What's For Dinner?

Back when I was a whiny little tyke, I used to annoy my parents by continually asking what was for dinner. (Not repeatedly on the same day – I may have been whiny but I wasn’t stupid.)
“What’s for tea?” the little Deborah would inquire, a glitter in her childish eye, and her parents, sensing an imminent chapter from that well-known collection of essays, Things I Do Not Like to Eat, would fall back on that stand-by of parents through the ages: “Wait and see.”

Nicolaes Maes 007

It has become generally accepted to blame the problems of one’s adult life upon one’s upbringing, and it has just occurred to me that this three word refrain might be to blame for my lack of organization when it comes to figuring out what the evening meal will be. Because deep deep down, my sub-conscious thinks that you don’t know what’s for dinner until dinnertime arrives. This may explain the scrambled egg incident.

Of course, this theory only danced across my mind for a handful of moments before the hound of reality came galloping after and savaged the poor little thing to shreds. Because I was still by all measures a child when my parents started me learning to cook the evening meal, which includes planning ahead and getting something out of the freezer in time for it to defrost.

Meal planning suggestions from 'Family meals and catering' Wellcome L0072310

Mind you, I grew up a handful of degrees south of the Equator, where meat could be removed from the freezer at lunch-time and be completely thawed by five o’clock. (I was thirteen before I encountered butter that had been left out of the fridge overnight, but was still too cold to spread, and I didn’t know what to do with it.) I now live closer to 42 degrees south, and lunch-time doesn’t cut it as far as defrosting goes, particularly in winter. Breakfast-time is more like it, and if it’s something large, better make it breakfast-time the day before.

One could of course use a microwave to defrost food, but the results are unsatisfactorily uneven, and in any case why pay for electricity to do what time and nature will do for free? This is not to say that the microwave plays no part in defrosting: we use it all the time. As a cat-proof meat safe.

cats-meat-609216

I am sure I am not the only one who has struggled with the daily task of organizing food on the table. It was worse when I was still working at the DDJ, leaving the house before I was fully awake and returning when I was tired and the need for dinner was imminent. The Caped Gooseberry did his best, but multi-variable decision-making and chronic fatigue do not mix.
We ate some very simple meals in those days. As Julia Child said, “Good French cooking cannot be produced by a zombie cook.”

But rejoice! there is still hope for us. Some time ago (on the website of the Daily Connoisseur, I think) I came across the idea of the capsule menu. Some of you may be familiar with the idea of the capsule wardobe: a small but effective collection of clothes that you can just wear without having to spend ages thinking about what to wear or what goes with what.

Walk In Closet - Expandable Closet Rod and Shelf

The capsule menu is similar. Basically it’s a schedule of what you’re going to eat on what day. You shop accordingly and voilà, the decision is already made and you don’t have to spend ages figuring out what you have and what you can make out of it. Bliss.

If you have a high boredom threshold, you can have the same menu every week. We have a two-week cycle, which includes such gems as “home-made curry” “spaghetti bolognese” “something eggy” “something from a cookbook” (variety: the spice of life) and a couple of nights where we get takeaways: a curry, or the traditional NZ fish & chips.

A particular favourite of mine is the four days we spend working our way through a roast or a corned beef. We buy whatever’s cheap at the supermarket (oddly, roasts are frequently as cheap or cheaper than even mince), cook it up, and then have the leftovers in various ways until they are all gone. What could be nicer than a chicken roasted with homemade stuffing, or a shoulder of pork with rosemary crackling? Served (of course) with roasted potatoes and lashings of flavourful gravy.

Roasted Chicken Dinner Plate, Broccoli, Demi Glace

Planning ahead also means that you can make sure you are going to get a balanced diet, time constraints are taken into account, and everyone in the house can be assured that their favourite foods will appear regularly. (If it was up to the Caped Gooseberry, we’d have rice nearly every night.)

Have you tried a capsule menu? Did it work for you? What dishes did you decide to have? And what’s for dinner?

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying

Hear me out: it’s the title of a book by Marie Kondo, a Japanese “expert declutterer and professional cleaner” – a book which I have recently read.

