Word Smoothie

On being a health-obsessive

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As a Virgo I have a natural bent towards, or perhaps even a (slight) obsession with all things health and well-being, if the Astrology folks are to be believed. I personally can’t argue with received wisdom around Virgo-an traits from a relative fact point of view, much as my logical and methodical brain would like to add a pinch of scepticism to the whole thing.

The trouble with deciding on a blog post with a seemingly innocuous one word title, short and sweet, is that when you put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, it is definitely very far from short and simple. For niche topics to pick, this is not one of them. For a start, there’s physical and mental health. Then we bring it down to the physical health sub headings such as illness, fitness, medicine, nutrition, and under mental health again medicine, spirituality, wellbeing, soul…. it all becomes very quickly interlinked the more you think about it.

Physical health

Since this is a blog post, and not a weighty tome of some 1,000+ pages, I’ll keep it light and just go for a few thoughts on physical health.

Firstly, despite a very keen interest in, and a not insignificant encyclopaedic knowledge of various ailments and illnesses and their symptoms (people’s eyes have been known to glaze over whilst being on the receiving end of one of my unsolicited diagnoses by the way), I have never had a desire to be a nurse, doctor, or any kind of healthcare related practitioner. For starters, I didn’t even do Biology O Level, and also I don’t deal well with the physical manifestations of ill health, which probably isn’t a great place to start!

Encyclopaedic knowledge 

My interest lies purely in the gathering of information, the absorbing of facts and figures, much like a bath sponge. You only have to tell me some health related fact once, and I’ll remember it forever. This is a great skill to have, used in the right way (and proved to be absolutely invaluable in the recent diagnosis of my eldest with Type 1 Diabetes. Marching into the doctor’s surgery having already determined the condition, proved to be one of the most critically life-changing paths that instinct and a little knowledge could have led to).

If you care to rifle through my bathroom cabinet, you’ll find it well stocked with a plethora of pills, lotions and potions to treat anything from verrucas to a bad case of piles (ok, so maybe not piles just yet….we’ll leave that for the retirement years maybe..). I’m probably more well stocked than your local pharmacy, so just ask and I’ll probably be able to pull something out of the cabinet, or my handbag which serves as a portable, slightly scaled-down version of the home treasure trove. Somehow I never seem to carry basics like tissues though, rather annoyingly as these are probably (along with baby wipes), the most universally useful item serving a variety of purposes, not all of them related to the wiping of snotty noses (stop it! no smut here).

I’ve already written a little bit about another aspect of physical health, which is the fitness side of life under the title http://word-smoothie.com/uncategorized/word-smoothie-on-on-sport-or-not-sitting-around/ but this just scratches the surface of the spaghetti-like mess that is my mind when thinking about health and well-being. I’m definitely one of those faddy people who’ll dive headlong into the latest diet or fitness craze for approximately, oooh let’s see, maybe 2 whole weeks… all gung-ho and fired up until the willpower runs out / work / life / literally anything else comes along to distract my butterfly mind and I’ve forgotten what it was that I was so keen on in the first place.

sucking up the knowledge like a ninja

Ring any bells? If there’s something health-related which grabs my attention in the media I’ll delve right down into the subject like a ninja, buying books and reading articles until I feel I’m a kind of semi-expert in the matter. And that’s exactly the point, dear friends, family and colleagues, where you should all retreat to a safe distance and do your very best to avoid all contact with me (reference the glazed eyes comment in paragraph 4 above).

Recently I have become invested in the whole HIIT vs extended cardio debate a la Joe Wicks et al. I very much like the idea that I can (in theory!) throw out a quick 20 minute turn of high impact cardio and reap the same benefits as an hour of running. Time is, after all, precious and in short supply. However, I do wish someone would just come out with the definitive answer to the holy grail of optimal fitness / weight loss, and be done with it. This would save me inordinate amounts of time wrangling with the facts and figures, but would not contribute so much to the GDP of the UK in craze-related Kindle downloads, new fitness kit, and associated nutrition (avocados and quinoa have never been in such high demand!).

leave it to the experts?

The flip side of course to all this random and indeterminate health information gathering is that sometimes too much can be a bad thing. On the subject of illness and ailments, we’ve all been guilty of self-diagnosing via the power of Google, myself included, and that can lead us down the path of hypochondria and worry. GP surgeries, usually  our first port of call,  must sometimes hate us patients turning up, symptom list in hand, with a pre-determined fate before we’ve even got our coat off and sat down in the surgery chair.

Sometimes, dear reader, information overload can be a bad thing and we should perhaps just leave the proper diagnosis to the medical experts, at least when it comes to our physical health.

Take it easy

X

Originally posted 2016-11-27 19:36:14.

Cooking, Baking and Feeding the Tribe

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Cooking or Baking? Which do you prefer? Or do you even make a distinction?

