Teapot used by the Dali Llama?

I have two pewter teapots which I bought at the Tibetan Monastery's garage sale years ago.  I know that the serving of tea is an important part of the Tibetan Monks' daily life.  So it is possible, I suppose, that one of these teapots could have been used to serve tea to the Dali Llama. He has visited our town more than once.  Anyway I like to think so. It seems to make the tea very soothing!  One had the knob broken and Bill fixed it and added a lovely Mother of Pearl insert.  I am drinking my favorite tea, Lapsang Souchong along with my low carbohydrate lunch.  I have had so much trouble with this low carb diet that I am planning to go to a dietician.  More about that later.

I will say that I've begun to enjoy having my favorite low carb foods whenever I want to!  Look at this breakfast!

That is a hamburger next to the omelet.  Bill has a mini-bagel and I have avocado!  Yum!


I have been playing with my doll rooms more and more.  Now, as the rejects pile up, visitors laugh and view that pile as another display!

This is the Big Bad Wolf with a cup and a clock and a table and rug, all just set over here in favor of other clocks and other tables.  He is reclining against a magnifying glass in a fabric pouch, a gift from dear friends.  He looks very comfortable doesn't he?  Notice the toothy grin!

I have had to set my new budget at $70 a week and it's starting to work out.  I had to get it out of my head that many treats had to be stocked every week.  I feared not having something good to eat.  Perhaps I am a carbohydrate addict, a term I've found in my research.  I have had some lucky sales too, to help the budget.  Aldi's had a vegetable sale this week and for $15 I was able to buy enough veggies to last for about six weeks.  Broccoli, cauliflower, and red and yellow peppers  were all frozen as soon as we got home from the store.  I blanched the cauliflower and the broccoli, but not the peppers.  You know, boiled them a couple of minutes, then plunged them in cold water, shoved them in bags and froze them immediately.  The peppers were just sliced, put on a cookie sheet and frozen and then slid into a big bag to take out however many I need.  Even for on a fresh salad.  They thaw out by the time you've got the rest of the dinner fixed.

Then when I went to Kroger's, they had pork loin roasts on sale for $1.98 a pound, I think.  I got two roasts and cut them in half to freeze.  The first one I roasted that same day and it was so good I went back and bought two more today.  And still I haven't quite spent the $70.

Funny!

     Its a funny thing, the diet of the Depression, mostly cheap carbohydrates, became the diet of the rather affluent  Cholesterol Generation.  No eggs, no red meat, no butter, no fat! And diabetes and obesity now are at an all time high.  Now the newest diet for diabetics is low carbohydrate.  No bread, potatoes, corn, sugar, flour, rice, not even peas!  From one extreme to the other.  When we went to the Doctor in the 90's we were told "change, change, change your way of eating" as if it were a sin to eat a steak cooked in butter with a side of fried eggs.  I was enthusiastic at the time and found that a diet based on carbs was a cheap diet.  For some time we spent $50 a week for the two of us.  Those days are over.  For I am being initiated into the mysteries of the low Carb diet.  And it's attendant controversy as well.  I was not enthusiastic at first, and I've found there are side effects to this diet that are almost never mentioned by Doctors.  Nausea, loss of appetite, extreme mood swings.  But I am impressed by the results, both the touted results and my own results.  Though I have struggled with it and was not always compliant, my blood sugar is down and I have lost about 18 pounds.  And I know I can keep this up.  This is different from a "never" diet.  It has some really loved foods in it.  Real cream for my coffee.  Bacon.  Real butter.  Steak, chicken, fish and pork.  Sour cream.  Cheese.  And, as my Doctor styled it:  "Leaves and stems"!  Asparagus, lettuce, cabbage, green beans, brussels sprouts, spinach, all things I like.  So this week, I'll give you our menus:
Thursday, day before shopping day:  Steak, Fauxtatoes, (made from cauliflower) and lettuce wedges with Aoli.
Friday:  Chicken Piquant with sour cream gravy, Rice for Bill, Asian vegetables.
Saturday:  After a breakfast out late in the day, we had soup and sandwiches.  Bill had tomato soup and ham and Swiss cheese on rye.  I had a wonderful peanut soup out of Dana Carpender's big Low carb book, and Rye Krisp with cream cheese, olives and ham.
Sunday: Giant meatballs in tomato sauce with pasta for Bill.  Lavish salad with Feta cheese and avocado.  One small square very dark chocolate.
Monday:  Chicken stir fry, with rice for Bill.  Hot peanut sauce on mine.
Tuesday:  Ham steaks, cole slaw, Baked potato for Bill, avocado with mayo for me.
Wednesday:  Clam chowder, made without potatoes for me, Rye Krisp with toasted cheese sandwiches.  I'll be serving raw vegetables with sour cream dip to guests that evening.

