Category: Lazy Lifestyle (Page 1 of 2)

Tips for lazy people

Luxury on a Budget: Afternoon Tea

November 16, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

I’ve said it before and I still mean it: When you’re trying to save money, luxuries have to come first. It’s not just possible to enjoy a little luxury while sticking to your budget; it’s absolutely essential. If life has no space for a bit of pleasure now and then, what on earth are you budgeting for?

There’s good news for your bank account, though. When it comes to enjoying a luxury, the thing itself is only part of the package. The main point is the quality of the experience. And the good thing about that is that it means you can have a whole lot of indulgence without spending very much. One happy little low-cost luxury enjoyed in Australian homes, schools and workplaces is morning and afternoon tea.

Japan understood the importance of teatime very well, changing the brew from hot matcha or oolong in winter to cold green or barley tea in summer, enjoyed with a variety of sweet or salted snacks. China and Hong Kong enjoy formal and informal teatimes, including yum cha, the ultimate tea break. South Americans sip volcanic mate, while India and the U.K. both enjoy their morning and afternoon tiffin with savouries and sweets (hence the Australian and New Zealander taste for the experience). Whenever you enjoy it and whatever you call it, when it comes to luxury on a budget, teatime is right up there with foot massages for pleasure and value for money.

Being Australian, Kin and I have always enjoyed our morning and afternoon teas, but we only started making an event of it during our first Japanese winter. Maybe being indoors so much caused us to try and make it a richer experience or maybe the frozen landscape so far from home caused us to invoke the spirits of our ancestors with their tin teapots, fruitcake, scones and blessed, blessed heat. Whatever our reason for starting, we kept it going all through that winter and now, two years later, we still haven’t stopped. No matter how busy or wretched the day, we always come together in the afternoon to enjoy a little oasis of peace and pleasant sensations.

Remember that word, please! PEACE is the point to your afternoon tea. This is an everyday event, so it’s not supposed to cause you any stress or problems. With peace in mind, here are a couple of my simplest, most reliable recipes for teatime treats:

(All measures are Australian and metric. I’ll include a conversion chart on the site soon, but for now, look them up here.)

Banana Bread

The simplest thing to make in the entire universe. I’m not even kidding; I have left entire ingredients out of this recipe before, and it still keeps coming up edible.

3 tbsp olive oil (or other vegetable oil) – 2 cups self raising flour
2/3 cup sugar – 3 eggs
¼ tsp bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) – ½ tsp salt
4 large or 5-6 small mashed bananas

Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease loaf tin and set aside.

In a mixing bowl, beat sugar, oil and eggs together until light and fluffy. Beat in bananas (if you’re using an electric mixer, you don’t even have to mash them, just dump them in one at a time and let the mixer squoosh them). Sift dry ingredients into the bowl and mix well. It should still be pretty liquid at this stage.

Pour mixture into tin and place in oven. Bake for about an hour; shorter if you like things heavy and moist, longer if you like them fluffy and light. Simple! Slice and eat hot, cold, toasted with honey or however you prefer.

Butter cake with passionfruit icing

Up until Japan, I baked my cakes in regular, round cake tin. Nagahama, however, had never heard of such a thing, so I wound up instead having to buy two tiny loaf tins and bake two tiny cakes …. which has turned out to be the best thing ever. I now get one cake to eat and another to freeze for the next time I fancy cake and don’t feel like baking (and sometimes when a woman needs cake, she needs it right away!) Other advantages are that small cakes get eaten quickly, even if you don’t have any visitors for a few days and they also make portion control much easier. Kin could happily eat an entire meal of cake, so he likes the small ones; for some reason, it’s much easier to cut yourself a small slice of a small cake than it is to cut a small slice from a large cake.

Butter cake (Margaret Fulton):

125g butter (half a block) – 2 cups self raising flour
¾ cup caster sugar – 2 eggs
1 tsp vanilla – ¾ cup milk
Pinch salt

Preheat oven to 180 C. Grease your cake tin/s and set aside.

Cream butter with vanilla and sugar until it looks white and fluffy. Beat in eggs, one at a time until thoroughly combined. Sift flour and salt together three times and fold into mixture alternately with milk, using a spatula or wooden spoon.

(I regularly skip this careful sifting and the cake still turns out pretty good, so if you’re in a hurry, just stir it up and go)

Dollop mixture into tin/s and place in oven. Bake for 30 minutes (twenty-five, if using two pans).

Icing:

1 cup icing sugar – 1 tbsp melted butter
2-3 tbsp passionfruit pulp

Makes enough for one of the little loaf-cakes, so if you’ve made a big cake, double up.

Using a spatula or a bread and butter knife, mix the lot together in a bowl, then spread it on top of the cooled cake. Too simple! I also often replace the passionfruit with whatever citrus is handy; use a few tbsp of the juice and grate up a few teaspoonsful of zest to mix through as well.

Sultana scones

Slightly more tricky here: If you want these guys at their best, you actually have to cook them at teatime. Scones are a teatime staple for a reason, though; they’re cheap, quick, pretty easy and bloody awesome. I like plain scones with jam and cream, but Nagahama sometimes had trouble providing these, so sultana ones with butter were a good mainstay.

60g chilled, chopped butter – 2 cups self-raising flour
½ cup sultanas – ½ cup milk
1/3 cup sugar

Preheat oven to 200 C. Grease a baking tray or dust it with plain flour and set aside.

Sift flour into a bowl and then rub in the butter with your fingers until it looks like fine breadcrumbs. Give the bowl a thump on your benchtop every now and then, to bring the big lumps to the surface. Stir in the sultanas. Make a well in the centre of your mixture and very slowly pour in the milk, stirring quickly with a butter knife until you have a dough. You may not need all of it, so watch out; if your mixture gets too sticky, you’ll have to dust it with a bit more flour.

This next step is where all recipe book authors turn out to be filthy liars. They will now tell you to turn the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead it until smooth. Do NOT do this, unless you enjoy eating grey, tasteless lumps. Instead, gather the dough gently into a ball, turn it out onto the lightly floured surface and then carefully fold and press it a couple of times until it looks like it’s fairly well combined. You may only need to do this two or three times and remember to be gentle!

Roll the dough out until it’s about two cm thick. Use a biscuit cutter or the top of a small water glass to cut scones from the dough (probably 16-17 of them). Place on the tray about 1cm apart and brush them with a little milk. Bake them for about ten minutes or until they sound hollow when you tap them on the bottom. Serve hot, with butter!

Even at 1/3 cup, these scones aren’t super sweet; I’ll add more or less sugar depending on how we feel. If they turn out to not be sweet enough for you, these scones are lovely with some honey or stewed blueberries.

Morning and afternoon tea are small, light meals, with the main focus being your chosen drink, rather than food. On working days, our afternoon tea is as simple as coffee for Kin and a pot of tea for me, with some little treat like a slice of cake or some good fruit or mochi. On non-working days we become a little more elaborate and along with our sweets, we also enjoy things like olives, devilled eggs, little sandwiches and other small, savoury items. The point isn’t the food, it’s the event; a period of stillness, pleasant sensations and happiness in solitude or in good company. Stuffing yourself with half a cake is no luxury at all; but slice of it with afternoon tea is an experience to savour.

