It's getting warmer and spring-time-ier outside. The cat is venturing into the garden a bit more now, or snoozing in the sun in the wintergarden, where it's now getting more pleasant again. Well, apart from the not-so-beautiful-looking dead plants in their pots. 

Every year, I try to get some of the tomatoes and some of the chili plants over the winter - with mixed success, sometimes a bit more, sometimes no success at all. Usually some of the chili plants survive, and if I'm lucky, one or two tomatoes make it through. 

This was the case this year (unless it now dies a sudden death because I wrote about it) - one tomato made it. The really nice thing about that?

aThis picture was taken yesterday. There's hope to have early tomatoes! 

I managed to totally forget blogging on Friday - there was just too much stuff going on. 

First, I was being very adult-y and sensible and had a doc's appointment to check for skin issues (cancer screening and mole check); I'd gotten some weird light spots in the upper torso area, and I was actually steeling myself for a kind of skin cancer diagnosis when going there. Fortunately, it's just an overactive dermal yeast and almost purely cosmetic, so now I'm quite relieved (and equipped with a cream and a special shampoo to curb the overenthusiasm of that specific yeast). 

After that, circumstances called for a baking spree - I'd promised a cake as a birthday present. A Snickers cake, to be precise. Which is a concoction consisting of a bit of dough glued together with liberal amounts of buttercream in three different flavours - chocolate, peanut, and caramel. 

Pro tip #1: If you actually buy caramel, and not sweetened condensed milk by accident, you don't need to boil the milk into caramel as an additional step.

Pro tip #2: If you read your notes correctly, you don't leave the cake itself in the oven for double the time necessary. (It was still fine. Phew.) It was a little flatter than I had hoped for, which made cutting it more of a challenge, but I did manage. (It's baked in form of a long rectangle, then cut in half lengthways, then the two halves are halved again with a horizontal cut so you have, in the end, four very thin and long pieces of dough. When fully assembled with the buttercream layers inbetween, you get something more or less with the proportions of a snickers bar. Which, by the way, will not fit on a standard long cake platter as it is, you guessed it, too long.)

Pro tip #3: If you try to mix double the amount of custard into the butter, you will kill the buttercream. (It's a water-in-fat emulsion, and it can only take so much of the water phase before it flips and "curdles".) If you don't realise what you are doing, you will manage to do that twice.

Which leads me to pro tip #4: Don't take skimpy notes, write things down properly. There's no guarantee you will really re-bake the cake after a short time, still remembering the bits you did the previous time in detail.

So... I had a bit of trouble getting the cake all done, but in the end, it wasn't more ugly than my regular not-so-much-trouble cakes, and (most importantly) it tasted really nice. Makes a large, very solid cake that is rather easy to transport, but should be cut in slices not more than a centimetre wide, meaning it makes about, oh, 30 and a bit servings? It will also freeze rather well, which is a good thing, as it's rarely all consumed at once!

That cake is also one of the test opportunities for my (still ongoing) quest to find the perfect chocolate buttercream, by the way...

It's Pi Day today!

I like pie. If it has pie in the name, and does not contain cheese, chances are high I'll go for it and enjoy it. Apple pie, shepherd's pie, Coastal Fish Pie, put-some-leftovers-into-a-shell-of-dough-pie... I love them all.

Unfortunately I get to make them way too rarely because, unfortunately, making pie is not a 20-minute-cooking-time lunch. It takes less time (obviously) if you have the filling prepared beforehand (hello, leftovers from another meal), but there's still the dough to be made, and it has to bake. Since my usual cooking plan is "go into kitchen, open fridge, see what needs to be used, put in pot, leave to cook, hope for the best", it also means I have to remember in time that there's something planned that needs prep time and then baking time, and thus I have to start early enough.

That all said... pies have happened here in the past, and will happen again, and there are a number of pie crusts that I've used. One of the versions that are pretty quick to make is the Hot Water Pie Crust:

 Hot Water Pie Crust

150 g fat (suet or butterfat)
150 g broth (or 60 g milk and 80 g water)
480 g flour
1/2 tsp salt

Heat fat and liquid together, then pour into flour mixed with salt, mix with a spoon, then knead until fully blended (should not take long). You can roll it out and use it at once, no rest time needed.

I bake it at 220°C in the no-fan setting for about 30 to 40 minutes. Filled with delicious stuff, of course.

