Mindfulness for parents, step-by-step

Life with a baby - or more - is challenging, unexpected and, at the end of every day, exhausting. How to find then place in your hectic schedule for the luxury of mindfulness, a concept that I explored on another occasion into more detail?

This book by Amber Hatch offers no only theoretical support  but also many useful practical examples shared by the author, a parent too, and other parents, is explaining why actually parents should focus more on mindfulness, which will help the mental wellbeing of their children too. Through it, better relationships can be built, and 'a little bit of distance' as well as a 'sense of perspective' are given. With an open mind, we can learn a lot from our little ones too, as 'children can act as our teachers in the sense that they show us how to be present'. 

Written in an accessible style, Mindfulness for Parents makes you feel more relaxed about juggling jobs between tantrums and food spilled all over the house. The best we can do is to try 'to meet our baby's needs', Hatch taking out of the picture the obsession that we, as parents, we need to keep the babies happy. Even though you are not too much into spiritual retreats and meditation, you may find a couple of useful and comforting tips, releaving the heavy weight of parenting from our shoulders. 

On the other hand, it encourages to cultivate a peaceful and beautiful house, avoid the consummerism temptation by avoiding to carry on the kids into the shop all round the day, spending more time in the middle of the nature and developing positive qualities such as loving-kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. 

A book strongy recommended to new and experienced parents, in the middle of a devastating tantrum or just trying to find the right spiritual routines for their children. With such books, parenting life is much easier.

Rating: 4 stars

Disclaimer: Book offered by the publisher in exchange for an honest review

Lagom, or about living in moderation

Either at work, in relationships, when it comes to your closet or your fridge, moderation should prevail. Not too much but precarious either, this is the Swedish concept of 'lagom', excellently introduced by this book by Clara Olsson. If you never heard about this idea - as in my case, although I noticed to my Swedish friends a certain relaxed and balanced way of being which was missing from my lifestyle - this is the best book to get acquainted with the concept.

'Lagom doesn't claim that you need to quit your day job and travel around the world to find happiness and nor does it ask you to embrace a shallow spirituality. Instead, lagom is found in the small things that make your life 'just right' - it's how you already live, just a little smoother, a little better, a little lagom'.

Following its basic and easy principles, you can aim at a life in moderation, suited to bring you balance in a life too much sometimes under the pressure of too much or the struggle of outperforming for the sake of performance only. If you are an adept of lagom - I love how in the last time European-born lifestyle concepts are introduced to the public discussion, after decades when the Oriental philosophies were preferred without being necessarily suited to the usual Western ways of life - you can expect a better mental health, a higher financial stability, less waste and clutter in your home and more engaged social life. 

I particularly loved how you can better focus on your hobbies, instead of laying for hours on a sofa binge remote-controlling. At work, you can find a better balance between the time spent in your cubicle and the hours with your family. Finding a compromise about the working load can be easier that you might have thought. For instance: 'You might only desire to work hard to earn more money, but by thinking about the reasons why you want more money can still lead to the motivation to push yourself'. 

At the end, everything is about schedule and prioritization and the right focus on your interests. This book can offer you the basic for starting, from tomorrow on, a different kind of lifestyle, less toxic and stressful. It helps you escape the circle of negativity and maintain a healthy and happy state of mind. 'Keeping positive is a skill, which takes time to learn, but when mastered, can be applied almost continously'. 

By creating consistent meditation practices and focus on minfullness, the change is possible. It may take time but this is what happens with good things, they need a long time until they finally settle. But the changes will be always for good.

Sautée mushrooms with onions and tomatoes

I always like my food tasty, easy to prepare and healthy. The more I am experimenting with cooking, becoming familiar with various tastes, the more I am tempted to create my own recipes and diversify my palate.

The following recipe is the result of such an improvisation, using the available resources at home, while trying to prepare a healthy meal for me and the baby.

Ingredients:

1 onion, finelly chopped

2 tablespoon raps oil

2 big tomatoes, finelly chopped

7 brown mushrooms, medium size, finelly chopped

1 teaspoon OSEM seasoning

100 gr. butter

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon sugar

Mix the ingredients in the pan, one by one, at 250C. Stirr well, allowing all the ingredients to melt together well. If you want the onion caramelized, you can add them first, together with the oil and the sugar and mix with the rest 5 minutes later.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Serves: 2

The result is irresistibly delicious and light.

