Motherly Advice....The many ways in which we've surrendered our power (and how to get it back)....

  There is a series called Back in Time for Dinner.   Have you watched it?   I remember watching the UK version a couple of years ago, and it was fascinating.   There is now an Australian version, and it's just as interesting.   I found the first two episodes, encapsulating the 1950s and 1960s, quite emotional.   Women truly were powerless in so many ways. Many lacked the freedom to choose their own life path, and the home was devoid of the convenience that technological and industrial advances provide nowadays. Looking back, I now see my own Mothers frustrations in a new light.   In this day and age, we have the enormous extravagance of both freedom of choice, and technology.   Wonderful advances, both, of that there is no doubt whatsoever.   But here's the rub.   In adopting reliance upon many items once considered 'convenient', or 'an advance in technology', we've surrendered the ability to do anything other than what we've been brainwashed to do.   We've surrendered our crowns as Monarch of the Home and Hearth, and left them out in the weather to rust.   Well. You know me. I have some ideas on how we can renew those crowns, and reassume our powerful role.   Let's look at a few   Disposable Nappies (Diapers):    We used to use cloth nappies. Sure we had to wash them. But we also made it fun, stitching flannelette nappies from pretty nursery prints, or dyeing towelling nappies into fun colours. You'd relish the sunny days with a washing line full of freshly washed nappies.   I read with a growing sense of unease, a recent post on social media. A young Mum had no disposable nappies left, and no money to buy any for another week. She was asking if anyone on that page, lived nearby and was able to give her any. I was so saddened that anyone would find themselves in that situation, without an alternative.   This Mum had completely given her power to disposable nappies. When someone suggested cloth nappies, there was great discussion on how you kept them on. Many simply had no knowledge of how to make a cloth nappy 'work'.   Now I'm all for the convenience and comfort for bub of disposables. I used them on my last two children. Fabulous.   BUT, in the back of my mind, I knew that I could revert to cloth nappies in a heartbeat if I had to.   Perhaps this is more a story of education than surrendering of power. A story of ensuring you always have a Plan B.   I like having a Plan B for just about everything. That makes me feel both powerful and fearless.   Have a Plan B.     Tinned food and bottled water:   Things like white beans, kidney beans and so on, are the easiest of things to cook. So why do we pay ten times the amount for tinned beans? You buy them dry so they're easier to store, you soak a small amount of them overnight, you simmer them the next day till tender. It's not hard, and saves so much storage space.   It's the same with tinned spaghetti and baked beans. Just stop and think about how much spaghetti you actually get in a tin. Then try my home made version:   Yummier than tinned spaghetti   You need:

Generic brand spaghetti (not thin spaghetti or vermicelli)..make an 'O' with your thumb and forefinger...fill the 'O' with uncooked spaghetti...that's about the right amount!

 2-3 diced tomatoes

1 stock cube or 1 teaspoon of stock powder....we use vegetable

1 pinch each of dried garlic granules and dried onion flakes

1 tablespoon of cream cheese or thick natural yoghurt   Method:

 Boil a big pot of water with a bit of salt, and add the spaghetti. Boil rapidly until cooked, then turn  the heat source off, and leave the spaghetti in the water for up to an hour....this makes the strands swell and go soft, like the tinned stuff....if you or your family don't want it soft, just drain as normal.

In a pan add a splash of olive oil, and add all the ingredients except the spaghetti and the cream cheese. Bring it all to a simmer, allow to soften well, then stir through the cheese or yoghurt.

