Oops –shouldn’t have done that!

I say that, but if I knew what caused it I certainly wouldn’t have done it.

One or other of the discs in my back is playing up again which is why it has been a while since my last blog I am afraid.

You may laugh if you saw me as this time I just can’t sit down.  Sitting down seems to push the disc on to the nerve so I have spent 2 weeks now either standing up or walking about.

Wow – is that boring , or what!

I haven’t even been able to get online as I only have a desktop pc.  It is definitely one of those times that I wish I had a tablet or a phone that has internet access.

I have been baking as it is something I can do standing up so hubby has been happy.  Talking of which, I had my first ever disaster when baking a Ginger and Marmalade Cake the other day.  Hubby wasn’t quite so pleased about that as he had to clean the oven afterwards! 

The tubs I buy of Baking Powder and Bicarbonate of Soda are exactly the same apart from the name and, of course, I mixed them up and put the wrong one in the cake.

You should have seen the mess.  You know how it is, you pop the cake in the oven and then forget about it until it is nearly time to get it out.

Well, when I looked through the oven door (as best I could as I can’t bend down) I couldn’t believe it.  The cake was bubbling, not only at the top of the high cake tin, which I never expected it to reach when it rose, but it was bubbling all down the side and all over the oven floor.

Plus, of course, as luck would have it, I had 2 cakes in the oven and had put this one close to the front so I could get it out first – so what happens – it had gone all over the door as well as down between which meant it had also made a mess of the bottom oven underneath as well.

It’s a real good job that the other cake turned out fine which redeemed me in hubby’s eyes for all the cleaning up, as the disaster cake went in the bin.  It tasted like neat Bicarbonate of Soda. 

Logically it should have been good for the tum as it had Bicarbonate of Soda and Ginger in it.  But definitely not to be!  Obviously somehow Bicarb does not work with either butter or with eggs!

I regularly make Date Loaf and indeed the Fruit and Nut Loaf (that survived in the back of the oven) with Bicarbonate of Soda but there is water in the recipe and no butter or eggs.  Flour and sugar is obviously ok as they are in both recipes.

So note to self:  Always check the labels before adding!

I don’t know if helping to erect a shed had anything to do with my disc going out (I have 3 bulging discs according to the MRI and my consultant) but I was really only passing things (screws etc.) an holding things in place, leaning on them while he screwed them together and nothing strenuous as I was being careful.

So whether it was getting in different positions to normal or whether it was “just the straw that broke the camel’s back” I just don’t know.  The pain came on when I was supermarket shopping (no I wasn’t pushing the trolley) and if I had been at home I may have been ok as I normally put my moist heat pad on my back and sit down at any sign of my back going normally.

I am very happy though that the nerve isn’t trapped or the disc leaning on it all the time, as that is what happened the 3 previous times.  Standing up all day is something I can easily put up with – it is just that I get bored.  It is surprising how many things we normally do sitting down!

I gave up waiting for it to ease off and stacked some big books under my keyboard and mouse but it still means the monitor is low (as the leads wont allow me to put that up any higher.  So after a few days of trying to type at arms length and my neck leaning forward to see the screen, I got neck ache and had to stop doing that as well for more than a few minutes at a time.

Thank goodness for gadgets.  One of my most used is my “picker-upper-thingy” – a long handled grabber (like a long gun with pincers on the end).  I have learnt to pick up everything with it, from cat fluff to shampoo bottles, even some cake ingredients out of a low cupboard when I was on my own the other day.

It would be so funny to watch me I am sure, but I have got it down to a fine art now which is a good thing because why is it that you keep dropping things when you can’t pick them up?!  It’s like when you cut your finger – everything you seem to do catches on it.

Anyway, although I am not better yet, I have managed to do this blog in short spurts so I will post it and hopefully be back to normal service soon J

Do we eat anything natural any more?

Vegetables are not what they were a couple of decades or so ago.  We now only have neat-shaped fruit and vegetables that have been grown in artificial conditions.

They have to be the right shape and colour.  They are treated and sprayed so that they can travel thousands of miles to get to our shops and still be in good condition.  They are grown in artificial environments so that we can eat every type of fruit and vegetable throughout the year instead of just when that item is in season.

Even "organic" ones are contaminated in some way by the chemicals in the wind, rain and underground water supplies, even if they aren't sprayed and fertilised.

We live in a very artificial world.

We have just got an allotment this year but the produce will still not be "natural" or "organic" as such because we have to:

Buy the seeds which have probably been changed in some way.

The land used to be farmland so has probably been treated with numerous chemicals.

The water is from an underground well which all the water from the fields nearby drain into after the farmers have sprayed their crops.

The chemical spray from the nearby fields probably blows over in the wind and rain.

If we did use any fertiliser, even from the nearby horses instead of in fertiliser bags, we don't know what they have been eating in their feed.

We now have chickens so our eggs are as free range as they can be but we still have to buy layers mash to feed them on so don't really know how they treat that.

We will never be able to get back to natural truly organic food as we have done too much damage to our soil and water but I wonder how far they will go in producing perfectly shaped and coloured fruit and vegetables for us to buy – will they all be identical in the racks in the shops so there is no real choice at all – it’s getting that way now.  And what happens to the ones that don’t conform to that shape and size – they get thrown away or ploughed back into the fields!