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Family Health Blog: The Stress-busting Family Meal
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
2 comments:
ClevelandLisa32 | November 17, 2011 Have no a lot of money to buy some real estate? You should not worry, because that's achievable to get the <a href=" http://goodfinance-blog.com/topics/home-loans";>home loans</a> to solve such problems. Thence take a auto loan to buy all you require. Eve | February 21, 2009 Julie, you are truly talented. You really capture the soundbytes and turn the words to create thought. I'm very proud to be doing this with you.
all my love,
Eve
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