Home, Rants&Rambles

Heels

Rolling over in bed before going to sleep should not result in stabbing pain in your heel, yet apparently it’s a thing, plantar fasciitis, for a moderately active woman of a certain age.

Just to re-state the obvious: menopause is crap. Growing old is not for wimps.

A few different factors can lead to heel pain, including sciatica and the heel version of carpel tunnel syndrome but one of the most common causes is plantar fasciitis.

Luckily self-care treatments can help reduce the pain and inflammation linked to plantar fasciitis so I’m going to try the obvious before panic sets in.

plantar fasciitis

The following treatments are available to self-administer at home:

  • Ice: Advice is to apply ice three or four times a day for about 15 minutes at a time. It’s advisable to wrap an ice pack in a damp towel and place it on the heel. Since ice seems to be making things feel worse (though it is the best advice) I’m going to try relaxing with heat packs as well. My coach recommends an alternating sequence of heat and ice.
  • Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs):  NSAISs may also help reduce discomfort and inflammation. Ibuprofen and paracetamol combined are my go-to pain relief so they’re definitely on the menu for the next few days
  • Orthotics: Foot orthotics are custom foot supports to places them in the shoes. Orthotics can support the arch, which helps evenly distribute the weight placed on the heel when a person walks. But since I spend my life in flats, and definitely use decent sports shoes, I’m going to passion these for now
  • Splint: Wearing a splint at night might also help. The splint stretches the arch and calf, and may decrease discomfort. At the moment this sounds like more trouble than it’s worth.
  • Switching activities: It might also be helpful for people to switch from high-impact activities, such as running, to exercise that is easier on the heel. Low-impact options include swimming and walking. Since I hate these and love tennis, this just isn’t going to happen

Exercises

stretching heel pain

Certain stretches can help heel pain.

Plantar fasciitis can disrupt workout routines.

Continuing to partake in certain activities can make heel pain worse, but remaining idle and avoiding exercise is not beneficial.

Exercise is still possible when dealing with plantar fasciitis. The key is to avoid activities that place a lot of force on the heel.

Stretches for plantar fasciitis

According to the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, certain stretches can help reduce heel pain and prevent plantar fasciitis from reoccurring.

People who have plantar fasciitis pain in the morning might want to carry out the following stretches as soon as they wake up.

Seated Fascia Stretch (this worked like a miracle of pain relief for as long as I held the stretch)

  1. Sit in a cross-legged position at the end of the bed or a chair.
  2. Place the affected foot over the knee of the other leg.
  3. Grab the heel of the painful foot with one hand and the toes with the other hand.
  4. Gently pull up on the toes, while at the same time pulling up on the heel. Bending the toes up stretches the fascia.
  5. Bending the ankle up stretches the Achilles tendon, which may help decrease pain.
  6. Hold the stretch for about 10 seconds.
  7. Relax the foot and repeat 10 to 20 times. If both feet are experiencing pain, repeat the exercise on the other foot.

Seated Ankle Pumps (this hurt like hell a few times into the repetition)

  1. Sitting in a chair, hold the leg out straight and flex and extend at the ankle joint.
  2. This exercise stretches both the fascia and the calf muscle.
  3. Hold the stretch for 5 seconds and repeat 10 times on each foot.

Standing Calf Stretch (felt it in my calf but not the heel)

  1. Place both hands on a wall, keep the back leg straight, and place the heel down.
  2. Pull the hips forward towards the wall until the stretch is felt in the back of the lower leg.
  3. Hold for 10 seconds and repeat several times.
  4. If the heel on the opposite leg hurts, repeat the stretch on that leg too.

Medical treatment options

Although home treatments can be enough to decrease heel pain from plantar fasciitis, they might not always have the desired effect.

If home treatment is not successful, a doctor might recommend additional medical treatments, such as:

  • Steroid injections: When heel pain persists, steroid injections are an option. The doctor injects an anti-inflammatory steroid medication into the heel. Frequent steroid injections can weaken the fascia, so injections cannot be given too frequently.
  • Surgery: This can be a possible last resort. There are several different surgical procedures for reducing heel pain. For example, a procedure called a plantar fascia release involves partially cutting the fascia to reduce the tension of the tissue.

