Escaping yoga... or not

I try not to do yoga, I really do. Part of me, at least, finds it too physically demanding. And there's always so much else I'd rather do, or have to do.

I do ashtanga yoga, which is very athletic - moving from one pose to the next after five breaths, with press-ups and leaps in between. It's hard work. (Not that I ever do the full 90 minute routine these days...  20 to 40 minutes is my maximum).

The washing dried on the clotheshorse and
my tray of lettuce grew in the sun
as I rolled  out the mat and got to work. 

But I just can't stop. My body gives me a week maximum before it starts feeling like a dirty bathroom - all cruddy on the inside. My joints go stiff and my muscles get gummed up.

So there I go again... cleaning out my body with yoga.

What's more, if I leave it too long, my long-standing lower back pain comes back. The problem, as I've come to understand it, is not enough yoga. If I do too hard a yoga session when I haven't been doing much, my back gets REALLY sore. But the problem again is not enough yoga.

Therefore, if you ever want to try it, be prepared that you may never want to go back to having an old-feeling, rusty body, and you will be hooked.

The temperature in our dining room as I did yoga in the sun, June 2013:
winter time in New Zealand definitely has its good patches!

Little house on the prairie

I LOVED Little House on the Prairie when I was little. I WAS Laura Ingalls. I wonder if it was that TV programme, combined with visits to a local historic village with its quaint old houses, school buildings and churches, that made me love old things so much?

I think having a mother who ooh-ed and ah-ed over antiques and old villas probably helped me see their beauty just as much, though.

So last week when I accompanied Anna's class to a nearby museum where they had a toy exhibition on, I was delighted when she got to dress up. Pinafore and bonnet... divine... all she needed were the brown lace-up boots.

I have to admit that a primary-school aged me had my mother sew me a pinafore a bit like this. I very much wanted to wear it to school, but the well-founded fear of teasing stopped me.

The toys were lovely and leave ipads for dead, I think, and the children were entranced.

 My favourite was these little wooden hens. There is a string underneath that makes their heads nod up and down as they peck the ground.

I never read the Little House books, just saw the TV programme, but I'm looking forward to when Anna is reading at that level. If she won't read them, I think I will!

Post script: I know I'm not blogging as often these days, so thank you to those who keep checking regularly for posts. It encourages me to keep going!

Boy energy

Here we are, living with a boy who is soon to turn 10 and is therefore probably half way to leaving home. Every year his energy, vigour and independence increases relentlessly.

I took him and his friend to a Steiner school medieval fair a little while ago. It was a boy's paradise with swords, armour and bows and arrows. Wow. They even got to fire arrows at a real man! He was well armoured, of course.

Because I love old stuff, I enjoyed the day. But often the things he loves seem so distant to me. I cannot, for example, get excited about his lego fighting machines. I'll build the castle or Luke Skywalker's house, thanks.

Yet I click with this boy and enjoy him immensely. I take pleasure in his pleasure. And he's teaching me a lot about men and where they come from.

Aren't little boys wonderful?

How to be poor

Free school breakfasts: they are coming to New Zealand schools because, apparently, enough families are too poor to give their children breakfast.

I've 'lived' poor for a few years of my life, and gathered a few tips on how to do it along the way. It's quite a fun project if you're doing it because you want to save for something, or pay off a mortgage. I fully acknowledge that it would be devoid of thrill if was done out of necessity. However, feeding your children when you otherwise couldn't would be surely be motivating.

Much of this isn't new and is what almost everyone did until a twenty or thirty years ago, I think.

This is what we did and mostly still do:

1. Eat cheap. We plan for every meal to be made at home, even if we're taking it elsewhere to eat it. Takeaways and restaurant meals just aren't part of normal life when you're in frugal mode. We learnt how to make soups, stews with cheap cuts of meat, home made bread, cheap baking (go Anzac biscuits), creative ways with mince, lentils and beans. We have lots of fruit and vegetables (but only the ones in season, because they're cheapest). A bowl of porridge costs next to nothing.

We make sure everything tastes great! We add flavour with meat and vegetable stocks, garlic and spices. Pad things out with pasta, rice and potatoes.

It relies a lot on being organised. Sometimes we inevitably arrive home late and hungry. There needs to be something in the freezer to heat up. Or pancakes for dinner is OK sometimes!

2. Alcohol is a rare treat for parties and Christmas, if at all.

3. Grow it. Winter garden bare minimum: silverbeet, broccoli and carrots. It's also possible to go all winter without growing a lettuce; we grow mizuna and rocket, which withstand frost, and if they get established in autumn they last all winter. Summer garden bare minimum: tomatoes, lettuce, zucchini, carrots and runner beans. Probably cucumbers, too. And we plant fruit trees, because apart from the vastly better taste, it only costs about $20 for a tree that gives you free fruit for years.

