why not both?
Aug. 30th, 2017 11:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareinaToday is the only day this week that I had time to do more harvesting of the produce of our estate, and I was torn between drying more nettles (so far I have one jar full, and we went through three or four jars last winter), or more black currants (the large jar is about 3/4 full and we went through the full jar and a small over-flow jar last winter). But I didn't want to dry both at once in the dehydrator. However, we don't yet have any of the black currants in the freezer, so when I went out the door at 18:00 to start harvesting, I decided to collect both and dry the nettles.
Since there are lots of tiny nettles starting to grow in in the areas we did landscaping this summer I started with them, and managed to fill one yoghurt bucket with tiny nettle leaves in about 45 minutes before I ran out of areas near the house that needed nettles removed. Then I went down to the black currant bushes, and in another 45 minutes filled 3 yoghurt buckets with berries. By that point I was out of empty buckets in my bag, and the light was starting to fade,so I went in to the house and washed up the nettles and popped them into the dehydrator. One well packed yoghurt bucket of leaves fills only 3.5 trays of the dehydrator, and the last time that I tried drying such small nettle leaves it was less than two hours to get them done. Since it was only 18:00 by the time I pressed the on-switch on the dehydrator I realized that I would have time to get those done and put the black currants in before bed. So I cleaned the berries and set them into the fridge for later and amused myself on the computer for a couple of hours (and an extra half an hour--I lost track of time). Sure enough, when I went to check on them the nettles were ready to come out, so I put them away, cleaned the racks, and then did the boiling treatment on the currants. I have found that if one puts the berries straight into the dehydrator without pre-treating them they take ages to dry, but if one pops them into boiling water for a minute first the skins crack, and they dry in only 12 to 24 hours.
When I did the last batch of berries, on Sunday, I saved the water in which I had boiled the berries, as it has turned a lovely shade of pink, and I decided that there was no point in throwing out that much nutrition, when I could use it. I had enough to fill two glass milk bottles with it, one of which I had used up before today (it is particularly nice as the liquid on my muesli in the mornings, instead of my usual water). But since I still had the second bottle full left, and we have only two glass milk bottles in the fridge, I decided to put that bottle into the pot for boiling the berries today, along with some fresh water. This time I also took the liquid that spun out of the berries in the salad spinner back into the boiling water. As a result the two milk bottles that just went into the fridge full of cooled and strained berry-boiled water are a much darker, more vibrant shade of pink than the last batch. It will be interesting to see how it tastes on my muesli in the morning.
In other news, I went to see my physical therapist for the first time in a very long time yesterday. I have had, over the past few months, a few occasions when I went to move one of my legs and something felt wrong in my hip and kinda hurt a little, but shaking the leg out made it feel better, and each time it happened, other than thinking "oh, that is kinda a bad sign", I didn't really think much of it, and didn't even bother to make a note of it. However, on Saturday night's yoga session while moving from one lunge to another, my hip gave a sharper flash of discomfort, accompanied by a popping sound that was loud enough that I heard it even though I wasn't wearing my hearing aids. It clearly wasn't something really major as I could still move my leg, but whatever happened was still enough of a problem that it kinda hurt to move the leg certain directions, even though there was no pain or discomfort when I hold still, but I had to be very careful which way I rolled over when sleeping that night so as not to engage that muscle/tendon, or it would hurt.
Therefore I emailed my physical therapist first thing Sunday morning to ask if he had any appointments available this week, or, at least, soon. Much to my delight, when I checked mail at 23:00 on Sunday evening, he had just replied saying "how about Tuesday?", so I promptly replied saying "perfect".
The hip continued to require careful, gentle movements during the day on Sunday, but by Monday was so back to normal that I didn't hesitate to do acroyoga with Ellinor, and didn't have any problems with the hip, either. But, of course, I went to the appointment anyway, as it wasn't something that I want to have happen again. Given that the last time I saw him about a hip issue he said the problem was underdeveloped muscles in my butt (when compared to muscles in my legs), I wasn't really surprised when he said pretty much the same thing this time--thought it is a different expression of the problem, and he gave me different exercises for it. Hopefully this time I will not only strengthen those muscles enough to keep this from happening again, but I will also learn how to use those muscles all of the time, rather than doing movements that should use those muscles with leg muscles instead.
