Three weeks in

My overarching goals for the new year were to feel happier, calmer, and healthier.  After the last year, I felt I badly needed a list of some things to do just to help me feel better.  We’re only three weeks into the new year and I still have a long way to go, but things have been going well and it’s good to feel like I’ve kept on top of things.

So far, I’ve maintained almost all of my health goals.  I haven’t fit in the yoga yet, and I need to be a bit better about meditating in the morning, but in terms of diet, exercise, sleep, and reading, I’m pretty well on track.  I bike almost daily, walk quite a bit, pack in the fruits and veggies, sleep fairly well, and spend more time than I usually would relaxing.  I’m feeling quite a lot better than I have been, and have even lost a few pounds at the same time.  I’ve also spent more time on food – I’ve been cooking a bit more and I baked bread twice now, and it’s been wonderful to pay some more attention to something that I care so much about.  I’d like to work in more meditation and yoga, but I do feel better overall.

In financial news, I’ve set up pension changes and have established designated accounts for special purchases and summer expenses.  I’m currently doing some research in terms of where I’d like to donate, and I’m hoping to make it down to the farmers’ market next weekend for our grocery shopping.  Work is also going fairly well.  Courses have started, but I’ve managed to fit in a bit of project-related research and sent in some conference applications.  I’m hoping to be able to step this up as I get into more of a routine this semester, but it feels reassuring to have work on the go, even if the process is slow.

Finally, I’ve been a lot more conscious about maintaining relationships these past few weeks.  I’ve spent more time talking with friends, and am currently writing a long email to a someone I haven’t seen in months.  I’m also setting up a standing brunch date with another friend, and made it out to a gathering last weekend and will be going to another this weekend.  It’s been really lovely to spend more time with people, and I think it’s helped a lot with my overall mindset and not feeling like I’m spending (or should be spending) every moment working.

My plans for the next few weeks are very much the same.  I’m going to keep up the exercise and the downtime, focus more on reading, and hopefully add in some more yoga and meditation.  I’m also going to try to be better about limiting my teaching prep and grading so I can make more time for the work that I need to be doing for research.  I’d like to try out a few new recipes to work into our repertoire, make some more bread, and find some time to declutter more of the apartment.  This might all become more of a challenge as the semester gets somewhat busier, but feeling better is really and truly lovely, and something that I’ll keep working towards.

New year, new kitchen

Generally, when the new year rolls around I like to clean the whole apartment.  But with a still-painful back and a lot of work-related things to do, I doubt that will happen this year.  What I can manage, however, is the kitchen.  With a lot of health-related goals for the new year, plus a few more focused on doing things I enjoy like cooking and baking, the kitchen seems to be a central point that could use an overhaul to help facilitate these plans.

There’s a long list of food-related tasks that I’d like to work on this coming year.  I’m planning to increase the from-scratch cooking that I already do, experiment with some new recipes, and teach J. how to cook some of our favourite things.  I’d like to bake more of our bread on a regular basis, and possibly get some good desserts under my belt as well.  I’d like to have grains sprouting regularly, and keep working on fermenting kombucha, kefir, pickles, and other veggies.  I didn’t get much canning done last year, so I’d like to work on doing more this year, especially when I have some time off in the summer.  And if there’s time, I wouldn’t mind trying out some yogurt and cheese making.

Given that time will likely be at least somewhat tight this coming semester, the cleaner, simpler, and more organized the kitchen is, the easier it will be to keep up with these tasks and to clean up afterwards.  Ideally, if I spend a bit of time on this now, I’ll have a space that will better meet our needs in the long-term.  Yesterday, I cleaned out the fridge, washed the walls, and sorted through or got rid of some food and some projects that were never completed (the failed sauerkraut was especially disappointing). Today, I did some dishes, cleared the counter, and started getting together donations, which I suspect will be the single most important thing I do in the quite over-crowded space.  Tomorrow I’m hoping to take stock of what we have both food- and tool-wise, figure out how we can better arrange and use what we have, and decide if there’s anything we need to do to make things work better.  I have a few projects in mind already – a proper spice rack and magnetic knife strip, for starters – that I’m hoping will help to streamline things a bit more.

I doubt this will all be done before the new year actually rolls over, but having a good head start and a plan will certainly help.  We don’t have the greatest kitchen in the world – small, no windows, poor layout, and very little counter or storage space – but I’m hoping that some tweaks will improve it.  Given that I need to focus on eating healthier and spending time doing things that I enjoy (like cooking), this is a really important thing to get in order.

