The even, calm smell of bees’ wax fills the air in the small house where I have harvested the first of this summer’s honey. The centrifuge, my main tool for extracting the honey from the intricate wax cells that the bees have built up, is still warm after a hard days’ spinning. In the corner, the fruit of our labors drips through a fine sieve into a gigantic barrel, where it will rest for some days with the occasional disturbance from my stirring spoon to ensure that it is not crystallizing. As I move my long wooden spoon through the thick golden substance so many thoughts emerge in the afterglow of doing something that is so entirely different from the regular activity of most of the rest of the year.

My hands are worn and scratched from this work. It isn’t the neat, hazard-free typing that they are used to. Hands rather than mind are the work horses of my Swedish island summer. As I listen to the echo that travels between the small islands of Lake Mälar, I realize that the transition from mind to hands is an annual Swedish summer tradition. “Ouch, that hurts!” or “Why can’t I get this blasted thing to work?” is the common cry of the land in July.

Do we just do it to remind ourselves that we are alive? I have often wondered why people living in the 21st century, including myself, voluntarily relinquish a convenient, cerebral life for this drudgery of the hands. Maybe Swedes who volt a traditional Swedish summer, in favor of piña coladas, a sun chair and a novel the thickness of a doorstep somewhere in the Mediterranean have got a point. Is there really a need to be tarring docks and building sauna huts with only the reward of filmjölk (light butter milk) and hard bread to look forward to for lunch?

Swedish summers have become legendary, particularly for people who knew them as children and young adults, and who may live elsewhere now. They were about picking wild berries and sometimes getting stung by a competing insect while doing it, they were about dipping briefly in the cold water off the dock while father hammered in the background and mother scrubbed the potatoes she had just pulled out of the ground. All of the time that these tasks were going on, grandmother rocked in her chair on the terrace and sewed by hand table runners out of favorite bits of old fabric, intermittently resting her head back to identify the bird chirping in the branches overhead. People have different memories, but woven into every legendary Swedish summer with the strawberry cream cakes is this return to the work of the hand.

Even in a society where machines can do almost all of the work, is it possible that somehow we need this simple time producing things ourselves with or just amidst the greenery in order to feel satisfied? Could it be possible that the digital age’s cerebralisation of humans, in which the mind must bear an ever greater responsibility for making a living, also requires that every once in a while we allow our hands to take the lead? Perhaps society’s next advancement will be to admit that our minds cannot serve us faithfully unless they have a sustained time to rest; and perhaps this is the kernel of truth in the fantastical legend of a Swedish summer.

The strange thing about giving your mind a break is that it is precisely at these times that it produces the most interesting ideas. The repetitiveness of handiwork unveils that place where almost all good thoughts are to be found – in our spontaneous consciousness where the mind doesn’t ‘think’, rather reveals its natural elegance without exertion.

I open the tap of the honey barrel and let it flow into a clean jar. Another jar is filled, and then another, until some hours later eighty jars stand filled on my counter. Some dexterousness is required not to overfill the jars or to spill and to get a feel for the flow. Yet as the honey falls voluptuously into the mouth of each jar some thoughts about why I subject myself to the heavy work of honey harvesting each year emerge.

Bengt, my bee mentor, must be one of the most satisfied people I know. He lives a simple life with his wife in a neatly tended home across the lake. Though age must present him with all of the usual frustrations, he seems always delighted to be out and about harvesting from the over fifty bee coups that he tends for the surrounding community. After more than thirty Swedish summers of the same ‘hobby’ work, he finds always that there is something new to discover balanced by a satisfaction in the continuity of things. The techniques of bee-keeping have barely changed in well over a century. As I fill the next jar, it occurs to me that our eternal search for happiness may well be met not by great happenings but by these moments of repetitive simplicity in which pure thought and balance are permitted to emerge.

