MY mental health hacks

So I’ll be honest – between Third Waves and the country falling apart around our feet I feel CRAP. I don’t feel resilient and I don’t think it’s marvelous that everything has gone to shit because now we can all hold hands and rebuild. I just think it is all awful and I want to cry most of the time. And no, I don’t have the energy to go and clean up the mess, but I am thrilled and inspired that other people do.

When I saw an article this morning telling me it would give me SEVEN hacks for my mental health in these trying times, I was THRILLED. I need hacks! I need mental health! So I opened the link, ready for my life to change, and instead found the biggest load of drivel I have ever read. Highlights include not exercising too hard (trust me, NOT a danger I face) and . . . actually, I can’t even remember anymore. I’m sure the word “meditation” appeared several times.

And I thought, “I could write a better article with better hacks even though I am a broken husk of a person”. And so that is exactly what I am doing!

1. Make a TO DO list. This is the bomb. Put crap on it like brush teeth and make supper (ha! like there was a choice as we endlessly feed the gaping hole that is a child’s stomach during online school). But really, ticking off a TO DO list is very good for your head. I made one this morning and look at me! Writing a blog! After years!
2. Get dressed. In clothes. If you are a person who wears make-up, put on your face. And the nice perfume. And try to mix it up a bit – wear a nice scarf. I mean, don’t get carried away and wear actual shoes if you are working from home. Obviously slippers are the only acceptable footwear. Obviously.
3. Go for a walk. (You should put shoes on for this part, to be clear). Honest to goodness, walking my dogs at the dam is keeping me sane. Fresh air, low-key exercise, and happy waggy tails. And space to think, away from online school and online work and best of all, online news.
4. Do small treats, according to your budget. A bunch of flowers, a cup of coffee OUT, a chocolate, downloading Not The Cheapest book on your kindle. I bought a bunch of irises and they made me happy for like a full 30 minutes.
5. Do something creative. For the first 100 days of 2021 I drew everyday and posted it on Instagram. It was really great until it stopped being great and started being a chore – but then I stopped. I write every day, and if I miss it, I can feel the difference in my mood.
6. Linked to number 6 – do something that ends in a physical product: a picture, a cake, a cleaned out drawer.
7. UNFOLLOW things. Unsubscribe from stupid emails. Block anti-vaxxers.

And speaking of anti-vaxxers, get vaccinated – I swear, I was happy almost ALL DAY on Friday after my first jab. It was the first time since this whole mess started that I felt like I was taking back control and doing something. Yes, for a moment, I felt RESILIENT! I mean, obviously I am NOT actually resilient and I am not going to try to BE resilient, but getting vaccinated was still very lovely.

So there. From my gloomy heart, to yours, are the things that work for me. Now if things go according to plan, as my blog is read, I will get little dopamine highs from the attention, and that’s also a pretty good mental health hack . . .

Good luck out there. . . it’s crap.

Podcasts are keeping me sane

I have been really lucky in my work life in the last decade. Mostly, I’ve worked from home. A commute from my bed to a table. And then I got my dream job and it was 4 minutes away from home and CLOSER to the kids school than home. That was perfect.

And then things happened and things changed and now I have to drive 25 minutes to work every day. And back. And if I either take or fetch the kids, that’s 45 minutes just to get there.

So when this all started, I listened to the news (I am not a music person. That’s right. I don’t like music. Yes, I know that’s tragic. Yes, I know, you think you can change me. Yes, I know, you’re now wondering if I have a soul. I’m 45 years old. I’m okay with my lack of soul.) So. The news. I would arrive at work in one of two states:

• Wanting to emigrate
• Wanting to kill myself

Because that is what 25 minutes of the news will do to you.

And then I started listening to podcasts. And my life changed. I listen to light, interesting podcasts that leave me a little bit more knowledgeable, a little bit inspired and, most pleasingly, wanting neither to leave the country nor the planet. Literally, I think that podcasts are the thing that have kept me sane.

So here’s my “playlist”, if you’re looking for a way to make that commute just that much easier to take!

What podcasts do you love?

Giving up meat

It has been a while since I’ve blogged. . . I wasn’t even sure that I would still know how to log in! But I am so pleased to see that there is still a steady stream of people visiting my site, so maybe it’s time to take up my pen again.

But what has really brought me here today (Other than that I have finished a first draft of my new book and so am “allowed” to write other things) is something that has been a quiet but big part of my life this year – I’ve stopped eating meat.