Tea’s up!

Gem

Fuss and Budgets

June 22, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 3 Comments

By Gem

Enroute is having money worries! Saving for a house has seen us put away a respectable stash, but now we’re soon to leave our jobs, leave the country and start taking some very big chances…… and that means we’re nervously facing the fact that our savings are likely to take a kicking over the rest of 2014. There are tough times ahead, we’re a little anxious, but we know it’s time to make some hard decisions.

So we spent lots of money and bought a camera!

You WHAT?

When we were young, Kin and I both had our own special ways of being terrible with money. In our defence, please note that we’ve always paid our rent and bills and never had our phones cut off. But once these essentials were out of the way, our spending habits were atrocious.

Bad Spending – Gem-Style

My dreadful money method was to meticulously plan where absolutely every dollar should go and to deny myself pretty much anything I wanted, pretty much all of the time. This allowed me to accumulate some savings… which were then decimated at intervals when the rigid discipline became too much and I went temporarily buy-crazy.

Result? Despite the constant threat of nest-egg annihilation, I never seemed to obtain anything I wanted. (Buy-crazy shopping is not well-considered shopping.)

Bad Spending – Kin-Style

Kin, on the other hand, would frantically spend anything he earned or received as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, he never thought very hard about what to spend it on, so his money would just evaporate, leaving him with nothing between pays.

Result? No savings mean a person has very little money at a time; and that means that Kin never got much that he wanted either! To make things worse, he also ran up some emergency debt (although not very much, thankfully; one of the good things about being in a low income bracket in your twenties is no-one wants to lend you money!)

So. Neither of us had much money (although I had slightly more than Kin) and neither of us were able to have nice things (although Kin had slightly more than me). Day to day, life was okay, but we were both just treading water; neither of us were ever in a position to improve things for ourselves.

Then, one day, we met, we moved in together and we combined our finances. And we combined our opposing ideas on how to manage those finances. And together, we developed our most important household rule:

Budget Luxuries FIRST

This isn’t the disaster it sounds like! The key words here are different for each of us, but the rule helps us both.

For me, the keywords are “Luxuries FIRST”. I like a good fait accompli and am happy to simply sit on money I don’t yet have a purpose for, so I will stick to a spending plan, even if it means having to scrape every last coin out of the couch, make scratch meals out of pantry scraps and home-grown vegetables and wash the dishes with soap. Because of that, it’s actually quite easy for me to sacrifice after the fact, especially since I already have my lovely indulgences to make me happy!

For Kin, who could happily get through the lot, the keywords are “Budget FIRST”. This means that before he spends any money in a pay period he has to think about what he actually wants, not just this month, but in the short and long term future. Actually setting aside physical containers to hold money for different purposes can be helpful for this sort of person. For example, you might have one envelope with money for restaurant meals, another with money for a new mattress, and so on. Doing things this way means that there is no large pool of cash for you to draw from to dilute the sacrifice; every time you spend, you will have to decide which area is going to take the hit. Watching your holiday, bicycle or pretty dress dribble away a few dollars at a time is a wonderful way to focus your attention on unnecessary spending.

If you don’t like keeping cash in the house, having separate bank accounts for your different kinds of spending can work (this guy has a lot to say on that topic, if you can avoid the advertising) but you really need to stay on top of fees and taxation.

But please remember: We budget luxuries first out of our household SPENDING money. We do NOT prioritise them over our rent, bills or savings. If you or your partner just flat-out can’t be trusted right now, this would be a terrible idea for you (you need to think about more basic goals, like these or these). There are also a lot of low-cost ways to obtain your pleasures, and I’m looking forward to talking about them later on!

Where do you fit luxury into your life? Where are you prepared to sacrifice and where do you indulge?

Happy (frugal) hedonism!

Gem

RIP, My Lovely Scarf

April 25, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 3 Comments

By Gem

I didn’t write a post yesterday, because I had a HORRIBLE afternoon. I’m tired and lurgy, so I was in no mood to go to my Tea Ceremony lesson, but I decided to be stern with myself (it’s a few hours out of my afternoon, it’s not that demanding an activity, the serene atmosphere would make me feel better, etc). So, when work ended, I wrapped myself in my scarf and coat, trudged to the station and plonked onto the Kinomoto train, where I sat in an unhappy daze with my scarf beside me… until I stood up and left it on the train!

And it was THAT scarf! My soft blue, lamb’s wool scarf that Kin chose the yarn for. My second-ever knitting project! I only finished it a few weeks ago, on the way back from Tokyo and it’s already gone.

I actually DID remember my scarf before the train got away, so I raced back along the platform with a JR employee and scoured the carriages for it, but some rotten sod had whipped it in the time it took us to get back there! I hoped so much that they’d simply picked it up to hand in to lost property, but it was not to be.

Tea Ceremony was a sad experience that day. Not only had it cost me my lovely scarf, lugging my bag around had given me a headache and I was far too wooly-headed and unhappy to actually learn anything. By seven, I decided that the day was a write-off, so I bid my sensei farewell and left early to catch the seven thirty train.

…and missed it. So I had an hour to sit scarfless in the cold, reflecting on how much nicer everything would be right then if I’d been less strong willed and had just gone home when I wanted to. Now I wasn’t going to be home until nine AND I still had to make dinner and wash my hair. As far as first-world problems go, I was suffering badly last night.

Kin, thankfully, knows how to put me back together, so I didn’t have time to take off my coat before he bundled me off for steak and cheap wine at the imitation Italian joint down the road (bless him). A decanter of dodgy white is generally all it takes to improve my outlook (not to mention my headache) so I felt much better about the world before very long at all.

So what was the take-away from my unhappy evening (since “wine makes everything better!” is probably not a good moral)?

While I was still shivering in the dark, I thought that the moral to this story was that if you really, really don’t want to do something, you’re a lot better off not doing it. Revived by steak and sauvignon blanc, I still broadly agreed with that point of view, but could remember what that tired, chilly Gem could not; that the whole reason I’d dragged myself out was because I’ve been not-doing far too much lately! So maybe the lesson is really that it’s important to determine and maintain acceptable levels of activity, so that you don’t have to force yourself to do things when it genuinely is a bad time for you.

I actually like the second moral, even if it’s not very catchy, but I thought of an even better one today. I was really very, very sad about my scarf; I treasure my clothes and homewares, because I don’t have a lot of money to spend on that sort of thing. When that’s the case, and something happens to one of your possessions, it’s something of a tragedy. This time is different. I loved my scarf; it was lovely, soft and expensive, but…

I can make another one.

A good scarf is bloody hard to find. Actual wool scarves cost a fortune and even finding a decently pretty acrylic is a matter of waiting until a shop finally has what you want and snapping it up the second it goes on sale (if it does). And if you lose it or stain it, it’s gone. You can’t have that scarf again. You have to resume waiting for the next pretty thing to turn up and hope that you have the money for it.

But my scarf wasn’t irreplaceable. Hours went into making it, but I was learning the entire time and now I know I can make it again; much, MUCH faster. I no longer have to wait for someone to design and produce a scarf for me at a price I can afford. It might not seem like much, but it shows how important it can be to an individual to develop a bit of independence in the production process.