Last week I conducted an experiment which probably caused the family to go up a bit on the scales. That is OK since we are getting more active now that the digging season is back (I mean the proverbial digging around in the garden which burns up energy). I planned and prepared our meals using recipes from a stylish-looking cookbook to which several of Sweden's top chefs had contributed. I chose the simplest recipes – the ones that lent themselves more to the everyday.

By the time we had reached the end of our gourmet week I found myself feeling stuffed. Each meal left me uncomfortable. This wasn't a great surprise. Each time that the recipe required me to pour in an extra cup of cream and even more butter, I hesitated. Is this really what it takes to make good food?

Some years ago I was invited as a speaker to a remarkable event in Copenhagen organized by Danish eco-food legend, Camilla Plum (visit http://www.fuglebjerggaard.dk/). The event attracted 600 women who had shown up to share the joy and skills required to improve cooking for the everyday. It was called The Belly Rebellion. Despite all of the health messages out there around food today, I feel that we need more organized belly rebellions by both men and women gathering together showing the world what truly good everyday food is.

It isn't easy to figure out. Top chefs frequently use a load of fat in their food preparation in order to deliver flavor. Then there is also of course the issue of sponsorship by the butter company. I don't believe in banning butter or cream from diet. You'll find this out in my food blog, Julie's Kitchen (http://www.nordicwellbeing.com/Julies_Kitchen/). Everything has its place in the right quantities balanced with enough physical activity. However, I do feel that we need to brush up on our skills of what balance of ingredients is required to produce healthy, tasty food.

My belly rebellion contribution for now is to read a recipe carefully before diving into it. Don't just accept that it must be good because Chef Marvelous wrote the recipe. Test your way forward. Try the recipe with a little bit less of whatever quantity seems outrageous and see whether it works. Change ingredients to suit your preference. Have fun and use your common sense.

I have a black currant pie sitting on my kitchen counter (using up my last black currants from 2008). It is divine and I made it with about a third less of the white flour, sugar and butter required by the recipe. Check my Kitchen Blog (http://www.nordicwellbeing.com/Julies_Kitchen/) for the recipe now!

Yesterday evening just before dinner, my husband walked into my study and noted that our two ten-year-olds were perched in front of their mini-computer screens, each in their own rooms. Not only that, my husband and I too were perched in our studies in front of screens, possibly not logged into The Penguin Club as our kids were, but still in front of screens.

I think it would be reasonable to say that if you were the fly on the wall in modern family homes either in Scandinavia or in America, you would at certain times of day observe this scenario. The question is, should we be concerned about it? Is it unhealthy?

I have to admit it, my computer is like my right arm. I don't venture far from home without it. It is my main working instrument, as it is for my husband. In order to participate in a modern economy, we need to use them. I am old enough to remember what it was like to produce a university thesis on a typewriter and I can definitely say that a computer is preferable to white-out, although I still hold my typewriter in high esteem.

I sometimes wonder whether from our children's point of view, this just looks like my husband and I are having fun all day. No matter how much we'd like to believe that our children have a wide range of role models, it is still parents that children take their cues from most. Watching the pattern of our days from a child's perspective, it might not be hard for a child to conclude that having fun on a computer is the thing to do.

There are experts who argue in favor of the chaos theory when it comes to computers (check books written by Douglas Rushkoff, for instance). That is, children and teenagers need to be allowed to muddle their way through cyberworld in order to become well-integrated members of a future society. A part of me agrees with that.

Another part of me looks at the evidence presented by medical science concerning the ill health of children due to the mental effects of screens and an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. The latest this week is that young children seem to be increasingly vulnerable to asthma due to increasing time sitting in front of screens (TV in this case - Thorax Journal, UK).

Since I've spent a considerable amount of time reading to children and running summer camps, I'm acutely aware of the anti-social effects that screens can have on kids (screens are in some cases all they can think of). It is terrible to see and experience a child whose instincts tell them that screen life is more interesting than real life.

