Day To Day: Calm Conversations with a Friend

#6 Morning Magic and Pina Coladas

• Jacquie Joy • Season 1 • Episode 6

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 Imagine waking up to the gentle glow of the Queensland sun, birds serenading you into the day, and a playful spaniel eager to greet the morning. Your friend chats about infusing the beauty of nature into her daily routine, the purchase of a new kitchen item, then discusses some delightful and healthy pina colada recipes. She chats ambient ethereal music then ponders the texture and elements of the Mojave Desert soundscape - from the rhythmic chorus of crickets to the spirited gusts of wind that dance through the landscape… each auditory element tells its own story.
Here's to embracing the beauty of both morning routines and the mesmerizing desert, setting a positive tone for the days ahead.


Jacquie:

Welcome to the Day-to-Day Podcast, calm Conversations with a Friend, spoken by Jacquie Joy, and you are listening to Episode 6. 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, thanks for the message, and it sounds like you've been busy writing and creating since you've been back.

Jacquie:

Like you, I've been waking up a little earlier lately to get extra work done. It's funny here in Queensland a lot of people do get up very early, maybe because of the warmer weather, and they also go to bed early, so that is fine. Except when you go out for dinner, the kitchens all seem to close at 9 o'clock or even earlier sometimes. It's a bit crazy. When we went down to Melbourne, I was so surprised that you could get dinner at 10 or 10.30 at night, but of course, when you went to get breakfast in Melbourne, nothing was open. You could get a coffee, though, so that was the main thing. So I was up at 5.30am. There weren't many cars on the road at all, but a lot of people were up and exercising and walking around the streets taking their dogs for a walk. I don't know what your neighbourhood's like Is it full of early risers or do people like sleeping in?

Jacquie:

Anyway, I did catch a very magical time of day this morning and I recorded it for you. It is a time it goes for about five minutes where all of the birds in the neighbourhood seem to tweet and talk to each other. It's like they're saying good morning and celebrating a new day. I just stood there on the veranda and listened to them tweet away. As you know, I love sound and it's a part of nature that I really love this sudden gorgeous good morning chorus of chirping birds. But the weird thing all of a sudden it just stops. But the weird thing all of a sudden it just stops and it's like okay, well, it's time to get to work. It's not the best recording, but this is what it sounded like. You might have heard a few clunks in the background and that was the dog chewing his morning rusk. So he always loves greeting me every morning, probably because I give him food. He sleeps outside and does enjoy being a guard dog, but anytime I move out of bed or start walking around the house, he is immediately onto me and looking at me through the window, tapping on the doors, ready to give me a good morning cuddle. It's funny when I don't wake up first and someone else opens the door to let him in, the first thing he'll do is to, at full speed, run into the room. I can hear him coming because we have wooden floors and his paws or nails scratch on the floors when he's running and I just duck under the covers because I know he just loves jumping on me and giving me a huge cuddle just to make sure that I'm awake.

Jacquie:

It sounds like your new routine of stretching is working out really well. I'm so happy for you and that it's giving you a lot more energy and freedom of movement. I've been doing a different routine this week. I have been using the punching bag. I have a set of pink gloves and it's a freestanding small bag. I think they hang them up in gyms and call them speed bags, but I'm not doing speed punching. This bag you punch and it goes about a meter away and then comes back to you, goes about a meter away and then comes back to you. So I've got a little routine of single arm punches and then double arm punches. So that is good for coordination as well, and we do have an outdoor gym set and I do leg extensions and have been doing some crunches on that, which it's been a lot of fun. That's the key, isn't it? Making exercise fun.

Jacquie:

I love being outside, and in between sets of crunches I sat up and had a little look at all of the peace lilies. We've got about a hundred of them out the front there and they have just been blossoming all at once. The flowers are about 10 centimetres wide or in length and about five centimetres wide, and they're all just looking up at the sun, looking very happy and proud that they were flowering, and they are also called Madonna lilies. I think We've had them mostly there for 20 years. Recently we've just planted another seven or eight pot plants of them just to fill them out a bit. When the dog was a puppy he took a liking to a few of them and we just needed to replace them. So they're looking great.

Jacquie:

I'll send through a photo you may recognise them. They are grown in warm, humid climates, so maybe not because it's dry where you are. They like being grown outdoors and don't like the cold at all, so they are very hardy and perfect for our weather here, and they really do look very pretty. I can see why they're called peace lilies. And, come to think of it, this morning early on, when the birds were tweeting, there were bees out and they were buzzing around the peace lilies Not too many, thank goodness like that swarm I was telling you about a little while ago.

