There's a [guest] in my kitchen, what am I gonna do?

You know how awkward it feels to have someone else working in your kitchen making you food?

Yeah, well, that's not me.

I have no problems sitting back and watching while my guest makes supper for me. None.

Does that make me selfish, or incredibly hospitable?

And you know how weird it feels to be working in someone else's kitchen, especially with them watching you all the time?

Yeah, well, that's not my guest tonight.

I guess, in that regard at least, the lovely lady who made supper for us tonight, and I, are well-matched.

....

I must confess though, I was disappointed that she wasn't wearing her slippers while cooking for us. Last week she promised me she would, and then she didn't. Talk about leaving a girlfriend hanging like that!

What's for dinner?

While away with Eskom Expo, I sat and chatted with some of the kids in the group over supper. I don't know why it surprised me, but they had never come across the etiquette regarding knife and fork positions at the end of a meal. I discussed the correct positions with them, but it got me thinking about them again, and about when to start teaching my own kids about them. (How young is too young to learn proper manners?)

Do you know how to signal to the waiter that you're resting during a meal so s/he doesn't whip your plate out from under your nose, or have to interrupt your conversation to ask whether you're finished eating? or how to send the message that the food was disgusting? or that you have now, finally, finished your meal? It's all down to how you place your knife and fork.

Technically, there are only two methods - the American and the Continental methods, but in SA I think we use a third variation. In SA, putting your knife and fork together, with the knife blade to the middle and the fork tines pointing up, in the middle (6/12 clock position) of your plate, with handles on the rim of the plate, indicates that you're done. However, both the American and Continental methods say the knife and fork should be at an angle and not directly in the middle of the plate (in a 10/4 clock position).

Something new I learnt though is that in very formal settings, the fork tines should be pointing DOWN, not up. This dates back to when cutlery was made from real silver. Silver tarnishes easily, and so the fork should not be allowed to rest in any acidic residue left on the plate for any length of time. Doing so is very rude as it would mean that some poor servant would have to spend hours polishing the fork to remove the tarnish marks (which isn't always possible I've discovered, to my chagrin).

If you're just resting, then the Continental method is to leave your knife and fork at a 45 degree angle to form an upside down V on the bottom half of your plate. The American method is to place the fork in the 10/4 clock position. The knife, however, should lie across the top of the plate at a slight angle, like wearing a beret. I was taught though, that if you're resting, the cutlery should be in a kind of upside-down V position, but the handles should be touching the table. Apparently, that's not acceptable in either of these methods. Bahumbug, I say.

While I can't find this anywhere on the web (and I don't feel like purchasing an etiquette book to check), I thought I'd share with you what I learnt about telling the waiter you don't like the food. Assuming that the rest position is with the handles down, then the 'this food is disgusting' position is with knife and fork wide apart, both pointing to the centre of the plate, but handles still on the plate. The idea is that the further apart the handles are, the more disgusted you are with the food. (See, my method makes sense - handles up = you're done. Handles down - still busy.)

Since I can't find this method anywhere on the web, I have to assume that this is just my family's idiosyncrasy. Still, I rather like it. Sometimes the food isn't so bad you want to call the chef or manager out, but you still want to send a message. Of course, in this generation, subtleties like this are lost. This is such a WYSIWYG generation that it really doesn't surprise me at all that no-one seems to learn basic table manners anymore.

But what about you - what table etiquette have you learnt that no-one seems to use any more?

(My Ouma used to have a rhyme to help. She would say to me: Say 'able', which I would duly do. She then responded with: get your bum off the table. You can tell sitting on tables was something I loved doing. It's something my daughter loves too. Maybe I should repeating the rhyme to her as well....)

Foodie weekend

We've had a few really great meals of late. The first was in Sedgefield, at Scarab. The village was holding a Slow Festival which included an evening of Boulle and Backgammon at Scarab. Ryan, the chef, made THE MOST DIVINE veg lasagne. I could easily have eaten seconds and thirds... The Boulle and backgammon was a lot of fun too - definitely to be repeated, methinks, next year.

The second was an evening out at Marko's African Place Restaurant in Bo-Kaap. Apparently, Marko was the first black restauranteur in Cape Town. Anyway, his food is TO DIE FOR (but don't bother with dessert). I had a platter with springbok, kudu and ostrich, with a side order of samp and beans. (The Kudu won, hands down.) While it did feel rather odd sitting in a fabulous restaurant eating samp and beans, I have to say it was really great samp and beans! The venue itself is pretty cool - including the live band from the Congo whose name I still can't remember or pronounce.

The third was lunch at the Food Lover's Market in Claremont, near Cavendish. OH MY WORD! I can't believe there's a place like that that isn't in town or the Waterfront, but is actually so close to home. We will definitely be making a stop there again soon. It's a buffet style restaurant, including a lovely sushi bar, which caters for all tastes. The food was fresh and delicious. We both opted for salads, and could easily have spent far more than than R40 we each spent. If it hadn't been for the horrible truck sitting nearby and spewing out fumes, it would have been very pleasant sitting upstairs on the balcony. Such is life, I guess.

