Day To Day: Calm Conversations with a Friend

#2 Smoked BBQ Delights and Stretching

• Jacquie Joy • Season 1 • Episode 2

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Imagine the tantalizing aroma of BBQ pulled pork wafting through your neighborhood, bringing people together in a shared moment of culinary delight. This episode of the Day-to-Day Podcast invites you into a cozy chat discussing a BBQ that is shared with neighbors like Tilly who add their own delightful contributions to the meal.  Additionally, the episode explores other aspects of wellness and lifestyle, including the use of cupping jars and stretching tight muscles.  Also, the potential benefits and rejuvenating effects of ice baths are also discussed.  Listen in, and you might just find yourself motivated to cook a BBQ, stretch afew tight muscles or share a new recipe with a friend.

Jacquie:

Welcome to the Day-to-Day Podcast, calm Conversations with a Friend, spoken by Jacquie Joy, and you are listening to Episode 2. You decide to check your messages. One new voicemail it's from one of your friends. You decide it's time to sit down, make yourself comfortable and have a listen. Hey, how's your week going so far? I know you said you were going to be busy, mainly with work, but I hope you've had some time to relax and look after yourself.

Jacquie:

Well, I've been looking after myself and my stomach because I finally got the Traeger smoker fixed up, so it's pulled pork time again. Also, we got given a lovely tray for the smoker so we can actually cook vegetables in it as well. We're very excited about using that. It was a bit of a process to get it fixed. The barbecue man had to come back three times and pull it all apart and replaced a few components initially, but in the end he had to replace the whole control board. But it was worth it and the smell of the barbecue in the neighborhood is just a very special smell. It makes you, it's very mouth-watering and it's quite different to the typical Aussie barbecue smell. It would be the sort of smell that in America you would be a lot more used to, whereas smokers here in Australia aren't as popular yet. As well as us being excited about having pulled pork again, the neighbours are also very excited, and they're excited because when we do a pulled pork on Sundays, we make multiple pulled porks for the neighbourhood. This time we just made a pork for Tilly and her family and, as you know, she's an excellent cook. This is the neighbour with the broken ping pong table and who made those delicious cakes that I was telling you about.

Jacquie:

Last week Tilly sent me photos of those cakes. There were 48 of them, all covered with chocolate icing. I think there's another name for icing, I'm just trying to remember it Frosting. I might have to get back to you about that. I'm sure you'll know what I mean. It's that thicker icing style that's quite popular at the moment, and she did three different designs in the end for the icing decoration. One of them was the chocolate sprinkles, the other one was the gold stars, and then she had white and gold like really thick hundreds and thousands sprinkled on top. Tilly bought some very professional looking cardboard cake trays and sent them off to the party in these cake trays. So the cakes all looked extremely professionally done and were presented really, really well. I asked if she'd had any feedback on the cakes and she said they were very much appreciated and didn't last very long at all. So that made her happy, and I did catch up with her in person on Sunday night when I was dropping off the pulled pork, I happened to walk past that ping pong table which hadn't moved and the hinge still looked a little broken. So nothing has changed there.

Jacquie:

Tilly made me a coleslaw, one of her very special coleslaws. The special thing about this coleslaw is that, firstly, it's moist, but not too moist moist, but it is beautifully flavoured. The flavour of apple just adds a lovely sweetness to it, which personally I adore. Also, the dressing doesn't seem to be too mayonnaise-y, if that makes sense. Also, the flavour really packs a punch, meaning that it just has a beautiful burst in your mouth, and I think this is because she spends so much time cutting up each ingredient into very, very small cubes, rather than the coleslaw you get in the shops, which has very long, bigger cuts of cabbage, celery etc. So we were very, very lucky to get a large tub of coleslaw, but we were even more lucky to also get mac and cheese to accompany apple pork and it was a large tray of mac and cheese, absolutely delicious.

Jacquie:

I did sample it when I went to pick it up, because I have not had mac and cheese for years, I don't know why, because I really love it. Now this mac and cheese was incredible and I found out what she did use in the mix. I still don't think I could cook it as well as she did, but apparently, well, I know you like mac and cheese, so I'm going to tell you what she used in it. It was a mix of sharp cheddar apparently the brand is Thomas Dux D-U-X which is aged 24 months. Sounds like a fine wine which would be aged a lot longer. Of course, normal, just the grated cheddar and parmesan. But then she had a lovely mix of onion powder, garlic powder, mustard powder which I have not used for years and also salt. I'm sure she won't mind me sharing the recipe with you, but it was incredible. But it was incredible and I felt very lucky to be able to give her a pulled pork and get this delicious mac and cheese and coleslaw as amazing side dishes for our dinner. When she was giving me the mac and cheese plate, I noticed her fingers looked a little stained or dark, as if she'd been doing some painting, and she said that the dark stains were actually from the chocolate icing she'd spent the day doing the day before for the cakes and it was a little hard to wash off, so that was rather unusual. Anyway, we're very lucky to have excellent neighbours and everyone is looking forward to the next round of pulled pork and coleslaw, hopefully next weekend.

Jacquie:

I finally brought those silicon cupping jars we were talking about. As I was saying, I had always used the old style cupping jars where you had to put a live flame into the cup and then put it onto the skin just to create the vacuum and the suction, but these ones you can squeeze as you put them onto the skin and they attach. So thanks for the tip. With that, it sounds like you've used these successfully, so I think they're similar to the ones that you've had and used. I love reading the instructions for these and the effects.

