fred_mouse

Any other WA folks here use soy milk as their default? If yes, what brand are you using, and do you have strong opinions? We've been using Sanatarium So Good, but for the last ~6 months, we been finding that it is very lumpy even if one shakes it, and there are frequently crystals of something (hopefully something harmless, like sugar) settling to the bottom, which isn't very nice.

It is possible that this is a storage time issue, given that we buy in bulk, two to three cartons of 12 at a time, and then work our way through. It is also, concerningly, possible that Sanatarium are having some kind of issues, given that apparently they have stopped making peanut butter. Losing the peanut butter and the soy milk aren't great, but losing Weetbix, which is a staple for four of us, is going to be difficult if the company goes under.

ETA: this query was brought to you by the fact that Youngest was saying 'The QLD stuff doesn't DO THAT!'.

Previous post from 15th September: https://fred-mouse.dreamwidth.org/906119.html

Things have pretty much continued as they were, although I'm in the balancing strictness against some amount of reward, because I am a very food reward oriented individual. I have continued to not eat the boiled sweets, although I also don't want to give them away. I'm contemplating one a weekend as an appropriate rate to go through them.

In terms of biscuits, I finished up the packets of no-reos at roughly the rate of 2 every three days. They've been replaced with a couple of boxes of very nice shortbready biscuits. Nutritional content is given as 4g sugar per serve; with 11 serves per box. That probably means one biscuit is one serve, I'm going to use that as my estimate. Which makes them about half as much sugar intake as the no-reos. So one of those is fine in a day, for the current experimentation. I've also checked my emergency muesli bars, which are 4.5g and 5.6g of sugars for the two variations we buy. As these are one of the few gluten free, almost dairy free, oat free, shelf stable, portable emergency snack options I have, I'm quite relieved at that.

I've also relented a little on avoiding dried fruit, and am allowing for a small amount per day. This means I don't eat too many roast peanuts.

In general, I've noticeably decreased the amount of sugar I was consuming, and I've not impacted on my quality of life. There are some tradeoffs in terms of availble gluten free options. I haven't yet got control of the stress eating, so that is something I need to continue to be mindful of.

content note: discussion of food and diet in the 'what I'm eating' context, not anything more than that.

Following last weeks slightly high Hba1c reading, I've been thinking about what I'm eating, and working on being slightly less cavalier about my sugar intake. I'm aware that I've been stress eating carbohydrates (and chocolate), and I'd like to be a bit more mindful about that.

I started the week with the goal of Just Not Eating Sweets. I've kind of managed that, in that I haven't eaten any of the boiled lollies I was given by Splanky when they visited (I still have about half the tin and some of the loose ones). Wednesday, getting home from work on a blustery gloomy day, I did resist the temptation to go straight to the treats box, but we did finish off the last of the icecream after dinner (what I could consider a standard serve for us, which is probably the size of a standard scoop). And then Thursday, across the day, I ate three of the gf faux-oreos. Which, when I looked at the box, have a serving size of two biscuits, with 40g of sugar in a serve. Which, oops. (The half-arsed research I did suggested that anything over 10g of sugar at a time is the wrong choice).

The other days of the week, it hasn't been much of an issue, but yesterday there was certainly a lot of 'my code sucks, what snacks are there' moments.

In terms of chocolate, I'm back to having plain dark chocolate at work, which I've eaten some of each day; in this case the block is a Lindt 85% dark or something like that, and I ate two squares on each of Mon/Tues and then three on Wednesday.

Wednesday, rather than going and having a mostly carb lunch (because that is pretty much the option when the local curry place is closed, as it was last time I went past), I picked up fresh salmon and avocado sushi at the place at the train station (only possible because I was on a later train and the place was open, but they only had three choices of hand rolls when I got there, and the other two weren't gf). Interestingly, I didn't end up hungry mid-afternoon, which suggests that the lunches I've been having aren't actually a good meal. I guess I've learned a thing there.

I'm aware that fruit is a sugar source, but for the moment I'm choosing to not moderate my fruit intake at all. If, the next time I get a blood test done, my levels are in or near the warning range, I'll do a more thorough audit of what I'm eating in terms of sugar levels. I have been skipping dried fruit as a snack, choosing peanuts or sunflower seeds (handful of one or the other) as my standard, with the occassional NAS carob buds.

