Lottie Loves: Finishing School D is for dreams

I have lots of day dreams. My problem isn't not dreaming about the future, it's knowing which dream to turn into reality. A goal is, after all, just a dream with a deadline. I read an article in Red magazine this month about dream boards, aka mood boards. I'm really, really, not a visual person (and I've done a couple of learning preference things which proved that!). So, sitting down with a pile of magazines, some scissors and some pritt stick is fairly close to my idea of hell. However, I do like concepts and abstract relationships.

I've just read the first chapter of "Women who run with the Wolves" by Clarissa Estes. A post-doctoral Julian psychoanalyst, she is also the keeper of oral stories for two family traditions. The first story she tells is of La Lopa, the Bone Woman. La Lopa gathers the bones of the dead, and sings them back to life. She days, "Come, gather the shards of your soul, sing from beyond your heart, and heal yourself." All the bones and all the songs are within each of us, waiting to be uncovered. I know what I shall dream about tonight.

Lottie Loves: Finishing School challenges A to C

I've never been particularly good at "girly" things. But I'd quite like to be, and I've - via a very roundabout route - come across Lottie Loves and her Finishing School.

A is for Attitude
The first fortnight's challenge is to think about your Attitude, in the form of things you like about yourself.

In no particular order, I like:

• My intellect, and the way I can combine unrelated approaches and concepts to solve problems
• How I feel when I make an effort to keep my home and myself in shape FLYlady was a small miracle when I came across her method earlier this year.
• My self-belief: I can do (almost) anything if I put my mind to it - and so can you!

B is for Bra
To avoid TMI, let's accept I've done this one.

C is for Clothes
Around 18 months ago, I "had my colours done" with House of Colour. I found out that I'm an Autumn, and I suit browns, golds, deep greens and reds. This shouldn't really have been a surprise, but it was. I now understand that if I'm wearing black the answer isn't to apply for make-up in an attempt not to look dead, it's to wear brown instead. I followed HoC's advice and threw out some of my wardrobe that was in the "wrong" colour, and have been very good about only buying colours that are "right". I haven't really been ruthless enough about getting rid of all the wrong ones though. So...

Earlier this month I had the second step, an Image Day. This told me that I'm a Natural Ingenue, which means I like - and suit - fitted, demure (but not prissy) and pretty clothes and accessories. Fortunately, all my favourite vintage style clothes fit this. It's also taught me that if I'm going to wear trousers, not only should they not have a (masculine) fly or pockets, but I need to wear them with heels. Case in point - I wore frilly t-shirt, brown cords and a shrug with flats for part of the day, then switched to heels, and instantly felt and looked better. The Image Day ended with the injunction to throw out anything unsuitable from the wardrobe, which coincidentally is the C is for Clothes challenge from Lottie.

I've binned some shoes, got some others ready to take to a charity shop, and have a large suitcase over half full of clothes that don't fit, don't suit me or will otherwise never be worn again. It's proving hard to do but I'm slowly getting there by breaking it into chunks: I'll just sort this rail. I'll just sort that drawer. I'll just sort my shoes. I reckon another couple of hours and it'll all be done. Then - revelation - I'll have enough room to hang everything properly AND be able see what I have and what I now have a reason to buy to fill a gap.

Bring on the shopping!

Darn I'm good: beef in red wine sauce

As usual, I've made it up as I've gone along, then decided I'd quite like to be able to recreate the dish at a later date. This is the first time I've tried to thicken a wine-based sauce: normally I just accept that cornflour is the work of the devil and don't even try. However, I make a mean roux-based white sauce, and figured it can't be that different, right?

So roughly:

Ingredients - serves 2
1lb beef (I used chuck and rump steak) diced into 1" ish lumps
Half a bottle or so of full bodied red wine (I used a New Zealand Merlot)
8 or so baby leeks, cut into 1-2" lengths, about pencil thick
1 tsp chopped garlic (I use Very Lazy garlic)
1 1/2 oz butter
3/4 oz flour
1/2 tbsp horseradish sauce
(You could also add mushrooms, but my guest doesn't eat them, and I didn't have any!)