4. Ditch advertising. Its main message is that what we've got is not good enough, and that we need to buy their product to be better in some way. It drains our cash and your happiness. We ditched the TV and put a no junk mail sign on the letterbox. (We kept the computer for watching DVDs and all the other useful trappings, some of which are money-saving and mentioned below.)

5. Teach our children well. It's possible to have an extremely rich life on a low budget by living the life of the mind, of nature and of companionship. The library ladies know us very well, and we read, read, read to ourselves and our children, and listen to talking books on CD. Then there's bush and beach walks, mud pies, tree climbing, cooking over fires etc for entertainment. And lots of talking and explaining how life works, and singing,  jokes and games. And there's usually a neighbour to have a yarn with over the fence, or friend to have a cup of tea with. We think these things matter more than movies and expensive days out.

6. Buy second hand. It's good on so many levels... for example using no raw materials, and avoiding cheap nasty stuff priced to exploit offshore workers. I don't think I need to do much persuading here: last weekend I was in a Salvation Army shop and it was packed full of shoppers. It's really caught on! Then there's garage sales and auction websites like Trademe, of course, each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Even better, of course, is making do with what you've got.

7. Learn how to do sew and/or do handy-person things like put up shelves and do basic woodwork. It's great being able to fix your gear without paying anyone. On that front, it's incredible what you can learn how to do on the internet, either with instructional websites or youtube videos. I continue to be amazed! Making things is also creative and rewarding, and home-made gifts are usually much appreciated.

Our austerity has worn off slightly as we can manage it over the years - a concert or holiday there, a gelato there, and certainly pricey after-school lessons all over the place (ouch), but really the loosening of the purse strings has made us no happier.

Here's to full tummies. Best wishes to you all.
xxx

Brains

I've been testing my brain a bit recently, by working towards publishing academic papers from my PhD, finished 12 whole years ago! There's lots to catch up on in the field - who's published what in the meantime, mainly - and some detective work to be done to remember just exactly what I did myself.

But there are really some brains in this family. My husband, for example. I made him a shopping list recently, and even ordered it in the order he'd come across the items as he wove his way through the supermarket aisles. He was also shopping for a trip he was going on with friends, so he added his items to the bottom of the list.

You can tell what he wrote.

Sometimes I come home from the supermarket and have forgotten something that was actually on the list. This guy comes home with everything, regardless a list this utterly - I struggle to find the word - tortured, perhaps? Certainly shambolic. Now that's brains.

Staying passionate

I saw this today, and like it.

Misty moisty mornings

The end of autumn is here, and winter approaching.

As a result, we are absolutely loving our pyroclassic fire. Worth every cent. Bring on the real cold!

Backyard chickens (new ones!) - or urban agriculture?

Today I purchased three new brown shaver chickens. They're about 4 months old and will soon start laying me lots of winter eggs! (Most chickens stop laying when the days get short, but because these ones are just coming into lay I think I'll be lucky. I'm planning the sponge cakes already.)

Check out their tiny, pale combs - these will get large and red
once they hit puberty, which should be very soon.

They're terrified. I've shut them in the coop by themselves, so that my two older ladies - one brown shaver and one grandmotherly black orpington - can check them out through the wire mesh without doing any harm, initially at least. 

I know there will be some violence when they inevitably come together - I've seen it before. Already my old brown shaver (who still gives me an egg almost every day, bless her - otherwise she'd be gone by now) has been looking very fluffed up and has been firing the odd peck through the wire.

I've also been reading a paper* co-authored by my old PhD supervisor, Professor Marian Dawkins, about just this issue. Chickens live in very stable social groups, but have 'establishment fights'. Basically they fight - which involves lots of head-gazing and aggressive pecks to the head - to sort out who's dominant. The reason, says the paper, is to establish it once and for all at the beginning, thereby avoiding the energy that would otherwise regularly be required to squabble over resources (e.g. the feeding trough).

This approach is intimately associated with being able to recognise who's who. Hens are good at recognising each other, it says, but they can only do so by scrutinising each other very closely - they need to be just 10-30cm away. If they can't recognise each other, there's no point in having establishment fights, because for them to protect against the need to have ongoing future fights, you have to know who you've beaten and vice versa.

Let's hope there's not too much bloodshed. I purposely left the older birds in the minority: there's two of them vs. three new ones.

Our cat, looking alarmingly like a grey lion - and certainly deeply predatory - has been scaring the new girls also. The old ones have put him well and truly in his place, but the new ones don't know that yet. He's firmly inside with me for the day now, and happy with the situation by the look of him.