I realised the other day that there are a lot of things I’d like to do in the kitchen that I’ve never gotten around to.  Install a real spice rack.  Hang some pictures.  Set up spots for fermenting and sprouting.  I’ve always assumed that it wouldn’t be worth it to put in the time and effort (and, in some cases, a small amount of money), especially since we were hoping to move.  But the truth is that even though I hope we will be getting out of here at some point, there’s no reason not to have a clean, organized, well-functioning space in the meantime, even if it requires a bit of thought and effort at the outset.

Food first

I’ve gotten into a bad habit this semester of not putting myself first.  It seems to be work, then me, then everything else, and often at least some elements of the everything else group come before me too.  This has been most noticeable in the mornings.  I’ve been waking up earlier than I’d like a lot of the time, and have generally popped awake worried about some element of my day.  This usually meant that the first thing I’d do would be whatever was on my mind in the hopes that it would tone down the worry a bit.  This usually mean things like dealing with student emails, grading, lecture prep, or paying bills.

As you can probably guess, this is not a great start to the day.  Launching immediately into work set the tone for the day, and the tone wasn’t a good one.  It was anxious, busy, and got be started far too early in the morning for someone who is also inclined to work all day and then some.  The icing on top of this cake of unpleasantness?  By starting work right off, I didn’t usually get around to a proper breakfast, which often left me gnawing on store-bought white bread by 11 am.  Not healthy.  Not healthy at all.

This morning I tried something new.  I know there are emails to deal with and grading to do, but the first thing I did today was put myself (and my food) first.  I made a real breakfast.  It was simple – steel cut oats with grated apple, cinnamon, ground flax seed, and a bit of brown sugar – but I spent the first half hour a dark, grey day stirring a delicious-smelling bubbling pot while perched on a stool reading The Cider House Rules.  It was really rather lovely.

Now, I’m sitting at the computer feeling a good bit calmer than I usually do by this point in the day.  I haven’t checked my email. Instead, I’ve read a few blogs that I like and that put out thoughtful, uplifting, and motivating content.  When I’m done here, I’m going to meditate.  Only then will I start thinking about and actually dealing with setting out a list of tasks for today, and dealing with what needs to be done.  There may be things that are tricky or somewhat unpleasant to deal with, but hopefully with a bit of downtime and a good meal behind me, they’ll feel easier to deal with.

Harvest

All summer, I’ve been tending a plot at the community garden at the apartments across the road from me.  Unfortunately, those buildings came under new management this summer.  Just this morning I learned that all plots need to be cleared by this Thursday, and rumor has it that won’t be a garden next year at all.

I want to say this makes me sad, but it goes well beyond sad.  Growing food is a wonderful thing, and something that I’d recommend to anyone.  It’s a powerful way to help assure food security and to teach a useful skill.  This particular garden was wonderful for helping to create community, especially among a group of people who were refugees from all parts of the world.  It saddens and distresses me deeply to see productive gardens being relegated to the status of “eyesore”, an attitude that I still seem to run into all too frequently these days.

But, distress aside for the moment, we’ve had some good food from that garden and today we went over and brought more bags of it home.  Lettuce, peppers, kale, peppers, radishes, beans, peppers, and a few baby zucchini.  I’m thrilled with the amount, and trying to figure what I can make with this sudden bounty that’s come home somewhat ahead of schedule.  I suspect there will be a lot of salad and soup in our future.

I’m also planning ways to avoid waste.  This is more food than we can eat before it goes bad, and I have no desire to waste anything, let alone food that we’ve tended over the course of a season.  I’m hoping for some red pepper jelly and dried beans for later use.  I’ve also started drying the radish and carrot tops, the kale, and the chives.  It turns out that the wire shelf I was planning to get rid of makes a passable drying rack.  I’ll need to move things around a bit more – I didn’t plan to have quite so much to deal with at once – but with any luck this will work well for now.

It’s not an enormous amount – my eventual goal is to grow as much of our yearly vegetable needs as I can, and this is a far cry – but it feels incredible to have grown and harvested this much this year.  I’ve loved growing it, eating it, and preserving it, and I’m hoping for the opportunity to do this again next year.  I’m in touch with the city about garden plots, and have my fingers crossed that something will open up.  And in the meantime, I have my many containers outside, which have produced a surprising amount of food this year.  Where there’s a will, there’s a way, and I now seem to have will in spades.