Method
Melt half the butter over a low heat, stirring in garlic. Add beef, and stir until coated, stir in leeks. Cover - leaving a steam gap - and simmer gently until beef is browned. Add 1/2 pint red wine and simmer over a low heat for a further 20 mins. Ish.

In a small pan on an even lower heat, melt the remaining butter. Stir in the flour a little at a time until you have a thick paste. Remove from the heat. Add the remaining liquid from the meat pan a ladle at a time, stirring thoroughly to ensure no lumps. Add more wine until the sauce is liquid again.

Pour sauce over meat, stir in horseradish sauce a little at a time, tasting between each addition. The exact quantity will depend on the flavour of the wine and how much extra wine you added! (Add chopped mushrooms at this point, if using). Cover - with a steam gap - and simmer very gently until one of the following occurs: 1) your guests arrives; 2) the sauce is thick enough for your liking; 3) 15 mins has elapsed.

You could also leave it to cool, then reheat later and serve, but watch the skin that forms on the sauce and stir it in well!

I served with beetroot, courgette, carrot and cauliflower roasted with olive oil, oregano and sage.

Not quite Two Moors Way Update #2

I really am bad at this regular updates lark. The real part #2 of the Two Moors Way trip should go up later this week.

In brief news - my Marmot Grid tent was awesome. The Primus spider stove was awesome, and had what seemed to be a never-ending gas cartridge. My old, old hiking boots were sadly not up to the job though. After 10 years, 4 continents and well into 4-digits of miles, they are unequivocably Past It. The rolling sole rolls no longer, and has a depressed ball of the foot tread instead of a raised one, making walking less efficient than with an normal shoe, instead of more. There's zero cushioning left in the soles, so every rock and rough surface can be felt on the feet: think the princess and the pea. They rubbed in brand new and interesting places, making for judicious use of tape as the week wore on. Finally, I tried some brand-new-out-of-the-box boots on Friday, and they were more comfortable than my old broken-in (=beat up) ones.

Time for some new boots before I go to Jordan in October!

Two Moors Way Update

Monday: 7 hours hiking, 13 miles covered, weather good, terrain moderate.

Tuesday: 4.5 hours hiking, maybe 7 miles covered, weather lousy, terrain difficult.

By half three we were soaked to rhe skin on the longest, most exposed section of moor on the route. With no shelter and no habitation to be seen (and next to no visibility courtesy of the cloud layer we'd been in almost all day) we pitched up for the night. We had just about enough dry kit and plenty of food, but not much water. No, going out in the rain to collect some was not an option!

Wednesday: writing this after 4.5 hours, 8 or so miles, weather lovely, terrain easier.

Shortage of water meant no breakfast, but after three hours my body revolted and we stopped and heated a rice pouch intended as half a dinner. That 400 cals got me to Chagford, a pub lunch and many, many drinks of water.

Tents

I'm in the market for a new tent. I have a 2-man fair weather one I acquired while backpacking around New Zealand in 2003. I was collecting a hire car, and the couple dropping one off at the same time had a tent they didn't want cart home with them. They refused payment and were glad to be rid of it, whereas I was glad of a tent. Several years of experience with this tent have taught me several things.

My tent is a square, no porch, with telescoping poles which are clipped to the inner and tied to the outer. It has a door, and one guy rope on each panel to the side of the one with the door. It goes up inner first.

Firstly, the British weather requires more than 2 guy ropes. I'm quietly amazed it took until last summer to prove this, but that might be due to my fair-weather camping preferences! Anyway, pitched up on an Atlantic headland last August, my tent bowed so far in the wind and rain that I had less than half the floorspace usable. With one person and a week's worth of beach holiday kit, this was clearly Not Working. Additionally, another member of the party had a fiberglass pole snap in his tent that night while acting as a windbreak for the rest of the party's tents. So, tents for the UK need guy ropes on each corner and at regular points along panels.