Meanwhile I've been flicking through this Urban Farming book that I got from the public library. I've got a friend interested in starting 'Urban agriculture' projects in our city. What I'm trying to figure out is how it differs from having a big vege garden with a few chooks in it. So far I can't see any difference, but let me know if there is one! If not, perhaps our family can call ourselves urban farmers. It feels like an overstatement, but it definitely feels like fun.

NB: My hens lay big eggs which, at our local Farmer's market, are called 'monster eggs' and sell for $10.50 a dozen. CHOKE. My three new ladies cost me $15 each and I expect to pay about $10 a month for food for all five of them. Even this winter I'll get over 20 eggs a week (although the young birds' eggs will be small to start with), and in summer probably 25 or more. So if you are thinking about getting your own chooks, you'll be helping your grocery bill beautifully.

*Pagel, M & Dawkins, MS (1997) Peck orders and group size in laying hens: 'futures contracts' for non-agression Behavioural Processes 40, pp13-25.

Mother's Day in the sun

I, who come from a family in which absolutely everyone has dark hair, have given birth to a red head. It's only obvious in the sun, which was in ample supply on this late autumn Sunday.

Here she has just finished counting out the $8 we needed to get into a cat show. Anna's been wanting to go for years, but it always falls on Mother's day, and usually we go to my mother on that day.

My first priority for the day, however, was one of Hamilton's greatest places of good food: the Sunday morning Farmer's market. I particularly love the huge 'sweet pointer' red capsicums and this week plan to use some of them to make a chutney using a recipe out of last month's NZ House and Garden magazine.

Today for the first time we tried their fresh fish. It was scooped out of the Raglan sea only on Friday,  the sellers told me, and it REALLY tasted like that too. Yahoo... I am so sick of semi-stinky supermarket fish!!! Fish-on-Sunday-night is the new routine at our house.

The market's also the place to spot stylish bikes.

To choose my Mother's day present, yesterday I'd strolled about 250 metres down the road from our house to another home of good food in this city: French shop La Cave. 

Our children are growing, and so are their appetites, so for a while now I've wanted a bigger lasagne dish. I have more than one I can fill, so it was a bit of an indulgence to want a single big one.

But I fell for this Emile Henry ceramic one, generously sized, made in France and very much on sale. 

This week it will be filled with a big beef lasagne made with tomato sauce from roasted Farmer's market tomatoes. And stewed gravy beef. Sounds strange, but it's my new discovery - I put a large amount of stewing steak such as gravy beef in my crock pot, cover it with water and cook it for hours. It makes lots of beef stock for stews and soups, and I use the meat as I once would have minced meat. It is SO much nicer, and leaner. 

But tonight, as I said, we had fresh fish, and the table was graced with flowers my little girl bought me from the Farmer's market for Mother's day, with her own money.

Cinnamon doughnuts for a picky eater

It's ironic that a boy who has never been easy to feed is somewhat of a gourmand (in that he prized good food, not that he eats to excess - he never does). For his birthday he wants a food party, with his favourite dishes to share with his friends, and his request for the school holidays was to make cinnamon doughnuts.

It was with the help of this 1960 retro cookbook discovered in a church op shop that I found the recipe. There are plenty more old goodies in the for me to try also. About five types of gingerbread, for a start!

(If you're looking closely at this,  we missed out the jam.)

 They were deep fried, which scared me a bit as I haven't done that for about 20 years. The children rolled the fresh doughnuts in a mixture of cinnamon and sugar; although the recipe called for just sugar, Jack insisted on cinnamon, a spice we all love.

They hit the mark, and by lunchtime the next day, 31 doughnuts were gone. We couldn't eat them all the evening they were made, said Jack. "That's enough! We don't want to overeat!"

Regarding the eating personality pictured above: once I read a book called 'Eleni' who featured a similar personality, this time a girl. I can't recommend the book because although it was amazing, it was the saddest book I've ever read. It's a true story.

Eleni's daughter was like Jack. She loved the best quality food and couldn't bring herself to eat things she didn't like. The family was living in a time of famine (due to a communist occupation) and she couldn't force herself to eat the meagre scraps they could find. Eventually she was drafted by the communists, along with the other teenage girls of the village, and taken for military training in another village. Their food was a big common pot of soupy stuff, and although she was by now starving to death, she couldn't eat it.

The communists ejected her from their army, because a soldier in such poor condition was no good to them.

So when you say 'Eat it or starve', there is indeed the odd person who starves! We're working on it though. Our extremely lean young man's 'normal food' repertoire is increasing every month.