Transportable food

Individual Sweet potato and spinach frittatas

We need easy transportable food- Frittatas

When we orienteer we come back hungry, and usually tired.
 It's great to have food ready to go and easy to eat.

One of my favorite go to recipes for this situation is individual frittatas. I make them with whatever I have in the fridge or cupboard.

Today we have.... Spinach and Sweet Potato

This week I had some really crisp spinach which was on sale when I was shopping, and some left over sweet potato that I had roasted for a salad the day before. So in they went.

I decided to add some nutmeg as it goes so well with sweet potato and I was pleased with the effect.

No grizzles were received, so I think others thought it worked pretty well too.

The recipe

Ingredients

Half a bunch of spinach
1 1/2 cups cooked sweet potato cubed
8 eggs
1 cup grated mozzarella cheese
1 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Nutmeg
1 clove minced Garlic
Pepper to taste

Ready to Cook

Method 

Heat oven to 180c
Soak spinach in boiling water 2 min (till just wilting)
Drain and blanch in cold water
Chop spinach roughly.
Combine all ingredients
Spoon into muffin molds.
Bake approx 30 minutes
They should be browned and be set when done. You can use a skewer to check.
Insert into one frittata. If it comes out dry then it's done.
Remove from oven but keep in muffin pan for about 10 min
Then turn onto rack to cool.

Eat and enjoy. 

Cryptic Clown

My latest favorite cryptic clue

Cryptic bonding time

Yes, we've been at it again.
The cryptic puzzle on the weekend is one of our bonding times. It takes our two brains working together as a team to solve it.

We both throw in our thoughts and bounce off of each other's inspiration.

Soggy jester

My favorite cryptic crossword clue from Saturday's puzzle was  12 down.
"Suppression of Spooner's soggy jester"

So what was our thinking?

What is a spoonerism?

Ok so a spoonerism is when you transpose the starts of two words ( like blushing crow instead of crushing blow). We figured we were looking for one of these.

Jester =Clown

Trevor quickly thought of clown as the answer for Jester, but we couldn't seem to stop thinking of wet for soggy.

Soggy = Damp

 It took a visit from Thom to assist us with the last few answers ( including this one). Of course soggy is damp.!!!

Laugh till you stop

The joy of a cryptic puzzle is surely when you find the answer and it makes you laugh with surprise and delight.

I just loved the damp clown turning into clamp down.

If you haven't tried doing cryptic crosswords I highly recommend it...especially if someone else you like will be a part of your team to solve them.

Padlocks on a Bridge

There is something so romantic about padlocks on a bridge.

I just love the idea of visiting a beautiful place with your one special person and marking your relationship in this way. 

Find the spot. Lock on a beautiful padlock. Throw away the key.  

Together forever.

I'd love to see all the padlocks on the Pont des Arts bridge in Paris, but I fear that I will be too late as it is a safety risk due to the weight of them all.

Tonight I went for a walk in Brisbane and finally made it to the South Side of the river to have a brief look around. 

On the way I found these locks on the bridge.
They might be pretty sparse compared to Paris - but I was delighted.

Locks on the Kurilpa Bridge in Brisbane.

I thought that this one was particularly beautiful and worth a photo on its own.

Who uses a combination lock for this purpose?

I could not  help but wonder what Kaz and JB were thinking when they attached this combo lock on the 13th of May...

In this time of permanent tattoos were they reluctant to declare permanent love?
Did they think it a great idea to declare temporary love that could be removed if either of them felt like it?

Somehow that one just seems not such a lovely romantic gesture- but maybe it is more realistic.

I'm now on the lookout for a lovely old lock of my own to take away with me next year.  I will dream of attaching it with my man,  and throwing away the key. If you see a lovely lock somewhere that fits the picture feel free to let me know.

Blaugust is over

Learning to Blog has created an enjoyable learning curve.

Well, Blaugust is over and therefore there is no expectation of daily Blauging any more, although no-one ever put pressure on.

Learning to use a Galaxy Note at the same time has, I suspect, made it a little more complicated, and has certainly raised the need for careful editing, as the interpretive text is a bit of a challenge.

I've found the experience enjoyable , as learning almost always is.

I've discovered that there is a whole other world out there to learn about, and that writing a good blog is one challenge, and getting people to read it is another.

I've also discovered the joy of receiving comments on the blog.

Blogging has helped me to reflect.

The blog has forced me to reflect a little. It reminds me of the months when  I put up a photo a day on Facebook  http://fatmumslim.com.au/category/photo-a-day-2/#
The exercise encouraged me to stop and notice the little things in life.  With the photos it was physical things I was noticing.   With the blog it is more the mental.

Thank you for coming along with me

I would just like to say thanks to those of you who have come along on the journey. I appreciate your encouragement and I've enjoyed your feedback too. 

The future of luvapuzzle

I thought I would struggle to find things to blog about, but I have a growing list of ideas.   Some are concepts that I would like to discuss, some are more practical.  And using the blog to record travel experiences has worked pretty well, so I will probably keep on doing that too, when we have a chance to enjoy that. 

So the future may well hold blogs regarding:

• Travel
• Things people have said that I'd like to explore
• Recipe discoveries
• Orienteering
• Geocaching
• Life skills
• Places that interest me
• Cultural phenomena
• Anything else that takes my fancy.

I hope to keep learning about how to write a good blog, and to continue to improve. 

Thanks for coming along on the journey so far, and I look forward to your company in the future.

How to waste a lot of time orienteering - part 1 (control 1-2 Para Wirra)

How did I mess up control 1-2 yesterday? 

Para Wirra-control 1-2

First let me show you the map. We were at Para Wirra based at the north oval.

Start to control 1, 2 and 3

Now let me show you what I did (taking 37 minutes)

My GPS track from my watch (above) shows that on 3 or 4 occasions I must have been sooooo close, but I continued to waste time there. This cost me about 30 minutes (and the win).

So what did I do wrong?

I think there are at least 4 things I could have done better.

I didn't think about the contours.

I was watching the vegetation and watching for the top of the spur, but didn't picture what the other side of the spur should look like.

As I came across the top of the spur I should have been expecting to see a gentle gully on my left and known that the control would be on rocks to the north of that gully.  

I ran across the top of the gentle gully and started searching on the spur next to it (to the south).

I didn't look up.

When I was so close to the control so many times I should have seen it anyway.  If I had looked up I probably would have.

Noticing other orienteers-1

I should have noticed the lack of other orienteers.  If no one else was near me I must be in the wrong area.  I knew that I had started ahead of many others and that they would be coming along.  The fact that I hadn't seen them close by meant I was in the wrong place.

Noticing other orienteers-2

I did see other orienteers a couple of times in the distance. They were all heading away up the hill,  from my left.  Why didn't I think about where they had been (control 2) and where they were going (control 3)?

So that's my lesson for today. The take away message is:

• Think about the contours
• Look up occasionally
• Notice other orienteers

Unfortunately this was not the only control that I didn't do well yesterday, so more analysis to come.