If you are strong enough to give up the temptation of eating it on its own, spoon by spoon. you can combine it in different equally healthy ways.

I personally made a dish with cauliflower. It goes very well with fish, meat - if you are eating kosher, eliminate the butter or replace it with a non-dairy variant - a base mix for pasta or rice. I can dream about throwing some eggs there too, shakshuka style. It is always a good match for boiled potatoes - French fries can be too oily. Because right now it is the open season, some boiled asaparagus can keep the mushrooms an interesting tasty company.

As it is open season right now, it can be a good company for some boiled asparagus too.

If you want your plate even healthier, add some spinach too. 

Bon Appétit!

Renovation continues

The paints section at Bauhaus, Berlin

The last few days were terribly intense and with daily - renovation-related - challenges. As I promised myself to operate on a very strict schedule, I spent most of my free time - which means, when I am not cooking and taking care of the baby, writing for a living and managing more than 3 blogs and other administrative works, plus sleeping and drinking coffee once in a while - advancing my project. 

It meant a lot of hours spent shopping for various things, such as paint, testing brushes, returning to the store the non-functional items, checking for the best price and improving my technical skills. I wasn't always successful, and some time went waster while being unable to find the right dimensions of pillows for the covers bought initially, or coping with using the wrong cleaning clothes for the windows. Sometimes I realized that I didn't paint properly one specific corner and had to start everything again in the middle of the night.

As for now, after a bit more than 10 days since starting this crazy project - at least for my friends who are still wondering why I didn't hire a professional team to do everything in one day. My answer is that I really wanted to take this challenge and also finally learn on my own, through my own experience, how to manage a home. Learning the hard way is always the favorite, especially when you realize it is about time.

Right now, there are only some small details to fix: changing the vinyl flooring in the kitchen - I know already the model I want to buy; changing the blinds in my room; painting the window frames and washing the windows in my room; changing the shower system and the lamp - those tasks will be kindly assigned to my landlord as we are entering school-related issues and I prefer to avoid any major accident; painting one wall and a half in the living room; changing the curtains in the living room. I have some small arrangements to make on my book shelves, but it is not too much to set anyway. 

After I will be done, I have to start to sort out the very messy situation in my storage room, especially by giving away a lot of things I don't need. But this will be my work the first week after the big renovation is over.

As for now, I am optimistic to have a much modern, cleaner and functional house and looking forward to an extraordinary home - and a storage room too - by the beginning of June!

My next posts will be dedicated to specific issues I encountered during my works, such as finding the right paint and brushes or the right ingredients to have clean windows, or some small interior design tips.

Looking forward to it and keep in touch with good news!

Starting my big renovation project!

After full eight years of living in the same house - which is so far a high record level as I never ever, even as a little kid stayed in the same house for more than maximum 3-4 years, maximum - little was it done to the original structure of the house. I haven't done nothing at all, except buying a big bad and doing some small adjustments after my lovely son was born.

People usually do have different reactions when they are coming to my house, but definitely, everyone agrees that I should do more to make this little corner of Berlin more for transforming it into my home instead of just using it as a stop and working office in-between my many trips. As the birth of my son changed dramatically my lifestyle - which means that I do not travel less, but I have a different kind of agenda meaning more focused on creating a warm and friendly home for the baby.

At the end of Pesach, looking for some new projects to share and create, I suddenly decided to start a very ambitious and frightening new project: completely renovating my house, on my own. I have no previous experience in this respect, and although more than once in the last hours I was thinking that what about deciding to move out of this house in less than a year, I realized that the novelty of the project is appealing enough to want to keep it straight and doing it despite all odds. I am sure I will gain enough experience and will have a lot of fun. 

My kind of life right now...Source: Pinterest

I am doing my project will being full time mom and also working on different writing and blogging projects at the same time. My time, as usual, is very limited, therefore I have to schedule the activities for each day. In the case of painting days, I should keep in mind that me and the baby we will shortly go out after the work is done, in order to avoid the smell of the paint. My plan is to finish everything within one month, with a relatively limited - but not small - budget and with serious time constraints. I will not work on Saturdays and on Fridays I am trying to finish everything as soon as possible.