(I’m trying to avoid the “teach a man to fish” parable here, but it just keeps seeming more appropriate with every word.)

This has made me more determined than ever to beg Beans for sewing lessons, stock up on crochet hooks and practice my knitting. Back when everyone could make things, I suppose store-bought items were a luxurious option. Now, though, we’re uncomfortably reliant on them; and the quality is dropping. Otherwise, why can no woman in the world find a blouse that is the right size for her knockers AND her waist? Not to mention opaque enough not to show her bra?

I don’t think we should all stop buying things; humans have always produced and traded goods, even when we were just doing it within our own villages. Our village is a lot larger now, but I love our interconnected world and I have no wish at all to shut myself away from it. I just think that it’s important for individuals (and communities) to keep their options open. In this case, if we had a little more independence when it came to making our own basic clothing, the products on the market would probably reflect the change.

Now think: If a certain amount of independence is important for luxuries like pretty clothing, how much more important must it be for things like housing and food? And how capable are you of separating yourself from the marketplace for both?

I’m not, very. When we’re in Australia, I produce a lot of the vegetables we eat, but when it comes to grains, meat and fruit, we’re totally reliant on outside providers. And I’m a fairly accomplished cook, so foodwise, we’re more independent than most.

I don’t actually mind buying most of my food; I’m pretty sure the dude who made the best flint tools traded for a lot of his as well. But I’m very glad that I don’t need to depend on anyone else to turn those raw materials into meals for me. And it worries me how much other people my age DO seem to need it.

But when it comes to housing, I am hopeless. Both of my parents are competent with their hands, but I’m utterly useless. Carpentry is something I’ve desperately wanted to learn for years, just not desperately enough to do more about than search for local courses a few times a year and give up when I don’t find any. I should have bought a book, gone to open days at Bunnings or hired a carpenter to teach me some of the basics. When I get home, I will do those things, or whatever else needs to be done, and when I hire a specialist, it will be for a specialist job.

I plan on being a lot more independent in future. I will still work within my profession and make money. And with that money, I will still participate in the world’s trading. But I’ll have the ability to be a lot more particular about what I’m buying.

THAT is what my carelessness on the train has taught me. I feel stronger when I think of what I’ve already learned and I feel very, very good about the new things that I will learn and the new independence that will grow from it.

(….but… Oh! My lovely scarf!)

Are you growing, making or otherwise trying to keep a bit of distance between yourself and the markets of the world? How are you working on it?

Gem

On the Boil: The Awesomeness of Soup

April 20, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 6 Comments

By Gem

Now Australia is beginning to settle into autumn, and the spring days here in Japan maintain their chill… Now, it is time to sing the song of soup.

O Soup, the nourishing
Soup, the tasty
O, Soup, ye friend of the poor and saviour of the lazy…

… not to mention, Soup, the best way I know of getting rid of whatever’s going leggy in the garden, or leaky in the fridge. Or, Soup, how you can get five serves of vegetables into one meal, let alone one day. Or even Soup, a really good way of impressing lunch guests without really doing anything.

But none of those really rhyme so well, do they?

Soup and Scheduling

I’ve spoken before about the importance of planning when you’re trying to keep your diet properly balanced. If you’re generally lazy (I am!), busy (I am!), or just someone who can’t always be trusted to make decisions like a grownup (I am!), but you still want to keep everyone properly fed during the week, then you need to organise your kitchen ahead of time.

Soup is central to my day-to-day organisation. If you always keep a jug of soup and a bottle of salad dressing in the fridge, you will always have a lovely, vege-ful meal half organised before you even get home from work.

This is great for those days when you just plain don’t feel like cooking or discover you have unexpected guests on a night you were planning to make scrambled eggs on toast. With about three minutes extra work, your scrambled eggs become an omelette, and you have soup, salad and toast ready to go with it! Salads and soups travel quite happily to work with you and will turn your lunchtime sandwich into a real meal. It also helps you feel better about those days when you haven’t prepared, but you’re already exhausted and just buy a barbequed chicken and some bread rolls on your way home from work. You’re still giving everyone a decent, balanced meal, you’re just not killing yourself to do it at a time when you just don’t have the energy.

Soup is also another arrow in my quiver against the Healthy-Food-Costs-More brigade.

Getting Organised

Soup and salad dressing are both very simple to make. I shake up my salad dressing in an old squeezy-top mustard bottle that Kin washes out each time we empty it (about every month or so) and store it in the fridge. Just find an old jar, dump in a couple of tablespoons of a nice vinegar (we like a very acidic red wine vinegar), about double that of oil, salt, pepper and any additives that take your fancy (I often add about a tablespoon of Dijon mustard, crushed garlic or some parmesan shavings), shake it up and boom; vinaigrette dressing ready whenever you want it. Just give it another shake when it’s time to squoodge some out.

(Here are some rather more precise recipes if you’re nervous about that sort of thing. Or you can simply buy a nice, low kilojoule salad dressing to keep on hand).

On the whole, though, it’s even easier to construct a soup than it is to make a salad dressing, and it’s a lot more impressive to visitors.

Basic Soup No 1: Green Velvet

This soup is Kin’s favourite; it’s also the easiest soup I know! A basic soup like this just needs vegetables and stock. I usually use a liquid chicken stock for my soups, but there are no real rules when it comes to soup. If you are vegetarian, use vegetable stock. If you can’t make liquid stock (I’m not very good at it, either) or afford to buy it, use cubes from the supermarket. Don’t fret too much about getting things right; it’s soup. Soup will forgive you for just about anything.

Ingredients:

1 head of broccoli, divided into small florets, stem chopped
1 bunch of spinach, washed
1 large onion, finely chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed or finely chopped
2 largeish potatoes, peeled and chopped into cubes
1.2 litres of stock (or whatever. If you like a thicker soup, use less. If thinner, use more)
Splash of olive oil
Herbs or seasonings (see variation). Today’s herbs for us are oregano, thyme and rosemary.

Method:

Heat the oil in a saucepan and brown the onion and garlic over a low-medium heat until softened (probably more than five minutes, probably less than ten. Again, it’s soup; don’t worry so much). Add the potato and stir fry for 2-3 minutes (if adding dried herbs, this is a good time. This is also when I add hard herbs like rosemary), then pour in the stock. Bring to the boil, and then simmer for about fifteen minutes, or until the potato is tender. Add the broccoli (and any other fresh herbs), simmer for about four minutes or until broccoli is tender, then add spinach. Stir through and turn off heat.

Liquify soup using a stick blender, food processor, or whatever you have on hand. If you don’t have any of those things, go to an op shop or a pawn shop and buy one. I don’t care how broke you are. Being able to make soup is going to save you more money than a second-hand stick blender could possibly cost you.

Pour soup into bowls and serve, or into containers to store in the fridge. I sometimes pop a swirl of cream in each bowl, but it isn’t necessary. This soup reheats quite happily in the microwave and keeps for over a week in the fridge.

