Eating like French Women

Over the last few weeks, then, I have been trying to live more like a French woman and I am feeling good. It really comes down to eating mindfully - to be in the moment with all your senses. I love how in the book, French Women Don't Get Fat, the author describes the process of eating from going to the market (which French women do every 2 or 3 days) to select the ingredients right to the presentation of the food on a beautifully made up table. 

For the last while I have been buying an organic vegetable box from a project, Harvest of Hope, that supports people in the township. It was quite a mindset change to be presented with vegetables which were in season and to learn what to do with what was in the box. I was forced to look up recipes in which I could use the vegetables that I did not normally use; this in itself was a learning curve. We so easily take over-wrapped fruit and vegetables off the shelf with little regard to whether or not they are in season, have been in cold-storage or have created huge carbon footprints by being imported from New Zealand or Norway. 

I bought a vegetable brush and to the strains of Edith Piaf (well, sometimes, when my daughter is indulging her French appetite) scrub the veggies and make pots of soup or sauces for pasta, or simply roast veggies. I now look forward  to the challenge of unpacking the box  and thinking up a recipe for the week's yield.

To come back to French women, putting your food on a plate and sitting at the table makes food a conscious occasion. When you eat in front of the television or on the run (as I sometimes do), you lose focus and fail to register when you have had enough. It takes a little bit more effort and planning to get everyone in the same place at the same time but sitting at the table allows us to catch up with each other at the end of a busy day and it certainly has been a pleasure.

• French Women Don't Get Fat by Mireille Guiliano

Saving the World

Every now and then I worry that it is so easy to live in a bit of a bubble.  I go about my daily grind and think that I am doing my bit to live responsibly and then I get a wake-up call that maybe the bubble is a little too small and not enough is being done.

I recycle plastic, glass and paper and take it to the Oasis Work centre for disabled adults down the road – I pat myself on the back every week because not only am I caring for the environment, I am also supporting the disabled. Every week we get an organic vegetable box from a township project – Harvest of Hope. So, again two birds with one stone – supporting the community project and going green. My kids have been collecting newspaper to take to school recycling projects since they first started school. So I have this illusion that the country is going greener.

This morning I was waiting in the car for my daughter (as moms do) when the dustbin collection was being done. One guy dropped a black bag and out tumbled cereal boxes, bottles and paper. Further down the road the local bergie was retrieving cans from a bin. I wondered if these people had not heard about recycling. This is a middle-class neighbourhood, with kids at schools in the area who are probably also promoting recycling.

I think we way underestimate the effects of global warming. We live as if there is no tomorrow. We have become a wasteful society, throwing away half of what we buy – either in terms of the packaging or going by sell-by dates and pitching into the bin reliant on computer dates rather than what should be our experience of the look and taste of food. Even the organic produce at the supermarket comes in plastic and Styrofoam which cannot be recycled.

When we were in Greenland a while ago, we experienced firsthand the effects of global warming on the glacier and saw how it affected the lives of the local people - changing their hunting, living and eating patterns. The irony is that the Inuit people live very close to nature, taking only what they need from the land or sea. Now life as they knew it no longer exists. While we are talking about climate change and global warming around the dinner table, it is actually happening in Greenland – they are the first to be feeling the effects and already having to adapt their lifestyles which is something we are all going to have to do.

The Illulisat glacier - a churning mass of icebergs.

Our young guide pointed out to us how the knowledge of the ancestors has become less valuable because of the change in climate patterns. The river that was once there is now dry, the glacier that covered the hills has disappeared, the reindeer that were always there when hunting season opened, no longer show up. Before it never rained in December and January, now it does.

While the world is being wracked by extreme weather – droughts and floods – it washes over us from the television screens in our living rooms and we once again think that “it can’t happen to us”. But it is happening to us now. And we can make a difference. Our children and future generations bear the greatest burden of the effects of climate change. We owe it to the children to leave behind an earth worth living on. 

World image courtesy of Google Maps