Going up inner first. I've always known this was a bad plan but my last trip proved it. After a weekend of sunshine and a night of torrential rain, I'd hoped to get most of my tent down dry: I knew the groundsheet was a lost cause from the rain. As I got to the tent to strike camp, it started to hail. I dived inside, waited out the shower then cleared up other things for an hour while the tent dried. Literally as I got back to try again, it started to rain. With an outer-first tent, you can pitch or strike and keep the inner dry, whereas with mine, if it's raining.and you're pitching or striking, everything gets wet. And it did this time! Next tent must be outer-first!

Not having a porch. Porches are good for putting wet and muddy kit in and allowing you to keep the inside sleeping bit for dry kit and sleeping. Not having a porch means wet and muddy kit shares your sleeping space and everything else getting cold and muddy.

Clipping and tying tent to poles. On the one hand, I like this because there's no faffing around with telescoping poles and fabric sleeves with poles coming part inside them. That said, there is a knack to the sleeve-pole combination and it doesn't require the manual dexterity, which can be a lacking in cold and wet conditions!

Finally, weight. I wasn't too bothered about weight with the old tent (and don't look a gift horse in the mouth!) but for the Two Moors Way hike, packed weight is crucial. Modern 1-2 man tents can weigh in at under 1kg, and mine is considerably heavier than that.

So, in summary, my new tent must:
1) be robust enough to handle the worst of the British weather;
2) go up outer first. This also means the outer can double-up as an emergency shelter if needed;
3) have a porch;
4) have a sleeve system for the poles, although this is fairly standard for outer-first designs;
5) be as light as possible.

These pretty much sum up the Force10 Helium, which builds on the success of Vango's original Force10 design. So subject to an in person inspection, I guess thus is what I'll be buying in the next few weeks.

Why exercise is bad for my health*

Since my last post I had my gym fitness test  & programme written, and I've finally managed to do all three workouts on the programme.  The fitness test on the Friday of the bank holiday proved that my core and upper body strength is non-existence, and my hamstrings are tighter than a violin string, but my BMI, body fat and blood pressure are all excellent. None of this was news, but it does highlight some areas to work on in addition to the cardiovascular endurance I'll need.

Over the bank holiday weekend, though, I went camping and spend 3 nights under canvas, running around a muddy field during the day (in addition to hiking, I LARP with Curious Pastimes).  Courtesy of this and the torrential rain on Saturday night, I picked up a throat infection swiftly followed by a kidney infection.  Thus, long cardivascular workouts didn't seem a terribly good idea since I couldn't afford to get dehydrated.  Two courses of antibiotics and 10 very frustrating days later, I finally started to feel right again on Saturday.

I picked up the fitness regime again last Friday, yes, before I felt 100%.  That one centred around upper body strength, doing 2 sets of each of 2 exercises followed by 5 mins hell-for-leather on a cardiovascular machine to raise my heartrate, repeated three times.  To top if off, the following evening I went to play laserquest, for 3 x 15 min games with a handheld , dual-trigger laser gun.  Two days later and my arms have just about forgiven me!

Today I went to do what I knew would be the hardest of the three workouts, and I was right.  15 mins of biking on a level 10 random programme is the light relief part of this one!  It features cross trainer (5 mins, warm-up, easy), summit climber (10 mins, 1:4 gradient, 5.5kph average speed, HARD), bike (easy) and rowing machine (in which I aim for 2000m in 10 mins and managed 1900. I would have managed the 2000 but forgot to breathe properly part way through and gave myself  a stitch. By the time I'd eased off and recovered, I couldn't make up the distance.)  Then, to complete the feeling of being a wrung out dishcloth, it rounds off with 2 sets of straight abs crunches, 2 sets of upper back extensions and 2 sets of oblique crunches.  This evening, I appear to have succumbed to another throat infection, so it's another early night tonight before getting back into revising for university Finals tomorrow. 

*Would I have got the throat infection if I hadn't gone to the gym?  Probably.  But it made for an ironic post title, so I used it.