I'm off travelling to Lübeck, this time with a little more free time to spend in that lovely little city. With me, of course, the big red suitcase (as usual when travelling for workshop purposes) and the indispensable travel companions.

Those are, in the back: a stainless steel water bottle and my battered trusty coffee travel mug. They serve, obviously, to hydrate me during any gallivantings through the countryside.

The jungle flowery thing in front is my travel cutlery in its little bag (and yes, that is a re-purposed folding umbrella cover that I found on the street - a souvenir from one of my England travels before Brexit happened). It holds a small and large spoon (both from wood) and a fork and knife (titanium, because it's cool and lightweight, and that set of cutlery is also my cutlery when we go biking or hiking.) The bag also contains a mini-salt shaker. 

Then there's a silicone pouch - packs small, is completely watertight and thus can carry soup if necessary. Usually it carries the leftovers from restaurant meals that I get, because these days I rarely finish a full portion. A lot of places offer a "small" option these days, but I prefer getting the regular-sized one and having two meals for the price of one. With the pouch, I can be sure that my food is packed up safely, nothing will spill out, I'll enjoy the rest of it the next day and it's not making extra waste because I do not need to ask for a to-go box or other packing material in the restaurant.

And finally, hiding out in the back... that is a travel-sized immersion heater (hence the pouch, which is the original probably vinyl one). I got that on a flea market, they've gotten out of style here. Water kettles have taken over here in Germany as the standard for boiling water many, many years ago already, but I remember that an immersion heater was what we used at home when I was a child. 

This one is actually a larger travel-sized one, and I have an even smaller one for when space is tight, sized to hang on the rim of a regular-sized mug. The heater, accompanied by a few bags of herbal tea, is my guarantee that if I need a cuppa in the evening to wind down, I can. Here in Germany, some rooms in hotels or other accommodations will have the complimentary tea-making facilities, but many don't. Some days I don't need the wind-down tea, but sometimes I do, and then it's just nice to know that I can, whatever happens. (Going into the restaurant or guest room or bar would be a possibility to get a cup of tea, but when I need the tea to wind down, I want to have a closed door between me and other people and no human interaction whatsoever. Which would not be the case in a restaurant, obviously.)

The second, just as important potential use of the water heater? Sometimes I have the cold feet problem. The literal one - my feet, before or when going into bed, are so cold that they will not warm up on their own. That means I'll have trouble falling asleep, will not sleep well, and will wake up in the morning with feet that are just as cold as when I got into bed, and it's not fun and no good thing. 

Entering the scene to rescue the night: the water heater (because tap water might be hot enough, but then it might not) and the steel water bottle. Tada - instant hot water bottle for bed. In theory, I could wrap the hot bottle in a towel to avoid burns on the feet, but I just keep my distance and pay attention. 

Added benefit: If there was sliced ginger in the water bottle before for a bit of flavour, you have nice tangy cold ginger tea in the morning. (I do not recommend leaving lemon slices in, as the rinds will make it bitter.)

It's said that having a positive outlook on life is a good thing... and I agree. I know a few people who have a tendency to having a negative outlook on things in general, and get the feeling easily and quickly that everything is against them, or wanting them to suffer, or something in that direction - and it does sound like bad things happen to them more often than to others, and that they have bad luck more often as well. 

Though of course, staying upbeat and positive and optimistic? Sometimes, that's hard to do. For instance, Tuesday this week was rather shitty - literally, in part. The poor little cat had constipation, and it was so bad that she obviously was in great pain and distress. 

The reason for that was a change in her food, which, in turn, is due to her having problems that point to an allergy or a sensitivity to something in her food, including food that she'd been eating without issues for years. Possibly age has increased these sensitivities. Now the hard thing is to find out what is causing that. Current hypothesis is that it's binding agents, which are added to almost all canned cat foods, and which do not need to be declared on the can. That, in turn, means the only way to find out about them is to ask directly at the manufacturer's.

As we've also found that she is sensitive to a number of meats - including beef, which is the main ingredient in most ready-made cat foods, and chicken, which runs a close second - the amount of ready-to-buy foods without binding agents and suitable for her, especially to find out if it is the binding agents, runs very close to zero. There's some few ones, but they are most often in tiny cans, we have a large cat, and I refuse to buy so much packaging, as it would mean several cans per day. (The cat is already the largest producer of waste in form of packages in our household. By far!)