At this level of behaviour change, over this time frame, I'm not finding it difficult. Not buying the chocolate brownie from the coffee place, not having a plain bagel for lunch, not having sweets in the drawer at work, skipping dried fruit in favour of nuts/seeds have been easy changes. Whether that continues to be easy, still to be shown. From previous removing things from my diet because it disagrees with me experience, I'll be fine for a bit, and then I'll have a bit of a 'aargh, I hate this' moment, and probably eat something inadvisable. And then go back to it, and the time frame will be longer between each tantrum. After all, I no longer remember the last time I had potatoes, and when we went out for burgers last week and other people had chips, I wasn't at all mopey about that. So it can be done.

So far today, I've slept in a little, decided to not wait for the bus but to walk to my hand physio appointment, accidentally used the work credit card to buy brunch (argh. paperwork), timed things exactly right for getting a bus home, and am now holed up in bed whinging to myself about cold and bleargh.

I have many things I want to be doing. Right now, I'm catching up on a week's worth of DW posts. I think I will aim to not comment on many, because stopping and making coherent sentences is more important in comments than this slightly more stream of concsiousness writing (in a comment, I make an effort to engage and not be me me me; here I don't have to self-edit).

my goals for the day are overly optimistic. I want to get the bedroom tidy, the bed stripped and remade with the new quilt in a cover, the kitchen under control. I want to not have so many tabs open across multiple devices. I want to finish at least one book. And then we get to the shoulds: I should go to Bill's Scoops and get the assorted dry goods we get there. I should work out what else is needed in shoppign and do that. I should do some viola practice. I should do some craft. I should try and dig myself out of the various exhaustion holes I'm in. And, highly importantly, I mustn't wear myself out because artisanat is arriving back in the country some time in the early evening, and I need to make sure that I can actually drive out to the airport.

Friday's coffee was at the 'General Sherman' which is the downstairs coffee shop at the Wexford centre (the upstairs is a Gloria Jeans, or similar). I ordered a gf avocado toast, which was white bread with a token smear of avocado in a colour that indicated it had been sitting for a while, some crumble of bland fet(t)a (seriously, how does one manage bland for that cheese?), and some pistachios. I didn't register the name on the way in; I'm not entirely sure whose army/which war General Sherman was a part of, but I'm not sure that I want to encourage such a naming scheme, and neither the food nor the coffee were a reason for me to work out if I want to justify going back. I will just have to make sure that I don't end up needing to buy food/coffee at that location again. (Gloria Jeans have some kind of 'avoid if at all possible' reason that I can't think of right now -- I'm assuming one of the bigotries). However, across the road at the other hospital there is a Jamaica Blue, and they do have some (one?) edible gluten free option (there might be more gf choices, but their breakfast fritatta ish thing comes with far too much bacon, and they put bacon on their smashed avo as well. I am not a fan of bacon. Every now and then I have the thought that 'it can't be that bad, surely', and I learn again that no, bacon is just salty and disgusting).

An innocent question by kerravonsen about favourite jelly* flavours sent me down a rabbit hole. They were talking about Port Wine jelly, which definitely up there on the list. But my memory of The Best Ever jelly was blue, and an Australian fruit. I was a bit vague on the details. What I said in my comment over at kerravonsen's post was

There used to be a blue flavour, which was some kind of Australian native fruit, which I really liked. I want to claim it was quandong, but I'm almost certain that is wrong. At the same time they did something that might have been lillipilli, which only matched in terms of the truly bright colour one gets when one makes lillipilli jam.

It turns out that the blue flavour really was quandong. I don't know how one gets from bright red fruit to blue jelly, but I'm not asking those questions. It also turns out that it was a flavour introduced in 1988 (along with midjinberry and Lilly pilly) that lasted until 1992¹. Those were, in fact, my prime jelly eating years. I had left home (so could just buy such things), but packet jelly crystals were cheap (maaaybe 50c?), light weight (great when taking shopping home on the bus or bike**), and kept forever.