Variation: Leave out the herbs and instead add half a teaspoon of cumin at the end of cooking. Serve each bowl with a blob of natural yoghurt

This soup can also be made with any sort of vegies you have lying around, like carrot, beans, zucchini and any sort of leafy greens. Just simmer hard veg for longer and add leafy veg toward the end of cooking time. If you like a thick soup, add more potato. If you like a thin soup, add more stock. However you make it, it will always be delicious. It will also be cheap and give you a hefty serve of vitamins and fibre with every verdant bowlful.

What other sort of soup recipes would you like to see? Or does anyone have a good recipe of their own? I’ll be back in my garden soon and I’ll be on the lookout for nice ones.

Happy souping!

Gem

The Best Things in Life…

March 31, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 5 Comments

Today we’re off on holiday! The plan for this post was just a couple of quick, merry little paragraphs (mostly as an excuse to show you photos!) detailing our early start, breakfast in Gion, then our cheery voyage aboard a JR highway bus, getting us to Tokyo station at about five thirty in the afternoon. A relaxed check-in, a little stroll, a pleasant dinner and then a gentle evening spent chatting, writing, sorting out the day’s photos and drinking our wine underneath the cherry blossoms in Ueno Park before hitting the frantic scramble of the city the next day. It was a good plan.

Instead, it’s rained all day, breakfast was McDonalds, our bus was late, there were landslides in the mountains, Kin was poisoned by a highly suspicious roadside Pluto Pup and, typing this at eight thirty at night, I am STILL on this goddamn bus, stuck in a traffic jam outside a city I’m HOPING is Tokyo, cramped, cold and getting crankier by the second.

Well, I was. I’m still stuck, that’s true, but I’m feeling a little more cheerful about it thanks to an even crankier email I’ve just read from a friend in Oz, detailing woes renovating, with a newly mobile baby in the house…

…And I started laughing at both of us. Honestly, there I was, grumpy about being en route to one of the most exciting cities in the world and there she was, cranky about her healthy child’s typical development and her house becoming lovely. People as lucky as we are shouldn’t feel so cranky!

Gratitude

Feeling a lot more relaxed, I settled back into my (still kind of uncomfortable) seat and started giving some thought to gratitude. Why does it make such a difference to happiness? Not to mention, why is gratitude so essential for being awesome?

Mostly, I suppose, because being grateful for good things helps you to accept how much they cost. Right now, I am fatigued, uncomfortable and getting chillier by the second… but I get an amazing trip out of it, so I’m happy. The best things in life may be free when it comes to money, but there will always be some sort of sacrifice needed, of comfort, time or other resources. Without being grateful for the rewards these sacrifices earn you, though, you’re more likely to find the costs unacceptable… and so good things will come to you less and less frequently.

Accepting the costs

Being grateful for the fun you have at a party is great; it means that you accepted the awkwardness and boredom of the first half hour. Being thankful for the daffodils is a result of your choice to go for a walk instead of being sedentary. Appreciating a good dinner helps you accept the time spent preparing it. And once you get used to these sacrifices, they become part of the joy.

See, that’s the part where I think a lot of people get the wrong idea about gratitude. They think it’s a passive thing, where you simply choose to accept with joy what the world has given you… and leave it at that. Now that’s fine, as far as it goes, (and it’s certainly better than being a miserable wanker about everything) but it’s really only a very basic first step. Gratitude isn’t passive. It’s a choice and a force. What do you do when you’re grateful to a person? You thank them and you and try to return the favour. You DO things! Gratitude is very, very active. In fact, just hanging around waiting for nice things to happen seems pretty UNgrateful to me. Simply by virtue of being when and where we are, we have been given immense opportunities for joy and growth.

Active Gratitude

Life has many gifts for us, but the gifts won’t just happen, even if you have been lucky so far. To keep on getting, you have to keep on doing. Even if it’s just making the decision to stay on top of your bad mood; you can’t be grateful for the violets near your feet if you’re scowling at rainclouds.

If you’re happy now, there are probably still things you can do to ensure your future has gifts to be appreciated (I’m thinking bone-density and financial security, ladies. Get that load-bearing exercise on and review your expenditures; it’s never too late!) If you’re not happy now, do something to be grateful for. Stand up right now, stretch as high as you can and then try to bring your chin to your knees. Hold that for twenty seconds, then straighten up (bend your knees as you straighten if you have issues with your back). Do that three more times. Feel good? Not yet? Okay, do it again tomorrow. Keep doing it for a week and I guarantee you’ll have something to be grateful for, as you recognise your increased gluteal strength and flexibility. Every time you do that simple thing, you are doing something awesome.

When Activity is Hard

If you’re depressed, never learned, or are just plain out of the habit of looking after yourself, it can be difficult to experience these everyday rewards (I’m talking mild-moderate depression here; if you’re in the middle of a serious episode, some chick talking to you on the internet probably won’t be helpful; you need to see your healthcare professionals and keep working on your plan). So, instead of telling you to look around for reasons to be grateful, I want you to look around for reasons why you’re awesome. But you can’t tell me things you are (I’m smart, I’m friendly, etc) you can only tell me things you’ve done. Five of them. Five awesome things you’ve done since you got up this morning.

And don’t tell me “Nothing”. I don’t believe you. I’ve been on this bloody bus all day, but I reckon I can still scrape out five. Yours will be much better. What have you done?

“Um… I watered the pot plants” YES! You’ve done something to ensure the continued existence of another being AND maintain your own environment’s liveliness and joy. What else? “I…. um… I let someone in ahead of me on the roundabout.” BRILLIANT! You demonstrated kindness and consideration at a particularly stressful time of day. What else have you done? Did you make breakfast? Shave? Wash the dishes? Pick best five and chuck them on your list.

“But I do that stuff every day!” So COUNT it every day! If you don’t think it’s good enough for your list, count it anyway and keep counting it until you have something else that bumps it out of the top five. THIS STUFF MATTERS.

If you’re depressed, just getting dressed might be enough to make it to your list. If you’re an alcoholic, not drinking is the best possible action you can take. We can’t measure this list against anything that other people are doing, it all has to be just us. And every day, we need to make five. I know that sometimes it can be hard to make yourself achieve anything in a day, let alone five things. But really, if you’re already miserable, then doing things won’t make you any less happy, will it? And by giving yourself things to be grateful for, you’re making happiness so, so much more likely.

My Awesome Five

I’ll admit, my mojo is kind of being hampered by this bus, but I’m still not without resources. My five things from today are:

1- I’ve stretched at each rest stop, so I wouldn’t get headaches.

2- I successfully blow-dried my hair out of its usual dead-seaweed tendencies (still a very new and unreliable skill for me) so I still look human.

3- I’ve kept my temper all day despite being sleepy and cranky, so Kin and Shallow still love me.

4- I’ve answered an email and made my cranky friend laugh (she feels much less cranky now).

5- I’ve written a blog post about doing five awesome things!

What are your five awesome things? Did you cook something? Make something? Plant something? Help someone?

Leave your awesome things in the comments. I’d love to see what you’re doing!

Gem

Edit II: If you can’t find the “Comments” box, try clicking on the heading “The Best Things In Life” so that you’re actually in the post. Then you should be able to see comments at the bottom.