Visiting a physiotherapist worked with tennis elbow (from housework rather than tennis) so I may make some appointments with my local recommended physiotherapist to see if she can work on my heel. I’ll certainly try this long before I visit the doctor for injections or the hospital for surgery.

Causes

The plantar fascia is a ligament that runs underneath the soles of the feet. It connects the heel bones to the front of the feet and also supports the arch.

The fascia normally serves as a shock absorber, but repeated stress to the heel can lead to small tears in the tissue. This tissue damage causes inflammation in the fascia known as plantar fasciitis.

There are a few different causes of plantar fasciitis. The ligament can become inflamed due to repeated force from high-impact activities and sports that involve a lot of jumping. Wearing high heels may also place stress on the fascia.

Having a job that requires a lot of standing or walking increases the chances of developing the condition. People with flat feet may also be more likely to develop plantar fasciitis. Flat feet can cause an uneven distribution of weight when someone walks, which puts added stress and pressure on the fascia.

Prevention

comfortable shoes

Choosing comfortable shoes can help reduce symptoms of heel pain.

Stretching can be helpful in decreasing the symptoms of plantar fasciitis and also preventing the condition from developing. In addition to stretching, a few steps might help prevent plantar fasciitis.

People can start by wearing the right shoes. Avoid high heels as they can place stress on the heel. Shoes with a moderate heel and sturdy arch support can help.

Be sure to always wear footwear and avoid being barefoot for long stretches of time. The lack of support could lead to heel pain.

Athletic shoes provide good support and cushion the feet. A 2011 study suggests that running or athletic shoes should be replaced every 500 miles. Start exercise slowly and gradually increase intensity to prevent plantar fasciitis.

Symptoms

The most common symptom of plantar fasciitis is pain in the heel and sometimes the arch of the foot.

The pain usually starts mild, and people often feel it when stepping out of bed in the morning, as well as after sitting for a long period. Although pain levels can vary, discomfort often decreases after walking around for a while.

The pain from plantar fasciitis can last a long time, and complications can develop. Continued inflammation of the fascia can lead to the development of scar tissue. This can make the condition harder to treat.

Plantar fasciitis can also cause pain elsewhere in the body. For example, when someone has heel pain, they might adjust the way they walk without realizing it.

Knee, hip, and back problems can develop due to changing body movements.

Rants&Rambles

Playing

Playing with a website is a fun but frustrating experience.

I cannot stress how grateful I am to the guys at WordPress for making the whole process around building a website so very very straightforward and for introducing me to an entirely new world of themes and widgets.

But as the themes change, widgets stop working so there comes a point where even change averse people like myself are forced to go looking for a new piece of code or widget to replace an existing a now no longer functioning widget.

Looking for feeds from the usual social networking sites, to sit neatly in my left column to the front page of this site was both surprisingly easy and confusing. My attempts to set up a tumblr link resulted in endless posts not only to my website but also through to twitter. Weird.

Pinterest and twitter feeds to the lead page took next to no effort to set up at all. Weirder. & to be honest, I don’t want to link through to Facebook so that’s probably as far as I’ll go.

Now I’ve been reduced to looking online for reviews or articles of the best widgets.

Rants&Rambles

Mythic

There are few things less useful or more commonplace than myths about menstruation, starting with the basic building block idea that women experience a 28 day menstrual cycle.

Seriously? What women, living on what planet? Because I know absolutely no women with a 28 day cycle and I know lots of women.

Saying “women” have a 28 day cycle is a bit like saying “men” have 5 inch dicks and expecting that to mean something.

At best it’s talking about averages, not reality. It doesn’t give any idea of how variable either menstrual cycles or dicks actually are in practice and says nothing at all about how the real life people with said menstrual cycle or dicks actually experience them.

I have never had a 28 day menstrual cycle but for most of my 20s and 30s could be reasonably described as having a 35 day cycle i.e. 4 weeks plus one week of menstruation. As a result each of my pregnancies was automatically calculated by midwives as a couple of weeks overdue, or would have been if we hadn’t adjusted the second time around.