And some of you have been kind enough to be curious about this, and ask me why, so I want to tell you. But I don’t want to tell you the stuff you should already know – the stuff about how completely, mind-boggling inhumane the meat industry is. About how bad it is for the environment. If you don’t know this already, I am sure that it is easy enough to educate yourself.

The question is, how did I go from being a person who was deeply uncomfortable with what I know about meat production and the lives of animals in that system, to a person who doesn’t eat meat. It took a long time – because I like meat; because cooking vegetarian food is more work – especially when you are still cooking meat for a family; and because I really like food in all its forms.

But then three kind of random things happened towards the end of last year:

1. We got a puppy

Now I have had puppies before.
But this chap, well, he’s particularly bovine looking.

And I really, really love him. And I would NEVER eat him – like not even if he was the last food source on earth (although I MIGHT feed him to my kids in that situation). But then I have to ask myself – if I won’t eat my cow-like dog, why will I eat a cow?

 

 

2. Pigs
In the course of my day job last year, I had to read about how pigs are treated in the commercial farming world.

And it really, really isn’t nice.

Pigs are apparently as clever as three year olds (I think, in pig terms, they are probably cleverer – I mean I think they are better at being PIGS than a three year old would be).

But I wouldn’t eat a three year old. Hell, I wouldn’t even feed one to my starving children. So why am I part of the inhumane treatment of pigs?

3. The Clifton Sheep

Do you remember the outrage last year? The sheep sacrificed on Clifton beach? You can read about it here: https://www.timeslive.co.za/news/south-africa/2018-12-31-timeline-rites-racism-and-rights-clash-on-cliftons-pristine-sands/

 People were freaking out. Well, white middle class people were freaking out. OUTRAGED by the sheep abuse.

And the thing for me was that I kept thinking that that sheep was quite LUCKY. It probably had quite a nice free-range life in someone’s yard, before going down to a nice beach and being quickly slaughtered. Trust me – that is better than what is happening to the meat you buy from your local butcher or supermarket.

I wouldn’t sacrifice a sheep in my garden though – so why am I eating far less humanely slaughtered animals?

So these ideas bounced around in my head – a head that was already uncomfortable with eating meat. And suddenly – and it was really sudden – on boxing day last year, I realised, I had hit a wall. That was it. I’m not going to eat meat anymore.

My plan was to be a bit flexible. I am calling myself a flexitarian. The plan was that if I was in a social situation where the meat was unavoidable, I would eat it. Turns out, not so much. If I am going to eat meat, dammit, I’m going to choose which meat it is and not just eat a random chop.

I do eat fish – but calling myself a pescatarian would be misleading because I don’t eat much of it. And I do allow cross contamination in my cooking, for now (my family are not doing this with me). I also am currently still eating gelatine and, if I can’t avoid it, meat stock.

It has been surprisingly easy. I am, literally, surprised. I don’t miss it, I don’t WANT to eat it, and it has made cooking fun again.

And lastly – and I hate to admit this because I hate healthy food fads – I feel much healthier. I feel cleaner. I don’t know if it is because I’m not eating all the hormones and antibiotics and fear – or if it is because I no longer carry the psychological guilt of doing something that deep down, I know is wrong.

It’s been six months. When it’s been a year, I plan to force myself to be slightly flexible – to eat that crispy bacon piece if I really, really want it. Why? Because I think rigidity is a disturbing character trait, and one I tend towards. But overall – I think it’s done. I’ve done what I never thought I would be able to do. I’ve stopped eating meat. I’ve done what I believe is the right thing.

(PS. I often post pics of my food on Instagram, where I am @therealgailschimmel.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rotten Bananas

at my mother's knee

Recipe: Banana Bread

I have searched for a specific memory of banana bread, but there are none. There is a general memory – like a thread through my life – of bananas disappearing and banana bread appearing and being devoured. Banana Bread is, of course, not something you PLAN to make. It is something that you HAVE to make because suddenly the bananas have gone off and now you have a bunch of rotten fruit and you’re either going to chuck them, or bake.

(Except for that one time when I was all ready to make it, and then opened the bananas and they were too far gone and I had to go and buy new bananas especially for the banana bread and felt like the universe was out of balance.)

I quite often chuck out bad bananas but then the guilt, the crippling guilt. And, of course, the lack…

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A tale of a biscuit

at my mother's knee

Recipe: Renate’s biscuits

This is a tale of biscuits, but it takes us down various memory paths, so you must concentrate.

