Belfast City has a piece of my heart

Northern Ireland flag

Wether I refer to it as The UK, or Ireland these days from far off North Carolina, Northern Ireland is both a piece of my past, and very much linked to my heart every day. I enjoyed the culture, the food, the nightlife, shopping and lots of concerts and events during my 20 years of having home base only 30 minutes away from the bustling city centre. My eldest girl still lives and now works there, kicking butt as an Estate Agent and has taken the companies social media to new outstanding heights. Belfast City was a place I had to learn to love, but my restless soul found plenty to keep me engaged and it will always be the place that nurtured me while I nurtured my girls.

Spanish Sun

Spanish Flag

One of my favourite places to be is on the balcony at my brother’s house in Southern Spain. It isn’t just the temperature, it isn’t just the proximity to the beach, it isn’t that I’m usually in holiday mode when I’m there, it’s being with family, that brings warmth, relaxation and a general sense of wellbeing to the world.

Intermittent Mystery

So the instruction leaflet that came with the 30 L CRIVIT electric cool box was quite specific. Which part of ‘This cool box is not designed for permanent use.’ did I not understand? I have been using the cool box successfully all Summer on board Sailing Yacht Danny Boy, but now that voice on my shoulder was beating me up. I’d heard the Crivit’s motor stop and turned to see the little blue ‘there is life’ ON button fade away to OFF and to hear the cool box’s friendly purr fade away to a deathly silence. OBVIOUSLY, having been left on for one day longer than its 5 day working parameter recommended in the users instruction leaflet, the motor had burnt out! However before taking it to be tipped into the electrical gadgets recycling bin I thought I would run diagnostics, and plugged in the alternative 12 volt electrical lead to my ‘cigarette lighter’ socket, if that worked then I would know it was the A/C power feed at fault… nope, she was a ‘gonner’. Clouds of doom descended, more capital outlay, and to replace something that had been working perfectly. Had I just paid attention to the 5 day alert on my phone would have perhaps carried on well into the future. The voice on my shoulder was having a field day ratcheting up my inadequacies. Then the clouds of doom parted, light and inspiration flooded the little grey cells. I remembered another electrical motor I had known, which had an overheat cut-out! Maybe if I just waited a couple of hours as per the prescribed ‘rest’ time the so solicitous instruction leaflet had advised the cool box would come back to life all on its own? AND IT DID respond to clicking it ON! For a while… for a few cycles of 5 days in fact, until one day I was sitting next to it, having my lunch, (this is a TINY boat home) and it cut out again. OH NO! I sat back stunned, but it started up again! I turned to look at it quizzically, and it stopped! So either it had taken to teasing me, or … I moved my knee to the left coming up against the tool box which supported the power strip which fed the fridge, and back to the right, with resulting ON/OFF lights and sound effects! A few minutes with my favourite ratchet screwdriver revealed a loose wire in the 3 pin 240v plug! I rebuked the voice on my shoulder, and thanked God for helping me think things through. Another few minutes had that wire screwed down tight. The Crivit lives to purr on protecting my produce, hopefully for many 5 day cycles to come!

Valkyrie’s Log – Blending, Baking, Confucius and confused Cultures

Milk and Whisk

Location: Home, Colorado.
Status: Cultured.

Today should have been a day of long walks and cupcake baking. But instead was all culture killing and Zhou dynasty quizzing. Our Saturday had consisted of Kombucha bottling and Banana Bread baking, banana bread so good that we totally ruined our appetites for dinner and ended up going for a very pleasant guilt induced evening walk for nearly an hour. Guilt for putting ice-cream in our lunch time smoothies (1 apple (peeled), 1/2 cup blueberries, 1/2 cup plain yogurt, 1/4 vanilla ice-cream, splash of milk and 2 ice cubes) that were supposed to be paired with salad but somehow the salad became unnecessary😅 Also mild guilt for the accidental dinner of L’s freshly baked banana bread, only mild as it was almond flour banana bread with relatively low sugar content (comparatively speaking).

So today started out as a “back on track” healthy active day. We had tuna salad for lunch and only the smallest square of banana bread 🤤 Then I was going to make yogurt and L was going to knock out the rest of her Social Studies from the previous week. But boy oh boy do the social studies of the Phoenician culture and the Shang & Zhou dynasty’s know how to swallow a day whole! Mid lecture, having pasteurised the milk to 180ºF, while clarifying the tactics behind the Mandate of Heaven and the influence of Confucius… I dumped my thermophilic culture into a piping hot half gallon of milk. Yogurt makers of the world will be simultaneously gasping in shock and groaning in sympathy. I put the whole pot in the fridge in a vain hope that if I cooled the milk down to the required 110ºF fast enough and scraped the meagre amount of leftover starter yogurt into the pot, things would somehow magically be saved… tune in again tomorrow to hear the most likely inevitable plight of our latest batch of Instant Pot yogurt (I’m going to give it the night in the hope that those few mighty cultures will take a leaf out of their Viking host’s book and conquer the whole darn pot!).

Grateful for:

  1. Banana Bread and Skype