How to make soup when you're sick

I am a snotfest.  This is not enjoyable.  Yesterday I slept all morning and surfaced requiring sustenance.  We have been struggling yet again with using all of our vegetables, so I decided that some Nourishing Soup was in order.  And at least some chilli was required for its decongestant properties.

Here are the things I put in it, in roughly the order and quantities I used:
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 small onions, chopped into strips
8 inches of celery, chopped into strips
2 roasted red peppers from a jar, chopped into strips
half a head of cabbage, chopped into ribbons
4 heaping teaspoons of thai green curry paste
1 chicken stock cube, made up in 1.5 litres of boiling water
a third of a tin of coconut milk

And here's how I did it:
Sickness-specific preparations 1:  Haul a chair into the kitchen
Sickness-specific preparations 2:  Stuff nose with tissue
Step 1:  Chop  onions and celery, cook on a low heat with the oil

Feebleness-specific interlude 1:  Fail to open large jar of red peppers
Feebleness-specific interlude 2:  Boil kettle
Feebleness-specific interlude 3:  Pour boiling water over lid of jar
Feebleness-specific interlude 4:  Wrestle with jar and teatowel until openness is achieved
Step 2:  Fish two peppers out of jar and chop

Optional prequel to step 2:  Rinse some of the vinegar off the peppers.  I didn't bother as the mild tang works nicely enough in this soup
Step 3:  Add the peppers to the pan

Step 4: Chop the cabbage

Step 5:  Add cabbage to pan and let everything cook until fairly tender
Interlude of forgetfulness:  Realise that cabbage goes better in soup if it's not in really long ribbons and attempt to bash it with your spatula so that some of the long ones break up.  Fail

Step 6:  Use the remaining hot water from the Feebleness episode to make up a chicken stock cube.  Add stock to pan, pop the lid on and leave for 10 minutes to really soften the cabbage
Step 7:  Stir through coconut milk, faff about fetching a bowl and serve

Step 8:  Feel accomplished and like your efforts are doing you good.  Have another little sleep.

Advent post III

Wednesday

Thrive

We only thrive in the light (which makes me think of this song, yes, I was that cheesy Christian teenager).  At this time of year it can be so dark.  We get up in the dark, like the Wife of Noble Character (when I much prefer the attitude of the psalmist), we leave work in the dark.  Darkness seems to  fill the time that is our own.

Thursday

Abide

I abide in an abode.  This tickles me.  As does the picture above, whereby I am cheating and using a photograph someone else has taken.  I helped build the house though.  But to abide?  To abide is to stay, to endure.  Also to rest, to remain alongside.  There's a heavy peacefulness to it.

Friday

Notice

The things we notice.  The height of the water.  The stillness of the reflection.  The traffic in the background.  We once went to this park to find a thing and failed to notice it, even though it was in plain sight.  What are the things we don't notice?  Who are the people I don't notice?

Saturday

I watched a number of things on Saturday.  I watched country music videos at the gym, I watched the clock in order to get out on time (and managed it), I watched (and joined in with) dancing and singing.  I took photographs, which takes quite a lot of watching.

Sunday

Show up

These wee guys showed up in ourhouse this weekend.  They are on their way to show up too.  To show up for a saviour.  Who in turn is on his way.  To show up for us.  And we should show up.  Show up for those who ask.  Show up for those who don't.  For those who can't.  Show up just to be there.  Show up to do the thing that needs to be done.  Show up when it hurts.  Show up when it's easy and fun.  Show up when no-one believes you will.  Show up when someone believes no-one will.

Advent post II

Tuesday

#Imagine

Imagine what's over the horizon.  That's part of the hope of advent, isn't it?  Looking forward to something.  To the world being changed.  What might Mary and Joseph have been imagining would happen following the birth of their baby?  And did the events of his birth and the flight to Egypt blow their wildest imaginings right out of the water?

Advent with monks

This year I am trying a Thing.  A Thing that The Society of Saint John the Evangelist have come up with.  Like an advent calendar, only with fewer doors and markedly less chocolate.  Contemplative, like.  We'll see how this goes.

Sunday:

#Look

I do all my looking through glasses these days.  Makes for awkward photography, looking through droplets when I go out in the rain and nose scrinching to keep them up there.  But it keeps things from being fuzzy.  And getting your lenses right, so that things aren't fuzzy is important at this time of year.  Keeping things in focus and with the correct perspective, that sort of thing.

Monday:

#Remember

I think Christmas is a time when a lot of people remember loved ones.  The first Christmas without someone is one of those significant firsts that you can't really avoid.  So I remember my grandma as she prepares for her first Christmas in 60 years without this man.  And remember that I am fortunate to have known all of my grandparents and privileged to have enjoyed their company for three decades, even though I'm just down to the one now.

