a stunning array of firey delights

Look at this stunning array of dragon's teeth! So shiny and RED! We've strung them together with a needle and multiple layers of cotton threaded through the stalks. Very easy to do.

Last year Meyles took seeds from a supermarket chilli and planted them in our garden. He did this because the plants we got from the nursery were always different chillies to what we wanted. So the only way to ensure we got the right plant, was to grow it yourself from seed taken from the actual chilli.

Here they are hanging in the laundry window where the sun comes in. They will dry out here (hopefully) and get used at our leisure. Next weekend we will probably have another string full!

a quirky mix of graffiti and food in melbourne

A sign makes claims about the quality of the coffee within. After an appropriate sampling, I am happy to report that the coffee was, in fact, 'bloody good'.

Breakfasts in the Centre Way laneway are squeezed into tiny cafes with barely enough room to stir coffee. The atmosphere buzzes as a hoard of hungry patrons find their breakfast specials.



Centre Way laneway at breakfast time. The pipe-smoking accordian player (left) adds his musical lilt for the diners' pleasure.



I now consider myself 'educated' when it comes to ordering lattes in coffee shops. Especially in Italian coffee shops. Lucky I don't drink lattes.



Hosier St Laneway is a cobbled-stone street which has been colourfully decorated by graffiti artists. Access to the MoVida spanish tapas restaurant is from this lane.




This graffiti wall hosts helpful messages which are a refreshingly positive type of graffiti.



The graffiti itself has become a tourist attraction.

Tourists click cameras as they view the graffiti. Much more interesting that the otherwise gray old walls of the inner city.

Mountains of gelato in Lygon Street tempt the passer-by.

Various types of pasta are displayed in a shop window in Lygon Street.



Italian food is the rage in Lygon Street with 'Godfather' movie thoughts mixed with the scene.



This busy Italian eatery hosted a long bar where patrons would sit and eat. Each was served a bowl of spaghetti, a chunk of buttered bread and a glass of watermelon granita.

mean green and lean

We have been enjoying these fabulous smoothies for breakfast lately. They are satisfying and full of all the good stuff. 

Ingredients:  a frozen banana, a whole apple, 2 scoops of vanilla protein powder, 1/2 cup water and  200g of fresh-picked-out-of-the-garden-5-minutes-ago spinach.  Yes, spinach!  (would you believe)

throw everything in the Thermomix & blitz

now you have breakfast guaranteed to satisfy 2 hungry adults and supply them with enough energy for gardening, washing, cooking and shopping all day, plus perhaps some extra curricular duties as well....

pour into a couple of sexy glasses. you might need a spoon too.  it's the consistency of a thickshake.

take with your favourite person, in the sun, on a still, clear saturday morning outside in the garden

i wanted to show you this because it's so beautiful. this is a crop of onions and just the environment to enjoy your mean, green and lean breakfast in.  

Note:  you might want to just clean your teeth before speaking to anybody, as spinach has a way of hiding in the cracks of your teeth. very unsexy.

a little taste of hell

The 'Before' shot. That smile will soon disappear. Because I am about to step into that hot-as-hell sauna behind me. You have to wet your hair before you get in. You must also have water on hand to drink, and don't wear contact lenses unless you want them to melt into your eyeballs.







Me and bro Steve. Gorillas in the mist. 80 degrees Celsius. 

I'm still smiling at this point.












A bath of cold water is just outside the sauna which you can plunge yourself into just for the hell of it.

Incidentally my dear old dad here turned 81 years old last week. How's that?






I never would have believed how good it could feel to tip a bucket of cold water over my own head! 

Back in for more punishment. The temperature gauge hits 88 degrees when we tip water on the rocks to create steam. Breathe slowly through your mouth and keep your eyes closed....







It's very hot in here!

The heat source. Volcanic rocks are heated and a pot of water keeps moisture in the air. The scooper thing hanging there is to tip water on those there rocks to create steam which hits you like a brick when activated.






The heat source is a fire built into an old LPG gas cylinder. The cylinder is positioned inside, but the opening for the fire is accessible from outside the sauna. It's a very clever and effective design.  The walls of the sauna are insulated. Wooden benches are inside and a couple of small windows allow you to look outside while you're inside.