Whatever, we do, we've got a hot potato on our hands when it comes to screens. As a parent, I think it pays off considerably not to underestimate the consequences of computer (and TV) use in a child's life, both positive and negative.

Balance is always a difficult idea to realize in life, but it is what is needed - always. Perhaps a useful barometer could be what I am calling the Real Life - Virtual Life barometer. If the indicator is swinging too far over into virtual (that is, virtual life is becoming more important than real for your child), it is time to step in with the most positive thoughts you can muster to make it swing back again.

Sorry, in our last blog entry we left out one of the really big questions of our times: How can you focus on making good food for the family when you are stressed by current economic conditions and perhaps even the prospect that supermarket bills are becoming a challenge?

Good Food Doesn’t Cost the Earth

Let me take the second part of this question first. Good food doesn’t have to cost the earth. In fact, many of the very best and healthiest ingredients are inexpensive. Those large, thick slabs of beef aren’t good for anything, not your bank account, not the planet, not you (I'm not totally anti-meat, but moderation please!). Visit The Nordic Wellbeing Cookbook and my other food blog, Julie’s Kitchen, for a wide range of examples on simple, tasty possibilities that don’t cost the earth (these are both accessible from www.nordicwellbeing.com). Check out the Dec and Jan issues of my e-magazine www.nordicwellbeing.com which will be all about eating royally on a budget! There, now I’ve made a push for the magazine, but I am being sincere – you’ll get a lot at zero cost out of this magazine when it comes to food thrift.

It’s About the Skills

I’ve heard repeatedly that fast food restaurants like Subway start to fill up when the going gets tough. That is not only because you can find cheap, high energy food in these dives. It is because many people no longer have skills concerning what to do with good, inexpensive ingredients. Put a head of red cabbage in front of the average person and he/she is likely to head straight for Subway! I can tell you from my seat here in Sweden that this isn’t just an American problem even if we haven’t yet got the marvelous Subway!

The Family Meal Stress Buster

Evelyn, my sister on the US side of the Atlantic, answered the first part of the question about being able to focus in stressed times. Evelyn is in the home-building business, so you can just imagine the stress that she is under! Amidst all of the mayhem, she had the wherewithal to write that making food together can actually be a great stress buster, not a stress creator. It can take you back to tradition, your roots and bring in some sense of stability. Reaching out for that institution that will never fail you – the family meal – has a number of other excellent spinoffs. Let's have a look...

Getting Kids Interested in Variety

First, Evelyn’s insatiably curious 7-year-old twins started nosing through the cookbooks and raising their eyebrows at how much sugar there actually was in their favorite apple pie. When they set out to bake with mother last weekend, they voluntarily chose another more dentally-positive version. Making a point about setting the table nicely for the family meal put the focus on being together to enjoy something good made together rather than the usual stuff-down-some-calories-to-quell-hunger-or-errant-emotions experience (that goes for adults and children!). Participation by the children in preparing the family meal has also stirred curiosity in new foods. Getting that needed variety into children’s diets is often a problem not because the kids truly don’t like something, but more because it doesn’t seem interesting. Would you be interested in a mushroom if all you knew about it was that it is a brown, shrivelled piece of organic matter swimming in some sauce on your plate?

A New Food Order?

So, in all the mayhem, perhaps a needed new order is emerging! Evelyn said it well when she confessed that “being together is much more important now than when we were all flying around at warp speed ‘doing really well’". Food for thought…

Contact Evelyn at: eochsner@fieldpointch.com
Contact me at: info@julielindahl.com

After a long day of feeding my own and other people's children yesterday, I asked my husband whether he can remember feeling as a child that there were all sorts of things he could not eat. I had spent the day watching my children's friends (each from a different family) pulling lettuce, tomato and cheese out of their sandwiches (and leaving their sandwiches looking like demolition sites), scraping away the carrots and picking apart their home-made hamburgers to check that there was nothing peculiar in them. There was no question that the stewed red cabbage was banned from their plates.

