I am staying calm...

I am seriously behind.

I know that this is true because I have been looking through Instagram posts at everybody else and they are ready for Christmas. My tree is as big as an entire forest, and that is after it had been pruned back while it was still in the living room, and bits of the twigs are still on the carpet. It is not decorated; though the ladder needed to erect it has been left handily between the armchairs for the last 2 days so that somebody [anybody?] can start to put up the fairy lights. So far there have been no takers.

The gammon joint I bought to boil is too big for the pan and is not cooking properly.

 All the flowers I had gaily dotted about the house to welcome our visitors have died...

 

Flower Morgue

Added to all this is the fact that I ate nine chocolates yesterday because one of my children left a giant box of dairy milk lying around and I was hungry. That is not bad in itself because I like chocolate, but I am trying to lose weight and that was pure gluttony. And that makes me feel bad.

However.

I reckon that the visitors that I am having don’t care too much about the fairy lights on the tree. OK, they do, but they won’t stress if I ask them for help to put them up. They won’t notice if there are no flowers if I greet them with a cup of tea and some bourbon biscuits.

 And I will just roll the gammon over and cook it twice as long.

What I have learned from my worst-organised-Christmas-ever, is that it isn’t the disaster that I thought it would be because I am staying calm. And that is my Christmas gift to you, my friends. Stay calm and let the situations just flow on by without getting upset. 

We can always decorate the tree tomorrow….

I’m burning my boats!

 

Not literally, obviously.

For so many months or years I have been dipping my toe into various diets and ways of eating, but now my husband has Parkinson’s disease my main focus is to feed him nutritious food, cutting out the crisps he so loves and the chocolate and the cider.

And I've made a decision...

Of all the diets that I have researched, I am leaning towards a high fat/ low carbohydrate diet. Not keto, where you eliminate all carbs, but almost paleo, where you eat starchy root veg and fatty meat. The brain likes fat, apparently. And all the membranes of every cell in your body contains fat, and many hormones need some sort of fat contribution to be produced.

One of the mainstays of this way of eating is bone broths. These are described by the Wahls Protocol, by Dr Sarah Myhill in any of her books or Youtube clips, and by Dr Chris Masterjohn on his Youtube channel. You boil up the bones in hot water we will get a gelatin-rich liquid from the breakdown of the cartilage, tendons and ligaments and this will provide what the body needs to form new connective tissue. Connective tissue supports skin and internal organs, and in the form of twisted cables helps to cushion joints, strengthens tendons and ligament; collagen may also play a role in preventing and treating auto-immune diseases.

Bone broth is also said to build healthy teeth, hair and nails and keep some elasticity in the skin. We get the marrow too, and that should contain phospholipids, choline and lecithin, phosphatidyl-ethanolamine [PE] and phosphatidylserine [PS]. PE and PS are vital to nervous system function and are found in the white matter of the brain, nerves and neural tissue. PS is known to improve brain function and mental acuity, so you can see why I want to get it down my husband.

Of course, you can get all this from supplements, and people avoid fatty meats now because they are scared of cholesterol. But supplements only provide glucosamine and chondroitin which are just two of the many raw ingredients the body needs for collagen repair and production. And cholesterol is part of every cell in your body too – part of the lipid bi-layer of the membranes. It should only be those who have familial hypercholesteraemia that need to avoid fat.

So here we go. My bones are in hot water on the Aga and I aim to have a bone broth bubbling away most of the time to make nourishing soups and stocks. 

Christmas comes full circle

Do you ever wonder why it is that childhood Christmases seem so idyllic when we look back at them?

I’ll tell you why:

1.      We were the children and not the ones who had responsibility for creating the perfect experience.
2.       We didn’t have to do the shopping or the cooking.
3.       We didn’t have to deal with family politics.
4.       We were the ones who got sackfuls of presents.
5.       We didn’t have to do the washing up.
6.       Although we might have been aware things didn’t always run smoothly, it wasn’t our problem.

The only negative thing about Christmas I can remember is wanting to be an angel in the school nativity play at the age of about five, and being told I wasn’t blonde enough. However, if one of the blonder angels should drop out I could take her place. Of course, nobody dropped out of the angel line up so I never got to put on the wings and tinsel and join the heavenly host.

Christmas was a time set apart, a time to play games together as a family, a time for the sort of treats we didn't see the rest of the year. Really special. 

The years rolled by, and the age of partying came and went. Eventually parenthood arrived and the Christmas responsibilities increased at the same rate as the family did. It was great to make a good time for the children. We had some lovely times as a family. Things weren’t too complicated, there wasn’t enough money to go mad. It never occurred to me to get into debt to buy the kids fancy presents, but they didn’t mind (at least they tell me they didn’t). I wasn’t pressured by ads on TV because we didn’t have one. We made our own family traditions, kept things reasonably simple and enjoyed ourselves, even though it was hard work.

Then somehow things got more complicated or maybe I was just getting older. My parents and parents in law started to give me money to buy presents for the family. I completely understand that and I now do the same for my grandchildren – much better than wasting money on something they might not like. Grandparents are notoriously bad at gauging what young people want. It also puts a stop to grandparents buying stuff that annoys the parents, like drums and whistles and toys that play irritating tunes and drive you up the wall. However, it did mean that I had to find three sets of presents for each child plus stocking fillers. This was before internet shopping too, so lots of trawling the shops.

Anyway, long story short, one year I started to realise I was dreading Christmas and I had to admit it.

 I’m not one of those amazing hostesses who are organised and efficient. No way could I live up to the image in my head of how I ought to be. So, sadly there came a time when I just didn’t like Christmas at all. Too much scope for getting everything wrong. Too much stress. Not enough time and energy.

But with age comes a measure of wisdom. You get to see the bigger picture and you no longer care about getting everything just perfect. So now I refuse to get in a tizzy about anything. I will get to see all the family in one go, at least all the ones who live in the UK, at the annual Family Knees-up. I’ll have another Christmas Day with my precious parents who never criticise my cooking or anything else. No weary shopping trips, it’s all done online.  No worrying if the presents I’ve given are ok. I’m warm and cosy among the twinkling lights here; the cupboards are full of treats. Basically, it’s almost like a second childhood only with alcohol, and I’m free to enjoy it all again.