It takes 20 minutes to light the fire and get the sauna ready for use. 



But afterwards.... it feels fantastic. Relaxed. Clean. Like all the sin has been burnt out of you!

Here's a couple of my damn fine nephews with Meyles. Sexy aren't they? Runs in the family....

3 steps to achieve good bowel health

Bowel health is pretty important in my family. 

Turns out that bowel cancer is one of the most common ills of the western world. Not a very good claim to fame, is it? Here's to good bowel health and a light hearted approach to enjoying it, regardless of whether you are a 'wadder' or a 'scruncher'.



3 steps to bowel health 

Step 1:  Marry the right person - i.e. someone who loves to garden and so you have a ready supply of beautiful greens and don't have to take that limp, 2-week-old stuff with brown edges you find in the supermarket.

Broccholi












Snow peas

Step 2:  Eat Fresh:  Snow peas, sugar snaps, spring onion

 More broccholi














Step 3:  Wait


Wad and / or scrunch







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this week in my history

This week I have –

<< Painted this. I did it for my dear old dad who turns 81 this week and is currently full-throttle on backyard chooks and gets a couple of dozen eggs a week from his chooks.  I pinched the idea from a picture I saw on Facebook.  I can’t wait to give it to him next weekend.

>>Saw my first wild dingo.  Walking at lunchtime on the bushwalking track at work.  It was a surprise.  It was a sandy colour with a bit of a bushy tail.  White tip on the end of the tail.  Pointed features, including pointy ears sticking up on top of its head. It was about the size of a… um… a dingo, I suppose!  He came out of the bush and ran across the road a few feet in front of us – maybe 20 feet – and disappeared into the bush on the other side. Very exciting.

>> Went to my usual Tuesday night uke group.  There were almost 50 other ukes in the room playing along to the uke tunes. We strummed along together to ‘Billie Jean’ and ‘I can hear music’ amongst others.  It’s a feel-good time where everyone can sing along and play. I also found the uke chords from Mr Google for Queen’s beautiful song “Love of my Life” which I have been enjoying by myself at home.


Passed my 2nd yearly breast exam since surgery!  Yayyy!  I have healthy tits!  Yes I do!  We bought a mirror to celebrate. It’s freaking huge. Weighs a tonne (well, 35 kilos actually) and fell off the wall about 2 seconds after we hung it up.  It’s OK and the marks on the wall can be fixed. But we will need a chain the size of a ship’s-anchor-chain to hang the thing on the wall.

How decadent. But a celebratory gift to myself for having healthy tits.

Note to women:  look after your tits.
Note to men:  Look after yours too. Breast cancer is not only a women’s disease.

don't get fructosed

Over the last 10 years I lost 30kg healthily, and maintained it. But more recently, it seemed that no matter what I did, the scales just kept tipping in the wrong direction. Until now. 

Up to now I have stepped up exercise, half starved myself, eaten lo carb, and nearly fainted from lack of food. I am only interested in healthy weightloss, but nothing I’ve tried lately seems to be working like it has in the past. The scales just keep tipping up and up in the wrong direction. Until now.

I’ve heard about the evils of sugar in the diet.  Specifically a TYPE of sugar – fructose.  Fructose makes up 50% of table sugar.  Consider these claims:

1. 50 years ago Aussies ate about 1kg of sugar a year each. Now we eat that much every week.
2. Fructose overrides the switch in your brain that tells your stomach when you’re full.  
3. Fructose is a type of sugar that is not used by the body for energy so gets converted to fat and stored in the fat cells.
4. Fructose is in just about everything, including fruit, dried fruit, fruit juice, table sugar, maple syrup and honey.

So I decided to just focus on cutting fructose at breakfast time and try cooking with glucose when required.  I made my own muesli of nuts, seeds, coconut and oats (no dried fruit).  I also bought a jar of glucose syrup to cook with (replacing ordinary sugar) and also used a bit of Splenda (fake sugar) in cooking.

