Tag: Cake

June Gratitude

Published on by Bubbles in the Brain1 Comment

I feel like I’ve prefaced every monthly gratitude post recently with a note that it’s been a hard month.  Once again, though, it has been.  My Prostap injections have stopped working – my doctor thinks this one was a dud – so I’ve been dealing with a solid month of pain accompanied by a really icky cold (lots of lovely mucus – yay!).

I think this makes it even more important that I take a moment to stop and think about the things this month that I am grateful for.

1)  Cake!

I successfully baked three really nice cakes this month.  One was a packet mix, so I can’t be too proud of it, but seriously, if you want a deliciously moist, rich, vegan chocolate cake, just add a can of Coke to the stuff in Betty Crocker’s Devil’s Food Cake and bake it, and voila, instant deliciousness.

I also made this funfetti cake from It Doesn’t Taste Like Chicken.  Unfortunately, my sprinkles vanished into the cake and just left little blobs of yellow behind, but the cake itself was delicious, and I’m really proud of the rainbow icing.  Sure, it has some holes in the bottom layer, but it’s the first time I’ve ever tried to get fancy with buttercream, so I’m proud of myself.

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Image description: a violently rainbow cake with colours ranging from red at the bottom through the rainbow to purple at the top.  It has rainbow sprinkles on top and is sitting on a silver plate in a fridge.  Please excuse the shocking photography – the bright light in the fridge was the only place I could really capture the intense colour.  

My third cake was for my mother’s birthday, and was the tastiest of the three.  I used this incredible, zingy lemon cake recipe from Lazy Cat Kitchen.  I cooked it slightly too long but it still turned out really well – very soft and fluffy on the inside and soaked in sweet lemony flavour.  Definitely a “make again”.

2)  Basketweaving

My workplace celebrated Reconciliation Day last month by holding Aboriginal basketweaving classes for employees, taught by an Aboriginal woman who travelled out on country to learn the techniques and is sharing them with us.  It’s really relaxing and it’s nice to have something to do with my hands when I’m watching tv or listening to an audiobook.  I’m trying to make a basket for Max, which is a little tricky because he is a) fat and b) prone to eating the materials I use, but I’m pushing through.

3) Max is ok

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Image description: a fluffy ginger cat with green eyes and a slightly angry expression.  That’s Max.  He’s not actually angry, he just has a resting bitch face.  He’s so chill that today he let me pull him down onto his side and rub his tummy for a good ten minutes.  For many more Max pics follow my instagram – OffBalanceSpinningTop.  

Last month I wrote about how Max had to have dental surgery.  He’s all recovered from that now, but gave me a scare this month when I found blood in his urine.  After a rushed vet visit and some medication, it turns out he probably just had sterile cystitis, and is back to peeing normally (i.e. not on all my nice blankets) and no longer in pain.  That’s a huge relief.

4)  A good boss

Chronic illness is terrifying, particularly when you love your job and want to earn the respect of colleagues you admire through hard work, but have to take off unreasonable amounts of time due to situations like my current Prostap issue.  I am still super stressed about it, but less stressed than I would be if my amazing boss wasn’t so good about this whole poopy situation.

5) Fulfilling a goal

One of my three goals this year was to read the Old Testament.  I have officially finished it.  I’ll admit, it mostly wasn’t thrilling.  The prophecy books (Isiah, anything after Jonah) are mighty confusing unless you have some reference material to explain what the heck they are talking about.  Lots of doorways getting measured and people dying of famine and then everything getting better and people being happy again.  I really enjoyed the books with strong female characters, though – Ruth, Esther, the early parts of Judges – and some of the books, like Lamentations, have some truly beautiful imagery.  There’s a lot of good stuff in Psalms and Proverbs, too.

Anyway, I’m proud of finishing it.  I’m on track to fulfil Goal 2 (getting SCUBA certified) next month, even if I’m doing really poorly with Goal 3 (learning Arabic).

6) Pretty dresses

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Image description: a beautiful brunette girl (not me, although I am also a beautiful brunette girl) in a burgundy dress with purple and pink flowers on it.  This is Review’s Chateau Floral dress, and I love it.  Photo by Review.  

This month has been all about the comfort clothes.  Maternity jeans, turtlenecks, flowing trousers.  Today, I realised I haven’t worn an item of clothing just because I love it for a very long time, and that makes me sad.  So, I made an effort, grabbed one of my absolute favourite dresses (pictured above), and wore it just because.

