Porto in Tile

In the train station, in the hotel lobby, on walls of crumbling buildings...beautiful tiles are everywhere in Porto.

The Eiffel Tower Bridge - Porto

That's not actually the name of it. And that's not the bridge I visited. I visited the Ponte Luiz I Bridge; a metal arch bridge that spans the Douro River between the cities of Porto and Vila Nova de Gaia in Portugal. At the time of construction its span of 172 m was the longest of its type in the world. It was designed by Téophile Seyrig; a partner of Gustave Eiffel.

I loved the spiral ladder although I'm very glad I'll never have to climb it!

The upper deck carries the light rail and the lower deck is used by wheeled-traffic and pedestrians.

The blue steel arch bridge seen here is the D. Maria Pia Bridge also known as the "Eiffel Tower Bridge" and, at least from a distance, seems to have a lot of the same elements as the Ponte Luiz I bridge. That makes sense since Téophile Seyrig and Gustave Eiffel worked on it together. D. Maria Pia was the wife of Luiz I. I wanted to go see it but they were demolishing some houses on the hillside and the road was blocked.

Odd and Curious - Porto

See that old wooden phone? It rang and she answered it!

No matter how hard it was raining there was laundry hanging everywhere. Some people covered theirs but with 100% humidity I'm not sure that any of it had a chance of drying.

JK Rowling lived in Porto for a while and rumor (at least in Porto) has it that many of her ideas for Harry Potter came from the city. There's a famous book store that is truly beautiful inside although usually quite crowded and the owner doesn't allow photos (but you can buy a box of post cards for 10 euro) so I had to zoom in from the street to get a picture of the staircase.

I loved the rainbow rust colours.

Shoes made from cork. Cork is popular in Porto due to all the wine.

Holy frizz balls!!  This is what happens when it's rainy and humid. I looked like this all week and there was nothing I could do about it!

Sundays in My Kitchen

I usually spend several hours (at least) in my kitchen on Sundays.  I like to prepare most, if not all, of my food for the week in advance.  I work a lot of hours and have dogs to walk and if all my food is ready then I eat well. Plus, I'm extremely picky about what goes into and onto my body.  I make almost everything I eat from scratch using real, whole, natural foods.

I'm lucky that I don't mind eating the same thing over and over so I can get away with making 2 or 3 dishes for the week and eating them every day.  

Both the oven and stove going full force. Quinoa pasta and sauce, carrot-peanut butter soup, veggie meatballs...

A pot of black beans that teamed up with egg whites and spinach for breakfast omelets.

Germinated brown rice that became stir fry.

Baby corn and witloaf (a kind of white cabbage) also in the stir-fry.

A weeks-worth of stir-fry with germinated brown rice, carrots, baby corn, witloaf, sugar snaps and salmon.

Potatoes and kidney beans in a spicy tomato sauce I had in Afghanistan. Sadly, none of that wonderful Afghan bread here. This is currently in the freezer along with the carrot-peanut butter soup.

Oops, made a bit of a mess with some sweet potatoes!

I eat about a half-gallon of salad every day. No joke!

Mushrooms, tomatoes, broccoli, radishes, olives, feta, lettuce.

I make 2 giant salads and cut up the veggies for the remaining 3 so that during the week I just have to dump into the large bowls and add the lettuce.

Next some healthy snacks.

The compost bowl is overflowing by the time I'm done.

Here's what my fridge looks like by the end of the day (fridges here are much smaller than their American counterparts so it doesn't take much to fill mine). Breakfast, lunch and dinner plus healthy snacks for the whole week. Nothing from a package (except cheese). All fresh, real, whole foods.  Often I make extra and freeze so that when I'm busy or tired or out of town on the weekend I still have healthy, homemade food for the week.  

Cheyenne is always on hand to make sure anything I dropped gets cleaned up!

By Sunday the fridge is empty and ready for me to start over.

I also make most of my own hygiene products. It's so easy and inexpensive and they work better than the chemical-filled products.

The ingredients for shampoo, conditioner, face wash, lotion, deodorant...

Refill old containers.  Google "no poo method" for shampoo and conditioner recipes. I add a couple drops of tea tree oil to my shampoo and a couple drops of vitamin E oil plus lavender to my conditioner.

 Whipped coconut body lotion (just coconut oil and vitamin E).

To see what others are up to in their kitchens or elsewhere, check out Unknown Mami.

I Wasn't Exaggerating

When I mention how much snow we've had and how cold it is...(grammar mistakes are not mine!)

Coldest 13 March Not only was last week’s snow not typical for a month of March, the icy temperatures were some of the lowest since records began. It’s a 167 years ago since temperatures on March 13 were lower. Last Wednesday early morning, the Belgian weather station in Uccle reported minus 10.2 degrees Celsius. Shelters for homeless will open 10 days longer than initially planned.