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Ten ideas for enjoying everyday life more

Written by Natural Maven on January 7, 2012 · 5 Comments

I thought I’d put together a few ideas which you may like to peruse – ideas for enjoying everyday life more.

#1. Avoid doing things you hate doing

I can already hear half of you (the responsible half of the population) crying, “But sometimes you just have to do things you don’t feel like doing!” and I don’t disagree with you. However, I think you can go a long way to minimising doing the things you hate. Life is short. If you hate doing the washing up, but don’t mind doing the laundry, then why not do a deliberate trade with someone washing-up-inclined in your household? If you hate working the job you do, then why not find a different one? If you dislike cleaning, then can you hire a cleaner? If you don’t like walking or jogging, then why not try swimming or weights instead? If you hate chopping vegetables, can you use a food processor? If you hate driving the school run in the morning, can you try a cargo bike, the bus, the train, carpooling, even homeschooling? It sounds obvious to say, but all of us fall into patterns of repeatedly doing things we hate doing, sometimes to the point where we realise we are really not enjoying life. Make a change! Choreograph your life so that you’re dancing the part that you love dancing. If you don’t, life will choreograph your part for you and it might not be the part you wanted.

#2. Sleep more (and together)

It doesn’t matter here if you’re a lark or a night owl, or whether you vacillate between the two, but the fact is, we don’t sleep as much as we used to. Before the light bulb, people slept an average of 10 hours a night. How many hours did you sleep last night? I’ll bet it was a fair few less than 10. Mine certainly was, so I’ll be taking my own advice here. You don’t have to take all your sleep at night, though. Can you fit in a siesta, even if just on the weekends? (A real lying-down one!) Can you sleep in for a few mornings a week? Can you take an afternoon nap somewhere, or perhaps get up on your Friday off, eat an early breakfast, and then go back to bed for a few hours? Can you brush your teeth, turn out the lights, and curl up with your kids after putting them to bed one night and forget about the dishes for once? Take baby to bed with you? Get a family member to babysit on Saturday so you can lie down? (But don’t then use the time to do work!) Napping is one of the best cheap ways to enjoy life more. Sleep is precious, a building block of life as much as sunlight and food. Garner ye more.

#3. Spend more time with those you love

“Spend more time with family and friends” is a top New Years’ Resolution. But by February, your busy life has crowded back in again. The solution? Make your life less busy. Be ruthless. Cut back your hours at work, or at very least, your overtime. Cut back your spending so you can cut back on your work. (If you can’t decide what to cut first, I suggest the Pay TV!) Cut back your after-work and after-school activities. Instead of sending the kids to soccer one night a week and going out to tennis by yourself one night a week, find an active solution that involves all of you at the same time. Do the kids really need multiple music, sport and dance lessons, anyway? Do you really need to attend that work function, that volunteer group, that AGM? Is giving yourself away all over the place the way to enjoy life? Step back and reclaim your time. I promise the busyworld will keep grinding on without you, bless/curse it.

#4. Ditch the TV

The shameful thing about TV is that it is trying to tell you how to enjoy your life, but it mainly just sucks enjoyment out of life. You know the deal – ads making you think you want to buy this or that, shows promenading celebrity lifestyles, enjoying the life in Hollywood (and we all know they are either in debt or divorcing at any given time.) I know, I know. I just said cut back on Pay TV if you have it, and that’s a big step for some people. But why do things by halves? Television is the ultimate encouragement for passivity. It turns off your rational brain and it turns up your internal stress levels, it mucks up your sleep patterns and it lends itself to unhealthy eating, and possibly worst of all, it ensures that the people in the room look at anything except each other. Get rid of the TV altogether (and by that I mean, remove it completely from your posession, otherwise it will creep back!). After a couple of months, you’ll wonder how on earth you ever found time to watch it. Be prepared for a withdrawal period, during which you should stock up on other non-TV distractions. Indulge in anything non-harmful which does it for you. Anything but TV.

read real books bookmark by riskybeads

#5. Read books

Not on a Kindle. Real ones. Nothing like a real, holdable, page-turnable book to focus the mind and pull you into an enjoyable world of its own. If you’re intrigued or bewildered as to why a book on a Kindle isn’t as good as a book in the hand, why not start off with Nicholas Carr’s most fascinating and shocking book, The Shallows? And don’t pick a book about how to enjoy your life more. (If motivational self-help books actually helped, they wouldn’t need to keep selling them!) Instead, find a story or a topic that interests you… and fall headlong into a nice old-fashioned book.