So we switched to raw food, which gives us complete control over what she has, but the change led to the really, really bad constipation. The vet visit solved that, and it actually overshot the goal a little, so we had to deal with some more shit than expected, in places where it was not completely welcome... I will leave the rest to your imagination, or better not. (Overall not too bad. Things are mostly clean again, and the last things to wash lined up for their go. We will cope.)

In addition, I got some news on that same day that were not too delightful as well. Nothing really superdrastic, but somewhere between annoying and troublesome.

In all of that, I did try to see the positive aspects. I was very, very fortunate to get an appointment at the vet straight that afternoon, without having to wait for ages in the waiting room as an unplanned emergency (somebody else had cancelled last minute, and I could slip in). I got an offer for help for one of the bad-news-issues, which made no sense as it would have caused an inordinate amount of effort on the offering party's side, but it was still heart-warming to hear that someone would go to these lengths for me, without a second thought. 

It will pass, I told myself. It will get better soon again. Just keep at it... you'll manage. Also huge luck with the vet appointment. Cat getting better. Everything going to be alright.

And yes, it did. The day after, the cat was getting better; she's almost back to normal now, and has successfully used the litter box with no visible issues. (Whew. Never knew you could be so delighted about cat shit.) There's been a few emails with better news, including one that turned the troublesome issue (late delivery of my medication) into a resolved problem (chances are very high it will arrive in time after all). Plus there were a few other things that are very to utterly delightful in the mail yesterday and today morning.

So I'm pretty happy today, and it feels like it was a very good thing to try and stay positive and not give up and see everything as bleak and horrible and awful. And yes, I know that this can be hard, and sometimes straight out impossible. Before I got on the HRT and my hormones were so far out of whack, dropping a pencil could ruin half the day at minimum, and though it was better than nothing, no amount of trying to be positive would put it into proper perspective. But it's always worth the try to stay as much of an optimist as you can!

(If you read German, there's an interesting article here about how a positive mindset and feeling like someone lucky will make it more probable that good things happen to you.)

There's progress. Isn't that nice?

Said progress is going on in multiple areas. First of all, the personal/health thing is one part - I've been tracking all my food, which is annoying and a nuisance and sometimes feels really ridiculous (weighing out salad, thank you very much), but at least it's working. I've managed to more or less stick to the goal of not eating above a certain amount of calories, and it's showing on the numbers of the scale. That is nice, and motivating, and keeps me going even though it's hard at times. There's been a distinct and very lamentable lack of cake these past weeks, and reduced amounts of everything, especially the non-crucial stuff like chocolate. (Well, chocolate is crucial in some regard, but when push comes to shove, it's unfortunately empty calories, and there's not much space for these in my plan.) A few more weeks of this are looming ahead, which is sort of disheartening (soooo long to go!) but on the other hand, I managed to do this for months back in 2016 so I know I can do it. 

What I can definitely say is that it is easier now that I have the HRT to keep me sane, and sort-of-normal, and functioning on a basic level. I did try to do dieting stints in the past two or three years, but just didn't manage to get the necessary motivation and stick-to-it-iveness.While the basic fact remains that it is always possible to reduce calories and thus lose weight, there are definitely life and health circumstances that will make it harder, and depending on all kinds of factors, possibly also temporarily impossible. 

There's also progress on the shop stock overhaul; replenishing things, taking stock and finally getting new stuff into the shop did happen. There's a plan to rearrange some of the storage furniture here as well, which will take place after I've been to the Nähtreff at Rothenfels, because then the storage shelves will be more or less emptied out anyways (as a lot of the stock travels with me to be set up as a market stall). 

The website is mostly up and running, with a few remaining issues to be solved and some articles (that have been taken offline a while ago) to be re-written and placed back online, but none of that is crucial or really time-critical (at least not compared to other stuff), so for now, I'm good with how it works.

Next on the progress list is removing some of the old backups, and setting up a new (better) system; I've been using a backup programme that leaves me not so very confident in its reliability. (In case you're wondering: It's Acronis. The programme puts everything in a huge archive file, and when I try to access them on the RAID, there are sometimes hiccups that need to be resolved, probably due to the connection quality.) This means it's time to re-evaluate, and switch, and make space on the RAID to get the new version going. That's a slow progress as well, but things are happening here too.

Of course, there's the usual long list of stuff to be done - writing stuff, sorting stuff (in my next life, I will be more organised, and less messy, at least that is my cunning plan), organising travel for the next events. Preparing workshops at Rothenfels.

