A Creative Spirit
For this week's #foodiefriday, I decided to focus on Bacalau (salted cod) because in Portugal, Christmas is not Christmas without it. I don't know why, because it is as stiff as a board, smells disgusting, and looks about as appetising as the prospect of munching on cardboard. In fact, it’s so stiff that it has... Continue Reading →
If we were having coffee or maybe a cocktail or three, I'd tell you that this week I've felt in limbo. Going through the motions of my daily activities. There in body but not in mind. Treading water as I wait for the impending, dreaded endoscopy and colonoscopy on Wednesday. It's only a routine check... Continue Reading →
If we were having coffee, I'd share my excitement at a major breakthrough with my physio... Yep, after weeks of practising different exercises, I can finally manoeuvre myself into a kneeling position. Okay, it is not the most graceful descent, but it's a start. The useless, incompetent surgeon who performed my total knee replacement told... Continue Reading →
If we were having coffee, I'd tell you last week was a strange week. As I write this on Sunday, we should be in the UK, but our youngest grandchild contracting chickenpox put paid to that, and we had to cancel our plans....pooh! Ho hum, so rather than sit around feeling glum, we made other... Continue Reading →
Let's talk about food! Chestnuts roasting by an open fire ... not quite, but you get my drift. When we were in the UK, we never ate chestnuts... it wasn't a thing. However, in Portugal, we quickly discovered there is even a day dedicated to them: Dia de São Martinho, celebrated on November 11th, which... Continue Reading →
Last Sunday was Remembrance Sunday and as I watched people laying poppy wreaths at the cenotaph, we are reminded: On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month....we shall remember them. https://www.youtube.com/live/jqckTaACroA?si=xDDcVUKZNpsCQ-1U&t=2164 and the haunting sound of a lone bugle brought to mind a poem I wrote many years ago, and with... Continue Reading →
If we were having coffee, I'd tell you my physio sessions are going well ... well, sort of. The painful tendinitis in my right hip had almost disappeared until I started driving our manual transmission car. A couple of journeys in, pressing the clutch aggravated the tendinitis, so it felt like two steps forward and... Continue Reading →
Seriously, I think I have a better chance of flying to the moon than having any meaningful conversation in Portuguese. If I manage to find the right words to ask a question, I rarely understand the reply. When people talk to me, my brain empties and my mind goes blank, leaving me staring at them... Continue Reading →
It doesn't seem possible that a week ago today we were visiting our family who live in France. Although it rained EVERY day for most of the day, it was great to spend time with the family, especially since I knew it would probably be about six months before we saw them again. At the... Continue Reading →
If we were having coffee, I'd tell you it has been a busy week or so. The highlight: we celebrated our 50th wedding anniversary on the 18th October followed by a trip to see our family in France more on that next week. Mr. Piglet secretly planned a boat trip from Olhao to the Ria... Continue Reading →
While on a boat trip to one of the islands on the Ria Formosa the boat's skipper proudly introduced us to these slimey critters. Sea cucumbers or “Sea rats” as they are aptly nicknamed by some fishers and divers because of how they move and feed—slowly crawling over the seabed, cleaning up waste and debris... Continue Reading →
For this week's Food on Friday topic, I want to experiment using alternatives to refined sugar so I can bake diabetic friendly cakes and cookies. I have a vague idea in theory, but am clueless in practice. I needed to find a sugar replacement. In one cookbook of diabetic recipes, Agave syrup was recommended, but... Continue Reading →
If we were having coffee, I'd tell you I had my hair cut and coloured this week, and the hairdresser made a right pig's ear of the cut. I usually have my hair styled in a long bob, so what did she do? Cut my hair almost level with the bottom of my ear lobes!... Continue Reading →
If we were having coffee, I'd mention it has been another busy week, which included a chance meeting with a dear friend whom we'd lost touch with. Our misinterpretation of the potentially complicated reason for their silence meant we had not reached out again. However, their apparent silence was not due to a lack of... Continue Reading →
For this week's Food on Friday, I want to discuss managing obesity, successes and weight loss failures, and the latest trend in what I have heard tagged as fat jabs to help you lose weight. I am obese and have been for years. Despite my best efforts to exercise (I have limited mobility), the excess... Continue Reading →
If we were having coffee, I'd tell you it's been a long week with hardly a moment to catch my breath! I don't know about you, but for me, some weeks drag as one day slowly melds into the next, and while I set out with good intentions that a quiet week at home should... Continue Reading →
Luckily for me, a close neighbour is an artist and has begun offering lessons. Delighted, I immediately enrolled and started this painting back in March. After showing her some rough sketches, we laid down a textured surface on the canvas using a combination of Gesso and Crackle paste. In the following lesson, after I'd sketched... Continue Reading →
Yes, this is a serious question. I ask because whenever I see something sweet, it triggers an irritating voice in my head, which keeps niggling like the spoilt toddler intent on getting its own way until you lose the will to live and comply just for a quiet life. Recently, the niggling came in the... Continue Reading →
I don't know what I expected, but my expectations were way off target. You know when you have a romantic idea fixed in your mind? Well, mine was that a candlelight concert would be held outside under the stars as I'd seen on my FB feed. Or did I imagine it? Now I don't know... Continue Reading →
At last—it’s September and sanity slowly returns. When we first came here, the Western Algarve was still undiscovered and far removed from the well-worn tourist hotspots further east. Now, summers are chaos. The great migration is ending at last: kids back to school, and the zillions of sunburned, flip-flop–wearing visitors have packed up their inflatable... Continue Reading →
Piglet in Portugal 