Mummy Zen

I’ve mentioned before that we get an organic vegetable box delivered to our home each week. It means we eat seasonally and consume (relatively) locally sourced food without the conscience of air miles. The boxes come in different sizes for different sized households. The contents are published on their website a week in advance so you can choose to add to your box or even create your own box if some of the vegetables are not too your liking that week, or you just can’t face another week of cooking with cabbage!

For the most part I go with the standard box, as opposed to creating my own. Whilst some customers might lament of receiving spinach for five consecutive weeks when in season, I find it a fun challenge to try new recipes, cooking it in different ways. The downside to having their standard box is that sometimes you inevitably receive vegetables that you don’t like. That happened last week – we got brussel sprouts and beetroot, both of which I really dislike.

The vegetables are all fresh, flavourful and of excellent quality. I’m certainly not going to waste any, even if I don’t like them. Instead, I make an effort to find a recipe that involves being a bit more creative with the particular vegetable. With last week’s examples, I made a soup with the brussel sprouts and a cake with the beetroot. Both are delicious! I get a real sense of satisfaction when I find a way to eat a food I wouldn’t ordinarily ever choose or take delight in eating.

Just as baby food books talk about disguising vegetables for little fussy eaters, the same applies to us as adults. If like me, you groan at the mention of brussel sprouts with the traditional English Christmas dinner, try cooking them differently and see how they go down. Finely slicing them and frying with chilli and ginger renders them a whole different texture and taste to the regular boiled version.

Do you have any inventive ways to cook your least favourite vegetables?

The title of this post refers to a video group set up by a guy called Garrett Murray on Flickr. The idea is to shoot a video of a day in your life, put it together to last no more than 90 seconds and post it on his video group. No music or sound effects should be added.

There’s something about this idea I really like. We’re so wrapped up in going about our regular activities each day that we probably don’t realise what we do because it all seems like the daily humdrum. Watching Garrett’s video, you get the impression technology is a very important part of his life! He appears to live alone and not have a family though. I think we all might get a surprisingly interesting perspective on our own lives if we did a video along these lines. There might be something we do a lot of that we hadn’t ever noticed before.

It could also be a helpful little project in the same way when you get video taken of you when you are teacher training, doing a course on presentation skills or learning a golf swing for example. Watching videos of yourself can make you cringe but also reveal things you do that you were completely unaware you did. Incidentally my husband just told me this weekend of something he’s noticed me saying lots recently which I wasn’t even aware of.

I think it can be good for us to look at ourselves and our actions from an outsider’s view. I’m not suggesting we all go and make our 90 second video of a day in our lives but we might want to consider what that video would show us if we did make it. What do you think a stranger watching you go about your day might notice or wonder? Maybe we sit at home too much and need to get out more. Maybe the tone of voice we use with our partner or children could be nicer and more reasonable. Maybe we don’t play enough with our children or have proper conversations with our partner. Maybe we’re always picking at food but not eating healthy nutritious meals.

With a little reflection, we would all probably notice elements of our daily lives that could be improved. Ordinarily, we would just carry on as usual without stopping to think about it but we’d probably benefit from taking time to reflect.

Have you ever been made aware of something you didn’t know you did? Have your own reflections lead you to make any big or small changes in your life?

You can see Garrett’s video, ‘My Day, yesterday’ here.

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Photo by Mark Hillary

If anyone came to mummyzen.com last Thursday around noon, you’d have found no site! Regular readers amongst you might have noticed a couple of missing recent posts. Whilst trying to back-up my files, I accidentally deleted them! You can imagine my despair.  Luckily, not too much is missing and I can live with a little gap in my posts. Apologies to those readers who had commented on the missing posts and whose comments are therefore now lost.

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We all know that making a small gesture towards someone, such as a phone-call to a friend/relative living alone or giving flowers will bring that person a whole lot of happiness and makes them feel cared for. The same principle applies when we make a  small effort to do something for ourselves. It’s maybe even harder to make the effort when it’s not for someone else, but it’s no less important or beneficial. Often the hardest part about it is that the time when you need to make the effort is usually when you feel least like doing so.

My husband’s been away most of this week for work. Last night, I felt tired, had a bit of a headache and generally couldn’t be bothered to do much. I was deciding what to make myself for dinner and wondering if I could eat pasta and pesto (my default quick and easy meal) for the second time this week. Then I felt ashamed of myself. I love cooking and always thought I wouldn’t be one of those people who says it’s no fun cooking for one. I knew it wouldn’t take me long to make myself a nice bowl of soup which would be a healthier meal and more what I felt like eating. So that’s what I did. I forced myself to make a little effort and felt all the better for it.

When we’re feeling tired, emotional, depressed or a bit run down we usually lack motivation to do much at all. However, what seems such a struggle at the time, really only requires a little effort. If we make ourselves do one small thing, it tends to do a world of good and make us feel much better. Think about the times when you’re not feeling in a sociable mood and just want to curl up on the sofa at home…..you’ll probably find that a chat with a friend revives you and is exactly what you need to perk you up. Or when you look outside at the rain and the grey sky and think that the last thing you want to do is go out for a walk – often a walk is the best thing for you and you feel better for getting out of the house.

Next time you feel a bit deflated for whatever reason, try to reason with yourself and do whatever it is you’re not quite in the mood to do. By making a small effort, I’m sure you will benefit more than you might expect.

Photo credit

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Welcome to Mummy Zen, which has launched today! I wanted to create a blog for mums with useful practical information and suggestions, as well as more contemplative content focusing on enjoying a healthy balance in our busy lives. Being a mum takes up a lot of our time and energy and it’s a constant learning and enriching experience. However, there’s another side to us and it’s just as important to put time and energy into that part of our life. By feeling happy, healthy and having dreams and goals to pursue, I think we all feel better equipped to be a good mum, friend, wife, partner and can achieve a cohesive balance all round.

Mummy Zen will be a sharing of thoughts, experiences and ideas ranging from the day-to-day basics to more specialised insight from some of our contributors. We can all learn from each other and benefit from different perspectives so you’ll find regular guest posts on the site and links to other sites and articles that I come across and think are worth sharing. Please feel free to add comments to any of the posts and to offer your own ideas to fellow readers.

Thanks for coming to check out the site and I hope you come back for more…. There’ll be 2-3 posts per week. Bookmark the site or subscribe to the RSS feed to keep updated!