My midwives who could hardly be regarded as ignorant about the whole reproductive system didn’t ask when I missed my period but rather asked for the date of my last period and added 28 days to estimate the missed date to come up with an estimated due date. Since an overdue pregnancy inevitably leads to pressure for inductions or forced labour, it can be an assumption with traumatic consequences.

Unlike many of my friends and one of my daughters, my periods were at least regular as clockwork. For most people the idea of a calendar schedule for periods is more an ambition than a reality. Mostly women have a vague idea of when they’ll start to bleed rather than a firm calendar commitment.

So you may expect a period to start sometime this week, but it could be any day Monday though Wednesday, and each day will require you to be prepared.

For most of my life my periods also followed a fairly straightforward pattern, starting light and never really progressing much beyond. Mostly I had some basic cramps to start with and then nothing. I was lucky. After childbirth my periods became heavier but still relatively easy to manage.

My personal luck meant that I was entirely unprepared for the physical pain my daughters experience with intense cramps, migraines and debilitating blood loss, each and every month. For tiny women, they’re bodies seem pretty extreme. We rapidly acquired paracetamol, ibuprofen, endless hot water bottles and lots of pairs of black pants.

Of course my honeymoon period eventually ended and my physical life fell off the menopausal cliff not that long ago. Whilst I remain relatively regular and true to the 35 day cycle, there is no saying from month to month what that cycle will entail, whether a barely noticeable breakthrough bleeding or full out flooding with enough force to send a tampon shooting out of my vagina with a sudden flush of blood.

Other symptoms come and go, from hot feet at night through to a burning sensation on my skin at the beginning of my period and an almost permanent deadening sensation of the nerves on one side of my hips. My belly now becomes tender and distended with water retention just before a period such that I sometimes feel as if I’m about to burst.

More generally, I’m physically also less coordinated, my timing just slightly off when it comes to playing tennis if I don’t focus very deliberately and intellectually I can be a bit distracted when playing a game such as bridge.

And obviously there will be plenty of people who regard all of this as an entirely personal issue to deal with but….

This stuff happens to 52% of the population. It isn’t an individual issue but one that impacts that majority of people in society directly and everyone indirectly, so it seems a bit silly to suggest that it isn’t everyone’s issue or that we shouldn’t talk about these things.

At the very minimum we should be clear when we’re talking about averages and expectations when applying to them to more than half of the population and at least acknowledge the variation that can render such assumptions as useful as any other myth or fairy tale.

Food

Sweet Tamarind Pie

If you like key lime pie then this NYT replacement using tamarind will suit you. 

Tamarind Cream Pie

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE CRUST:

  • 2 cups/170 grams digestive biscuit / graham cracker crumbs
  • 6 tablespoons/85 grams unsalted butter (3/4 stick), melted

FOR THE FILLING:

  • 1 large orange
  • 4 large egg yolks
  • 1 (14-ounce/400-gram) can sweetened condensed milk
  • ½ cup/120 milliliters tamarind paste, extract or concentrate (see tip below)
  • 1 to 2 tablespoons lemon or lime juice, to taste (from 1 lemon or lime)
  •  Pinch of fine sea salt

FOR THE TOPPING:

  • 1 cup/240 milliliters heavy cream
  • 1 tablespoon icing/confectioners’ sugar

PREPARATION

  1. Prepare the crust: Heat oven to 350 degrees, and place a rack in the center of the oven. In a large bowl, stir together crumbs and butter. Transfer mixture to a 9-inch pie plate, and press it into an even layer on the bottom and up the sides.
  2. Place pie plate on a rimmed baking sheet, and transfer to oven. Bake until golden brown, about 10 to 12 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool.
  3. Meanwhile, prepare the filling: Halve the orange and squeeze the juice from one half. You should have 1/4 cup. If not, squeeze some juice from the other half. Reserve squeezed halves for zesting for garnish.
  4. In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the whisk attachment, beat egg yolks until pale and fluffy, about 5 minutes. Turn the mixer to low and slowly add condensed milk, scraping sides if needed. Whisk in tamarind and orange juice until just combined, then whisk in the lemon or lime juice and salt.
  5. Scrape mixture into cooled pie shell, then return to oven and bake until filling has just set, 15 to 20 minutes. Transfer to a wire rack to cool to room temperature, then refrigerate until completely chilled, at least 2 hours and up to 1 day.
  6. Just before serving, make the topping: In the bowl of an electric mixer, using the whisk attachment, beat together cream and icing/confectioners’ sugar until thick and fluffy. Dollop whipped cream on cooled pie. Finely grate the zest from one of the reserved orange halves over the top of the pie, and serve.