My father had a friend called Francois Naude, who was an artist but was also in advertising. My dad was a bit older than him, and I think had almost mentored him from when he was very young. Francois was a talented cartoonist, and my guest loo has three of his “cat” drawings hanging in it.

Francois, in the time before I was born, was married to a potter called Jenny. When they got divorced, my parents uncharacteristically stayed friends with both of them.

Jenny went on to have an interesting time of things. She met a man called Sam, and together they worked on a pig farm in Stellenbosch where we had a fabulous holiday looking after baby piglets (and a dog ate my Monchichi toy, causing terrible…

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Comfort dip

at my mother's knee

Recipe: avocado dip

On Mother’s Day, if your mother is dead, you will always feel a little bit sad.

We weren’t actually that big into Mother’s Day in my childhood home – something I now regret – and my mother’s mother actually died on Mother’s Day, so my mom wasn’t the biggest fan of the day. But still, I miss my mommy.

So yesterday between listening to my children tell me that I didn’t really deserve the cards that they made me, and feeling quite hard done by that I don’t have a mom of my own, I needed some comfort food. And one of my favourite comfort foods dates back as long as I can remember – avocado dip and tomato chips.

So great is my love for this dip that it caused me to also love mayonnaise. This is what happened. When I was little – very little…

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Hot stuff

at my mother's knee

The thing that I haven’t told you about yet is the terrible, crippling impediment that my mother had in her cooking life: my father.

My father was “allergic” to foods so numerous that to list them would take hours. Some were genuine allergies (like cucumbers. . . although I suspect this may have been the only genuine one), some were the results of the war (eating raw potatoes in the war put him off potato skins for life, although not the inside of potatoes), some were really irritating (tomato – whether raw or cooked), and some ruled out whole nations of cuisine (curry and chilli). There were many more. In the spirit of transparency, I must admit that I didn’t help my mother much either – three of the vegetables that my father WOULD eat, I wouldn’t – mushroom (genuine allergy), broccoli and cauliflower (Just really don’t like them).

So…

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The First Oxtail of Winter

at my mother's knee

My mother loved traditions, and she loved seasonal cooking.  She loved celebrating “The First [insert food type] of [insert season]”.  And she was strict about it! The first time I ate a hot cross bun before Good Friday I was in my twenties and I felt so rebellious!

When the cold weather starts, it’s time for The First Oxtail of Winter on my mother’s calendar. I eat oxtail all year round, I confess. But there is nothing nicer than a melting hot oxtail on a cold winter evening. And the smell that permeates the house makes me feel like Martha Stewart.

The First Oxtail of Winter was such a big deal on my mother and Janet’s calendars that often the two families would have to have it together. I remember one year when both Mom and Janet made an oxtail – and one was tough – but because they had…

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What grown ups cook

at my mother's knee

Recipe: Roast chicken and veg

When I was little, and my friend Susan and I played house, Susan was always pretend roasting pretend chickens. For her, it was the epitome of grown up behaviour. Maybe she was right, because the first thing that my mother formally taught me to cook, when I was about 9, was a roast chicken.

Everyone should be able to roast a chicken – it’s really easy and it can be a family supper or a special occasion meal. There’s something about a roast chicken that is comforting and makes the eater feel nurtured. And most people, except vegetarians, like it. It’s the most inoffensive of dishes.

My mother’s basic rule for roasting – for roasting ANYTHING – was to cook it at 180 for two hours. This feels kind of counter-intuitive – surely lamb and beef and pork and chicken can’t all be cooked the…

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THAT chocolate cake

at my mother's knee

Recipe: Janet’s Mother’s Chocolate Cake

If it’s celebration time in our house, our friends know that they can expect my chocolate cake. But “my” chocolate cake isn’t really mine, and like most of the things that I cook, it has a story.

Probably the biggest influence on my mother’s cooking life was her best friend Janet Telian, who is a chef (you may show your age if you remember Anton van Wouw, Harridans and Pomegranate in Johannesburg, as well as Savoy Cabbage in Cape Town). Janet and my mom met when her son, Sebastian, and I went to nursery school together. Remember Janet – she’s going to be mentioned again in this blog.

My mom and Janet in 1985, in my parents’ garden – discussing their food, no doubt!

In my recipe books – and it is written down in several places – the chocolate cake that I always make…

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