I am wondering how other artists and creative people cook meals.

The reason for my question is that I own recipe books, my current favourite is the Michelle Bridges, Crunch time, cookbook, but I never follow a recipe, I think I cook like an artist. Lol J ,not sure that’s a s good as a cook and certainly not as elaborate and skilled as a chef, but it works for me.

I think of food, like an artist from the time I hit the shops, I love the fresh fruit and veggie department and I buy a rainbow variety of coloured food.  The fish, meat and poultry counter has the same attraction to me and I love to mix colours, something cream, this week it was turkey mince,  a pink salmon steak, some red strips of beef steak, and then to the pulses and legumes and there were black and yellow legumes added to my trolley.  Even my bread, is dotted with texture and colours, lol J.

When it comes to planning and preparing the meal, even when I have this lovely array of cookbooks I have read, I do little more than glance at the photos of the meal.  My system is look in the garden for any fresh vegetables ready to pick, then open the fridge and see what I have, choose an assorted selection of items that will work well together. I then head to the pantry to add any extras, and pick some fresh herbs from the garden, and then I produce a concoction using any one, of the simplest, of cooking methods, except for deep-frying, which I never do.

I probably read nutrition books, more than cook books, and I occasionally amend the food choices I buy as I learn more, this has been successful as aside from taking prenatal multivitamins, when I was younger and pregnant and now that we are seniors, adding some calcium and anti inflammatory fish oil to my diet.  I am currently looking into information about managing fibromyalgia, through diet, 10 Food Rules for Pain Patients - fibromyalgia - Health.com,  to help Reg, so he can join me on more of the bush walks we love doing together.

My colourful palette of food has provided all the nutrition I have needed and I wonder how many other, creative people never ever follow a recipe and manage perfectly well, producing delicious, healthy meals, just treating every meal as its very own, original creative work.

I would LOVE to hear your responses to this.   How many creative original cooks are out there?

 

We were walking back the way we thought we had come, when we got to one of the many forks in the unsignposted, bush track and Reg, wanted to go to the right and I wanted to go left. He was so certain, I let him lead, and I think he was actually right at that point, I am not sure where we took the wrong turn.

I knew there was a main road out on our left somewhere and we could always find our way out, by turning left.  Just the same, when you begin to walk through areas you have not seen before on unsignposted bush tracks I do find it unnerving.

Lol, we were not lost, we just had no idea, J, exactly where we were

 

We were within 5 kilometres of a little country store, somewhere vaguely to the left, or was that left right or right left?

I steered us left and we found a road, not one we knew, this took us to the main road, not sure which way to turn from there, left or right, we turned right, knowing we could stop a car and ask if we needed to.  Reg by now was favouring one leg, it had been the longest walk he has done since before he got whooping Cough last August.

 I was doing fine, the little bit of anxiety at not being sure where we were, had gone, now we were on the main road. 

Heaps of relief, when the little general store, appeared in the distance. Funny, but as I reached the car, my energy flagged. I felt ready to flop 

To think that back in my thirties I never considered going for a two-hour brisk walk and healthy portion controlled eating as the way to becoming and maintaining a slim body, no I looked for solutions that took the work away from me. Diet pills, generic adipex, I think are versions of the phentermine drug, type, products I used to pop, hoping they could make me slim.  What a long way, I have come since then. 

 Reg and I probably should have turned back sooner, or not even have gone on that walk when the directions were so vague. I did follow the safety rule of making sure someone knew where we were going, by telling the people in the general store we were going to do the walk and I left our car parked in sight of the store so people would have known if we had had a problem and not returned.

 While the walk was not as we expected, we both feel great now, knowing we had a great exercise session, and we are both steadily improving in fitness each day with the exercise challenges we are giving ourselves. 

 

I have illustrated this blog post about today’s walk with images of the art fridge magnets I have made from landscape paintings I have done. 

I saw some views,  today, I would love to paint. How will I paint it, Impressionist style or romantic realist?  I favour impressionist style and Reg and most of the public prefer romantic realism. When I begin a painting, the scene dictates to me, how it wants to be painted. 

I find on line study to be a great way to learn. I love learning from experts in the fields I am interested in and have no time for and little patience for hobby classes.

I have never totally stopped educating myself and last year I studied on line, for my certificate in Bone Health, as an addition to my current health science degrees I originally graduated with in 1967. I have continued to keep my health science degree up to date, until recently when I have begun to extend my interest outward, towards, Creative Arts Therapy, Eco Therapy, Fitness and Aging Well.

This year I have begun a new field of on line study and I love it.

I am, being challenged in a way I find will encourage me to do the work I need to do, to learn the information that will help me achieve my future goals and be able to use the information to help others. Education is rewarding in so many ways.  While I am educating myself on line, I can do all my study in my own time; this fits in easily with my current carer duties.

I am totally convinced, having experience it for myself, that online degree courses are a great way to achieve the credentials I am seeking. I know there are online universities that offer a wide range of degree options that are well worth investigating further by anyone interested in obtaining a degree qualification.

I mention Western Governors University, because it is a non-profit online university, and certainly, for me, cost is a considerable consideration, (though not as important as quality of tuition), when weighing up where I chose to do my studies.  Anyhow, ‘take a look’ if you are interested in obtaining a degree on line.