Within a day I realised my belly was flatter – and I never realised how bloated I was all the time. Within a few days, unexpectedly, my hips stopped aching like I was an old woman. The black rings under my eyes disappeared.  However, I did spend a few days feeling woolly-headed, which is what happens to me when my body starts to change gear. 

I also eat pretty clean anyway, so it’s been not a huge change for me. I also exercise regularly and have done for years. I still have a small, sweet snack every day – made with non-fructose sugar.  I also notice that my energy levels have increased and I even fancy that my moods are also more buoyant. 

And the weight?  At first I thought it must be a coincidence.  Then I got cautiously optimistic. Now I am excited. Yes.  I’ve dropped 2.5 kilos.  In about a month.  I have never lost weight that fast before.  

Yesterday someone offered me a beautiful, delicious-looking cupcake.  Which I declined, opting to enjoy a bit of food-porn instead. And today I knocked back cake. This was not hard to do, because I am not hungry and my appetite is not out of control. I have my own sweet snack anyway, which I enjoy. But mostly, I am loving the results I’m getting and don’t want to mess it up.

Mr Google can tell you anything you want to know about fructose. But I started with looking at this website:  Sweet Poison.  
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This blog has sparked interested on Facebook and several people have commented they are going to do their own research. My suggestion is that we share our information below here in comments, and that we only share the results of what we ourselves have tried and tested. Is that a plan? We can learn about this together, and from each other.  
Cardinal Cyn.

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confessions of a helper

Last night I had a discussion with others that made me think about my time as a ‘lay pastor’ (volunteer pastor).  I’ve never exactly spelt this out for people, but my blog-name of ‘Cardinal Cyn’ is also a reference to a time in my life when I studied ministry and did lay pastor-y things.  As a result I have some experience with pastoral care.  

Part of me loved to help others in a sort of pastoral care type of way.

Sounds all warm and fuzzy, but I can tell you it is not.  Among other things, I can remember the awkwardness of visiting someone in hospital after a failed suicide attempt; there seemed to be a plague of depression everywhere I turned; and I once faced a person exhibiting behaviour which was just freaky and weird (screaming, pointing and rocking in church…ffs!) (while sitting on the floor). What would you do?


I kept a journal on pastoral care for a while in order to learn from my own reflections.  Here’s a quote from it:

…There are others however, who don’t seem to grow or who are playing games.  I am concerned with how a person is travelling spiritually and like to encourage them.  But I don’t like being manipulated or played with by people who are excessively needy.  I don’t have a need to be needed, in that sense, and I’m glad about that.

I discovered during this time how much I needed help, myself, from time to time.  It’s hard to hear and see some of the stuff you do, in its raw intensity.  I needed to ‘debrief’ or find a ‘relief valve’, particularly after a tough session.

I found that when in the role of ‘helping’ others  I MUST do stuff in order to look after myself.  Stuff like self-care. Knowing my own limits and boundaries.  Dealing with my own issues so they were not projected inappropriately. It was really important for me to know who I was and be comfortable in my own skin – otherwise I’d get creamed. 

The risk of NOT doing this – of NOT knowing who I am, and NOT dealing with my own stuff - is that all the crap that gets dumped on me from other people goes into me and builds up, to a point of pressure-cooker-meltdown level. If I didn’t have a healthy release valve in place, the crap comes out in unhealthy ways – usually in ways which damage relationships. This is not a long-term recipe for wellness, happiness and health, people. No it is not. Not for me. Not for anyone.

I had to learn how to be well. And not just physically well – but emotionally, mentally, socially, spiritually well.  Prevention is better than cure.  This is what works for me:

• Practice acceptance.  Breathing in the realisation that I can’t change some things or people, and there are probably elements of a situation that I will need to learn to accept. 
• Support.  Allow someone else to stand alongside me to provide “psychological splinting”.
• Time out.  Escape by taking days off, pursuing recreational activities, having a regular diversion, taking part in social activities.  Have some fun.
• Self development. Learning skills and gaining more understanding.  Always reflecting on my own attitudes and behaviours and what I can learn for next time.
• Attending to physical factors such as exercise, rest and diet.
• Plan Strategically.  I always like to have a plan in order to build.

Even so, it takes a special kind of person to survive long-term in such a role. 

Just saying.