#6. Get your kitchen sink completely clear and spotless at least once every day

I stole this one from the FlyLady. I used to scoff at it, but now I know what a difference it makes to my everyday morale and enjoyment of my home. Somehow a sparklingly clean, totally-cleared kitchen sink actually sings. Now, it will still mean a thing even if it ain’t got that swing, and you don’t need to start using curlers or retro-coloured kitchen appliances…. But you too would enjoy a spotless kitchen sink at least once every day. Ooh lah lah! There’s a definite element of fake it till you make it in getting the kitchen sink spotless even if the rest of the house is a complete and utter bombsite. But at the same time, it does actually help you “make it”. I’m always surprised at the level of stress I was tolerating until I get my kitchen sink clean, and once it’s done, I can actually notice the stress level difference. It has to be experienced to be believed. You never know where it might lead. (Probably to more cooking – haha!)

#7. Light candles – often

Connect your animal self to the everlasting wonder of fire. Often. Children love the magic of lighting a candle, and a little daily ritual could inspire many quiet moments together. Dinner candles are inexpensive and a plain iron or ceramic candle holder will last you a lifetime. Then a box of matches and you’re set, but if you want to go one step further back in time, get a flint stone! Beeswax candles give off a lovely comforting aroma, and burn for longer than parrafin candles. A happy flame will add warmth to the room. Winter breakfasts in the dark and cold of morning are made warmer with a candle; some graceful tapers burning over the dinner table give you an excuse to dim the lights and feel extra cosy. :)

#8. Tend a plant

It doesn’t have to be a whole gardenful. It doesn’t have to be your own. It can be a houseplant (get a hardy one if you’re at all concerned about accidentally killing it) or it can be a community garden plot, it could be the tree in your backyard, or it could be a pot of basil on your balcony. Maybe your neighbour is too creaky to water his roses anymore; could you offer to water them a couple of times a week? Maybe your kids want to try growing some vegies. Give them a bit of dirt next to the fence and sow some seeds together. I recommend zucchinis because they are pleasantly sturdy seedlings which are unlikely eaten by birds or bugs (unlike peas), they grow impressively big leaves, and they produce insane amounts of fruit, which you can watch grow bigger even within the same day! To tend a plant, you must observe it, watch it. You must offer it water and food (seaweed and manure are generally accepted by most plants!) Why tend a plant, you ask? Because your life is connected to the earth, and all your food comes via plant life, whether you are a vegetarian or not. (Cows eat grass, we eat cows. Grain eats cow poo, we eat grain.) Tend a plant because it will change you. Tend a plant because it will bring you back down to earth. Tend a plant because it is alive, just like you.

#9. Ferment something

This may sound a little crazy to those who have never even thought about the concept, but once upon a time a large proportion of our foods were fermented. This was in part because fridges and freezers and worldwide-scale food importation hadn’t happened yet! Things were grown locally and in season, and whatever couldn’t be eaten fresh was preserved, often with fermentation. The beautiful thing about fermentation is that it happens all by itself, but you can catch the kinds of fermentation you are after. What I mean is, everything will go off left to its own devices – home fermenting and culturing simply means that you make food go off in the ways that you want! Think of cheese, yoghurt, sourdough bread, sauerkraut, all things you’ve probably tasted before. They are all popular fermented foods. Homemade yoghurt is an easy one to start with. You’ll be surprised at how addictive it is to ferment and culture food – and how satisfying it is to participate in an edible ritual that our ancestors have been participating in from the dawn of time.

