Quaintr

There's one thing I absolutely hate since I started my new life in the working class... dinner. Although I love to cook, I just can't get myself to do something creative in the kitchen after a full day of work. (It's hard enough to get myself to do something in the kitchen after a full day of work, let alone something creative.) The problem isn't the cooking itself, it's the thinking part... what're we going to eat, how am I going to make it, what should I do first, which pots and pans are needed, watch out with the knife and more of the basics of cooking. He isn't much of a help either... fair enough, he will do his share of chopping and cleaning, but his doesn't provide creative thinking input in the kitchen.

Every now and then, mainly when he's not at home to talk me out of it, I can't resist the urge to visit the snack bar. Quick food. No cooking (and especially no thinking) involved. But it has been a while, more than six weeks since the last visit... and now I remember why... It tastes horrible, like chewing cardboard which has been soaked in fat for at least a day. A 'meal' with absolutely no nutrients, which I really regret at the moment. I can feel my bowels complaining and my arteries clot...

Next time I've this urge for quick food, please remind me the stuff they sell in snack bars doesn't qualify as food and hand me an apple.

Various people tend to complain about my cooking, not because i'm a bad cook, but because i cook with lots of herbs (and other flavours). So the food tends to have a strong taste, and, especially if one isn't used to it, it can be a bit of an overload on the taste buds... Therefore, i always have to contain myself when cooking for others. But with this year's xmas dinner i was able to use as many herbs and flavours as i liked, actually the more the better. She loved it, cos she was finally able to taste some (70-80%) of the food.

Maybe i've found my cooking niche?

"Nurse?"

"Nurse?"

"Nurse!"

"Nurse? Can you help me? I'm looking for a bathroom."

"Goodmorning. I'm a doctor, but I can help you look for a bathroom."

First bathroom: covered in brown/yellow substance... don't want to enter. Second bathroom: used as a storage room... no possibility to use as a bathroom. Third (and final) bathroom: occupied.

"I'm sorry, there's no bathroom available at the moment, you'll have to wait."

"You might be a doctor, but you're of no use to me!"

"Will the tea-bags still be okay even if i opened the bag a year ago?"

"Well, what's the expiry date?"

"Oct '07"

"Oh, that should be okay"

..... 

"Mmmmm, normally it doesn't take such a long time for the tea to brew"

Takes a sip... "Yuck... Well, it doesn't go off but the taste is gone" Puts in another bag and leaves it in for another 10 mins

"Yeah, that's better"

About fifteen years ago I made a plan to become rich, but it is failing desperately. I had really thought it through: no one got rich with hard work, so I wouldn't even start trying; robbing a bank has a small chance of success and if you succeed there's even a smaller chance you can enjoy the money, so I decided it wasn't worth the risk; writing a best selling novel resembles to much of hard work; inheriting from a rich family member is a quick, easy and failproof way to become rich, but you need a rich family member (which actually is a problem); marrying a rich man still belongs to the possibilities, but I'm completely in love with a not-especially-rich man (so it wouldn't be fair to the rich man to marry him, would it?); so the final option would be to win the lottery, which is the part I'm failing desperately in...

(Luckily, my plans changed over the years, otherwise I would be a very frustrated woman.)

From the recently finished 'Bad Heir Day' by Wendy Holden, a very enjoyable read:

"You write, of course?"

"In theory, how did you know?"

"Well, everyone's a writer," came the rather less flattering reply. "I tell everyone at the start of my course that a book is just like an arsehole. Everyone's got one in them. And most of what comes out is, of course, usually..." He cleared his throat delicately.

"Oh" [...]

"But the point is, [...] it's better out then in. Most people feel a lot better afterwards, anyway. It helps them work out their frustrations. I'm a great believer in the therapeutic value of writing things down. If everyone did it, the world would be a better, calmer, less hysterical place. And if that means there are a few more bad novels about, so what?"

She's absolutely right. And still, I just can't. Maybe I should just get on with it...

Seven men have taken over my house. Our living room is featuring two tables, both with miniature trees, houses, rivers and streets. My crafts room is hosting the third table with a small farm. All the men have brought their mini wizards/humans/rats/dwarfs/skeletons and are trying desperately to kill each other, using dice and a very complicated rule book. Supposed to be great fun, or at least it is for the one watching (with absolutely no understanding of this Mordheim mayhem whatsoever)...

"You've got twice a chance of 2/3 or four times a chance of 1/4, which is actually... ehm... very little."

Gesprek tussen twee artsen:

"Het gebeurt regelmatig dat een van mijn bewoners een longontsteking krijgt, die we actief (met antibiotica) behandelen. Alle tekenen van infectie verdwijnen, het lab normaliseert, kortom, de behandeling slaat volledig aan... maar dan stoppen ze verdorie met eten en drinken!"

"En dit vind je een beetje onsportief van ze?"

Zucht. Puft. Denk na. "Nou, ehm, eigenlijk wel."

"En je betrapt daar voornamelijk dementerende mensen op?"

There's a (chocolate) smile from ear-to-ear, ten fingers covered in chocolate, a half-empty box of chocolates and a nurse looking for a napkin.

"Since I live here [the nursing home], I've still got a husband, but I don't have a lover anymore."

He gently whispers in her ear "but I'm still your lover..."

"No! You're not! You go to the whores!"

Last summer, we started to cut in our meat consumption, resulting in half a week of vegetarian cooking and half a week of 'regular' cooking with fish or meat. (Hey, I still come from a family of carnivores.) But in the last weeks, I've had more and more trouble buying meat... it's just dead animal, which has had an unnessecary poor life, which we don't really need to eat, which is bad for the environment, which stimulates world hunger by not being part of the solution, which is full of stuff we don't need and which is expensive. So I stopped buying it.