Jacquie:

I have to tell you about pina coladas because I know you love them and I think I've found a great way of making them. I have two recipes one for normal pina coladas with Malibu rum, and the other ones are for I call them virgin pina coladas, but here they're called pina colada mocktails, mocktails. That is it. All started last week when we went out to see some live music with my brother's friends and we actually saw an ex-patient of mine who is a singer now, so it was great to catch up with her because it had been many years. So while we were watching her, we met some other people and I was talking a little bit about my kitchen frustrations and she said hey, why don't you come around and I'll show you a demo of something called a Thermomix, which is like a Vitamix, I think, but this has a touchscreen which gives you step-by-step instructions on how to cook, on how to cook. It has an attached cooking app so you can choose your meal on the phone and save it and the Thermomix will automatically know that that's what you are cooking that evening. And then Also, you can use this app it's called Cookie Do or Cookie Do to make a shopping list.

Jacquie:

Apparently these things have been around for many years, but it's not something I've used before. Apart from that, it is like a Vitamix before. Apart from that, it is like a Vitamix, but it does have a simmering basket and a steamer attachment and a few other things that I'm not familiar with yet. But it does make lovely mango ice cream and an amazing pina colada. So the best thing about this thermomix is it has great recipes attached to it, and I'll send you the two pina colada recipes because, of course, these can be made in any ninja mix or Vitamix.

Jacquie:

But I must say, look, I don't know if you normally use fresh pineapple for your pina coladas. I don't, because it's too much trouble cutting it up and I tend to use either pineapple juice, tinned pineapple or pre-made pina coladas until now. So the ingredients for the normal pina colada are ice cubes, of course, fresh pineapple cut into pieces, coconut milk, caster sugar, desiccated coconut and I mean, I love Malibu rum, so that's my rum of choice, or my alcohol of choice for my pina colada. There's one for pina colada mocktail and this is the. It's a quick one to make because you just need canned pineapple pieces which is something I would normally do and coconut milk and ice cubes, and you can garnish with pineapple or coconut flesh. I'll send those two through to you. But flavour sensation, it was amazing and it felt so healthy to drink. Oh my gosh.

Jacquie:

Music wise, I've been listening to some gorgeous cinematic, ambient pop music. It's on vinyl because I'm listening to it for an album review. I'll send you through the cover art because it is a gorgeous impressionistic. It is a gorgeous impressionistic well, it's a print, but it looks like a painting, with brushstrokes of yellow and greens, and it features an apparition that is coming up or lifting up from a pond of stars, surrounded by a lot of swirls and doves, and I think you love it. So sending that through. It's amazing how much that cover art really represented the music so well. It was a great match. Also, it led me to find an amazing Spotify playlist called Ethereal Ethereal and it had some great tracks on it from artists like, well, lana Del Rey, of course, imogen Heap, who I hadn't listened to for a long time, fiona Apple flume Anyway, you get the idea. It's an amazing list. Oh, radiohead, of course, as well. Anyway, I'll send you the link. You might enjoy listening to it in some of your downtime, when you're just relaxing in the kitchen making your pina colada.

Jacquie:

Work stuff is going well. I'm exploring the ambience and sound of the Mojave Desert, of the Mojave Desert. It's not somewhere I've actually been to in person, so I've been doing a lot of research and listening to sound recordings of people that just visit there and turn on their microphone, record sounds and share it. And I've also spoken to a couple of people who have been there and they say that it sounds alive at night. There are a lot of animals in and around the mountains, main animals being coyotes.

Jacquie:

I was speaking to an American girl last night at Felon's Barrel Hall and Brewing Company I just call it the Barrel Hall because I have trouble saying brewing and brewery, I don't know why. Anyway, we met them there last night and she was saying that the coyotes coyotes in the Mojave Desert sound almost like birds calling each other other, so they have their own language howling, yipping, barking. So I'm looking at all of that, and that will make the daytime versus nighttime soundscape contrasty as well. I think at night they howl a little more Birdwise. There's something called a great horned owl that I've found beautiful sound recordings of.

Jacquie:

I've even found some Mojave Desert crickets Mojave Desert crickets and of course, the other feature that is very present in the desert soundscape is the wind. So we'll be treating that a little like a character of its own as well, because you get little wind, swirls and gusts, whistles of wind, high wind, low wind, wind rustling in the trees and the bushes, travelling between buildings and mountains. So, work-wise, that's what I'm up to. I hope you have an enjoyable rest of the week. I know you are super busy at work doing what you love, so that's great to hear. I'll chat again soon. In the meantime, take care and enjoy a pina colada or two for me and chat soon. Bye for now you.