Painting of girl in tree: Susan Seddon Boulet

#10. Listen

Listen to the magic of the morning – enjoy the day as it wakes up, stretches its wings and starts singing. Listen to your own breathing before you fall asleep. Listen to the rain when it falls on your roof and the storm when it hammers on your windows. Listen to the messages of your dreams. Listen to your thirst and hunger. Listen to the smell of fresh air, when you can get it. Listen to your child snoring softly. Listen to the wind in the different heights of trees. Listen to your heartbeat at midday. Listen to the silence between you and your best friend. Between you and your lover. Fill silence with listening, not words.

Listen to the way the night opens up like a huge cave inside the mouth of the sky. Listen to the bread crackling and hissing to itself when it comes out of the oven. Listen to your fridge turn itself on and off. Listen to the flame kissing the wax and the candle ever so softly hiss and pop. Listen to the ache in your bones that tells you you don’t belong on concrete. Listen to the wild, which is what you really are. Listen, not to those gurus who glibly tell you how to enjoy life and be happy, with their fireworks and fashions and crash diets, but to your own strong and fragile self, which wants to live with dignity and grace, firelight and freedom and contentment.

Take your own hand; step into the world, your home: and listen.

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How to make a nourishing soup from leftover roast duck

Written by Natural Maven on December 29, 2011 · Say what's on your mind!

I roasted a duck for Christmas dinner this year, which was yummy. But afterwards, I had a duck carcass with leftover meat still on it. It was not easy to pick off, either, and I didn’t want to waste the meat that was still on the bones. What to do?

The answer: duck minestrone! In fact, any type of poultry can be used in minestrone, and goose meat or turkey meat would be just as at home. It’s the perfect comfort food to create from your leftover roast bird.

How to turn roast duck leftovers into duck minestrone soup...? (Read on!)

But more to the point, the bones aren’t wasted either: they are boiled up for a most delicious broth, forming the base of your soup.

1. To prepare for making the broth: you probably won’t feel like making the broth right after clearing away your dinner, so put the bones/carcass from the bird into a freezer bag and place straight in the freezer. That will keep them safe and good for when you want to make the broth.

2. To make the broth, I do this just like I do chicken broth. I place all the bones (don’t worry if there’s still a bit of roast meat stuck to them – the goodness ends up in the broth), along with a onion cut in half, a couple of sticks of celery, a carrot, a bay leaf and some black peppercorns, and a good splash of white vinegar or apple cider vinegar (helps to release the nutrients from the bones), into a large stockpot or pressure cooker. Add water to cover. Don’t add salt; the broth will reduce and get too salty, plus salt also reduces the amounts of nutrients which are released from the bones.

If making in a stockpot, bring everything to the boil. Once boiled, reduce to a simmer and leave to simmer for 4-12 hours. I actually use a pressure cooker (see the pressure cooker I use at this post) and I bring it up to 15psi, then maintain that pressure for 20-30mins, before using a natural release to let the pressure down again. But you get the same effect from simmering the broth for hours on the back of the stove – it doens’t need much attention from you, except maybe a splash of extra water now and then. You could also use a slow cooker to make the broth overnight if you prefer.

Once you’re happy with the strength and flavour of the broth, strain it through a colander or sieve, and put aside any excess broth that you don’t want to use for the soup. I let it cool in a stainless steel pot and then pour it into containers or freezer bags to freeze. Keep out as much as you’ll need to make your pot of soup; for broth made from the bones of one roast bird, and the leftover meat of that roast, I would normally use all of the broth that I’d made. However it depends on how strong the broth is and how strongly brothy you like your soup to taste! It’s not an exact science and every pot of soup will be a little different :)

Duck minestrone soup from roast duck

3. Shred the leftover duck meat and put aside in the fridge until the broth is done.

4. Dice some carrots, some onion, some celery, and some garlic and gently sauté them in some butter until the onions no longer smell “raw”.

