Ostara 2021

It is officially spring here in Australia, and the spring equinox has recently passed. Our seasons start based on calendar dates, so Spring started on September 1st (and it is 1st December for Summer, 1st March for Autumn, 1st June for Winter). Of course being that I live in Brisbane, spring barely gets a look in as it is full steam ahead into summer weather. Gross. Today as I write this it is going to be 32 degrees Celcius here today, which I wish to decline.

Ostara aka Spring Equinox (23rd September, 2021)

A lot of Ostara has been coopted and folded into Easter traditions, given that in the Northern Hemisphere they are around the same time. In Australia, Easter is in Autumn. Ostara is the coming of spring, a celebration of new life and fertility.

Egg, Pea, and Ginger Fried Rice from To Asia, With Love by Hetty McKinnon: Eggs feature heavily in Ostara celebrations, but we don't need to exploit chickens. This is a vegetarian recipe, but I made it vegan by using some Follow Your Heart Vegan Egg instead. I made the equivalent of 2 eggs (which I blended up with my handheld blender, thanks Bianca for that tip), cooked it like an omelet, chopped it up and seasoning with some black salt. I scaled down the recipe a bit, based around using 450g of white rice rather than 740g. I served this over some baby spinach, and got two serves out of it.
Rating: :)



Carrot Cake Granola by Donna Hay: I had planned on making a carrot cake, but the day before I bought a treat box from a local vegan bakery (more on that in a later post), and just didn't feel like more baked goods to eat. So I went the granola rout! I used this recipe from the Donna Hay website, scaled down to a quarter recipe. It still gave me three good sized serves. The flavour of this is wonderful, and definitely very carrot-cake like! I realised after I made it and ate it that I forgot to add the raisins in after it cooled, but to be honest it was fantastic without them. I served it over some Alpro vanilla almond yoghurt, topped with some almond butter, more yoghurt, and shredded coconut.
Rating: :)



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Two weeks of sutures, a cone, and confinement meant no cat max for Boo! But now that is all behind her, she has been loving spending hours and hours in the cat max. She has really taken to sleeping in this little plastic kennel that we originally bought for Dim Sim. Dim Sim never used it, however Boo has decided it is the best place to be. Her final lot of results came back, showing that her high calcium is idiopathic (which means we don't know why... cats love to be mysterious). We have ruled out a lot of rare and nasty things, and she has been started on some medication which will help both her calcium levels and her IBD.