How to: Christmas house decorations

This year I plan to make a few of these little dudes (can a house be a dude? I don't know.  Perhaps I should schedule a post on the personhood of inanimate objects someday) for various folks - as 'first christmas in your new home' type gifts, 'thank you for having me' gifts and 'here, have a tiny village' gifts.

Step 1:  Select a short length of wood left over from making a play tent, I cut mine down to about three times its width:

Wood all marked up, lookin' shiny in the dim hallway lights.

Step 2:  Mark a cross through roughly the middle of the wood if you want two houses of equal height, or at some other point if you don't.  Mine was slightly off-centre, for artisticals.

Step 3:  Rig up a slightly dodgy-looking clamp assembly in your hallway, because it's too cold and dark for outside nonsense:

This is the first outing for my 'table vice'.  You can find marvelous things at Lidl.

Step 4:  Being moderately lazy, put together your electric saw:

There's a pre-step about charging your batteries, but your saw is probably more charge-holding than mine.  Or not electric, in which case, fuel it with a banana, or some festive lebkuchen.

Step 5:  Cut along one of your diagonal lines to separate your houses from each other.

Step 6:  Cut along each of the remaining diagonal half-lines to leave your house-shapes:

Little housies.

Step 7:  Change the saw-attachment for the sanding attachment, for you are nothing if not lazy.

Step 8:  Sand the roofs and edges of your little housies to make up for your shoddy sawing.

Step 9:  Tidy up after yourself, you dreadful slattern:

We have the niftiest little multi-vac thing in our house - great for jobs like these, plus it's cordless, so you can only hoover for a maximum of 20 minutes.

Step 10:  Mark out the features of your little housies with pencil:

Confession time:  I only did this for the first one, I freehanded the second.

Step 11:  Select a tip for your burning iron, fit it and turn the thing on.  This is yet another fabulous Lidl purchase, it's lots of fun, but you do have to be careful because it gets VERY HOT and the cord is quite short.

Step 12:  Carefully burn over the pencil lines, or freehand your way through it.  Add a roofline because your girlfriend says it needs something at the top.  Try to to hunch over your work too much or you will get hot smoke in your eyes and won't be able to see the table properly.

Step 13:  Burn snowflakes onto a bunch of little wooden discs you have lying around that were sliced of the excess from your morris-dancing sticks, just so you don't waste the heat in your iron.

Step 14:  Admire your handiwork and stretch your spine back into a more normal configuration.  Ignore any alarming cracking noises.  Sigh with relief.

Finished products.  I'm trying to decide whether I prefer the leaded lights of windowpanes.  There might be a prize if anyone spots the difference.

I think I could get quite the little production line going for these.  I'll drill little holes in the snowflake discs and use them as gift tag/tree decoration combos.  I may also wash the housies (or maybe just the doors) with a little paint or stain for colour.

Real Legs are Awesome

Well, they are.

At the top of Corrie Fee - knackered and fabulous!

The title of this post comes from a BBC 2 documentary about servicemen competing in the Invictus Games this year.  Specifically I think it was double amputee David Henson that said it.  And it's become one of the little mantras of our house (along with "No boshing, only loves", "Sounds sticky" and other such deep and meaningful thoughts).

So when Sally posted about loving her knees I was right there with her.  Because real legs are awesome.  And my legs are awesome.  Some of the awesome things my real legs have done recently include:

Off to chase a toddler at the park...

Climbing the back wall of Corrie Fee
Swimming a few lengths here and there
Gymming more than a couple of times each week
Dancing for pretty much 12 hours straight
Taking friends for turns on Daisy the tandem
Chasing toddlers around soft play areas and parks

They may not be the most aesthetically pleasing of legs, by the restrictive standards of conventional beauty, but they are strong and soft and real, and that makes them awesome.

New crochet project

I have started a Thing!  I am hoping that a couple of long-haul flights will lick it into shape (or, more accurately, length).  It's Cotton Ripple Blanket no. 3 for impending niece/nephew person.  I'm using Lucy's Neat Ripple Pattern for the third time and yet again it's going like a breeze.

No, it's not out-of-focus bacon.

Here we see just more than a single pattern repeat measuring in at about 8", so there's a fair bit to go, but this is crocheting up a bit faster than the original Cotton Ripple Blanket, which was double-size to this one's cot/twin-size.  I think the section up there took about 3 hours on a Sunday afternoon and a few hours here and there on a 24-hour roundtrip road trip.  There has been another Sunday afternoon since I took this picture so I think I've achieved nearly a foot of blanket.

I hope I have enough cotton left...

Update:

Blanket was, in fact finished in time (posting on the day she was born counts as on time, non?) but in my enthusiasm I didn't take any further pictures.  I also doubt there was anything sufficiently interesting going on to warrant any of my family taking action shots, but plenty of folk did admire it while it was in progress.