If I’m honest, I’m a more of a  ‘GBBO’ girl than a ‘Masterchef’ fan, but neither are watchable without a generous side helping of snacks to accompany. Heaven help me if they ever bring out ‘smelly-vision’… that will really be the death of my finely-tuned, svelte, hourglass figure…*cough* , who am I kidding?

the 1970’s

Back in my childhood 1970’s, baking or cooking in the parental household followed a predictable weekly pattern.  You could definitely tell what day it was by the following menu:

Sundays: a roast of some kind. Mostly lamb or beef, with all the trimmings. Followed by a fruit crumble or pie (all home made) and custard. Always for lunch, so that we could have a proper sunday ‘tea’ at 5pm – sandwiches, jam tarts, sliced luncheon meat.

Mondays: Cold cuts (leftovers from the Sunday roast) and salad (the most dreaded meal of the week from the thrifty WW2 mentality of the parents)

Tuesdays: usually something ‘exotic’ like spaghetti bolognese (This was about as ‘foreign’ as food got in the 1970’s, other than the occasional tin of Sainsbury’s chicken curry Dad had a penchant for)

Wednesdays: Perhaps a shepherd’s pie made with ‘proper’ mince sourced from the local butcher.

Thursdays: for some reason I’m drawing a blank here….

Fridays: Fish, of course! if we were lucky, deep fried with chips from the ‘chippy’, or some kind of grilled flat fish like plaice (I loved the red spots on the skin) or if things were tight on the money front, tinned sardines (double triple yuk)

Saturdays were usually lamb or pork chops (aka soles of shoes with gritty fat rind) with mash, gravy and veg.

Dessert … or desert?

If you’re looking for the dessert options (or pudding as it was called in our house) this would usually be some kind of fruit cocktail from a tin with evaporated milk, or maybe a packet of Angel’s Delight. If really lucky, an apple ‘snow’ which was basically pureed apple mixed with whisked egg whites and topped with a little cream (or the ‘top of the milk’).

Quite often though, puddings only made an appearance on Sundays, and this didn’t really seem to matter to me, unlike my own kids who demand to know what’s for pudding most days before they’ve even lifted their cutlery to the main course, presumably to determine whether it would be worth their while eating the whole plateful or not (no pudding without eating all your main, that’s the rule in our house and one which is non-negotiable).

Mum was the central figure I remember in terms of the bulk of the home cooking. I can picture her very clearly in her flowery brown pinny, baking some kind of Victoria sponge or perhaps a pavlova on a Sunday morning before the compulsory 11am church service. It was in the warm kitchen, mostly on Sundays and sometimes after school, that I could be found as a small child, standing on the rickety old painted chair, eagerly lapping up every ounce (and it was ounces, not grams!) of  wisdom and culinary trickery I could.

make it from scratch

Mum was a fantastic cook, and an even better baker (reference my first question in this post), and it was by listening and watching closely that I picked up the skills and tips needed to master a decent sponge, meringue, or even a good, from scratch- not- a -packet, gravy and have never really had to rely on a recipe to come up with some great meal options.

One of the first recipes I absorbed for many later uses was the mantra of the 3 eggs, 6 ounces of flour, sugar, butter, then 20 mins at 180 deg C needed for a Vic sponge. I still cannot work in grams because mum taught me in ounces and that’s what makes sense to me. Much like feet and inches, not centimeters, or pounds not kilos.

I hope I’ve managed to pass some of these skills on to my own kids, as we still as a family (as a 95% of the time rule), cook from scratch, not from packets or ready meals, and the open plan kitchen diner is definitely a godsend in this respect. Every action and consequence is very visible to the gathered audience. And if the consequences are really spectacularly dire, then there’s always a 4- legged friend to eagerly lap up any misdemeanors!

Mini budding chefs! 

My youngest is a brilliant budding chef. Most mornings before school he makes himself bacon and eggs (he’s 10), has made his own packed lunch for years, and will very happily create amazing flavour combinations which just seem to be pure inspiration. He has a natural talent and a great palate. To be encouraged since most 10 year olds I know don’t even make their own toast, never mind a full meal. I view this not only as a fantastic skill for him, but also one more tick in the ‘getting them to independence’ list which I have in my mental store.

I really hope he’s picked at least some of this up from me, and by definition therefore his Nanna whom he sadly never had the chance to meet, but has definitely made her influence felt in a number of ways.

I really believe in cooking from scratch wherever possible. Not only is it more cost-effective than ready meals, especially for a family of 5, but the taste and health benefits (hidden sugar in ready meals anyone?) speak for themselves. I’ve even got the whole shopping thing down to a fine art by scanning a recipe book, writing down the ingredients needed for the 7 meals I’ll be planning, and whizzing as fast as humanly possible through Lidl or Aldi to source said ingredients.

planning the week

The ‘menu’ (literally) goes up for public viewing on a Sunday (attached by penguin fridge magnet) so that everyone has the chance to view (and complain to deaf ears) about the forthcoming choices for the week, and we all know where we are with things. Did I mention myself and the husband are Virgos? It’s all in the planning folks!