Jacquie:

Apparently, as well as being useful for boosting circulation and relieving muscle pain, it claims that it's going to reduce cellulite. In fact, it says it's very effective against cellulite, stretch marks and scars. I wonder how true that is. How, anyway, we'll see. It does claim it will relax my body as well. Anyway, I'm looking forward to trying those. I've got two medium-sized ones and two small ones. I'll let you know how I go with them, but I plan to use them on my neck and shoulders. The trick is to get a flat surface that they can attach to, so that's why I got the smaller ones. Anyway, let's see how they work.

Jacquie:

The other interesting health hack that I'm going to be using again is using our ice bath, which I'm not sure if I've told you about this before. I haven't used it for a while and it was broken. The pipes were broken. It's an outdoor bath. It's something that is inflatable, but it's extremely sturdy, and you connect it to a cooling pump. The hoses are about five six metres long and the attachments to the cooling pump were starting to leak. So we've upgraded the pipes and have reattached them now, and it looks much better. The insulation of the pipes is a lot more effective and it looks like they're using some sort of new material, whereas the old ones had started to well disintegrate because they were surrounded in a foam-type material. Because they were surrounded in a foam-type material, the great thing about having an outdoor ice bath, especially in this climate is that you can have an ice bath in the sun. If you choose the right time of the day to have a bath, that is which is the perfect combination, and it makes it a lot easier to get used to again.

Jacquie:

I'm looking forward to using that again. It gave me a lot of energy when I used it it was probably over a year ago now. I also find it does help me with extra fluid in my body and I always feel much better muscle-wise when I have a nice bath. When I have a nice bath, my muscles feel more toned without even exercising, so you have to love that. I'll start at a fairly warm temperature initially, probably about 17 degrees, which is not very cold, but I hope to stay in there for 15 to 20 minutes initially. Then over a period of weeks I expect I'll be able to bring the temperature down to 12 or 13. We'll see. It always takes a little bit of time and, most importantly, I want to spend 15-20 minutes in each bath so I can't make it too cold because, as I've learned from previous experiences, it takes a while to warm up again afterwards. That is also the benefit of having an outdoor ice bath. It means you can also have a sunbake afterwards, just a short one to warm yourself up again. The other benefit that I find by having an outdoor ice bath is that afterwards I can also spend some time grounding with my feet well, my bare feet on the grass, which is lovely. It just makes you feel reinvigorated. I'll let you know how the first ice bath goes.

Jacquie:

What have you been doing this week so far to help your body stay nice and limber? I know you like stretching, if you can each day. I meant to ask you last time did you have a chance to try the leg stretches that I suggested? Let me know how you went with those. Certainly also, using the tennis ball against the side of the leg is a fantastic way to loosen up the iliotibial band. I think people call it the ITB. I can see why it's a big mouthful otherwise. Anyway, it's quite easy. Again, you only need to put the tennis ball between your leg and the wall and put pressure on three different spots for 10 seconds in each spot, three times, which would make it a minute and a half in total. So it's definitely worth trying. I find it really useful if I get sore knees the other thing that I'm going to find in my cupboard of sports equipment, which is rather messy at the moment and needs a little bit of decluttering, is the sports band that I purchased a year or so ago. It's a well you can get different strengths of the sports bands and it's a light one, so it's a good way to start, but I'll be looking at starting that up next week as well, and I'll just have it near my desk. Actually, this is the plan. I do have to find it first and that will remind me when I'm having a work break to pick it up and stretch my arms behind my back so I can help keep my posture in check. Anyway, I'll talk a bit more about that next time and I'm keen to hear what you've been up to.

Jacquie:

Thanks for asking about the 80s party. We had a lot of fun and I'll send you through some pictures now of our costumes and how they looked, and also a few of the other costumes there. There was a lot of reflective glasses, lacy tops, leopard skin pants, lots of light blue and pink eyeshadow and bright lipstick. My brother came to the party, which was a lovely surprise, and he came as an 80s rocker, complete with long hair, which was, of course, a wig, a rock and roll bandana and the reflective glasses. So he certainly very much looked the part. One of the other party goers went as a rocker as well, and he was wearing fake tattoo sleeves, which I hadn't seen before, and they were well, from a distance, very convincing and looked. He really looked the part.

Jacquie:

So the host did up an amazing 80s playlist on Spotify, so I'll get a link for you and send that through, just so you can hear some of the best songs of the 80s. Most of them are one-hit wonders, of course, but they certainly are a lot of fun to dance and sing to. I find, with a lot of songs from the 80s, that they're quite repetitive and catchy. So even if you haven't heard the song by the time you're about one minute into the song, you already know the chorus, feel like you've heard it before and are singing along. It would be a good playlist actually to do housework too, because it does make you smile. Anyway, I'll send that through.

Jacquie:

The playlist was played a few times because the party went for about eight hours and it felt like it went very quickly Lots of great conversation, laughs, great food, and then we were able to, as a bonus walk home because they don't live far from our house. That's probably enough for now. I do need to let you know how the music set is going as well. You were asking about that, so I'll save that for next time. Take care, looking forward to hearing what you've been up to, and thanks for listening. Enjoy the rest of your week, you.