Drain the spaghetti, and add it to the pan. Toss thoroughly, and leave for at least 30 minutes for the spaghetti to absorb the flavours. Re-heat if necessary.   Completely delicious and conjured up from nothing really. And not a tin in sight.   Don't build a new kitchen to house your pantry needs.   That's a whole new crazy.   Find ways to minimise what's in your trolley and your pantry. Buy dried legumes, concentrated cleaners, make your own baked beans and spaghetti, and invest in a soda stream to make your own sparkling water.   That's a bit of power right there!   Produce in packaging:   Why let someone else decide which six apples or pears or bananas or tomatoes you should buy?   This one really gets to me. Often I find that avocadoes are prepackaged in threes or fours and are less expensive that way, but I don't want someone else choosing my produce. What if I want two for today and two for later in the week? Sometimes they're cleverly packaged that way to conceal damaged produce or produce past its prime. Sneaky.   Avoid the supermarket for fresh produce. Find your nearest local fruit and vege barn and shop there instead. Not only will the produce be less expensive, due to the high turnover, it will probably be fresher, sourced locally and NOT packed so that your power to choose for yourself is stolen from you.   Learn to choose for yourself. That's an important skill and a power all by itself.   Not growing anything:    I grew up on a farm. My grandparents grew tomatoes, citrus fruit, bananas, mulberries, strawberries, chokoes, passionfruit, persimmons, macadamia nuts, mangoes.   My Mother continued that tradition and grew all of that in our own back yard or in pots. And that was normal in most back yards. It got us through lots of tough times.   Don't surrender every single thing to the supermarket. Even in this day and age, money gets tight, natural disasters prevent supermarkets from opening or they open but can't be restocked. Our reliance on supermarkets is unnatural.   Grow something....herbs, a bit of fruit, a passionfruit vine. You'll love it. The satisfaction of being able to go outside and clip a few herbs for an omelette or pluck a lemon for a freshly caught fish, is sublime.   Relying on our cars:   Everyone complains about the cost of fuel.   But nobody is willing to take the obvious step of simply using the car less often.   This is a difficult one if you live in an isolated area. But for many of us, the nearest supermarket is less than a kilometre or two away, and with some imagination, you could be getting your daily dose of exercise and Vitamin D from the sun, with a simple walk to the shops.   There were some things about 'the good old days' that simply made more sense. A daily trip to buy what was required to feed the family saw everyone more fit and healthy, and meant that oversized kitchens, pantries and refrigerators were not required. In addition, most families did not own a car. We didn't.   Mum bought her first car at the age of 40, AFTER we'd all grown up. Hard to believe nowadays, but true. We walked. We used public transport. That was it.   You can do it. Now that my daughter has finished school, she catches the train to University, and I'm lucky if I use my car once a week to visit my sons and granddaughters. I walk as much as I possibly can. We're both fitter for the experience, and our fuel bill has reduced by 75%.   Credit card debt to have the illusion of a good life:   Credit cards did not exist until the mid 1970s here in Australia. Department stores had personal accounts where you could spend up to a pre-determined limit and pay it off slowly. But that was it. People just bought things when they could afford them. Credit cards have a lot to answer for. Since their introduction, we've been lured into the spend, spend, spend mentality like never before, and rates of bankruptcy have increased exponentially.   Spending on the credit card doesn't seem real. It's not like opening your wallet and handing over a $50 note. It's emotionless. You get the thrill without the thought. I noted recently that banks now have to declare on your credit card bill, how long it would take you to pay off your balance if you only pay the minimum required payment.   About time I say. I know someone who would take 60 years and 7 months to pay off their balance at that rate. If that's not alarming, I don't know what is!   Try to adopt our grandparents mentality. If you don't have the cash you don't buy it. Of all the powers to give away, this one is the most distressing. Get back your power by saving for major purchases, and using cash for as many transactions as possible, and you'll see a change very quickly. Handing over cash, is a lot more difficult than waving a card over an electronic device. You tend to think twice. And paying with cash, often brings real benefits in being able to negotiate a better price.   That is a formidable power!   Buying alcohol or soft drink:   I cannot believe the modern attitude that we 'deserve' a drink every night. I mean an alcoholic one.    I've moved in and out of social circles where this was acceptable. I can tell you right now that drinking every night is detrimental to your health, your finances and your relationships.   Drinking lots of sugary soft drinks isn't good for you either.   It takes a while to adjust, but with patience and perseverance, you can learn to like sparkling water (made with your Soda Stream), herbal teas, or home made brews of Ginger Beer, just as much as your nightly glass of wine or cider. Better for your health, your wallet and your family.   You NEED that power.   Buying everything 'not in it's natural state':   Tinned this, processed that, manufactured meat, things wrapped in pastry/breadcrumbs and whatnot.    The great shift towards Convenience Foods as depicted in Back in Time for Dinner's 1960s episode was not all for the best. An opinion that I think will be upheld in future episodes as the growing awareness on how the way we eat, impacts on our health and longevity, is realised.   Initially those changes were thought to empower women. It freed them up to pursue a career. They were no longer tied to the kitchen bench and the stove. Food in cardboard and tins were hailed as a revolution for families. But look at the damage that has wreaked on our ability to make food from scratch, and our long term health and that of our families.   An occasional takeaway or pre-packaged meal does no harm for sure, but where does it end?   I've twice in three weeks, seen a television programme show people who don't even want to crumb a piece of chicken themselves. Breadcrumbs were once a byproduct of stale bread, and were made in the home. They were used to crumb less than perfect cuts of meat to make them more appetising.   Now they're a whole industry in and of themselves.   I once saw a Chinese Medicine practitioner for ongoing back pain. His number one piece of advice? Avoid ALL processed food. I mean everything. No ham, no tinned fruit, no confectionery, no breadcrumbs, nothing out of a tin, a box, or a piece of wrapping paper.   Just eat fresh food, in it's natural state.   This was really hard at first, although not unpleasantly so, but within a week, my skin was glowing, my back pain had reduced to a manageable level, and I had a real spring in my step.  It really made a difference.   That's an extreme course of action, but here's another example.   You know those little tiny tins of salmon and tuna? We buy them, so...you know...GUILTY. Daughter takes them for lunches as they're less likely to get squished in her knapsack at University. I snap them up a dozen at a time when they're half price at the supermarket.   But I recently had an epiphany. Those tins hold 95gms or around 3ozs of salmon or tuna. The premium brand of tinned salmon costs around $3.50 for between 95gms and 125gms. For that price, we, and she, could be eating fresh salmon, baked, steamed or pan fried with delectable spices, and our enjoyment of that salmon would be multiplied exponentially. Yes, I know. It's less 'convenient', but why does convenience always have to be the deciding factor?? It didn't used to be.   I swear to the heavens that half the reason we overeat nowadays, is because our enjoyment of our food, or rather the power to enjoy our food the way it should be, has also been snatched from us.   Why are the choices for added flavours, left to a marketing team and a factory?   What if I want lemon pepper, chilli, tomato and basil on my salmon, not just one or the other?   It takes less than five minutes to season and steam or microwave a piece of fresh salmon seasoned the way I like it, and my ENJOYMENT of that piece of salmon far exceeds what I'd get from opening a tin, and consuming thready bits of inferior salmon swimming in a predetermined, mass produced sauce.   Crumbing a piece of chicken with breadcrumbs seasoned with a Cajun or Moroccan spice takes one minute, and again, elevates our enjoyment enormously.   We actually eat LESS, because we've enjoyed our food MORE. We've taken control of how it's seasoned, cooked, presented. We've used flavours that we love. We've sought to regain that power.   Think about it.   Isn't it just smart and discerning, to take back the power for our food choices, and the ensuing impact on our health and wellbeing, by shunning what is simply 'convenient' for that which is just holistically better for us?   I think so.   I'll be interested to hear your thoughts.   Meanwhile, I'm polishing up my newly rediscovered crown.  

  I'll be wearing it to dinner tonight.   Love, Mimi xxx