Next week it's back to peanut butter sarmies for me... or cuppa soup... But I guess I need to lose weight anyway.

The solution to the weight-loss problem?

When people see me now, they mostly comment on how thin I'm looking. While this is great, it's also awful. I seem to have lost most of my pregnancy weight from Nathan, but I've still got my pregnancy weight from Janel & Zoe to lose. I reckon there's a good 10-15kg there that could easily disappear without anyone noticing it. My ribcage has expanded outwards, along with every other part of my body*. All my clothes, apart from my preggie pants and pyjamas, still fail to fit me around the waist, hips, ribs, arms, thighs... oh sod it! I still feel horribly uncomfortable in most of my clothes. I still feel fat. (I don't care what you say - I may hide my rolls and flab well, but that doesn't mean they don't exist.)

One of my problems during pregnancy was that I simply couldn't exercise because my pelvic girdle (the bones that your hips are the edges of) was loose; so loose, in fact, that any movement of my legs was incredibly painful. I had to wear a special girdle thingy just so I could walk. Stairs were a no-go for me. Long distances (anything longer than from my classroom to the staffroom!) were a no-go. If I forgot that little rule and tried to go for a walk, I'd suffer for hours and possibly a few days afterwards. It all started at the beginning of the pregnancy, with the girdle thingy becoming a daily feature from the 3rd month. Just think - 5 months of no exercise at all, with a further 2 months of next to nothing at the beginning and another 2 months of next to nothing at the end while I was waiting for my pelvis to come together again. That's a HANG of a long time to go without exercise.

Since coming home from the hospital, I've been trying to get more exercise. However, it's very hard to break old habits - in this case, a 9 month-long habit. It's much easier just keeping the status quo of doing nothing, of being lazy.

I've been reading some of the latest research on weight loss which seems to indicate that exercise does NOT help you lose weight. It helps you get healthy, yes, but in non-weight related ways: it reduces blood pressure, increases lung capacity, increases flexibility and bone density, etc, etc. It does NOT help you lose weight. In fact, it's been shown that regular doses of moderate activity (note: not exercise) every day helps you lose as much weight as going to the gym 3-4 times a week. So there's no point (from a weight-loss perspective) in spending hours sweating it out at the gym.

If exercise doesn't help you lose weight, what does? Eating right. Plain and simple. Eating whole foods, eating unprocessed foods (i.e. cutting out sugar in all its forms), eating smaller portions, eating more vegetables and fruit, drinking more water and less caffeinated drinks.

Now, anyone who knows me will know that I am a chocoholic. No doubt about that. However, I am also a snack-aholic. Trying to restrict my portion sizes has, to date, only caused me to snack after the meal because I still feel hungry. I can wolf down a very decently-sized main meal, have two decent-sized helpings of pudding, and STILL have space for a snack. Not healthy when one's metabolism is no longer that of a rapidly growing pre-teen or teenager, but rather that of a rapidly-approaching middle aged potato that's been sitting on the couch for the last 9 months. I have tried, really I have, not to snack, but I wind up getting ratty and irritable within a very short space of time. My body craves the calories. Failure to get them = G and the kids have to put up with Ms Snap-your-head-off-if-you-so-much-as-look-at-me-wrong-and-even-if-you-don't-I'll-still-snap-it-off-because-I'm-hungry-and-need-to-eat-SOMETHING.

All of this left me feeling rather hopeless. If I don't have the willpower to get up from my desk chair and get the exercise I need, and if exercise doesn't help anyway, and if I don't have the willpower to moderate my food intake, I'm in serious trouble. I don't want to wind up like the people on 'The Biggest Loser', but I feel like I'm heading that way if something doesn't change, and soon.

This week has brought me a revelation though. We ran out of bandwidth last weekend. (That in itself was a revelation... wow - internet-lessness is... like... wow.) While waiting for the new month to begin, I decided to get started on the garden that DESPERATELY needs attention. Shortly after lunch on Monday I got stuck in. Apart from a few hours on Thursday and Friday morning, I was in the garden during daylight hours for the remainder of the week. I dug holes, laid gutters, weeded, planted plants, planted more grass runners than I care to think about, hauled 6 Vibrocrete wall slabs from the back of the property to the front (MAN! those things must weigh a ton each! I could only carry one at a time, and even then: only just!), hauled 6 concrete paving slabs from the back of the property to the front, hauled bricks around, and built brick borders for the beds.

It may not sound like much, but it was hard, physical labour that took me all week. (We now have a front garden, as opposed to a front building site.) Even now, there is still one small area that needs a gardening solution before I will be happy declaring that the front garden is fully completed. For now though, it's as done as it's going to get until I have more money to spend on plants. (And if I say so myself, it looks pretty damn good, even though the planting still has to mature and the grass has to grow.)