My husband replied that he could certainly remember feeling traumatized when pölsa (animal innards) was served up at school. In those days you weren't allowed to skip what was on your plate. In fact, he could remember stuffing it into his pocket and throwing it away as soon as he found a convenient bush or a friendly dog. His conclusion was that it was important for kids to be able to choose what they liked to eat.

Of course, I agreed but, I reflected that my husband has the world's healthiest appetite and there are very few things that he won't eat. He is also very clear about his own choices and is difficult to sway. So, being able to skip whatever you want when a child probably has no clear linkage to developing a strong sense of choice and feeling free around food.

In fact, through all of my dealings with young children, I have noticed that not encouraging them to try a wide variety of foods repeatedly on most days limits them when it comes to eating. After 5 years of reading English stories to Swedish school children (ages 3-11) in which I provided home-made refreshments and running English Summer Camp on my island, I have come to grips with the fact that, as a parent, you get back what you put in at meals. That means, if you try to anticipate what your child will eat and only serve that, for example, pasta with ketchup every night, then your child will believe that it cannot eat anything other than pasta and ketchup.

Tired parents coming home from work often find that meal time is a terrible stress with the kids. To make everything easier the usual meatballs are thrown into the pan. That is OK every now and then but over the long haul it damages a child's confidence when it comes to food and eating.

Evelyn, my sister on the American side of the Atlantic, raised the confidence issue in one of our discussions about this subject. She pointed out that instilling confidence is simultaneously about getting kids to understand that their bodies are under their own jurisdiction and that their choices will have results, at the same time as it is about letting them know when they are going outside reason and drawing them back inside the lines.

My own children? They have their own food quirks like all of us do. However, they do run down to me every day, and trying to catch a whiff of what is in my pots, ask excitedly what is for dinner. My retriever, Lucy, drools at the stove. Everyone can choose, but they've all got the basic confidence to try it.

Stock markets may go up and they may go down, but if there is one thing you are always going to need it is your health! As this most important feature of your life is closely bound up with the health of your nearest and dearest, I’ve decided to devote my blog to that many-faceted subject: family health.

Here, you’ll be able to tune into a fascinating ongoing conversation about family health seen in a Transatlantic perspective. If there is anything that I have learned through a lifetime of travel and living in different places in the world, it is that each culture has its own approach to health and wellbeing. I have always believed that if we could share more ideas that the world would be a better place to live in for each individual. Now the Internet is making that possible, so let’s get down to business.

Right now in this blog, I’m inviting my sister, Evelyn, to discuss her family health issues with me. Evelyn lives in Connecticut, USA with her husband, three young children (7-year-old twin girls and an 8 year-old boy) and three dogs. If you don’t know it already through my column for Nordstjernan, I live near Stockholm with my husband, two young children (a boy and a girl who are 10 years of age and, you-guessed-it, twins) and one dog.

On the weekend we were discussing family weight issues. As soon as Evelyn mentioned, “we’re having to make some changes around here,” I became interested. We found that each of us has a family of individuals with different metabolisms and food preferences. A further complicating factor was that the parents within the family are also individuals and therefore don’t always deliver a unified message when it comes to how to eat right.

The big questions we ended up with are: 1) how does the food provider of the family cater to everyone’s health and taste needs? 2) how does he/she make sure that the family can eat together and enjoy it? 3) Last but not least, how does the food provider so all of this alongside a full time job? We intend to provide a few answers in our upcoming blog entries.

Write to us with your questions and thoughts about these family health issues and any others that you are grappling with. Surely, if Sweden and America put their heads together, we can solve any problem!

If you’d like to know more about me visit http://www.julielindahl.com and http://www.wellnessofscandinavia.com (my e-magazine with lots of great health and food tips). If you’d like to know what Evelyn does, visit http://www.fieldpointch.com. "