It also seems that the reason some of you are PMing me your five things is that sometimes an error message comes up when you try to comment. I’ll do my best to fix it, but in the meantime, I’m told that just refreshing a couple of times should do the trick.

I really need to learn some HTML, damn it.

Edit: This was actually completed on Wednesday, and was supposed to be uploaded the same day, but issues with batteries, camera cards, hotel wifi, and the generalized insanity of Tokyo meant that it was much, MUCH easier to just wait until we were back in Shiga. Also, a more complete album of the Penis Festival is now available on our Facebook Page.

Being Awesome Part II

March 3, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 3 Comments

By Gem

Part One is available here.

Okay, ready for step two?

Stop Feeling Like A Jerk

In Part One, we discussed how a bit of self-criticism can improve your relationship with others. Now we’re going to look at how self-criticism can improve your relationship with yourself. Today’s the day I want you to take a long, hard, critical look at yourself… and love what you see.

I’m Sorry

Oh god, I think I threw up in my mouth a little. One second….

I’m a bit jaded on the topics of self love and self acceptance just now, because of the nasty, self-adoring fetishism that’s currently passing for both online. There seems to be a real push at the moment to avoid the unpleasant, indulge all desires and cling to every flaw as a virtue; after all, it’s a facet of our totally wonderful selves!

I could not possibly agree less with this nauseating dreck, but will still happily admit that accepting and loving yourself is 100% essential for anyone with the urge to be awesome. You just have to love yourself right.

The Bad Boss

Have you ever had a really, really horrible boss?

The kind who hang over your shoulder every minute, eager for you to make a mistake? Then, when you do slip up, insult you instead of helping you and make you so nervous and unhappy that you dread going to work? How much did you get done working under a boss like that?

Conversely, how much more have you achieved with a good boss and a more supportive atmosphere?

The good boss is aware that you have weaknesses (like shyness and inexperience) and uses that knowledge to help you overcome your troubles. They applaud your successes and help you not to fail. In such a supportive environment, it’s easy to achieve and it’s easy to recover from mistakes.

The bad boss is also aware that you have weaknesses and loves to draw attention to them. In fact, if you don’t have enough weaknesses for their satisfaction, they’ll help you to create some (like anxiety and defensiveness). The bad boss ignores your successes, but is thrilled when you fail, rendering that failure more and more likely with every day. In such an antagonistic environment, achievement is almost impossible and recovering from mistakes becomes very, very difficult.

Don’t be the bad boss. Not even to yourself.

Being The Bad Boss

Being the bad boss is miserable. It’s setting yourself up for self-hatred based in lies. Unhappiness lies to you about what you can do and how you’re perceived by others. Loneliness lies. Fatigue, hunger and boredom lie. And depression lies worst of all.

Being the bad boss is also impractical. People who don’t love themselves don’t get anything done! If you’re constantly focused on what’s wrong (I’m a lazy, awkward frump with no skills, bad breath and a terrible haircut”) then it isn’t really any surprise that you don’t care to do much for such a loser. What would be the point?

This is where the infuriating, self-worshipping gunk plastered all over the internet at the moment is right; you do need to love yourself. And this does include the parts of you that need improving. Where it is wrong, wrong, WRONG, is in suggesting that this is where the journey ends. Loving yourself isn’t important because of internet warm fuzzies. It’s important because of what it makes you DO. You can trumpet to the skies how much you love your scatty brain/ messy house/ alcoholic tendencies, but deep down you know better. Which means that, deep down, you’re still unhappy.

This is why your truthful self-analysis is vital. If you’re being the bad boss, dishonestly focusing your reflection time ONLY on negatives, then you’ll hate yourself and do nothing. But if the way you choose to love yourself also causes you to do nothing, that’s almost as harmful!

Being the Good Boss

In the past, I’ve told you not to go around assuming you deserve things. Today, I’m telling you not to assume that you don’t!

Confused? Stick with me, this actually does make sense.

The trouble isn’t really your conviction that you deserve something. It’s what that conviction causes you to do. If people think too much about their rights to things, they lose their impetus for action. They deserve whatever it is, damn it, so other people had better bloody make it happen.

But thinking that they don’t deserve things also destroys a person’s ability to act if they’re hanging over their own shoulder being the bad boss. Kick that bad boss away! This is the time where you do get to think about what you deserve. But I’m not talking about eating pizza or quitting your lousy job. I’m talking about real things, the things that get left out of the Tumblr circle-jerk.

Self-love does not mean indulging your own every whim. Self-love is recognising your desires (for example, good health, enjoyable work and a happy home) and then loving yourself enough to do what is necessary to achieve those desires!

Think of the respect the good boss gives you. They’re encouraging and supportive. They want you to be happy. But they don’t give you a book, a beanbag and a bar of chocolate and tell you to have a nice time. They expect you to work. And you should expect that too!

People work hard to do things like build a house, raise a child, create a business or maintain a marriage. And all of these things have made people very happy. But they also involve a lot of unpleasantness and difficulty. If you’ve thought hard about yourself and your desires, it becomes a lot easier to grit your teeth and get through the hard parts, because you understand the rewards will be worth it.

Expecting the Unrealistic

I know it isn’t necessarily that easy to just look at every part of yourself and love it. Most people avoid thinking about their flaws and hence, when they are forced to face them, they seem far more heinous than they would in another person. Relax. Deep down, most of us are pretty dreadful. But luckily, we’re all pretty awesome as well. You fit right in.

Your problem probably boils down to just one thing: Unrealistic expectations. There are two forms of these and both of them are bloody dangerous. There’s Form A, otherwise known as:

I Hate Myself

Look at all of the awesome things everyone else is experiencing while I’m not doing anything. Everyone I know has a better job/ prettier children/ nicer holidays. I suck.

Form A is what happens when you have unrealistic expectations of yourself. If you don’t understand yourself well enough to know what it is you want from your life, it’s impossible to determine whether or not you’ve achieved it. In that state, it’s easiest to look at what other people are doing as guidance for what you should be doing as well.

Trouble is, all of those people are doing different things! Some of them are travelling the world, some of them are having babies, some of them are volunteering in distant places, some of them are staying home and achieving amazing things in their fields. You can’t possibly keep up with the achievements of absolutely everyone you know, so instead you wander around feeling constantly dissatisfied, no matter how many good things there are in your life.

Or you could have Form B, otherwise knows as:

I Hate Everyone Else

I’m an amazing person so good things should happen to me. If they don’t, it’s because society and the people around me are shallow and superficial and only care about money and prominent abdominal muscles.

Form B occurs when you have unrealistic expectations of the world. It’s not wrong to believe good things about yourself. You probably are a truly nice person.

BUT WHO THE HELL ISN’T?

Have you honestly met that many people who aren’t nice? And has the world rewarded them with riches, fame and incredible sex lives? Nope. Because being a nice person is the default setting for life in a human society. It is literally the least we can do.

On the bright side, that means we can usually depend on other people to be nice as well. On the bummer side of the ledger, though, is the fact that there are no special rewards for being nice, other than our fellow humans continuing to allow us to be near them. To get the extra goodies, we need to do extra things.