Stalking the internet, I did find a picture of the quandong packaging, but no such luck on the other two.

* Australian jelly; ie a dessert made of gelatine, sugar, flavouring, and water.
** much better than many other things. Getting a carton of eggs caught between the spokes of my front wheel was an experience I'd rather have never had.
¹https://www.aeroplanejelly.com.au/history

Gluten free locals may be as excited as I by the fact that the local IGA has GF chapati and another Indian flat bread in their freezer section.

Youngest and I headed out for a walk to the local shops after dinner, in order to get the things we knew we needed. Shopping list was about eight things long, although one of those was 'fruit'. On the way, went past a jogger on our side of the road (unmasked), saw two people on the other side of the road doing some kind of exercise (unmasked; one kinda jogging one on a bicycle -- they went up and down a section of road), and then had two much more serious looking cyclists go past us (both masked). Another jogger went past the two on the other side, putting on a mask for that section, and then pulling it off again. Youngest and I were wearing masks made in the first shut down.

Keeping in mind that this is a five day shut down, and that there were requests by the government spokespeople for no panic buying, panic buying has definitely been happening.

There were no ripe bananas (but enough green ones; we got nectarines and grapes to get us through tomorrow). Bag salad, cauliflower, bags of carrots, all potatoes all out; we had remembered to take our own bags, so got to feel virtuous about getting loose carrots. We got the last celery. We should have bought avocados, but that is just me wanting some now. Fortunately, 'fruit, bananas, carrots' was the shopping list there.

The bread shelves were entirely clear, except the gluten free section, and what turned out to be the shelf of little Turkish breads. Given that there was also gf Turkish bread, we now have a plan for Monday dinner. GF bread was on our desperately needed list, but we have enough bread for the rest of the family, so that was okay

Eggs (we didn't need), fresh milk (which we really did) were both out. Youngest commented that bacon was out as well. Cheese was still a plenty, so we got our usual 2kg. The brand/type of soy milk I buy was out; fortunately we have four litres, but I like to have eight, so I grabbed one box of vanilla, and one large cold soy coffee. We can make dessert with the vanilla, and Youngest has already decided that we will make some kind of rice pudding. The coffee will have to do me tomorrow for morning tea. The yoghurt section was trashed, but Youngest's flavour of choice was there, so all good there. Frozen veggies were about half gone, so we were able to replenish the frozen corn.

Other than the milk, I reckon we can now make it through the week without shopping. We might be a bit short on veggies at the end of the week, or at least, a bit sick of the same salad, but I'm okay with that. I just hope we have lots of tomatoes, because I forgot to check!

A little while back, I lucked across a green-grocer selling well ripe mangoes by the case for $10, and loose cherry tomatoes for $1/kg. I knew I had a bit of cooking time, so mango tomato chutney was the plan. I don't actually have an existing recipe, so I went wandering. Lots of the online ones have onion, which is a no-no. But I found one that was a good enough basis (from All Recipes Australia) and worked from that.

I used 1 kg of cherry tomatoes, chopped in half; about 8 cups of chopped mango; a chunk of fresh ginger, grated; 1/2 cup panera (palm sugar); some amount of white vinegar. These were all put in the slow cooker pot to sit overnight with a couple of cassia sticks (because I was out of cinnamon) and a handful of cloves. Then it was cooked for ~6 hours

I estimated that I was making about twice the quantity of that recipe, so I aimed to double everything except the sugar. As it was, I either shouldn't have doubled the vinegar, or should have doubled the sugar. Either way, while it is tasty, it is just a bit too sour to eat much of at a go (although it goes really well on pasta), and it didn't quite set. This latter issue may also be related to the ripeness of the mangoes, because they were very very ripe. Or I should have taken the lid off the slow cooker sooner, so that there was greater evaporation (I took it off for the last hour or so).

content note: the last paragraph (behind the cut) talks about measuring weight; the rest is about what food I've been eating.

For the first week of the no sugar challenge, it wasn't particularly difficult. And then, this week? I've really struggled. I suspect if I'd had a block of chocolate stashed at work, I would have eaten the whole thing the day I tried to work out where my tangled if then logic had failed when, the day before, I had foolishly tried to patch two bugs and solve another problem simultaneously. Yes, I should have known better.