Tips

  • There are two distinct products that may be labeled tamarind extract, concentrate or paste. One is syrupy and nearly black, without any pulp. (Tamicon tamarind concentrate is one brand.) The other is lighter in color and pulpy; it looks like apple butter. (Swad is one brand.) Try to use the pulpy kind here: It’s fresher-tasting. But if you can get only the concentrate, use 1/3 cup and skip the lemon or lime juice.
  • You can also make your own paste out of pure dried tamarind fruit that’s either pulled directly from the pods or sold as a sticky brick. Soak the fruit in boiling water for 30 minutes to 1 hour, then drain. Use your hands or rubber spatula to mash it into a paste. Strain it through a fine mesh sieve. The fruit will vary a lot in its acidity, so use 1/2 cup of it for the pie, along with as much lemon or lime juice as you need to make you pucker.
Home

Easter Miracles

It’s a long bank holiday weekend, where mostly everyone, except retail workers and priests, get to enjoy four days with no work, and the sun is shining.

The garden is probably at its best and mostly things are going to plan. The crocus, daffodils, magnolia, camellia and pear blossom have arrived and left in successive gorgeous waves of spring colour. The wisteria is about to dominate, with both its beautiful purple drapes and the scent of Spring.

After two years, it looks as if the iris planted just infant of the new white roses are about to bloom, earning another year or two in the hope they’ll eventually come into their own and flower more generously. It’s likely that the dry site is a problem even though the iris were chosen to be drought tolerant. If they get to be large enough, they’ll probably flower more generously with better root systems.

Replacements have been planted for the penstemon that died off in the Summer drought, and one of the fatsia spiderweb which managed to die entirely in the shaded plot at the back.

I’ve also added two thug clematis, one to the shaded plot (though the sunniest corner) and one to a very elderly rose along the wooden frame boundary to the gravel path. The rose flowers but not well and has become increasingly sparse. With a bit of luck, the clematis will use the rose as a climbing frame and cover the wooden frame from the wisteria on the left to the virginia creeper on the right.

My bedding from last year seems to have survived in the cold frame so the pots are now back on display. As always there are gaps in the bedding scheme and the hated hanging baskets. I have never managed to keep one alive through the Summer.

`I’ve also invested in a bit of biological warfare, or at least biological control for slugs and ants. The two separate packs are currently sitting in my fridge waiting for a bit of damp to be watered onto the garden, hopefully towards the end of the week.

The sun is shining and all is well in the world – miracles happen.

Food

Basbousa (Semolina cake)

This Egyptian recipe for sweet semolina cake is incredibly easy to make. It’s topped with a delicious rosewater and lemon syrup. SERVES 25–30 

Ingredients 

  • 2½ cupscoarse semolina
  • 90 g(1 cup) desiccated coconut
  • 220 g(1 cup) caster sugar
  • 75 g(½ cup) self-raising flour
  • 200 gthick yoghurt
  • 200 gunsalted butter, melted
  • 1 tspvanilla extract
  • 25–30 gblanched almonds 
  • milk, if needed

Syrup 

  • 330 g(1½ cups) sugar
  • 250 ml(1 cup) water
  • 1 tsplemon juice
  • 1 tsprosewater

Instructions

Preheat the oven to 190°C. Mix the semolina, coconut, sugar, flour, yoghurt, melted butter and vanilla in a bowl. If the mixture seems too thick, add a little milk, but it should still be fairly stiff. Spread the mixture with your hands into a buttered 30 cm x 25 cm x 5 cm baking tray. Cut it into diamond shapes, pressing hard. Place an almond in the centre of each diamond. Bake for 35–40 minutes or until golden brown.