Some Form B people manage to think that far and try to do the extra things, but don’t necessarily get the goodies they’d like. That’s because their expectations are still unrealistic, like “Once I’m thin, everyone will love me,” or “If I get this law degree, I’ll be rich.” And when these things turn out not to be true, they promptly arrive at Form A via the long road, with a hearty dose of self-loathing to get them started.

Actually, I think most of us tend to combine Form A and Form B, depending on the state of our self esteem at a given time. But whichever one you pick, you’re going to be miserable, and miserable people aren’t very good at loving themselves.

Fear not! None of this is inevitable! Unrealistic expectations of any sort are caused by lack of self-understanding. And that means that you’ll be completely cured by a healthy bout of honest self-analysis (INCLUDING self-criticism). Fortunately, wiping out the unrealistic expectations makes it much easier to love yourself; and loving yourself makes it much easier to get rid of the expectations!

Staying Real

When you are trying to honestly assess who you are and where you’re going, try and do these three things:

1- Look at the big picture

Sometimes we need to be gentle with ourselves. Sometimes it’s better to have a glass of wine, rather than go to an evening class. Sometimes it’s better to rest and let the dog go unwalked or the children unwashed for one day. SOMETIMES.

But please don’t be so gentle with yourself that “sometimes” starts to become “mostly”. If you aren’t moving toward the things you desire, then you’re waiting for someone to given them to you. And is that really very likely?

2- Measure your progress against yourself

“My friend just ran a full marathon!” Well good for them! But you learned to make Pad Thai, so good for you, too. Don’t judge the worth of your accomplishments by what others do, judge them by how far you’ve come. Your achievements will make you greater, so it’s safe to take joy in those of your loved ones. They do not diminish you.

3- Don’t make excuses!

It’s okay to not want to do things sometimes, even when those things are good for you. It’s also okay to want to do other things which aren’t good for you. What’s not okay is when you try to sell those feelings to yourself by blaming your long day, sore knee or lazy spouse!

There is no need to try and eliminate your imperfections, or hide them behind a wall of denial and shame. If you examine them in the light, there are usually ways to work with them. But if you’re nurturing your feelings at the expense of your development, that’s not loving yourself. It’s killing yourself.

Basically…

You can’t be awesome if you think you’re rubbish. Accepting and loving who you are is one of the first and most vital steps of your journey.

Just never forget; it is a journey. And without regular, honest self-criticism, even those first steps are going to be impossible. Don’t criticize yourself too gently; you deserve more respect than that. But don’t dwell on your failings, either. Sure critics can be harsh sometimes. But other times, they give rave reviews.

On with the show!

Gem

In Breaking News

February 12, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 1 Comment

Our flat is tidy.

Like, not just things-stuffed-in-cupboards-so-you-can’t-see-them tidy or I’m-compromising-incredibly-hard-but-this-is-actually-really-below-my-standards-and-one-day-soon-I-will-break tidy, but actually tidy tidy. We have a tidy apartment.

And?

You can laugh, but for Kin and I, this is a massive deal! The two of us have lived together for well over a decade. That’s almost thirteen years of joy and sharing, but it’s also thirteen years of aggravation, building resentment and an almost total failure to keep the coffee table clear.

At the beginning of this month, we once again made the effort to come up with an equitable housekeeping strategy. Nothing too innovative; we essentially wrote out our existing chore lists and added a visual reward system. But there’s an important difference. This time, it’s working.

And it’s easy. No arguments, no stressing and no furious one-off cleaning marathons. We’ve just gradually developed tidiness over the last couple of weeks and this morning, as Kin staggered downstairs with the kitchen’s Last Great Mountain of Recycling, I realised the journey was complete. Our flat is tidy. Our problems are over. And am I happy?

I am NOT!

I am outraged, disbelieving and just plain cross at how easily fixed all of this was, when it took us so long to get here! We made ourselves miserable for literal years, when the solution was so simple!

Simplicity

Of course, every solution is simple, once you know how it’s done. The tricky bit is discovering that knowledge in the first place.

Previously, the two of us dealt with our housekeeping differences in the traditional manner, with me either gritting my teeth and cleaning up after Kin, or gritting my teeth and ignoring the mess. Then, I’d have a screeching meltdown every six months or so, Kin would undergo a dramatic improvement that would then gradually start to taper off, and I would start laying the ground work for my next meltdown.

See how we were encouraging one other’s awful behaviour?

Unfortunately, for a very long time we couldn’t see it. We tried all sorts of different ways to even up the housework burden, but we’d always slip back into unhealthy patterns. We only started to realise what a big problem this was becoming after my meltdowns became a lot less screechy and a lot more tearful and household chores had taken on so much emotional weight that just the thought of them made us both miserable.

Strategising

We needed to come up with a way to sort this out. Initially, though, we weren’t very hopeful. We’d already tried a lot of different ways and none of them had worked well at all.

So why is our strategy working this time? Since, as previously noted, it’s essentially a glorified chore list, variations of which have failed so dismally before?

I think our success comes down to two things:

1- We did it together

Our previous efforts to create a strategy were honest ones, but all of them, ultimately, were me attempting to control Kin’s behaviour in some way. He, on the other hand, was only motivated by my unhappiness, so, once I was no longer upset, that motivation would gradually vanish. The effect of that made me gradually more manipulative and him gradually more self-centred, both of which sucked, but which weren’t the real issue. Our problem was responsibility.

Kin would see a mess and think “Hm, a mess.” I would see a mess and think “Damn, I have to clean that.” This basic difference in perception meant that I spent a lot of time stressed, while he simply had no idea.

But in December, I abdicated. And I mean fully. Kin was now completely in charge of our household and I would perform only those tasks which he had requested of me (for example he asked me to continue cooking, washing clothes and managing our finances). This was not easy on either of us. As the mess built, Kin became more stressed and miserable (and, as I think I’ve mentioned previously, he likes to share that stuff around) while I was initially depressed at the chaos our apartment descended into.

After a while, though, a glorious freedom started to take possession of me. I would come home from work, see some horrible muddle and remember that there was nothing for me to do about it. Not until I was told, anyway. And then I would go for a run. Or make a cup of tea. Or do anything else I pleased. And it was good. I hadn’t been this slack about responsibilities since I was a teenager, with my poor long-suffering parents doing everything for me.

At the beginning, Kin wanted me to tell him what to do; and he became quite aggrieved when I wouldn’t! After a couple of months, though, he instead began to ask for my input. He had accepted our home as his responsibility and he wasn’t happy with the state of it. Now we could finally make decisions together!

2- We kept on trying

Hoo boy, did we ever. We’ve had a long time to try and repeatedly fail to find a way to make our housekeeping work, and only now have we managed to put the right set of circumstances together. Imagine if we’d stopped trying!

I think, very often, when someone has made an honest effort to fix a problem but they haven’t been successful, they decide that problem can’t be fixed.

“I still haven’t found a job.” (So I give up.)

“Running hasn’t made me lose weight.” (So I give up.)

“This holiday didn’t fix our marriage.” (So I give up.)

And once you’ve given up, all of your power is gone. All you can do is wait and see what will happen to you.

