A special gift

Hey all

I don’t celebrate Valentines Day, so this is not about that. This morning I was listening to Radio 4 and they were discussing organ donation, and the fact that they still need more people to sign up to the register.

I know that some people have personal reasons against it, so I am not saying everyone should, but my personal opinion is that I would like to think that death is not in vain and if you can help someone then do it. There are so many people waiting for transplants and of course no-one wants to die, but it does happen. It reminded me of a few weeks ago when marathon talk had an interview with a man who was about to run his 11th London Marathon since having a heart transplant. I found it so inspiring- I love hearing about how famous and speedy runners train, but hearing how the average person overcame such a huge barrier is amazing. You can download it here.

Anyway, I won’t go on, but if you want to sign up to the donor list then you can do it online, here. You must tell your family your wishes, because it seems they still need to give permission even if you are on the register. So, if you believe in it, maybe spend a few minutes today filling out the form and telling your family about giving that special gift.

Onto normal ramblings:

I am currently enjoying a cup of Bengal Spice tea. I loved the Gingerbread tea I got from the blogger secret santa, but alas used all the teabags and it seems to be a seasonal flavour. I had seen this tea on i-herb, but had not got around to ordering any. Anyway, today I met Andy for a Starbucks in the afternoon (2 for 1 using the loyalty card) and there is a little health food shop right next to it. We popped in and they had a pack of 10 (for 99p which is a bargain), so at least I get to try instead of ordering it  from the USA. Anyway, it tastes, in all seriousness, like I am drinking a Starbucks cinnamon roll. No joke. This tea is spicy and sweet. I don’t ever add sugar or sweetener to tea, but it does taste like it has some syrup or something. Anyway, next time I am going to make it into a latte as I think it would be perfect for that.

I have been baking:

I had some friends over and one of them gets migraines from chocolate. I mentioned carob to her, and she had never heard of it, so I took it upon myself to make her some carob chip cookies (half also with dried cherries- the bag is separating them!)- she loved them! 🙂 I used the millies cookie recipe that I got from Lucy’s blog before- perfect.

I also made some fudge:

Peanut butter and some beyond dark chocolate drops (found these again in Sainsbury’s- hooray). (We did also have pittas, veggie crudités, grapes and strawberries- we are not all bad!).

I made something healthy for dinner, don’t worry!

Tofu/ pesto quinoa and broccoli. It needs perfecting, but basically I cooked some quinoa (30g dry), whizzed up some silken tofu (about a third of the pack) with a few tsp meridian pesto, then mixed in the quinoa. I put some broccoli in a baking dish and topped it with the tofu/pesto/quinoa mix, and baked for 20 mins. Then I topped it with pine nuts. It was tasty, but I think it needed some more pesto in there.

And after seeing Lucy make some yummy sounding peanut dip, that is what I did for lunch today.

I mixed up peanut flour with cinnamon and almond milk, and had it with apple and wholemeal pitta to dip. Very tasty indeed.

Finally- a few of you have asked about my op. Well, it’s not great news- I don’t have a date but have been told the deadline (their waiting list limit) would be mid-April. I have been put down on the cancellation list, so I am hoping for that. I did see my lovely GP last week and she was not impressed to say the least when I told her about my latest hospital appointment, so she has encouraged me to complain to the hospital. I do feel bad about complaining, because coming from another strand of the public sector I know about how there is never enough money in the budget and everyone does work really hard. And I know that I am lucky because what I have is easily solved and not life-threatening. But at the same time it is my health and my GP did point out to me that the last doctor I saw was not very professional. Anyway, I don’t want to get into it here. It is weird because if we have a problem with our internet/ gas/ shopping then I would complain (in a nice way- I am not swearing at people down the phone or anything- a few years ago we had an awful saga with British Gas where our boiler kept breaking and they kept saying they had fixed it but it only worked for a day and then went, and of course no-one could come out for 3 days, and it was for about 3 months over winter- I won’t ramble on) but for some reason I don’t feel altogether comfortable complaining to the hospital. Also I would not send food back in a restaurant for the fear of spit even though I am sure that actually never happens in real life, only on TV!

How are you with complaining? What is your style?

How do you feel about organ donation?