Author: Wattle

It is time to start using some green items in the kitchen and pack away the blue ones. I have several green tea towels, and a few coffee mugs but other than that the spring seasonal box is relatively empty. It will be an enjoyable task to look around some shops for a few more green items this month.

We may still anticipate some windy, cold and rainy days so the main task for Septnana is to reduce the amount of catalogues that have found their way to our place. As you can imagine it is really easy to bring them home and let them sit around, or in a box, thinking now I must cut out that really great image of grapes (or whatevers) for next year, and what actually happens is that not a thing happens. The stack just gets higher. So this month the stack gets lower again.

Pleasant days are great to do some gardening so I go outdoors and in particular look after the herb plants. An outing to the nursery to find a tarragon plant, or at least to find out when one may be found will also be on the activity list. Of course these days things like that can be found out “online”, but I like to admire all the plants they have growing there, in person.

One half a kilogram of weight has been lost in the month of Augrapes, which is just about in the land of maintenance. I am not going to complain about it too much. My current weight is 73 kilograms.

The eating theme for Septnana is just as it sounds. Bananas. The aim will be to eat plenty of them. Bananas go particularly well on pancakes with a generous serve of custard for dessert. Some days will see vanilla slice on the plate instead. For the evening meal we mostly have beef steak with commercial brand Bearnaise finishing sauce, oven fries potatoes, mushrooms, beans and the starring vegetable of the month is cauliflower.

Later in the month I will tell you about my recipe for port and cream mushroom sauce, which we love but do not have very often. Sadly, it doesn’t love us back.

The Wattle’s Weight Warrior for Septnana is tarragon. It is the wrong time of the year to get fresh tarragon. Instead, we use large amounts of dried tarragon which is almost as good, just about smothering the steaks with it. It also goes very well sprinkled on fresh tomatoes on toast for lunch.

I anticipate that the portion size of steak will be slightly less compared to last years, just as the portion size of pork was last month compared to one of the year before. Getting used to less protein on the plate is not trivial so the plate still gets heaped with large amounts of steamed beans and cauliflower.

Breakfast is usually an egg and shortcut piece of bacon on a round of toast, followed with an orange. This is the breakfast which suits me best. However, some days in Septnana a bowl of cereal with a banana might be tried.

I do not want my weight to keep reducing too much. It would be very nice to learn how to maintain this shape for six months or so. I will make sure that I eat a few extra custard tarts this month to stop the downward trend.

Today was special because I met the gardener of some of the flowers I take photos of. I was given permission to get closer to the daphodills to take their photograph. You will see in the archives section of the site a photo of some very special weight warriors, a present from the gardener to bring home.