As I was reflecting on the effect of all this activity on my body, I realised that my food intake has changed this week. Firstly, I am not eating more. This surprises me because I've certainly been working like a dog. I would have thought that (as usually happens with exercise) the increased metabolism would cause me to increase my calorie intake. Not so. Secondly though, and probably even more important, my snacking habit has been greatly reduced. Again, I have been very surprised by this. I can't really explain it, except to think that my snacking is actually a comfort thing, rather than a need for extra calories, as I had always thought.

Maybe my snacking has more to do with my state of mind than my state of body. If this is true, then I think I've just found my personal key to losing weight. I haven't craved chocolate or biscuits or rusks or sweets in the same way. (Of course, I've still wanted them, but I've been satisfied by smaller quantities, and I've had days of no cravings at all.)

Most of my snacking is done after supper. Of course, since I've been asleep in bed by 9pm (or earlier) this week, it would have been rather hard to snack, even if I'd wanted to**. But here's the thing: when addicts talk about recovery, one of the things they mention is that in order to break a habit, you need to change your pattern of behaviour. If you normally have a bottle of wine when you get home from work, then don't come home directly after work. If you normally have your cocaine at the night club, stop going to the night club. In my case, that could read, if you normally snack after supper, go to bed as soon as you can after supper so you can't snack. (As a long term solution though, going to bed this early doesn't bring me much joy.... no more Desperate Housewives, no more movies, no more going to cell group, no more socialising, no more anything...)

Because I'm hyper-flexive (yup, my body is just one long catalogue of deformities, infirmities, and such like) I've always been nervous of sports that require my muscles to work hard to prevent injury. That rules out pretty much everything except horse riding (been there, done that, broke my spine doing it), cycling (been there, done that, not so effective with a broken spine), swimming (been there, done that, couldn't be arsed with the early morning training, the cold water, the foot cramps or green chlorine-induced hair colour) and yoga/ callinetics (been there, done that, too expensive to pay for classes). I've always known that it was hard work (my favourite work avoidance behaviour at school and university was weeding our lawns at home), but until this week, I never really rated gardening as a solution to my eating habits. Fancy that?!

So, surprise, surprise, it would seem that: garden more = eat less = lose weight. Plus it's fun. There are only two problems with this: one - it's a very solitary pursuit, which means that (certainly once I'm back at work) it will mean even less time with my family; and two - I have a small garden, which means that once the back breaking work is done over the next little while, there shouldn't been too much to do in the line of maintenance work (or is that just my fantasy?).

Still, I've got a month and a half left. Let's see how much of me is left when I go back to work before I make any final declarations though. Until then, here's hoping that all this work at least gives me the start of my summer tan.....

*I'm seriously thinking of investing in a few corsets to help my ribs return to their previous size. The only problem with that is that whatever fat is residing inside will be pushed outwards.... Maybe a nip and tuck with a boob job would sort it all out? Nah, I reckon a corset is the cheapest and least painful solution.

**Sex is also supposed to be a fun way to lose weight. I wouldn't know. Being asleep so early put rather a damper on finding out. Even if I'd wanted to (and I was too tired & too sore to want to, sorry), it's rather hard to be energetic about sex when you're fast asleep - and snoring, apparently. I wouldn't know about that either - I don't listen to myself when I sleep. Do you?

ROFL!

Apparently, if you're a Saffa in London, then you've already seen this. But given as how I'm back in Saffa-land, I haven't. I saw it for the first time tonight, and... well... I nearly wet my pants! I think you can only appreciate this if you are a Saffa, but I think Saffa's who either live in London or who have recently done so will truly appreciate the beauty of this little story.I hope you find it at least a little bit funny.


And here's the Aussie version too...Graeme thinks it's better. I'm not so sure.

Nellie

I know that she has her own blog now, for her own stuff, but that doesn't mean I can't talk about her here...

.. tonight she made me cry again. We've been having increasing battles over food (I know, I know. But when she refuses to eat ANYTHING, including her favourite foods, then what do I do?) Yesterday I won. I persevered, without losing my temper. I strapped her into her chair and left the room every time I got mad or she refused to stop crying. Eventually, she ate the whole damn lot without a tear. After an hour.

Tonight, neither of us won. I did exactly what I did yesterday, and we got nowhere. After an hour, I figured that she wasn't going to eat. Bribery did not work. So she's going to bed without having eaten. No doubt, she will wake us up in a few hours starving hungry. Great. In the mean time I feel like a shit for having made her go to bed hungry. (She was very happy to just eat her biscuits, but I wasn't going to let her. If she wanted a biscuit she had to earn it.)

And it's just ruined my day. I had such a lovely day with Graeme and seeing friends I won't see again before we leave, and then a lovely time playing with Nellie before supper. And now that's all ruined.

This is the part I absolutely hate about being a parent. Rightly or wrongly, once you make a boundary you have to stick to it. Consistency is key. Sooner or later she will learn that she has to eat whatever is put before her, although she doesn't have to finish everything on her plate. If she wants treats though, she has to eat her food. Plain and simple. In theory, at least. The practice of it is much, much harder. I feel sick to my stomach right now. I really do. I have a headache, I feel nauseous, and I have to go and fix my face (after crying) right now as we have a guest coming in 8 minutes. I just hate this.