A very quiet day today with us. My usual walk with ‘Pip the Dog’, lots of people about though. Many joggers, walkers and people who are never up this early in the morning. I am worried about one man in particular and that’s John with his dog Biscuit. I meet John now and again on the street when we’re both out walking our dogs. Biscuit and Pip kinda tolerate each other, no sniffing though, we stay on opposite sides of the street. John is 89 and tells me every time that he has Alzheimer’s. I bet he’s on lock down for 12 weeks, but wondering who is walking Biscuit? His wife, he told me, has Alzheimer’s too. I hope they are both okay.

The main big news with us is re-discovering Wim Hof and the Wim Hof method. This is the Dutchman who likes taking cold showers and holding his breath. Clair saw a snippet of an interview by Russell Brand, so we decided to watch the whole thing. Below is the interview, it’s fascinating on so many levels.

[embed]https://youtu.be/YfAgSusi6t0[/embed]

We first heard about Wim Hof at Tony Robbins UPW. So I’m going to try it and see what happens. I won’t be starting the cold showers just yet, but will develop the breathing technique and also the push ups.

You can learn more about him via his website, link below.

[embed]https://wimhofmethod.com/science[/embed]

Then after watching a few episodes of Pandemic on Netflix, I connected with Jacob (Jake) Glanville on LinkedIn. Jake and Sarah Ives are working on a universal flu vaccine. But, they are not a big pharmaceutical, they are a small company using external companies in collaboration to help them with the work. They call their company Distributed Bio. Then I also saw a link to an update they both shared where they were updating their followers on the progress on developing a Covid medicine. The work they are doing is really fascinating. They are developing a medicine from antibodies, that they have developed based on the SARS virus from a few years ago. I’m not an expert and they explain this really well and has allowed me to get a better understanding about the difference between a medicine and a vaccine. The video is below, I highly recommend it, so we can all get better educated about what the potential solution is going forward. The video starts at about 3 minutes in, when the real start is.

https://youtu.be/-sHcWPUrc18?t=190

Clair made a Pineapple, Carrot and Walnut cake, based on a recipe we saw on Sunday morning on Channel 4’s Sunday Brunch. Simon was cooking it in his kitchen. Seeing as we had a Pineapple that needed using up, Clair made this very lovely cake, very simple to make. I am sharing the recipe below.

Pineapple Loaf 🤩

1. Mix 150ml veg oil with 150g light brown sugar, once mixed now add in 3 eggs, mix well.
2. Now add in 30g of chopped walnuts, 1 small tin of pineapple (finely chopped), a handful of sultanas, 200g grated carrot, 250g of sifted plain flour, 2 tsp baking powder, 1 tsp bicarb of sofa and a tsp of salt.
3. Pour into a greased and lined 2lb loaf tin, then bake at 180C for 45mins.
4. Once cooked, turn out and let cool completely before icing.
5. For the icing, Mix together 125g soft butter with 250g icing sugar, 25ml pineapple juice and a tsp of vanilla paste or extract.
6. Now to build your cake. Slice the cake in half horizontally and ice in between the cake and on top. Dust with a little cinnamon and serve with a cup of tea. #SundayBrunch

So we had that for our pudding!

I think tomorrow the diet will start, too much Easter chocolate, biscuits, crisps and crap food, but I’m not beating myself up though, it’s just a phase I had to get through.

More Wim Hof method coming up and I will report my progress!

Tomorrow I will write about a long standing business agreement with a very ‘small’ business partner who has told me without any discussion that he’s reducing my share in a project we created a few years ago. An e-learning project.

I sincerely hope you’re staying well and being mindful of your actions.

Michael de Groot