The two artists, who visited me today, asked me, ‘what advice I would give a starting out artist’. I said, ‘get a qualification, preferably in an essential service. My reasoning is that if you have a profession to fall back on should times be tough, you will be able to respect your art, enough to not fall into the financial crisis trap of painting trashy bread and butter paintings.

Art needs to be, kept free, of financial pressure to be ‘art’.  Work done under financial pressure to produce income becomes craft, skilled craft at best, manufactured product, at its, worst.

Artist integrity is easiest to maintain when the basic essentials of life, are secure, due to having professional qualifications. Even if you become financially successful artist, and never use the qualifications you earn, professionally, an education, is never, wasted.

 

My walking shoes and hat were on, my shoulder bag had the essentials, including the filled water bottle, when I saw Indigo, ‘stiffen’, and take up ‘pointer dog’ stance.  I looked up and there quietly observing me was six guests who had dropped in without a warning, asking if they could stay for a morning tea with us.

Hastily we reshuffled our plans and put the kettle on and they stayed for a chat or a photo shoot anyhow as they were exceedingly vein guests, primping and posing and for endless photos.

After our coffee, they turned away in disgust saying they did not like my no left over breakfast scraps camp site and they moved on without telling us when they would next turn up totally treading so softly, unannounced and give me a start like that. Lol, it was funny. One moment they were not there, then the next thing these huge five baby emus and their daddy were in my camp.

You have to love emu law. The fathers do most of the child raising workJ.

So should guests arrive unannounced?. Lol J

 

I have never adapted to using my mobile phone for internet use. In fact, I have never even learned to send text messages on my mobiles phone. My main excuse for not doing that is that the keyboard on my several years old, mobile phone is too small to allow for easy texting. 

I intend to upgrade to an Iphone or a full keyboard phone, I am not sure what I want. I am currently looking around, trying to decide what phone to get. 

Many of my friends are buying an unlocked phone so they have full choice of internet provider and I am unsure if I want to do this or to get a phone for a discount price along with a two-year plan with a phone and internet provider.

When any of my friends chat, about their new phones, I am ‘all ears’.

I am letting everyone know ‘I will be in the market for a new phone soon’, as I want to learn all the advantages of the different types, so I make the best decision for my own use, one that will give me additional use, especially ease of texting, but will not greatly increase my monthly expenditure.

I hope to learn more from my own friends, before I make this decision. 

I thought these tinnies, laying above the high water mark at Phillip Island, were great material for an artist to paint so I am putting them here and letting my readers know they are welocome to use them if they wish.

Remember though that unless I give permission for you to use them, other pictures on my website are copyright to me and should not be used.

I am often, asked, to tell people when I first became a portrait artist. 

I had been studying life drawing and figurative clay sculpture at Swinburne Technical College in the evenings and I was working as a housekeeper and carer for three young children during the day to earn my night school tuition and wagging secondary school so I could do what I wanted to do.  I was twelve and very determined that I was going to be a professional artist and I was not going to waste my days learning algebra, geometry and French, which I never intended to use

I had chosen to do an Intermediate Certificate and a Commercial Art Certificate through, International Correspondence School and had been able to select my own subjects, something I could not do back then in the traditional day school system.  On what was my last ride home from secondary school on my bicycle, I was wild with excitement, singing, ‘no more schooling, no more books no more teachers, dirty looks’ as I approached the crest of the hill for the final downhill stretch to the turn off to my home.

I was in a state of euphoria, that I had cheated the truant officer, of the joy of hauling me back, to a bricks and mortar school, where art, was suppressed. I wondered what it would be like to sail down that hill without doing what I had always been instructed to do, ‘apply the brakes’. I decided to find out.

I reached our street corner, swung into it at full speed, streaked across the road, hit the curb, somersaulted off my bike through the air,  flew over the nature strip and footpath, over the fence and landed plonk in the middle of someone’s recently softly  turned cushioned earth. 

I came out of my stunned state, with the understanding of ‘well that is what happens, when you don’t apply the brakes’.

I remember someone coming to my aid. With pride always having been my greatest sin, I brushed their concern away by holding back my tears, brushing myself off and collecting my bike, saying something stupid like, ‘ Ha- ha, I meant to do that’, and getting my wounded self and bike, home without letting on to anyone the pain I was in.

I have no idea how I walked home, because after that I could not walk for months. My housekeeping job was gone, all I could do was watch over my three child charges in my child minding job.  I also needed to keep the three children I cared for, near me, so I could watch over them, so I spent all day, every day, for weeks, drawing these three children playing near me or sketching solo portraits of their faces, which they loved and sat posing for time and again. I had adults dropping in to see my work and buying it from me. Horray! No more housekeeping jobs.

The children were disappointed when their full time sketch artist recovered enough to improvise for myself a pair of crutches from old sporting equipment found in a shed and I could begin to get around again and back to my usual routine. That is my usual routine that no longer involved dodging truant officers thanks to my portrait art income now being able to pay for my correspondence schooling lessons and a routine that now did not include testing out what would happen if I did not apply the brakes when advised to. J    Now I think of it, I still flaunt that rule slightly, just not when out on the highway or when driving. J

Well that was life back in suburbia in 1958. No convenience of mobility products to help the average injured child get around, or places where you could research the best product for disability needs, such as mobility compare , back then, or if there was, it was for the rich kids.