That might have been the day that I ate the muesli bar out of the stash, or might be the day that I finally ate the small size snickers bar I've been carrying around for weeks. Basically, I hit 'chocolate is no longer optional' for that second one.

And yesterday, I was looking for food at the time I was at the servo, and there aren't a lot of good options. I picked the probably least worst option, and got a small single serve blueberry yoghurt. Which doesn't appear to have particularly disrupted my innards. But was still more sugar than I really wanted. I did manage to stick to the no sugar idea when I stopped to get Youngest's afternoon tea, and grabbed a drink -- tried the diet Bundaberg ginger beer. I won't be doing that again. Yes, the general ginger beer is too sweet, but this was that plus weird aftertaste.

I'm trying to decide whether aiming to get through the next two weeks sugar free, and then calling it done, is enough of a sop to my pride in the "I can do this" or whether I want to aim for something else. I certainly don't want to then cycle through adding another week each time I make the choice to consume sugar. Equally, I don't want to set a specific number of days to achieve. And I'm concerned that if I let it run on too long, I'm going to bounce back afterwards with a 'shove everything in my mouth' approach.

( comments on measuring weight )

Today is ‘sit in a library and write’ day. The plan had been to drop youngest at school, drive to the city, grab a coffee, and then sit near the Art Gallery pond and read a book until the State Library opened at 9am. And then at 5:15am, when we left the house, it was wet and foggy*. Not the weather to sit outside on concrete steps.

Instead, I followed the plan to ‘parking under the library’, and then wandered across the train line, with the expectation of finding acceptable coffee somewhere. It turns out that various bits of the city have been rearranged. Including the Murray Street end of one of the arcades having been closed.**

I had some ideas about where to get coffee, and maybe something savoury to eat***. The access through to my first choice option was closed, so I found myself wandering up to Barrack Street, where I discovered that there are far more Korean shops than I remember. And I looped back to that first choice, and there is no cafe, no lunch bar, no shop. There is open air and structural work.^ So I continued meandering, until I decided that my best bet was to see what is open in the City Arcade food hall. Most of it wasn’t, but tucked in a corner is ‘Blk Espresso’. Which looks a bit hipsterish, but advertised a toastie+coffee option for $9, which is pretty reasonable^^. Particularly when they were happy to include a large long black in that.

And the toasty was fabulous. I picked the ‘spicy avo and egg’ option. By the time it turned up, I was well into the so hungry I was nauseous and dizzy phase, and had gone through the ‘try ventolin’ approach, and was in to the ‘careful breathing’ approach to the nausea. Eating was a careful balance between scarfing the lot as fast as humanly possible, and savouring a really nice bit of food.
And it was a lovely toastie. The bread was good, the egg was good, the flavour balance was good, the avo was nicely ripe. And the coffee was lovely. Smooth, and just really good. Yes, some of this was probably that I was over hungry, but mmm.

On the whole, I recommend this as an option for a nice bit of food. They open at 7:30am and close at 3pm. I suspect only week-days, but I didn’t actually note that option. There were three toastie options, but I don’t remember what the other two were, because not actually vegetarian. I think one had bacon?

* first real fog this year, that I’ve been awake for. Youngest and I continued to enthuse about fog all the way to skating, and all the way home again.
** this is not new. I’d just completely forgotten about it.
*** this was optional, until my stomach declared that the meal eaten at 5:45 am didn’t count as breakfast, and could we have breakfast please. Now. No, like right now. Really now. NOW NOW NOW.
^ where the Murray Street Woolworths is, upstairs used to be a mixed Asian noodle place.
^^ a. Perth is expensive for food. b) I was expecting to pay $4-5 for a large long black coffee. Given that gf is more expensive, my minimum expected spend for food was going to be $5, and I was expecting that to be a shitty tastes-of-nothing-but-coconut raw something slice, if I could find somewhere that sold them. Sadly, often still my best bet for food-that-won’t-make-me-feel-worse. c) there are places that charge that for a toastie alone. Usually on pretty thick bread, and with fancy schmancy stuff in them, but still.