Well that’s not an option in 2014, remember? This is the year we make things happen. And that means that giving up is never the right thing to do! If a strategy doesn’t work, then discard that strategy and try something else. If it’s jobseeking, maybe the answer is interview practice, additional qualifications or moving into a different field. Maybe the runner needs to look into weights, maybe he needs some bloods done, or maybe his weight is actually fine and he needs some nicer clothes. Maybe the worried spouse needs to talk with their partner or concern themselves more with their own interests. Or maybe they really do need to consider separating.

The point is, you never have to accept a miserable situation. There is always something that you can do to make it better, even if you’ve tried and failed in the past. You also have the right to change things that make you unhappy, even if the people around you don’t seem to share your priorities. Your happiness matters. You just can’t expect other people to create it for you!

To sort out our housework issues, I needed to surrender control, while Kin needed to accept more responsibility. How do the rest of you organise your households? How long did it take you to sort it all out?

Gem

P.S. If you don’t fancy commenting here, try visiting our Facebook Page. I’m really interested in how people divide their labour.

Sumo Food: Chanko Nabe

January 15, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 2 Comments

I know! I’m late! I promised Beans this recipe ages ago, though, so I really wanted to wait for nabe night!

Vegetarian readers are also safe to stay this time! I’ll offer a few options for de-meating the dish as we go.

Those of you who are familiar with Kyuushockers will already know that our school lunches tend to be a bit light on the vegie side of things. Nabe is one of my favourite ways of making up for this; it’s an easy way to get HEAPS of vegies into yourself, without having to work very hard. Kin also approves of nabe because it doesn’t make a lot of dishes; all of the ingredients are popped into the communal stockpot, and you haul out whatever you fancy to eat, replacing ingredients as the pot empties.

Nabe ingredients differ with the season (which is a nice way of saying “with what’s on special at the supermarket/going leggy in the garden”). If you don’t have all of the ingredients in this recipe, leave them out or replace them with something else. Greens are greens, roots are roots; I would only recommend that if you’re having trouble sourcing/affording asian mushrooms, buy them dried or leave them out.

Dashi (Stock)

This is my weeknight dashi; I get a little more elaborate on the weekend. Take a piece of kombu, (dried kelp) around 20 cm by 10 cm and wipe off any white residue with a damp cloth. Soak the kombu in a litre of water for at least half an hour. Hell, leave it in there and go to work; it’ll be fine when you get home. Gently heat the water (skimming occasionally if you can be bothered; I can’t) until it is almost boiling, then whip out your kombu and discard it.

Next comes katsuo. Since it’s a weeknight, I’m using dashi granules, which are available at any asian grocery and, these days, probably at supermarkets as well. They tend to come in a blue packet and will have instructions on the side (even if the instructions are in Japanese, just look at the numbers; you’ll work it out). Mine comes in sachets to be used with 600ml of water; I’m using two and a half and adding 500ml to my kombu stock, so now I have 1500ml all up. Since I’m using dashi granules, the stock will be a little scummy on top; if that bothers you, give it a skim before you go any further.

If you are vegetarian, dried shiitakes make a gorgeous alternative to fish-based dashi; just pour boiling water over about eight of them in a saucepan and leave them to soak. You get mushrooms AND dashi! Kin and I aren’t vegetarian, but shiitake dashi is one of our favourites.

Now that your stock is prepped, you just need to pop it into your nabe pot (a big saucepan will do) and stick it on the hotplate. I then add a shake (probably about 50ml) of soy sauce and about the same of mirin. Tonight, we’re also having a dash of ponzu in there as well, just because we like it. Once it’s boiling, you’re ready to start adding ingredients!

Ingredients

Vary as desired; the dashi is the important bit.

Chicken and/or fish (or extra mushrooms and cottony tofu for the vegos!)
Tofu
Udon noodles (fresh or dried). We’re also having konnyaku noodles!
Flavourings (chopped green onion, grated ginger and garlic chives)
Sliced root vegetables (One medium carrot and about 15cm of lotus root)
Leafy greens (Pak choy, bok choy, chrysanthemum greens and about a quarter of a wombok)
Mushrooms (shiitake and enokitake)

The quantities are up to you. The first time you make it, try a bunch of each thing and see if you need more or less. The best order to pop things into your stock is:

Meat…

Then flavourings…

Then root vegies…

Then go mad and throw in whatever you’d like!

On nabe nights, cooking and eating happen simultaneously, so you’ll only need a very small bowl each, with a soup spoon and chopsticks. You’ll also need at least one slotted spoon and a ladle for scooping out your dinner! When the ingredients you fancy are ready, ladle them into your bowl, devour them, then ladle out some more. Keep topping up the pot until everyone is full. (Needless to say, meat is the ONE ingredient that absolutely cannot be added later, unless you’re going to let the soup boil by itself for a little while). If you don’t have a portable hotplate, you can also prepare your nabe on the stove.

Traditionally, rice or noodles were added at the very end of the meal and then enjoyed in the soup, but Kin and I enjoy our noodles with the rest of the ingredients, so we stick them in a few at a time and haul them back out as we fancy them.

Chanko nabe is warming, hearty winter comfort food that still manages to be extremely high in fibre and nutrients. I love it after workouts and Kin loves it any time at all, especially since he gets the leftovers for breakfast. Nabe is also cheap (because you toss in whatever you can get) and super-fun to serve to guests!

What are your go-to dishes in winter?

Gem

Cheep Cheep: Budget Roast Chicken

January 6, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 0 Comments

This week’s recipe: Roast chicken and stuffing, roast vegetables (with super-crunchy potatoes) and steamed greens with basil and parsley.

Hopefully any vegetarian readers have already fled; if not, please be warned: Today’s post is not for you! If that first shot wasn’t enough to put you off, the ones below definitely will! Why don’t you try this blog or this one today instead?

Kin is very eager to practice his food photography and a couple of other people have suggested we include a regular recipe section. I’m not sure how well I’ll manage it; I’m not a trained chef or dietician and I don’t really intend to become a food blogger. That being said, I can boast of one skill that I’m not convinced all food bloggers possess: I am capable of producing decent mails on a daily basis. You probably won’t see perfectly swirled berry tarts or bowls of glossy pasta with one salmon egg and a single piece of cress balanced on top, but you will know that the dishes you see here can be cheaply reproduced and are usually manageable on a weeknight timetable. Also, unlike most food photographers, Kin actually has to EAT the dish once he’s finished photographing it, so he has a vested interest in maintaining flavour, rather than appearance.

Roast chicken is one of my favourite weapons in my personal war against the “real food is expensive” brigade. One small chook with stuffing will give two people a massive dinner, a couple of decently hefty lunches (think sandwiches or chicken salads), wings for snacking and a carcass to make into soup. I defy you to get that out of KFC. Roasting a chicken is also super easy! The only slightly tricky bit is the stuffing, but if you make it the day before, there’s no hassle involved.

Today’s stuffing is a fairly basic one; the main flavours come from onion, bacon and this little champion here:

That’s sage, one of the nicest herbs I know for flavouring meat. With care, it will grow into an attractive silvery-leafed shrub. With abuse, it will grow into stunted, silvery-leafed sticks, but will still survive to flavour your food, no matter how badly you treat it. I like that in a plant. Dried sage is also easy to find in shops and the flavour is decent.

