No resolutions for me this year.
Although Oliver has requested that I stop swearing in the car when out driving. I'll give that one a good go for him.
Today feels like the first day of the year to me, Mark has gone back to work and so have I. The close family times are over for another year. Yes, yes, I know we can 'be together' anytime throughout the year, but there is something very special and unique about that week or so at Christmas when you are drawn together by the celebratory feel of the season and family films, games and lovely meals eaten at the festive table with crackers. I feel more of a unit then than any other time.
And whilst mentioning crackers may I just say how disappointed I am by the growing trend for 'luxury' crackers. I don't want a silver plated yo-yo or nail clippers in my cracker. I don't want a sheet of highbrow jokey facts or charades nor a pleated hat made from high quality cartridge paper. Crackers should be the crackers of my childhood - cheap and completely crap. They should contain a hat made from flimsy tissue paper so that extreme care must be taken when putting it on. Jokes should be groan-tastic and the gifts should be a clip-on moustache or a fortune-telling fish.
Having said that I have found the odd tape measure and mini screwdriver set to be quite helpful in the kitchen drawer. If I can ever find them in amongst the clip-on moustaches and fortune-telling fish, that is.
We are going to eat better this year. I have spent some time scaring myself silly reading up about conditions you can develop by years of poor eating and have decided to overhaul the family diet (and budget) at the same time. Mark is ok with that, Oliver less so. Not sure Mark will be so happy when I dish up a kohlrabi and cauliflower sandwich next week ha ha.
I have ordered a fortnightly veg box from a local organic farm, as I caught a TV article last night saying that spinach grown in the soil in 1914 contained so much more iron than its counterpart today that you would need to eat around 30 times more. Shit a brick. The same sort of figures were true for cabbage and calcium. I think. I was crocheting and skim-listening so I can't be too sure of exact figures, but it has jolted me enough to decide to not buy supermarket veg for a while anyway.
And fibre. I am going to start cooking more oaty things. Like cookies etc as the fibre we eat is not brilliant. And I know cookies may not be 'the' way to go, but hey - gotta be better than no oats surely.
And I will return to exercise as I gave myself December off (thank you me), and I can feel a layer of blubber settling in and no doubt making itself at home around my internal organs and choking me from the inside out.
Out damn blubber.
Like you, I don't make new year's resolutions - never feel like it in January. Always depressing to find I have broken them by February I find! On the subject of crackers, you are SO right. All I want is a good snap with a pungent smell of cordite when pulled, a flimsy hat and a bad joke and I don't want to pay the earth for the privilege! The spinach and soil thing sounds scary - happy healthy cooking to combat it! E x
ReplyDeleteHehe - that looks like a set of resolutions to me!
ReplyDeleteI got a clip-on moustache in my cracker this year. I was shocked at the prices of them but eventually found some for £3 and they were as groan(and giggle)-worthy as I wanted them to be.
I can't really work out why people are so surprised about the soil/nutrition thing. Can people really expect the same values of nutrients when we treat the planet so badly?