up, unaware, and rolled my ankle.

It was just after six in the evening and Jim rang the physio practice and I drove myself straight over there. Luckily, my car is automatic and the injury was to my left foot.

First the strapping, then the x-Ray, then the big black boot held on with velcro straps, then the MRI... Now so many weeks later the news is good. I'm only to wear the boot for two hours a day and will be able to give it up next Friday, all being well. That means that I must do every exercise I've been set and spend 10-15 minutes a day walking - something that I've really missed.

They're a good bunch of people at the physio practice. I've been seeing James, who is physio to the Wallabies, and also Suzie, who works me hard and is delightful!

I've been Sprung

The existence of this very intermittent blog has been discovered by one of last month's Blogs of Note! He has been posting four times a week for years, so is very profilic - to say nothing of funny. The Badger's blog is Vienna for Dummies. So, perhaps, he will inspire me to write more frequently than has been the case so far.

As we settle into the winter months, we have finally succumbed to the need to install reverse cycle aircon. This will happen on Friday and we have a team of three Chilean blokes coming to make it happen. They've said they'll be here early, 7-ish I think they said. When I mentioned that we wouldn't have had our breakfast, the eldest suggested that I should be making breakfast for five, bacon and eggs would be good.

It should be installed by 1 pm, they said. But we will wait and see. Trouble is, I think that we won't need to keep calling them back to fix things, which is a shame as they are a trio of good guys.

Aircon, however, is only one of the services they offer so they may try to get their feet back in the door and line for breakfast before starting on ventillation and pest control!

All this means that by Friday evening we should be warm, instead huddled over an electric heater, swathed in blankets. Here's hoping, anyway.

Sir David Attenborough - Plastic Oceans

Plastic is forever. Don't forget this when buying packaged products and when disposing of plastics of all kinds.

Tim Minchin's Storm the Animated Movie

Found on the Antipodes blog and now shared with my world!

Barbara Sher: What You Love is What You Are Gifted At

I love Barbara Sher. She really knows what she's talking about.

Motivational thoughts for the weekend

Now that I've broadened the scope of this blog, I'd better start using it!

This seemed a good way to start:

Earth Hour 2011: Beyond the Hour

I've signed up for Earth Hour. Have you?

Periphery - Buttersnips Solo Cover

This is Jim's grandson, Seth. He loves playing guitar and is very talented.

Some beautiful photos, including lightning and thunderclouds at sea

It'll take you a while to scroll through all of these and some will not interest you. But there are some real gems:

National Geographic's Photo Contest 2010

Wonder how many of them are seasick?

Saw this earlier today and thought I'm mighty glad I'm not onboard!

Writing and Sailing - waiting for the perfect conditions

I was pondering earlier this morning and came to the conclusion that writing and sailing don’t have a lot in common. And how, I hear you ask, can you explain such a strange, but obvious, statement?

Well, I’ve always been one to wait for conditions to be just right before I put pen to paper. Actually, these days it’s much more likely to be tapping away at the keyboard! But the fact remains, I find it hard to get into the mood, get everything just so, so that I can write.

With sailing, you can certainly wait for the perfect conditions before you set out. But you won’t be able to go sailing nearly as often as you could, because you would always be waiting for perfection.

And if you’re sailing any sort of distance, even if you did set out in perfect conditions, one or more changes would come through and you, your crew and boat would have to handle them.

And, of course, Jessica Watson certainly wouldn't have been able to complete her circumnavigation is she'd only been able to sail in perfect conditions.

So, having been inspired to write this post after reading just the first three paragraphs of Chris Brogan’s How to Write Three Posts a Day, I think I’m doing quite well!

Celebrating World Rivers Day

I just found the following in Mr Punch Afloat (published by Educational Book Co, London, 1910). It was written by Robert.

THE SILVER TEMS

The butiful River's a-running to Town,
It never runs up, but allers runs down,
Weather it rains, or weather it snos;
And where it all cums from, noboddy nose.

The young swell Boatmen drest in white,
To their Mothers' arts must be a delite;
At roein or skullin the gals is sutch dabs,
For they makes no Fowls and they ketches no Crabs.

The payshent hangler sets in a punt,
Willee ketch kold? I hopes as he wunt.
I wotches him long, witch I states is fax,
He dont ketch nothin but Ticklebacks.

The prudent Ferryman sets under cover,
Waiting to take me from one shore to t'other;
I calls out "Hover!" and hover he roes,
If he aint sober then hover we goes.

When it's poring with rane and a tempest a-blowin,
A penny don't seem mutch for this here rowin;
And wen the River's as ruff as the Sea,
I thinks of the two I'd sooner be me.

For when I'm at work at Ampton or Lea,
Waitin at dinner, or waitin at tea,
I gits as much from a yewthful Pair
As he gits in a day for all that there.

Then let me bless my lucky Star
That made me a Waiter and not a Tar;
And the werry nex time I've a glass of old Sherry,
I’ll drink to the pore chap as roes that 'ere Ferry.

Free Help with Blogging

I'm evaluating a multi-media course on blogging from the folks at Simpleology. For a while, they're letting you snag it for free if you post about it on your blog.

It covers:

• The best blogging techniques.
• How to get traffic to your blog.
• How to turn your blog into money.

I'll let you know what I think once I've had a chance to check it out. Meanwhile, go grab yours while it's still free.