Step-by-step

Here are my first steps for actually beginning

the process

Day 1

- Having a look at each room in order to realize what it doesn't work and what I don't like about the setting. I only have two rooms, a kitchen and the bathroom to fix, with the child's room with minimal investments as I already did some furniture decluttering already. I only need to fix small things, like changing the jalousies or painting the radiators.

- Assign for each space a color or a special style. For instance, I want my living room to be very cozy, I want my bathroom to have variations of silver and black.

- Set up the available budget for your investment. Start doing a little market research to more than 2 shops. Yesterday, I went to both Bauhaus and Poco for seaching for the best deals, and I've found good deals for different products. I took pictures and made a list of the things I need and where the price is better.

- Create a schedule of to-do-list for each room. For instance, I would love to start cleaning seriously every corner but if I have to paint first, I better start with paiting and leave the cleaning after that as there is a high probability that I might need to do some extra cleaning after anyway.

- See the limits of your technical abilities. For example, changing the taps and the lamp is obviously more than I can know via YouTube and Google. I want to do this last anyway, but until then I should also search for a technical expert that will help me. It saves nerves and money in case I may damage seriously the entire electricity system.

- Ask for advice. As my neighbour just finished her own DIY painting project last summer, I visited her yesterday and was lucky enough to leave with some brushes and recommendations. For instance, to always use some plastic cover when I paint to avoid damaging the carpets or the floor. 

- Last but not least, take measurements. As I will need wall tattoos and tapet and some new bed coverings and jalousies and so on and so forth, knowing the dimensions is a very important stage of the project. I carefully measured everything that I needed and right now I am more focused on what I can find for advancing my plans.

That's all for now. I promise to write more and more updates in the next days. For today, I already have a little plan and I am looking forward to it!

Having upma for breakfast

After patra, I continued my Indian food experience with what seems to be a favorite Bengali breakfast dish: upma. As in the previous case, I completely trusted the recommendation of my friend, plus the attactive picture on the box. This Southern Indian breakfast dish is 100% vegetarian, and contains gluten and mustard. It was provided as a bag with all the ingredients: semolina, lime juice powder, green chilli, ginger powder, among others. I personally added 100 gr. green peas and 2 tablespoon flowerseed oil. 

The preparation process is very simple: pour the ready made content into 600 ml. warm water, add the peas, and keep mixing well at 250C for the next 5-7 minutes, or until a compact puree is formed. 

I love the consistency, but once I've tasted, I also fell in love with the spicey taste. At first, it has a very neutral semolina taste but soon it becoming more and more spicier, as the ingredients need a contact with the palate to further develop. For more fresh, green taste, adding a couple of leaves of coriander could be a good move. 

If you have the semolina, you can prepare it by yourself. It serves 4 and the preparation time is less than 30 minutes.

What surprised me was how such a consistent meal can be served at breakfast, but actually, it is a very good idea when you need a lot of energy for the rest of the day. We, the Europeans, we are used to have our bread and cereals, but it seems that in Souther India, a simple bowl of upma can be more than enough. 

My Indian food tour will continue in the next days, now that Pesach and all its high restrictions is over.

Keep in touch with more foodie news!

Milk banana blueberry smoothie (or raw pudding) with rose water

This recipe can be used in two different ways, depending on the amount of milk you want to use. For instance, if you use more than 125 ml. of milk, it turns into a smoothie. In the case of a lesser amount, with the other ingredients unchanged, you have to pour the final result in a bowl and serve it as a pudding.

Preparation time: 10 minutes

Serves 2

Ingredients:

1 big banana

100 gr. blueberries

1 tablespoon white sugar

1 tablespoon rose water

milk - either 125 ml. or 250 ml.

Mix all the ingredients in a blender for around 2 minutes at maximum speed.

Add some blueberries or/and coconut shreds for decoration.

Keep it in the fridge for around 45 minutes.

It has a special consistency and a beautiful color, and the rose water adds a distinguished perfume. 

Bon Appetit!