Meanwhile, make the syrup. Place the sugar and water in a saucepan and bring to the boil, stirring until the sugar dissolves. Simmer for 5 minutes without stirring. Stir in the lemon juice and rosewater and remove from the heat. Leave to cool.

Pour the syrup over the cake while the cake is still hot. Cool to serve.

Home

Garden plans

It should be possible to just sit back and enjoy a garden but I’m not quite able to do that. It’s Spring and the garden has been lovely, but even so there are gaps to be filled.

In general, white flowers have proved successful in this garden against a green background.

The crocus have been beautiful, white and purple, but it would be nice to see more of them, especially white up on the roof in the gravel garden.

The miniature iris have been and gone, but there are fewer this year than last so I’d like to see clumps of them also, especially in the gravel. Iris reticulate Blue Note are on the shopping list

The white windflowers have appeared and are wonderful, but there could be more in the borders at the front of the house and along under the hedge to the right of the garden.

& some tulips are just about starting to appear, red and tiny in the gravel – let’s have some ore of them too. Tulip Montana might be worth buying and planting in clump

The violas and cyclamen bought as bedding last Autumn are still flowering and lovely so maybe I should try them again.

But mainly I’m waiting until the end of April to order replacements for some of the plants that died in the dry heat of last year’s Summer, watching the gravel garden carefully to see what rises after the stripping and re-planting

Food

Lemon Snacking Cake With Coconut Glaze

A good cake for afternoon tea.

  • TIME1 hour, plus cooling
Lemon Snacking Cake With Coconut Glaze

INGREDIENTS

FOR THE CAKE:

  • ½ cup/120 milliliters neutral oil, such as grapeseed or canola, plus more for pan
  • 3 lemons
  • ½ cup/120 milliliters sour cream
  • ¼ cup/60 milliliters coconut milk
  • 2 large eggs
  • 1 ½ cups/185 grams all-purpose flour
  • 1 ¼ cups/250 grams granulated sugar
  • 1 teaspoon baking powder
  • ¼ teaspoon baking soda
  • ½ teaspoon fine sea salt
  • ½ packed cup/50 grams shredded sweetened coconut

FOR THE GLAZE:

  • 3 tablespoons coconut milk
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil, melted
  •  Pinch of fine sea salt
  • ⅔ cup/85 grams confectioners’ sugar
  •  Finely grated lemon zest, for garnish
  •  Nutritional Information

PREPARATION

  1. Heat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9-by-9-inch pan, and then line with parchment paper, letting the two long ends hang over the edge of the pan by at least 2 inches.
  2. Grate 2 tablespoons of zest from the lemons. Juice the lemons so you have 1/4 cup/60 milliliters juice. Add juice and zest to a medium bowl, then whisk in oil, sour cream, coconut milk and eggs.
  3. In a large bowl, whisk together flour, sugar, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk wet mixture into dry mixture until smooth.
  4. Scrape batter into baking pan and spread in an even layer. Sprinkle evenly with shredded sweetened coconut. Bake until the top of the cake springs back when lightly pressed in the center, and a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean, 35 to 45 minutes. Let cool completely.
  5. When cake is cool, make the glaze: In a small bowl, whisk together the coconut milk, oil and salt. Whisk in the confectioners’ sugar until smooth. Pour over the cake, and grate some lemon zest over the top. Let the glaze set for at least 30 minutes before serving.
Political, Rants&Rambles

Expectations

Beyond tired of brexit, like most people however they voted, I still couldn’t describe myself as resigned.

Certainly I would not characterise myself as wanting my MP and the government to push ahead with the current brexit plan to “get it over with” not least because we haven’t even started the trade negotiations with the EU yet so this process is going to run for years.

But I have been trying to work out what to expect next.

There seem to be two scenarios coming into focus: a shitty deal where limits to immigration are prioritised followed by trade in goods or leaving with no deal at all.

Since the UK makes most of its money overseas from trade in services, even with the shotty deal now being discussed, our economy will obviously be damaged and as the negotiations go by, more and more compromises will be required to limit the damage to our economy from setting those two priorities.