7) Clean water

It’s a simple thing to be grateful for, but it’s so important.  Clean water is one of the greatest guarantees of health (in terms of freedom from things like cholera, anyway, if not from endo) and is vital to sustaining life.  It also tastes good.  If I’m thirsty, I can just turn on the tap.  People in Flint in the USA still don’t have clean water after years of complaints, and that is in the very developed world.  People in other parts of the world have to walk for miles to get water, and today I literally bathed in litres of it.  A few weeks ago, I went for a swim in a 50m pool.  That’s more water than some people will ever see.  Even in Australia, animals and people suffer every time there is a drought.  Clean water is something we cannot take for granted or be sufficiently thankful for.  Clean water is life.

8) Assassin’s Creed

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Image description: the torso and head of a man in white Renaissance clothing with a red fancy sash and silver belt, a brown cloak and two knives sticking out of bracers on his wrists.  The text says: Assassin’s Creed II

I finished the first Assassin’s Creed game some time last year after literally years of procrastinating, and I loved it.  This month, after slightly less time, but still a lot of procrastinating, I finished the second one.  The first one sees you play an Assassin in the Middle East during the Crusades; in the second, you are in Renaissance Italy.  Both games are heaps of fun and absolutely stunning.  Seriously, the detail that goes in to creating the huge cities that these games are set in makes them worth playing even if you don’t want to stab lots of bad guys and save innocents from corrupt guards.  I so badly want to go it Italy now.

9) One year

I’ve been writing this blog for one whole year now.  I’ve been up and down with it – it’s really hard when I’m not well, because my motivation and creativity take a big hit – but I have stuck to it.  I have more than 100 followers, and I’m super grateful to each and every one of you.  I can’t tell you how happy it makes me when I see someone like an article.  Please keep on liking and sharing, and let me know in the comments if there is any particular content you want to see more of.  I want to keep this blog relevant to the experiences of people with endo, adeno and chronic pain, and it really helps me to know what people want to read.

10)  Today

Sundays are really difficult for me, because I spend a lot of time stressing about how I’m going to get through another week, and how exhausted I will be when I have to get up at 6am, and whether I’ll even be able to fit into my clothes tomorrow.  Today I woke up especially depressed and I kept getting worse.  However, I managed, largely thanks to my husband, to pull my socks up (actually I wore tights, but whatever), put on my pretty dress and do my face and hair, leave the house, breathe some fresh air, buy the vitamins I’ve been neglecting, and eat some good food and drink some delicious hot apple cider.  It was really, really hard to actually do that, but I did.  I’m proud of that.

 

What are you grateful for this month?  Have you baked anything delicious lately?  Share in the comments.

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RUOK Day and the Cake of Doom

Published on by Bubbles in the Brain1 Comment

TW: Suicide, mental health

Yesterday I explained that I am engaged in a battle to the death over who at my workplace can make the best cake.  I will tell you the results of that epic showdown, but first I want to talk a bit about RUOK Day.

Did you know that 8 Australians take their own lives every single day?  Even higher numbers than that make attempts.  Rates of suicide are higher amongst men.

This is particularly relevant to people suffering from endometriosis, and chronic illness in general.  Why?  Because there are three main factors that make it more likely that someone will commit suicide: social isolation, feeling like a burden, and the means to follow through.  I’ve talked before about how easy it can be to become socially isolated when struggling through a flare-up, and that feeling like a burden is one of the many mental side-effects of physical pain.  With the amount of strong painkillers many of us have access to, means to follow through completes the endometriosis-suicide trifecta.  We are an at-risk group and today really brought that home to me.

RUOK Day focuses less on people at risk of suicide, though, and more on the rest of society and what ordinary Australians can do to help their friends, colleagues or loved ones through the power of asking a simple question, “Are you ok?”  It teaches listening without judgement, helping the person struggling to seek appropriate help, and continuing to check in with them (in my view the most important step of all).  It’s never going to be an easy conversation to have – it may be embarrassing and overly intimate for both parties, but they are right when they say it can save lives.  I encourage everyone to head over to their website, watch some of the informative videos they have on how their system works, and put it into practice.  Use this day as a chance to check in with friends and family.  That simple act of connection may pull someone back from the brink.  It may pull you back.  I’ve written before about the importance of maintaining social connection even when you feel like you can’t.  Take a step to do that right now.  Ask yourself, “Are you ok?”  If you aren’t, speak to someone.

On a lighter note, my workplace wisely decreed that the path to mental health is built on cake.  Ironically, I had to fight my way through crippling knee pain (my knees were swollen and aching from referred back pain) to make my cake, I literally lost sleep over it, I would have skipped dinner if not for my husband, and I shed real tears.  Not my proudest mental health moment.  However, the cake was a success!