Breadcrumbs provide the bulk of your stuffing; you’ll need about four slices with the crusts cut off (we use wholemeal, but it isn’t important). If you have a food processor, toss your bread in and blitz it to crumbs. If not, cut it bread into the smallest cubes you can. Place it in a bowl, and season with pepper and salt. Add any herbs you fancy finely chopped or processed; tonight our pots have provided parsley, thyme and a little rosemary, but if you don’t have fresh herbs, don’t go out and buy them. A shake from a jar of dried herbs will do nicely.

Heat a tablespoon of oil in a frying pan (med-high) and drop in about three leaves of sage. Let them frizzle and crisp for a moment, then reduce the heat to medium and toss in one finely chopped brown onion and two – three rashers of bacon, also trimmed and finely chopped. Cook, stirring for three minutes, or until onion is soft and translucent. Dump this into your breadcrumbs and mix it around with a wooden spoon. See if, when you squeeze the mixture in your fist, it keeps its shape. If not, try adding an egg, a little milk or some melted butter to bind it together. Once the mess is moist enough to hold a shape without being sticky, it’s ready to go.

Get your oven preheating to about 190°celsius (a little up or down won’t matter). Give your (thawed) chook a good wash with cold water, including inside the cavity. Dry it off with paper towels or tea towels if you plan to wash them right away. Then, trim off any fat you don’t fancy, shove in your stuffing and secure the cavity with toothpicks. Lightly oil and salt the outside (if you want to) and put it in the oven, breast side down for thirty minutes.

I also include a head of garlic during this first part of the cooking time (garlic needs very little time to roast) for use in soups and sauces through the week. Just stick it in the fridge and it will keep almost forever.

For a weeknight dinner, I don’t do anything very elaborate with the veg; I usually toss them in a small amount of olive oil and season them with garlic powder and chopped rosemary. Ditto the greens; today’s are a combination of broccoli and beans, steamed for two minutes. After two minutes, I add spinach, flat leafed parsley, basil and a tiny wodge of butter and steam the lot for one more minute.

Potatoes, however are a serious matter. For super crunchy spuds without a lot of oil, peel, chop and then par boil them (starting from cold) for ten minutes until the outside is soft. Drain your potatoes, then toss them in their sieve to break up their outsides. Then tumble them in your oil and seasonings.

Put your potatoes and other baking veg on a tray together (tonight we’re having pumpkin, onion, carrot and finger eggplant). Once your chicken has been in the oven for thirty minutes, turn it breast side up and put it on the lower oven shelf, with your tray of vegies on the top shelf. Also take this time to pour off and store and juices collected on the tray; you’ll want them for gravy or soups.

After half an hour, add your soft vegies (this is when I actually add the eggplant), like tomatoes, zucchini or capsicum. Wait another half hour and your dinner is done!

Once you’ve done your prep, this meal will cook quite happily without your supervision. You can have a bath, do some cleaning, entertain guests, whatever you’d like. If you’re the forgetful type, though, make sure you set a timer. You can also be really lazy if you want and just throw in all of your vegies at the one hour mark soft ones included; just don’t blame me if you end up with salsa!

Gem

P.S. I tried to keep the word count down, so I might have left something out. If you have any questions, just send me a message and I’ll clear it up.

Settling in to 2014

January 4, 2014 / enroutetoawesome / 1 Comment

By Gem

By the end of this year, we won’t be here any more!

The start of a new year has really brought it home to us; our time in this little apartment, in this little town is going to end in 2014! This place has become so much our own it’s hard to believe that, this time next year, it will belong to someone else. Time is suddenly a limited commodity.

But the start of a new year in Japan is a difficult time to manage any sense of urgency. New Years in Japan is like Christmas in Australia; it’s the time when the whole family get together and then just kind of sit around. For a week, the country shuts down, while people eat, gossip and walk to local shrines to pray for good fortune through the year. It’s not a time for exciting trips or big projects, but for kotatsu-snuggling, cups of tea and big bowls of mandarins.

Not to mention New Year cakes!

And other lovely things!

Right now though, we’re still in Nagahama and we still have things to do. On Monday, Japan restarts itself. Our evening classes will resume, our friends will return from their home countries and we will be back at our schools, doing our best to slide some English into stubborn little skulls.

At Kin’s school, there will be a continuation of the dramatic investigation into the identity of the elusive Dick Phantom; one of the boys (we assume) has developed a taste for penis-based graffiti. The Phantom spent the final months of 2013 creating elaborate, phallic extravaganzas over every wall and piece of furniture a kid that age could reach. These works don’t show a lot of dedication to accuracy, but, particularly toward the end of the year, a real focus seems to have been given to scale. We can only imagine that his scope will expand in 2014.

I never really feel I’ve left my school, as half of it seems to live in this building. The very, very small first-grader with the very, very big eyes has finally worked up the courage to ask why I seem to spend so much time here. Her eyes got even bigger when I told her this is where I live!

Although Kin and I enjoyed the Japanese-style New Year, in time-honoured Western fashion, we have made a resolution or two; or rather, have reviewed how our Tanabata wishes and our everyday goals are going.

This is one of Kin’s tanabata goals… or sort of. He never got to start those glass-blowing classes; the college filled up before his enrolment was processed! Instead, he’s been spending his weekends up to his elbows in clay and is having a wonderful time. His very, very earliest work (above) has just returned from the kiln.

Kin never made it to cooking class either but, on the domestic front, is now single-handedly responsible for the running of our household (a development we will share at a later date) and is getting better at it every day. And on the artistic front, with blue plastic document sheets, sticky tape and a stanley knife, he produced a photographic soft-box that make today’s pictures even nicer than usual!

And me?

As you can see, I didn’t learn to braid my hair; I cut it all off, instead! In my defence, though, this has made it a lot easier to reach my goal of learning to swim properly and I HAVE successfully poached an egg, so I think I’m still ahead of the game. I also finished my first knitting project!

Kin’s scarf is so long that he can (and does!) wrap it around his entire head to keep the wind off his face when he rides to work. I’ve started a scarf for myself, now and once that’s done, I’ll be ready to get a little more ambitious.

Learning to draw underwent a lengthy hiatus during our illness, but during this week of shutdown Japan, I’ve picked it back up. Kin is excited to share his skills with me; I think he’s too optimistic, but I’ll keep trying.

We’re ready for you, 2014. We might end the year in New South Wales, but we’re starting it in Shiga, and we’re going to enjoy every single day of both!

Gem

Banana Bread

Butter cake with passionfruit icing

Sultana scones

You WHAT?

Budget Luxuries FIRST

Soup and Scheduling

Getting Organised

Basic Soup No 1: Green Velvet

Ingredients:

Method:

Gratitude

Accepting the costs

Active Gratitude

When Activity is Hard

My Awesome Five

Stop Feeling Like A Jerk

I’m Sorry

The Bad Boss

Being The Bad Boss

Being the Good Boss

Expecting the Unrealistic

I Hate Myself

I Hate Everyone Else

Staying Real

Basically…

And?

Simplicity

Strategising

1- We did it together

2- We kept on trying

Dashi (Stock)

Ingredients

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