     To distract myself from diet aggravation, I have been playing with my miniatures a lot.  Upstairs in the guest bedroom is a big table covered in all the miniatures I have that are not already in service, so I have plenty to select from.

 

This is my Miss Hickory Room.  Notice that she has a Baby Hickory.  Also a pet turtle which moves his tail and head eerily at the slightest vibration.

This is the third table I've tried and I think I like it best.  On the side of the white mug it says "Ana"  That Coleman lantern actually works, you know! .

Rearranging

     I have been rearranging the house and conducting some general spring housecleaning.  The table is gone from in front of the stove.  The insulating layers are gone from the picture window and I have put the house plants there to catch a little sun.
     Last weekend we stayed at the Canyon Inn  at McCormick's Creek State Park.  There was a tool show there but I enjoyed other things.  In the Nature Center was a Bird Room, where we could sit and watch the antics of birds, squirrels and chipmunks unseen.  Then in the lobby of the Inn there is a red-eared slider in a large tank.  I am sorry I did not take a picture of him, I thought him charming.  He is a turtle!  But lest you think turtles boring I hasten to add that this one has personality.  When I peered at him, hovering over his tank he paid no attention but when the Ranger came to feed him he obviously recognized her and began to wiggle and try to climb the glass.  She fed him tadpoles and he was entertaining to watch, catching them.  He never took his eye off the one he was pursuing, backing up to make another attempt on one who was too fast for him.  He ate 21 and was satisfied at last and went to take a nap on Sunday afternoon.
     So I wanted to make a bird room of my own.  I moved furniture out and added all my house plants as a screen.  Not as many birds are coming as will once they have all discovered my largess.

No birds yet!

      I've had to rearrange my shopping too.  A low carbohydrate diet is not so easy to achieve.  And looking for direction, I got a book at the Library that was rather extreme.  But I gave it a try.  And my blood sugar went up, not down.  My Doctor was more helpful the second time around and now I am doing a "modified" low carb diet.  Whew!  Still, I've made changes.  Bought more meat, real Mayo, real cream for my coffee.  It blew the budget out of the water but I am learning ways to do it.  

 These items as well as a large quantity of meat have added $60 to our monthly expenditure.  I am beginning to find some new recipes to try.  The best so far is Asian pulled chicken, with a few snow peas and lots of mushrooms, ginger and soy sauce, hot peppers too!  A lunch time special is tuna salad with celery sticks instead of bread.  Very good.

      The last rearranging has been to my loose leaf binder where I store recipes I print off of the Internet.  Labeled dividers became necessary as well as jettisoning some high carb desserts.  And when I put the plants in the bird room I found room for more miniature displays, as you see.  Next time I'll show you what I have added in more detail!

If this is spring, I have survived!

 

This great poster is by my friend Josh Johnson and it advertises his upcoming show in Indy.  I fell in love with this fox immediately!

It's so warm here, all the records are falling, 80, even 82 in March!  I have gone right out and bought some lettuce seed.  My bed is all ready as I put down black plastic last summer.  I have already planted some Rose of Sharon seed I found in seed pods on the way home from digging up cedars along the 4-lane.  My white pines are slowly dying, either from old age or because we found and repaired the water leak among them.  Pines are not doing so well these days anyway, I can't tell if it's a mite or some defoliant, it depends on where you get your news.  I thought I'd replace some of the dead trees with cedars, which are hardy and drought resistant.  We had so many in Virginia when I was growing up, I quite think of them as old friends.  And free.  I just dug up the 3" ones that have come up on the wide verge since the last mowing.  Anything bigger than that is too hard to dig up, the tap root is very long.

I am having sort of a crises with food since finding out I am diabetic.  Books and internet sites are confusing, and my Doctor seems to wish I would just stop eating anything at all.  "Just leaves and stems and things like that" he said to me last week.   "If you didn't eat anything at all these problems would all be gone in a week" !

So I won't be having any menus for this week.  I am struggling with carbohydrates, which I have pretty much lived on all my life, and the expense of buying much larger portions of meat and fresh vegetables.  I suspect I will have to go back to once a week shopping.  My own attitude is the biggest problem.  I dream of stuffing on strange cakes, swimming in chocolate syrup and mountains of ice cream. I am angry about a lack of buttermilk biscuits and sausage gravy. However, larger spinach omelets are OK  and the prospect of frequent guacamole is enticing.  I can have cream and mayonnaise, if in small quantities.

Thank goodness for friends who share their knowledge and experience with me.  I am still doing research and will fill you in as I become more educated.