Japanese traditional style SAMURAI house / 稲葉家下屋敷(いなばけ しもやしき)

It’s quite different to the usual run of (Western) decluttering books. For a start, there’s her belief that a seven-tatami-mat room (3m/10ft by 4m/13ft) is ample living & storage space for a single person; her habit of greeting the house and thanking her belongings for their service; her almost religious devotion to folding clothes; and of course, the idea that decluttering your house is best done all in one go.

What? I hear you cry. All in one go? Does she not realize how much stuff I have?

On which note, it turns out that Japanese people are not entirely immune from hoarding, despite the overall population density and corresponding lack of space. Examples given include sixty toothbrushes, eighty rolls of toilet paper, and a hundred boxes of cotton buds – with 200 buds in each.

Toiletpaper stilllife

So rest assured, she doesn’t mean that you should sort out everything you own in one day. (Phew!) Six months is more her estimation, starting with easy things like clothes and working your way up to difficult things like photos and keepsakes.

The idea is to sort everything by type, and not put, say, your clothes away – any of them – until you have sorted out absolutely all of them. This makes sense, when you realize that there’s no point organizing how you’re going to store a certain class of object until you know how big that class is going to be.

And here’s the really surprising bit of her claim: she says that if you go through the process properly, imagining how you want your home to be and delving deep into your motivation before sorting it all out, you will never regress. It will be a once-in-a-lifetime purge. Because once you’ve got it the way you want it, you will have the motivation to keep it that way, one presumes.

That's me right now

The thing I really like about her system is the measure for deciding what to keep: does it bring me joy? If not, out it goes. Except tax papers and the like, which, alas, have to be kept regardless of the feelings they inspire.

What do you think? Could you commit to a season of purging the dross from your life – and never look back? What does your ideal feel like – and how does that look?

For myself, I’d like my living environment to be one of simplicity, spaciousness and peace; where both focus and relaxation are possible without the distraction of unfinished jobs, unnecessary items, and unimportant decisions.
As to whether I am prepared to spend the next six months ruthlessly purging all my belongings (my books!) – well, I know better than to sign up for the long term at short notice. But I am certainly considering it.

Feeling the Urge to Purge

Funny people, the ancient Greeks: at least four words for love (storge, philia, eros & agapē), but they make one word serve for cleansing, purging, pruning and emotional release.
Katharsis.

It makes sense, though, when you think about it. The word ‘love’ is made to mean far too many things for people to be really certain of what anyone means when they use it; and the various meanings of katharsis do fit together with a certain neatness.

Katharsis (or catharsis as we spell it in English, presumably a thin attempt at covering up the theft) is generally agreed to be a pleasurable feeling. This is why we enjoy reading or watching stories which involve unenjoyable elements. Our emotions are taken out for a brisk airing and returned to their proper places with the warm glow of exercise. This is, incidentally, why we cry when we’re really happy: all the emotion needs to be purged, and tears is how we do it.

But it’s the cleansing/purging aspect of katharsis which I particularly want to look at. Because cleansing and purging are themselves cathartic. This is not to say that washing dishes comes with an automatic glow of satisfaction (if only!) but there is a certain pleasure to be had in pruning the unnecessary elements from one’s life, purging the unwanted stuff, and cleansing what remains. It’s refreshing.

Le faccende di casa by Adriano Cecioni 1869

I spent a while this afternoon cleaning and cleaning out the bathroom – with particular reference to the cupboards. A variety of items left the room for good, and what was left was vigorously reorganized. And I felt good. Unfortunately this took the form of making the Caped Gooseberry come and admire the results. (Patience: a highly underrated quality in a spouse.)

A word to the wise: don’t flush random medications down the loo. Sewage is generally treated before it’s released into the wild, but as far as I know they don’t have special filters for distilling medicaments from the surging tide. Drop them off at the nearest pharmacy/chemist instead.

But don’t worry. As far as I know the mutant-druggie-sewer-alligator is just an urban myth.

Albino Alligator mississippiensis