Each one of those real-poilitik compromises will be met with horror by those currently cheerleading for brexit. The lack of transparency by the UK government means people have been allowed to keep their illusions so when each and one of those illusions fractures, people will be looking for someone to blame. Never themselves. They will claim that leaving with any deal at all was the mistake, not leaving itself. WTO rules only will become the mantra because unhappiness needs a meaningless slogan to coalesce around.

So politics will stay fundamentally divided and fractious. Society will remain divided and fractious. And people will still split between “remainers” and “leavers”. Economically things will get worse. Nothing will be fixed.

If we leave with no deal at all, then things will get difficult quickly. A developed country will see empty supermarket shelves for the first time in a generation. We will risk medicine shortages and see immediate price rises as WTO tariffs are applied to all imports.

But the world won’t come to an end. We are wealthy and the cost increases won’t stop us eating what we want when we want. Food used to talk cup 30% of people’s disposable income compared to today’s 10% so maybe it will just rise, offset by falling housing costs. Neither will the increased costs stop us taking holidays and living our lives much as today. We will have less but we won’t have nothing. Plenty of people will be significantly worse off. London will be damaged, but it is wealthier and perhaps more able to mitigate that damage.

Our children are maybe now more likely to go and work and live overseas.

We will see a slow decline of our economy relative to the rest of the world. Initially we’ll be able to pretend it’s a worldwide phenomena as we pull the EU down with us, as the US-China trade war starts to bite.

Away from the sheer anger that brexit creates, I’m left with just a sad resignation. For my generation the walls came down, the threat of war receded and we all felt we were going to be richer, healthier and better. For my children’s generation, that is no longer true. The walls are going up, the threat of war is rising and they will be poorer, less healthy and generally worse off.

My expectations are sad.

Food

Lemon tarts

It was incredibly difficult to find a simple recipe for basic lemon tarts. This was the best I could find.

Lemon Tarts 2 (1 of 1).jpg

Lemon Cream Tarts
Makes 6

Lemon Cream
150ml lemon juice
zest of 3 lemons
2 large eggs
2 large egg yolks
150g caster sugar
225g unsalted butter, diced and at room temperature

Pate Sucree – just look up the recipe or use basic shortcrust

Start with the lemon cream or curd as it needs ample chilling time before it is ready to use. Add the lemon juice, lemon zest, eggs, egg yolks and caster sugar into a heatproof bowl set over a pan of simmering water and cook, stirring regularly until the mixture reaches 80c on an instant read thermometer. The temperature is key because it needs to be fully cooked like a custard so the finished cream holds the correct texture. I have said here to do this stage in a bain marie but half of the time I just place the ingredients directly into a saucepan and do this over a low heat stirring constantly. It is quicker than the bain marie method but it is also more prone to catching and overcooking so if you decide to do it this way be very careful and keep the heat down low. 

Once the custard is cooked pour it into a large jug, through a fine sieve to remove any cooked egg bits, allowing to cool for 15 minutes, when it should be about 60c. Using some form of blender (traditional jug style or stick blender both work great) blend in the butter a couple piece at a time. If using a stick blender do this in the jug you cooled the curd, the depth of the jug means you won’t end up incorporating too much air which you’re trying to avoid (the same reason it is best not to use a food processor). Once all of the butter has been incorporated pour the cream into a container, press a sheet of clingfilm onto the surface of the custard and refrigerate for at least fours hours, until the mixture thickens up. 

Remove the chilled pastry from the fridge and cut into six equal sized pieces and working with one at a time roll out, on a lightly floured worksurface, until 2-3mm thick. Use to line either six 10cm loose bottomed tart tins or as I do use tart rings, which give a more modern style. Trim off the excess and set onto a parchment lined baking tray. Line each tart with a piece of crumpled parchment paper and fill with rice or baking beans.

Blind bake the tart shells at 190c for about 15/20 minutes before removing the rice and parchment  and baking for a further 10 minutes or until the inside is nice and golden. Once baked set aside to cool. Once ready to serve remove the cream from the fridge and fill the tart shells. Set back in the fridge for about 30 minutes before serving to firm up again.

The cream can be made a few days in advance but once the tart shells are filled with the cream they are best eaten the same day.