Going back to my original question of Baking vs Cooking, if I thought I could reasonably get through life just eating cake, of course that’s what I’d prefer (and who wouldn’t?), but in the interests of not getting scurvy or a call from social services about malnourished kids, a balance has to be struck, so these days I’m really glad that mum taught me all about both.

Happy cheffing!

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Originally posted 2016-12-30 21:01:28.

Why Aldi and Lidl are our saviours

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Lately I’ve been giving some thought to the ‘balance’ (or not) of my typical week, and the strange feeling I’m sure most of us over the age of 40 can relate to, that life is passing by too quickly, that there’s just so much left to ‘do’, and that leisure/free/family time, whatever you wish to call it, is all out of whack.

I have always assumed, as is the norm for most people, that time spent with colleagues far outweighs my time with family and friends, but this nifty little pie-chart puts it out there in glorious technicolour (thanks to www.meta-chart.com) for properly justified, hard-data style analysis (and therefore the opportunity for a good old whine-whinge-moan!)

The Pie of doom?

Those of a more advanced mathematical ability may well have noticed something odd about the above… I seem to only have 105 hours in my 7-day week…whereas I’m pretty sure most would argue there are actually 168 hours in a week (thanks to my calculator for that one).  So let me add a few notes about that:

  • I have generously allowed myself 8 hours’ sleep a night
  • Work time includes 1) getting dressed and ready for work 2) commuting an hour each way per day 3) the me-time / unpaid lunch ‘hour’ (HA! what is that exactly?)
  • Home chores/ commitments includes a small amount of housework each day, a bit more at the weekend perhaps, child-related taxi-ing, clubs and so on, and the Lidl run on a Sunday morning. From this you can deduce that there is a fine line between dirt, dust and hygiene management, and slovenliness in our house. The bare minimum and delegation are key words.

Max the free-time

It’s really the ‘free time’ element that I’m aiming to maximise (no shit, Sherlock!), and I can’t quite believe that I have 40 hours a week of it right now. I’m fairly certain it doesn’t feel like that so this might require further investigation!

The glaringly obvious way to maximise the free time, since the paid work element is currently rather stubbornly fixed due to us not having won the Lotto, is to focus on minimisation of chores.

Now to the main point of this post (at last!) – this is where the joy of #Lidl and the rise of the discount supermarkets (I love #Aldi too!) work their magic.

Some of you may be amazed to hear that, for a family of 4, occasionally 5 when the eldest is home from Uni, the full weekly shop is done in around an hour – hour and a half max, and for less than £100, 90% of the time.

There are numerous reasons for this time-money combo:

  1. I love food and cooking, but hate food shopping with a passion – I would rather pick stones out of my car tyres, or watch paint dry than spend any more time than is absolutely necessary in a supermarket.
  2. I don’t have much spare time anyway and have better things to do
  3. I’d rather spend my hard-earned cash on my family, hobbies, holidays, the house, than on over-priced, high margin food, despite being a self-confessed foodie and lover of good quality, fresh ingredients.

The low-cost German dream 

This is where the likes of Lidl and Aldi really shine. On many levels their experiential offering is the polar opposite of the trend for warehouse style, Walmart-esque behemoths, places which take you days to get around, and in which you could lose a) a small child very easily and b) the will to live.

Lidl and Aldi are streamlined and miniaturised to perfection.  Everything is just that little bit smaller; from the space itself (both inside and outside in relation to parking), to the selection of food available, and the number of tills (yes, this is a good thing, it puts some people off going in the first place, more till space for ME!)

You couldn’t spend hours in there if you tried, because there simply isn’t the vast array of stuff you’d find in Tesco, Sainsbury’s or Asda to distract you and empty your purse. Yes there’s a brilliant selection of non-food items, changing on a weekly basis (miss it once and it’s gone forever), but the emphasis is on store cupboard, fridge and freezer basic food in the most part.

I’ve always been one to cook from scratch rather than relying on ready meals, but for me the real bonus of the Lidl format is in forcing better organisation. Pre-Lidl, I may have spent hours in a faceless supermarket, spent in the region of £100-150, and still come away with only enough actual food to make 2 meals at a push. Now it’s all about the planning. On a Sunday morning you’ll find me sitting at the kitchen table, paper and pen in hand, recipe books and iPad at the ready, writing a meal plan for the week and noting down the associated ingredients. I plan meals around what I know will be available in the store. This does mean on the odd occasion that I’ve had to source more unusual ingredients from somewhere else, but I do have the benefit of a great imagination and a well-stocked spice cupboard!

If it’s not on the list, it generally doesn’t make it into the trolley. The whole round trip takes me an hour, costs me about £80-90, and the resulting meal plan for the week is attached to the oven door with a penguin magnet … ta dah!

Job done.

So, thank you Lidl and Aldi for gracing the UK with your presence. I knew you well from a childhood spent with my family over in Germany, so I knew you passed muster on the quality and reliability front, and now everyone can benefit from your small prices, big quality and shiny new trollies.

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Originally posted 2017-01-29 13:51:21.

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