I had the same thought. 'I'll switch on a candle for you', I said to a friend a day or so ago. It doesn't have the same ring to it as lighting a candle, but I can no longer have flames in the house!
It's not the candle that is the prayer, no indeed! It's just a visual sign to remember to pray, off and on through the evening. The actual circumstances and names and details of the request are unknown to me; I don't need that. I just hold the situation in my thoughts, asking for God's blessing and mercy for the people concerned.
So that's my tiny spiritual change for this week; to remember to pray for others.
I dug out a recipe for lamb koftas - goodness me, I posted this in February 2012! - and a good thing too because I can't find the page I ripped out of the magazine. It all went very well until I started to fry the little patties and then everything began to fall apart. Literally.
So we had lamb mince for lunch, with Mediterranean-style flavours. I found a little tin labelled 'harissa' in a corner of the shelves - wow, that stuff packs a punch! I'm glad I was fairly delicate in adding it to the kofta mince with a tin of chopped tomatoes and some tinned chickpeas!
Afterwards I thought I'd sit outside in the sun, in a sheltered spot, with a little tea tray. BB was mowing, so I made my tea and washed up a few bits while he finished. I was treated to a delightful little comedy scene; he paused, looked up, and made best speed with the mower straight to the shed, pausing only to wave at a neighbour while emptying the grass box into the garden waste bin. Over the fence I could see the neighbour's rotary drier shaking as a pair of arms stripped the washing off it at a tremendous rate.
The skies were darkening and heavy drops of rain were splattering the patio. As soon as the mowing machine and washing were all safely stowed away, and everyone was indoors, the sun came out and it was all just as it had been five minutes before...
British weather...
Chopin, Raindrop Prelude, played by Martha Argerich
His recipe uses Chinese noodles, salmon, teriyaki sauce from a bottle or home-made, pak choi, tenderstem broccoli, spring onions, stock, red chillis and liads of garnishes like fresh coriander and crispy onions and bean sprouts.
Mine was sort of similar, at least regarding the stock and teriyaki sauce. Two out of eight is pretty good for me when I'm 'following ' a recipe. I did ignore all the garnishes.
I used loch trout, Japanese straight-to-wok noodles, a pinch of dried chilli flakes, carrots cut into short thin sticks, broccoli florets, and finely shredded carrots, a sachet of blue dragon sticky teriyaki sauce.
Having straight-to-wok noodles instead of dried ones meant I had to rethink the cooking order... marinade the fish (I skinned the fillets first), chop veg, bring slightly less water to the boil.
Drop in the fish and marinade, add all the veg except the cabbage, simmer 5 minutes, add cabbage and noodles and simmer another couple of minutes until three noodles were hot, and the fish was cooked.
It all looked pretty good and tasted as though that was how it might be meant to taste... more or less, but not as pretty as John's picture!
This afternoon has been a good one for weather watching. 'Rain moving across the Southern counties from the west', the say on the television. Several times today it really was raining at the west side of the house, the back, but not at the front. The sky had a band of billowing white clouds along the horizon, a broad band of clear beautiful blue sky, and then a bank of uniformly dark, uncompromisingly grey clouds above.
Then you'd look again and the skies were totally different.
There was a sudden clap of thunder, then... nothing.
A sudden pelting of little pellets of white hail skittering along the road and pavements in the rising wind, which vanished as quickly as it had arrived.
Bright sun for half an hour, then three minutes of rain.
The weather seemed bewitched! I had thought of going out, but I'm glad that we didn't.
Boud often references exercise videos by April and her mother Aiko on her blog. I tripped across the Japanese 'Radio Taiso' 3 minute exercise programme, which is broadcast every day, and followed by many many Japanese people in their offices, schools, homes and out in parks.
Here's April and Aiko explaining some of the background and demonstrating the exercises
Monday; 52 tiny changes for a quieter mind: this week it is all about taking a rest, a proper rest, away from screens and scrolling and working and busy busy busy busy.
Disconnect for a little while once a week; have a leisurely bath, or go for a gentle walk, read a lovely book, listen to music, or just sit without feeling you ought to be doing something useful. You are doing something useful; you are looking after yourself!
....
I'm working on the next Quilt as you go patch
I've done needle-turn applique to add the flowers, and I'm using green embroidery thread and stem stich to fill in the space with leaf shapes.
Every scrappy stash-buster quilt seems to create smaller scraps! Where does it all end? I'm using an old matress protector as the padding for the QAYG patches, so now I have scraps from that as well...then inspiration struck;
I have made an Extremely Portable project kit from a sweetie tin.
I've got scraps of fabric and mattress protector, leather thimble, spool of thread, thread cutter, pins and some self-threading needles. Plus card templates. I'm using English Paper Piecing, with a scrap of mattress protector as the 'paper'. The finished patches are about the size of a stamp.
In due course I'll make another project pouch from the patches... I suspect that day could be a long way into the future. That's ok. I've come to the conclusion I like starting things and doing things more than finishing them. Which bodes ill for the current half-a-hundred UFOs (UnFinished Objects) scattered around the house...
