What is your waist measurement?

What's that I hear you say....none of your business! :-) Well, of course it isn't but as Australia's Healthy Weight Week has just come to an end I thought it would be a good time to measure my waist and see if it is 80cm/32in or less. For males it should be 95cm/37in or less as above those measurements puts you at increased risk of type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and heart disease. 

This time last year I think I just got my waist measurement down to 80cm by lots of breathing in and holding my breath but this year I was well under due to having lowered my sugar intake. I had a look around the Healthy Weight Week website and there is a cookbook there which looks interesting and it can be downloaded here. The recipes are from the Sprout team, Callum Hann and Themis Chryssidis. There are other tips on how to work towards better health under Healthy Eating and also Weight Management Tools and Exercise. I am sure we would all like to be eat a more nutritious diet and to exercise more. I would...how about you?

I heard a knock at the door today and there was a courier there waiting for me to sign for two parcels

which was very exciting as I knew they were coming but didn't expect them to arrive so soon. In that big box above was my new slow cooker from Kambrook but it says Breville on all that tape so perhaps they are one and the same company. I know when I rang the call centre I had to press 1 for one brand, 2 for another one and I think there were about three or four to choose from. 

As my slow cooker died when cooking my last loaf of sourdough I emailed Kambrook and was told that it couldn't be replaced as it was out of warranty but if I wanted to ring the call centre perhaps something could be arranged. Well, I did that and the girl I spoke to wondered why I had been given that advice and said that there was nothing she could do. So I emailed again and the person I had communicated with was out of the office till today so I reread her email and noticed there was what looked like a reference number in the email so I rang again, spoke to a different person and quoted the number and he said he would give me a discount on a new one so I went with that. However, I should have done my homework first as I could still have bought it cheaper from The Good Guys here in town as they have them on special at the moment. Oh well! The upside of it is that I now have a spare ceramic insert and lid to experiment with making hot process soap in the future. 

The other parcel that was delivered was my new wooden soap mould with a silicone insert from eBay. It isn't as big as I thought it would be and I think it is the same one that Racheal used during our workshop last Saturday. I can't wait to try it out as I want to do some swirling . Annabel sent me some of her red pigment to make pink soap so I am going to experiment with some pink swirls soon. Racheal lent me her goats milk soap mould the other day and my new mould hadn't arrived this morning so I made some goats milk soap and it is looking good so will take it out of the moulds tomorrow. I used cold lye mixture for this batch so will explain the method when I see how they turn out in case anyone is interested.

This photo doesn't do it justice but this most beautiful flower just appeared after the heavy downpour we had the other day. The CEO was quite intrigued as he had planted it somewhere else and was wondering why it turned up on the other side of the path. LOL! I had never seen it before and it is very striking.

Have a great week everyone!