5. Put the broth and the sautéed vegetables into a big soup pot, and bring up to a gentle simmer on the stove.

6. Open a can of tomatoes and a can of cannelloni beans, or get some soaked and cooked beans out of the freezer if that’s what you normally do. Add the tomatoes to the soup pot; drain the beans and put them to one side.

7. If you like pasta in your minestrone, then add 1-2 cups of pasta shapes now. I often add elbows or macaroni, because you don’t have to fight to get them on your spoon!

8. Once the pasta is almost done, add the beans.

9. Just before serving, stir the shredded duck meat so that it warms through. You don’t want this to simmer or boil because it will make it a bit tasteless and tough.

10. Serve in nice open soup bowls with sea salt and freshly cracked pepper, and some parmesan to sprinkle, if you like.

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Christmas gingerbread with rapadura sugar and blackstrap molasses

Written by Natural Maven on December 8, 2011 · Say what's on your mind!

Since it’s December now, that time of the year when everyone seems to drop in for a quick visit before the year is out – in many cases their only visit for the year – I like to have something ready to offer to people with a cup of tea.

Reading a Nigella Christmas recipe book I was inspired by the description of a “sticky gingerbread” cake brownie slice thing which would fill my house with the scent of Christmas. I’d made gingerbread-flavoured biscuits and cookies before, but never the actual “bread”.

I messed around with her recipe a bit though: the original recipe called for a bit too much sweetener for my liking, and also called for treacle and muscovado sugar, neither of which I had. Also, I added the hot English mustard. I also couldn’t resist adding a slug of rum into the mixture – it seemed just the right timbre and colour to go with the other rich, golden ingredients!

Above: the Nigella Christmas recipe book from which

I adapted the following gingerbread recipe.

My below recipe turned out a beautifully squidgy-yet-light gingerbread slice…

Christmas gingerbread with rapadura sugar and blackstrap molasses

Served with fresh strawberries (sorry Northern Hemisphere…!) and homemade crème fraîche

Makes about 35 small squares or 15-20 larger ones

150g butter
50g golden syrup
300g blackstrap molasses
100g rapadura sugar
3 tsp ground ginger
2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1 tsp hot English mustard
1 tsp bicarbonate of soda dissolved in 2 Tbsp water
250ml yoghurt
2 eggs, beaten
300g plain flour

1. Preheat oven to 160°C and line a slice tin, or roasting tin, with baking paper (or grease with butter)

2. Melt butter , sugar, syrup, molasses, and spices together in a pan over low heat.

3. Remove from heat, add milk, beaten eggs, and dissolved bicarb of soda.

4. Sift the flour into a bowl and pour the combined liquid from the saucepan into the bowl, and mix well so all flour is nice and wet. Yes, I know, it looks too runny to bake properly, but trust me, it will!

5. Pour into the baking tin and bake for 35-60 mins, depending on how accurate your oven is – keep checki

ng it through the oven window if you can, because the golden syrup, molasses and rapadura can burn if it all gets too hot or if it bakes for too long.

6. Get the gingerbread out before it’s cooked fully through – inserting a skewer ought not to come out clean like with regular cakes – leaving it a bit sticky in the middle makes for a squidgy, denser, rich textured gingerbread.

7. Let the gingerbread cool and then cut it into squares of whatever size you wish. I like small pieces, because then I can eat two, which means double the amount of…

8. Fresh strawberries and crème fraîche! So delicious, and a summery Christmas pairing that goes very nicely in the Southern Hemisphere. I should have taken a photo before we ate, but I forgot, as always – will add photos next time I make it!

This was so delicious. Everyone who has tried some has liked it. It’s not as tooth-achingly sweet as many gingerbread recipes out there – yet it isn’t bitter either. Even my sweet-tooth friends enjoyed this gingerbead. :)

Very peaceful to make, too – no beaters or stuffing around with multiple bowls; just melt, and mix.

Yummmmmmmmmmmm.

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