Now, I've got a totally new challenge... how to cook vegetarian all the time? Some cookbooks helped, and some friends did too. At first, I tried a lot of veggie-burgers and things. But they're expensive too, while plain tofu is cheap. But what to do with plain tofu? Surfing the internet, I found some great sites... tofu 101 explained everything you need to know and everything you don't nessecarily need to know. And for recipes, always trust the BBC.

So what did I do with it? I've made some gnocci with herby-tofu-tomato-sauce, some pasta with spinach-garlic-tofu-sauce and wacked the remaining tofu in our smoker oven (10 minutes, wood: pure maple). Made a smoked-tofu-salad and a pasta with smoked tofu-pesto-broccoli-pine nuts sauce.

From the age of twelve, I've taken an interest in all kinds of medicine. In the following twelve years, I've studied medicine, gained a second degree in reiki, read all kinds of books on TCM, nutrition, phytotherapy, yoga, meditation, vibrational medicine, bodywork, NLP, psychology and read even more articles (mainly from the internet) about every other kind of healing you can imagine. My medical study is too narrow for me... I need more. But self-thought knowledge is not the same as an degree or even a course.

And there comes the problem challenge. In the Netherlands, we have several home study courses in alternative/complementary medicine. The thing is, they're mainly MBO level, some are at a very easy HBO level. I've got a masters degree in WO, so it's way to easy for me. (See this article for a very short explanation of the Dutch educational system.) And the books I've read are the study books used in the bachelor of western herbal medicine at the university of westminister. So my guess is, which is supported by the sample lessons, that I already gained most of the knowledge given in these home study courses. So why not try a course you have to attend you might think. I've considered this... there are a couple of such courses. Mainly, again, at a very easy HBO level, but more importantly they spent a considerable part (more than 50%) of the education to anatomy, physiology and pathophysiology. As I've just spent six years in college studying medicine, I think (and hope) to know the things they teach in two years part time. But they won't give me any exemption. Sorry, but this inflexibility has caused me to lose trust, interest and faith. So no study for me, or at least, not in this country.

Other options... I could go live in London and study three years, but I don't want to live in London for three years, I want to stay home. There are several home study courses around the world. Some of which were created my some famous men in the world of herbalism, being David Winston (sadly, in this online course you have to tune in at certain times, which is impossible to do due to the time difference), Paul Bergner and Michael Moore (by judging the preview movies, this is absolutely not my kind of thing). There are also many other distance programs (in the US) offered by Rosemary Gladstar (which is, sadly to say, at the same level as the Dutch courses), Susun Weed (her distance course is named 'green witch'...) and Michael Tierra (which has combined east and west, but doesn't seem to be very scientific). In the UK, we can also find various distance offers, like this one, or the more doubtfull school of natural health sciences, the university which offers 90% of it's course in distance learning (but still, 10% attending, total duration four years, fulltime) and many more. My problem is that you can't see what you're buying, and if you can most of these courses are no more than MBO level. Some of them contain many medical mistakes, which is simply unexceptable. Others aren't scientific. This isn't nessesarily a problem, but just making statements without any reference isn't my style. And most of the time, these courses do not offer more than a couple of good books can and are too expensive.

So I've anybody decides to start a home study course in phytotherapy or herbalism, for MD's with an interest in complementary medicine, please let me know. But it seems to me, I'm a minority and should look for knowledge elsewere. Maybe a certain herbalist wants to teach me privately...

I've always kept diaries, well, it usually resembled more a collection of little scraps of paper than an actual diary... the more precise formulation is that I've always written things down. Things to gather my thoughts, to formulate my emotions, to adjust my feelings and for fun. I've also written several short stories, but never dared to let anyone read. (Still don't, btw.)

Writing has some kind of mythical attraction. I like the tranquility of a clean sheet of paper and the ritmic strokes of a pen. But there's something dual about it... if I need to write (if there's a deadline or an obligation of some sort), the words won't come. Complete block.

Among other things, that's what happens when I blog. I like it and I start to write a couple of times a week, I like it even more and want to keep the blog going... and at that precise point, it become a self-ordered-obligation and I block. It also happens when somebody decides my study should be published in an article. Or when I need to write an email. Even Christmas cards become a challenge. So it would probable surprise you, I've always wanted to be a writer... I've got a big hurdle to take. Maybe I should just stop wanting it... and start doing.

It's my favorite restaurant. Biological. Wood burning stove. Environmental friendly. Really, really good food. And when it was struck by a serious fire six weeks ago, we counted the days 'til the reopening. However, the service last week was a bit off. He served the wrong dish, which was absolutely delicious, but not what we ordered. He fixed it perfectly, by sending us a selection of the ordered dish just for the taste (no charge off course.) Tonight, we tried again... (luckily, we're persistant) and he managed to forget our drinks (twice!). Logically, I was getting pretty pissed. (Mainly 'coz all the mistakes were made by one person.) At the end, it all became clear. He served coffee (on the house) with some beschuit met muisjes. He had just become a father, his son was sleeping upstairs, so his head wasn't thinking straight. I can only imagine, with the recent fire and a pregnant wife...

If you know the whole story, some annoying things loose their importance.

Tonight, we've tried out our new smoker oven (thank you, sinterklaa-aa-aasje). After a quick search on the internet, we decided to start with something easy: smoked mackerel, and leave the experimenting with vegetables, cheese and eggs until we get the overall principle of smoking.

And the fire alarm didn't even noticed...