Since there are lots of tiny nettles starting to grow in in the areas we did landscaping this summer I started with them, and managed to fill one yoghurt bucket with tiny nettle leaves in about 45 minutes before I ran out of areas near the house that needed nettles removed. Then I went down to the black currant bushes, and in another 45 minutes filled 3 yoghurt buckets with berries. By that point I was out of empty buckets in my bag, and the light was starting to fade,so I went in to the house and washed up the nettles and popped them into the dehydrator. One well packed yoghurt bucket of leaves fills only 3.5 trays of the dehydrator, and the last time that I tried drying such small nettle leaves it was less than two hours to get them done. Since it was only 18:00 by the time I pressed the on-switch on the dehydrator I realized that I would have time to get those done and put the black currants in before bed. So I cleaned the berries and set them into the fridge for later and amused myself on the computer for a couple of hours (and an extra half an hour--I lost track of time). Sure enough, when I went to check on them the nettles were ready to come out, so I put them away, cleaned the racks, and then did the boiling treatment on the currants. I have found that if one puts the berries straight into the dehydrator without pre-treating them they take ages to dry, but if one pops them into boiling water for a minute first the skins crack, and they dry in only 12 to 24 hours.
When I did the last batch of berries, on Sunday, I saved the water in which I had boiled the berries, as it has turned a lovely shade of pink, and I decided that there was no point in throwing out that much nutrition, when I could use it. I had enough to fill two glass milk bottles with it, one of which I had used up before today (it is particularly nice as the liquid on my muesli in the mornings, instead of my usual water). But since I still had the second bottle full left, and we have only two glass milk bottles in the fridge, I decided to put that bottle into the pot for boiling the berries today, along with some fresh water. This time I also took the liquid that spun out of the berries in the salad spinner back into the boiling water. As a result the two milk bottles that just went into the fridge full of cooled and strained berry-boiled water are a much darker, more vibrant shade of pink than the last batch. It will be interesting to see how it tastes on my muesli in the morning.
In other news, I went to see my physical therapist for the first time in a very long time yesterday. I have had, over the past few months, a few occasions when I went to move one of my legs and something felt wrong in my hip and kinda hurt a little, but shaking the leg out made it feel better, and each time it happened, other than thinking "oh, that is kinda a bad sign", I didn't really think much of it, and didn't even bother to make a note of it. However, on Saturday night's yoga session while moving from one lunge to another, my hip gave a sharper flash of discomfort, accompanied by a popping sound that was loud enough that I heard it even though I wasn't wearing my hearing aids. It clearly wasn't something really major as I could still move my leg, but whatever happened was still enough of a problem that it kinda hurt to move the leg certain directions, even though there was no pain or discomfort when I hold still, but I had to be very careful which way I rolled over when sleeping that night so as not to engage that muscle/tendon, or it would hurt.
Therefore I emailed my physical therapist first thing Sunday morning to ask if he had any appointments available this week, or, at least, soon. Much to my delight, when I checked mail at 23:00 on Sunday evening, he had just replied saying "how about Tuesday?", so I promptly replied saying "perfect".
The hip continued to require careful, gentle movements during the day on Sunday, but by Monday was so back to normal that I didn't hesitate to do acroyoga with Ellinor, and didn't have any problems with the hip, either. But, of course, I went to the appointment anyway, as it wasn't something that I want to have happen again. Given that the last time I saw him about a hip issue he said the problem was underdeveloped muscles in my butt (when compared to muscles in my legs), I wasn't really surprised when he said pretty much the same thing this time--thought it is a different expression of the problem, and he gave me different exercises for it. Hopefully this time I will not only strengthen those muscles enough to keep this from happening again, but I will also learn how to use those muscles all of the time, rather than doing movements that should use those muscles with leg muscles instead.