bignoseduglyguy

On most Saturday mornings, SWMBO and I enjoy a lie-in. Aware that it is morning, we hover between sleep and wakefulness, listening to the cats scampering on the sun deck outside the bedroom, the interminable chirruping of Playhouse Disney downstairs and the traditional Kiwi weekend chorus of lawn mowers hard at work. No.3 usually makes us a cup of tea which we enjoy while reading a book or chatting about weekend plans before getting up for breakfast.

This morning, however, saw us sitting up in bed trying to read while slowly but surely working our way through swallowing the best part of forty capsules each; a scene so absurd that we turned, looked at each other and burst out laughing. The reason for this unusual activity is that we’re half way through a detox and internal cleanse at the moment, supposedly giving our abused bodies a break in the short breathing space between our Christmas visitors leaving and our late January visitors arriving. It is the first time we have tried this sort of thing so we sought advice from friends who have done a cleansing detox before and have settled on a programme based on herbal products.

The idea is that you prepare for the cleanse over a few days during which you avoid proteins, grains and refined foods. After a couple of days of that, you start taking capsules of four herbal products (anti-inflamatory, high fibre laxative, stimulating laxative and nutritional supplement) while eating meals based on the ‘delicious recipe ideas’ before returning to a normal diet after you’ve finished the capsules.

Though you can spread this programme out over fifty days by taking just 4 capsules twice a day, there’s no way that we can go for a month and a half without bread, pulses, diary products and, in my case, meat. This being so, we decided to go for the ‘power’ cleanse and do whole the thing in 8-10 days. It was only on the fourth morning, when I broke the seal on the containers of capsules, that it dawned on the ‘power’ cleanse option means chugging between 32 and 40 capsules morning and night! Ho hum.

So, for the last five days, breakfasts have been fruit smoothies and lunch and dinner a rotation of vegetable soups and salads. Snacks are made up of fresh or dried fruit or, well, more vegetables. I have to say that I am finding the restrictions of the required diet trying and I have no doubt whatsoever that the lack of stimulants like caffeine and alcohol play a fair part in this. Likewise, the tiredness and the headaches that commonly accompany detox and cleansing only serve to darken my mood further.

However, in the spirit of the venture, we are trying to find new ways to make the allowed foods interesting. Tonight, I made a dish consisting of a bed of cos lettuce, covered with a Roma tomato and onion salad, topped with sliced avocados. I served this with a yoghurt dressing I whipped up to add some contrast and zing to the salad. For the recipe, click over to my food blog, Big Boy’s Brunch, where you’ll find a similar post.

I really miss the texture of freshly baked ciabatta, the snap of a sausage against my teeth and the aroma of coffee so, with the weekend without the distractions of work just hours away, it remains to be seen how many days I’m prepared to go without them.

This evening, New Zealand mourns Sir Edmund Hillary. While much will be written about him and his achievements in the days to come, I hope that none will be more applauded than the work of the Himalayan Trust he established and through which he worked tirelessly to raise funds for schools, hospitals and infrastructure for the Sherpa people.

Photo: wasibicube

After a break of one year and one week, I am once again in the mood to resume writing here again. I stopped because I felt blogging about our life before, during and after our emigration from the UK was becoming a chore. I was tired of feeling guilty when folks asked when I was writing the next ‘episode’ or how I came up with the stories. I just wanted to do be able to do things without some small part of me feeling that I should be writing about it.

Similarly, bignoseduglyguy, my other long running blog has run out of steam and begun to ramble incoherently over the last year. Having revolved around geekery and online activities for a good few years, it suffered when I no longer bought the latest gadgets and work/emigration left little time for distractions.

A month or so back, I referred a colleague and fellow émigré to a post here so that he could read about something that had come up in conversation. Sometime later, he mentioned how much he had enjoyed reading the posts and how it had offered him a different perspective on who I was. Over the Christmas break, I have found myself re-examining my motives, thinking about the positive comments I have received about my blogs and the enjoyment I derived from writing them.

As result of all this, I decided to give Looking for No.8 wire a new lease of life and the primary focus of my blogging activity. I have moved it away from its old sub-domain home and Blogger API to join my food and recipe blog here on WordPress. A new theme with one of my own photos as a header image and a revised byline provide what I think is a fresh look. That’s it for now though I’m sure I’ll be tinkering with a few cosmetic tweaks and adding more links over the next few days.