I was attempting to recreate Anthea of Rainbow Nourishment’s glorious Golden Gaytime cake.  For those outside Australia going “um…what?” the Golden Gaytime is a popular and delicious ice-cream that is sadly not vegan.  I based my recipe partially on Anthea’s ice-cream bites of the same flavour, and improvised a whole lot.  I topped it with a bunch of things from her beautiful e-book, “Nourishing Treats”, including date-tahini-caramel swirls, hazelnut chocolate dough, and vegan Ferrero Rochers.  I also made some banana popsicles but the cake was so full of treats that it didn’t need it (and they also were just really unfortunately and inappropriately shaped).  On the plus side, they are safely in my freezer where I can eat them all.

Although it lacks the professional finish of Anthea’s cake, I was pretty proud of how it came out.

My cake 1.JPG
We had a crunchy chocolately base, a caramel ice-cream layer, a chocolate ice-cream layer, a vanilla ice-cream layer, chocolate drizzle, tahini-date caramel at the edge, chocolate hazelnut swirls, Ferrero Rocher bits, shards of chocolate, cacao nibs and cookie crumbs – all made from scratch!

I was up against some very stiff competition, though.  There were six cakes in all.

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I was tempted to try and steal that nice little chopping board.

Offering number one was this banana raspberry creation, vaguely reminiscent of an aeroplane.  This cute little number was a runner-up (ranked in the bottom three) and won a box of cake mix.

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Does anyone else always try and spell macadamia as “macademia”, like some bizarre cross between nuts and university research?

Offering number two was this plate of delicious-looking white chocolate and macadamia cookies, which deserve special mention as the baker was sick with a sinus infection and still loved his colleagues and the promotion of healthy minds enough to bring in biscuits for us.  Despite his efforts, these biscuits also landed as a runner-up and also won some cake mix.

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Doesn’t the “cheese” look disturbingly realistic?

Offering number three I found unbelievably odd.  This cake actually looked very much like a cheeseburger.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good (vegan) cheeseburger, but there is something about seeing one in cake form that just does my head in.  However, it is very clever and landed a neat third place.

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Beautifully presented and it smelled AMAZING.

Offering number four was this decadent gluten-free chocolate-raspberry cake, which was apparently full of whiskey.  This was the one I was most sad about not being able to eat because it looked so good (mine was the only vegan cake so I couldn’t taste-test any of the others).  To my surprise this cake also only made it into the runner-up position – I think maybe not enough people tried it as it was on the smaller side.

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The inside sponge was vegan so I did manage to nab a taste of that and it was admittedly delicious.  Why must I be surrounded by such talented women?

Finally, my main competition, made by my work bestie and towering over its competitors: the gravity-defying Malteser cake.  It is with a heavy heart that I admit that this cake beat mine to take out the main prize of a silicon muffin tray and loaf tin, and I walked away with second (a very nice glass tray).  Admittedly it was an excellent cake and the win was not undeserved.

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A better look at the layers in my creation.

All in all, I was very happy to come second.  I had some stiff competition and although mine looked incredibly decadent, it wasn’t particularly sweet.  Barring the chocolate, it had no refined sugar and relied on date and a small amount of maple syrup in the Ferrero Rochers for sweetness.  However, I think the lack of sweetness may have worked in my favourite – it was cold and relatively refreshing and I think would have stood out because of that.  It also managed to be quite rich, thanks to being 90% coconut cream, and had all sorts of textures thanks to the crunchy base, nutty crumble, stiff chocolate and smooth creamy layers.

So, what’s the take-away from today?  Eat cake, but don’t hurt yourself to make it.  Perhaps more importantly, look after your mental health, and look out for your friends.

Cake Wars

Published on by Bubbles in the BrainLeave a comment

Hello, dear readers.

I apologise for this interruption for your regularly scheduled endo posts.  There is a bake-off at work on Thursday for RUOK Day and I’ve been bitten by the Nailed It bug, so I’m using my after-work hours and new energy (thanks Zoladex!) to create like a mad thing.  I’m trying to create a Golden Gaytime vegan frozen cheesecake worthy of Rainbow Nourishments (whose BEAUTIFUL e-book is well worth the $20!).  Trouble is, her Golden Gaytime cake is a jealously guarded secret so I’m improvising based on several of her other recipes.  This could be a disaster.

To add to the pressure, my work bestie has decided to make this into a personal challenge about who is the better baker.  I love her but I must defeat her.

For that reason, I spent last night starting the process and will use tonight to do the bulk of the work, which will take hours.  I won’t be able to write an actual useful post as a result.  However, tomorrow night I will post the result of my labours (and the battle) as well as explain a bit more about RUOK Day.  On Friday we will return to something a little more on topic.

Adios til then!