No progress yet on planning the next online workshops, something very high on the list... but overall, it feels like things are going okay. Which is a very, very nice feeling!

I've hinted at it yesterday: Other health issues. During the last two or so years, I've had some troubles that all seemed more or less unrelated, and that were all sort of not so bad that they'd merit a visit at some doctor's, and too squishy to really pinpoint them. However, they were gradually getting worse.

It started when we were doing a bit of strength training during the second lockdown, as the pandemic was still causing things to be cancelled - which resulted, for me, not in a strength gain, but in joint problems instead. Those got better with less training, but there was still a rather persistent niggle, and it was very easy for me to overload or overstress them. (Also made my motivation for strength training take a very, very steep nosedive.)

There was also the weight gain, not really quick but still a good bit more noticeable than in the years before. My hair stopped growing, there was more hair loss, and the braid became shorter and shorter as well. I had dry eyes, and a dry mouth.

And then... more joint pains, and muscle pains. Tender knees, tender hips, tender fingers. I got the impression that in spite of bouldering regularly, I lost strength instead of gaining it (or even just maintaining), and when trying to do a bit more, it quickly resulted in... more pain, due to overstressing something. Plus I got more and more depressed, and things just looked ever bleaker. This all got worse over time, and I was really at a loss as to what was going on.

Until I finally, in a stroke of sheer and pure luck, I listened to a podcast about menopause.

The symptoms list? Oh, how familiar it sounded. All of it. Well, almost all of it - I'd never had the infamous hot flushes, which might have been a hint towards what was happening. The way it was, though, I never had considered menopause as a possible reason (and it's usually not expected to start in the early fourties with such an impact).

Long story short, having ticked off most of that symptoms list, I found myself a doctor specialising in hormonal treatments, got an appointment, left some blood there, and a few days later I got the results: Early menopause, with really low levels in both estrogen and progesterone. (Well. You can insert a bad joke about being early for a change here, if you like - I've missed enough deadlines in my life, or cut it very close, that I really don't mind.)

Based on that bloodwork, I'm now getting hormone replacement therapy, and things are so, so much better. There's still some issues, but we're also not yet finished with the stage of figuring out what the proper levels for me are. The most important thing, though, is that I'm feeling like myself again, and am functional once more. Now I just have to remember to take one of the magic capsules in the morning and in the evening to keep things peachy. (There's actually a reminder app running on my phone now, just for that. Works wonders.)

The betterment, by the way, was almost instant. There was a real, significant difference just a few days after starting therapy, on all levels. I'm still not where I used to be, but gradually, things are getting better again, and I feel like I'm making progress once more instead of just stalling or things getting worse.

So... what I learned, when reading up on the stuff: Menopause has a large impact on a woman's body, as there are estrogen and progesterone receptors about everywhere. EVERYWHERE. (Like in your brain.) Not getting enough of the stuff has an impact on overall health and well-being, including bone health and density, muscle strength (there's the explanation for my loss of bouldering strength) and cardiovascular health. There's a reason why women after a certain age have the same risk as men to get a stroke or a heart attack, and that's lower estrogen levels. Same reason for the brittle bones at a higher age.

Also - depressive mood swings, or full-out depression can be a result of too low levels of hormones. When dropping a pencil suddenly means that you feel like the day is ruined, because obviously you cannot do ANYTHING right... well. Not a very good situation.

Now mind you - every body is different, and there's some people that breeze through menopause and don't feel anything, but just in case you'll land in the other camp... if you're over 35, consider reading up a bit on menopause and peri-menopause (that's before the proper start of things stopping, so to say) just so you know what possible symptoms are. Maybe get your hormone levels checked on a day when you're feeling really good, at a known point within your cycle, so you have a baseline you can work from.

And once stuff starts happening... do consider a replacement therapy. These days, bioidentical hormones are available, which are what your own body would produce, and the side effects of those are very low. That includes the risk of cancer, which can be linked to non-bioidentical hormones that were used in some of the studies that caused a big scare about HRT some years ago. And in the sense of full disclosure: I was feeling so bad before the therapy started that I'd have gladly accepted a 10% increase of the risk for cancer, in exchange for feeling better again.

Now you're all up to date, and this blog will return to its usual shenanigans. Unless you have questions - then let me know, and I'll try to answer them!