who only by moving can balance

so we're getting a lot of beetroot in these veg boxes, right. (beetroot, lest we forget, being a food that I Don't Like, or more accurately that I have historically Disliked and have gradually, since... about 2010...? been rehabilitating.) we are nearly at the point where we have run through all of the beetroot recipes in East except the beetroot-and-yoghurt-rice (which we are going to make at some point) and the beetroot-and-ginger soup (which we likely aren't because we are routinely eating root veg stew for lunch), so I am turning to Other Cookbooks for More Ideas.

the various Ottolenghi cookbooks that we own are not particularly useful -- yes I could make a bicolour roast beetroot salad, but A is suspicious of most of the other ingredients and it'll still need a lot of padding to be dinner.

okay, thinks I, and starts digging through the various other ridiculous cookbooks on my shelves, and it is in the Terre à Terre cookbook, which I picked up from a charity shop in York lo these many years ago for three quid, that I strike more-or-less figurative gold. after a fashion.

this is a cookbook I have owned since 2015 and have yet to actually make anything out of, though I occasionally flip through it and enjoy the pictures and go "hmm, maybe--" and. WELL. it contains a recipe entitled Himmel und Erde: "apple and cheddar potato latkes, baked beets with dill and caraway oil, spring slaw and iced horseradish cream".

I have horseradish at the allotment that we are not personally inclined to eat and that needs using somehow. I have enormous quantities of dried apple, which the recipe very much does call for. and after I have made Meera Sodha's clay pot noodles with smoked tofu I will still have 250g of red beetroot that needs using!

... Himmel und Erde (which usually refers to a decidedly different dish, so I do keep tripping up on that) calls for 180g of red beetroot! and, also, 180g of golden beetroot. (this is the less-figurative part.)

so, obviously, this week's grocery order contains yellow beetroot! probably 650ish grams of them, of which I have plans for 180ish grams ('twas on a Monday morning...) and this weekend's plans include, in addition to "maybe finally rebuilding the greenhouse", "horseradish soured cream ice cream". I know, courtesy of Ruby Violet, that despite my usual suspicion of horseradish I quite like at least their version of horseradish ice cream -- not enough to have done more than taste it in the shop, but at least sufficient to be pleasantly surprised by the sample.

obviously, at the point at which I'm making one recipe from this ridiculous book I'm not going to stop there, so I have also chosen a dessert. it involves custard and tiny individual steamed puddings. (I did look through the starters but decided that none of them appealed Sufficiently to convince me it was actually a good idea to cook a three-course meal for six.) possibly I will set Adam loose on the cocktail recipes at the very end of the cookbook!

and anyway that is the very long-winded explanation of how I nearly wound up buying more dill seeds despite, as it turns out, already owning two packets of dill seeds! because Waitrose have apparently stopped selling packets of frozen dill and I am indignant about the cost of fresh, but this ridiculous recipe requires 75g of same, and obviously anything I plant now won't be ready in time to use on [checks watch] Friday, but this entire ridiculous adventure the purpose of which is using up excess beetroot has apparently convinced me that one of my gardening priorities this year is growing enough dill that I can freeze a bunch of it myself given! that the market! is apparently! unwilling! to provide!

and while we're on the topic of dill: never forget the spindly menace.

goodnight.

... i.e. "the sense of the internal state of the body": in conversation the other day, cardiac interoception -- awareness of heartbeat and pulse -- came up.

( Read more... )

Thank you all for your comments on my last! Which I still want to reply to, but words-brain is currently mostly going on thesis, but--

( positive outcomes... )

I finally realised, yesterday, i.e. a full two weeks on, that I...

... have been taking a migraine preventative. daily. since about 2012.

(Amitriptyline, 25mg, for pain and sleep management.)

So, you know, I'd already (grudgingly) decided "definitely a migraine", but I now have further evidence (if more were needed; yes, I am facepalming at myself rather) for "actually I can get stressed enough and fuck up my sleep badly enough that I get breakthrough migraines, even if I'm not getting other psychosomatic symptoms of stress".

On the one hand: :|

On the other: as I discovered in October (re sleep), it looks! rather as though! the amitriptyline is in fact still working!

So that's nice.

I really was exhausted and miserable last night, it would seem: I forgot to take my bedtime meds, which unfortunately includes all of the psych meds I (a) really don't want to skip doses of and (b) really cannot take in the morning unless I want to spend the rest of the day asleep. :-/

(I think it has been upward of six months since the last time I did this.)

(Actually, I'm going to try taking the citalopram now and skipping the amitriptyline, because I like having vaguely stable doses etc etc.)