Back again!

 

I’m Back!

Well, it has been a long time, I got lazy, my interests changed and life happened. But through it all I really missed blogging; Instagram didn’t really hit the spot except for showcasing my art. However, the thing was that my blogging was mostly about crochet and I had crocheted myself out with my last giant project. So, what to blog about was the question, and why did I have this urge to blog? I think it is because I like to write, I have a dream of writing a novel and have started several times but usually get struck after a few chapters.  Maybe one day it will happen.

Anyways, I have decided in tandem with my word for 2026 – Health to blog as a diary about my venture into maximizing my health, not that I want to live forever, but I want to be full of health till the end.  Also, I want to do it on a budget as I am on the pension now and finances are a concern.

So, this time around in my blogging life I will be blogging about my garden, food and so on. Of course, my cat Princess will make her presence known.  Like me she is getting on in years.

 

Why health for my focus this year? I got a surprise with my last round of blood tests; I have just slipped into the prediabetic range.  I was kidding myself that my diet was healthy but forgetting the little treats and the laziness of just having a sandwich for a meal. The danger of living alone is that there is no one to be accountable to.  If I want to be healthy, I need to be accountable to myself.

So, for the last 2 weeks I have consciously made myself cook meals, ridding the house of those tempters, yes, I am looking at you Doritos, chips, and cheese.  While these are not that bad in themselves it is how you consume them.  Snacks are temporally banned.

The goal is more vegetables and fruit, less meat, moderate amount of grains, at least until my prediabetic markers are okay. To help myself in my goal along with my garden I have taken a subscription to the Wonky Vegetable and Fruit boxes once a fortnight.  If you are in New Zealand, they are good and you get far more than if you had to pay supermarket prices. Bonus is that they are also much fresher as they come straight from the farms and don’t sit in storage.

 

MEALS

So today, lunch is pumpkin soup, as it is a bit cool today. Supper will be Silverbeet (chard) rolls filled with leftover pilaf rice and feta cheese. Fruit today is a nectarine and an orange.

 

The soup I made yesterday as I intended to freeze pottles of it for quick meals in winter, but the weather changed and it is cool, so only 1 pottle will go into the freezer. It’s my usual recipe of onions, celery pumpkin and our red skinned kumara (sweet potato) it is not as sweet as the orange kumara, and it is a bit denser.  This time I decided to ring the changes and added a teaspoon of mild curry powder and added a small can of coconut milk. It is so delish that I think I will be making it this way from now on.

 The silverbeet rolls I saw on a utube video of Turkish cooking.  They used lamb, but I had some leftover pilau and a little bit of feta cheese that needed using up. This meal was delicious and is definitely going to become a regular item. The feta made the inside very moreish!

 

I cooked the rolls on top of a layer of the stalks and they were amazingly tender.

 

 

 

 

PRESERVING

As it was cooler I decided to make up some jars of zucchini pickles, I went overboard on the planting of zucchinis, last year I had 2 plants and hardly got a zucchini this year I planted 6! What was I thinking, lol.  I love these pickles and I am also in the process of looking for a zucchini relish recipe, but I think I might experiment with a recipe of my own.

 

 The Garden

 I don’t know what the name of this bush is, but it provides colour throughout the year, and the monarch butterflies love it.  It is right by my back door, and it is a joy to sit there with a coffee and watch the bees and butterflies going about their business.

Well, that’s if for today, I think I will post every few days. Tomorrow, I want to get into the garden  as the forecast is good and the rain over the last three days has made a jungle!