Dried leaves in boiling water...

...an exercise in associative blogging.

Tea.

My Nanna (Dad's mum), who I remember as teaching me to drink tea - no sugar, a bit of milk, strong and hot.

Breathing in the steam from the mug, cupped in cold hands, sitting around a campfire at night. So many glorious camping holidays with my family and my mum's twin sister's family when I was a kid.

Yum cha, the brew getting stronger as the meal progresses until the pot is refilled and it goes back to hot water lightly tinged with colour and flavour.

The ritual of Grandma's teapot, readied before every meal and filled with boiling water as dessert was finished, the cosy tucked around it, and cups of tea poured when perfectly brewed.

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy and the cup of something that was almost but not quite entirely unlike tea which was all poor Arthur could get out of the Nutrimatic drinks dispenser.

Cold tea being used as a burns treatment in one of the Sue Barton books.

The Swallows and Amazons were always drinking tea; Lucy had tea with Tumnus the faun; Bilbo drank tea with Gandalf; the Mad Hatter had a tea party; Bunyip Bluegum, Sam Sawnoff and Bill Barnacle brewed tea in a billy to have with the puddin'; and there's nothing better than sitting down with a nice hot cup of tea and a good book.

Standing at the bus stop waiting to go to school in the morning with my cup of tea, the bus stop was right by our letterbox, when I finished my tea I'd put the empty mug in the letterbox and retrieve it when I got home in the afternoon. I once dropped and broke a favourite mug (given to me by my best friend Rowena) juggling too many belongings while trying to open the front door.

Tom reaching for my mug of hot tea from his perch on my left hip at maybe 9 or 10 months old and demanding his share of it before it got cold. Asbestos mouth that child.

Sitting on our front deck with my gardener, drinking tea and listening to tales of him growing up on a farm in South Africa and becoming a cheesemaker and eventually emigrating to Australia. He's moved up to the Central Coast now and has passed the Sydney part of his business on to his son. They're both lovely people but the son sends minions rather than coming himself (he's also living on the Central Coast) and I'm not at home as much so the tea break with the gardeners isn't happening any more.

Comfort, the cure for all ills. Peppermint tea for morning sickness (or rather morningnoonandnight sickness as it was), chamomile for sleep, English Breakfast tea for fueling up for the day, Earl Grey tea at night.

Watching Star Trek with Adam and wrangling cups of tea from each other with humerous orders "Tea, Earl Grey, hot. Make it so?"

Smoko at the shearing sheds when I went on a Scripture Union Agriculture camp during school holidays in year 7. It's called a smoko but it's really all about the mugs of tea. And the enormous trays of slab cake. I rode a pony bareback (and fell off) and drove a car across a paddock on that camp too. Then sprained my ankle so badly I couldn't walk for several days because I tried to chase sheep over rough ground wearing gum boots. My friend Rowena carried me piggy-back from the paddock back to where the camp staff were.

My kids bringing me cups of tea when they see I'm stressed or upset. On Wednesday night after Caitlin's dance concert this week I was so exhausted and strung out that when we got home I collapsed on the lounge and cried a little. Next thing I knew I had two cups of tea, both Caitlin and David had independently made one for me. I drank them both.

Drinking tea with my Mum and my brother on Saturday night. We sat at the kitchen table at my Mum's place after having left Grandma's room at the nursing home. We talked and cried a little and remembered and smiled and even laughed a little.

Tea.

Dried leaves in boiling water.

50 Things post No.18

This isn't quite a usual Friday Fragments style of post, not least because it doesn't just cover the last week - more like the last 40 years - but it's certainly fragmentary and it does include a couple of bits from the week just gone, so I'm linking up anyway. Don't forget to visit all the other fabulous fragmenters too!

Hosted by Mrs4444.

Food and love (Part 1)

Some time ago Liz posted a piece titled Love You With Food, it ends with these lines:

There is a legacy of love and food and cooking in my family. I'm so glad to be part of it and so glad it doesn't end with me.

I wish I could say the same thing about my family. It's not that there was any lack of love, or indeed of good food, in my childhood - far from it! But somewhere along the way food became a problem instead of an uncomplicated celebration and the legacy I inherited could be better described as a fraught relationship, with food often being both the focus of special times and at the same time an enemy to be controlled and guarded against.

It's hard for me to write about this without feeling that I'm being too harsh about the choices my mum made when I was a kid and as reached my late teens. I know she was doing the best she could as a mother and many of her choices are ones I have made too. My dad played his part in shaping my relationship with food too, and mum's for that matter, but he wasn't ever much involved in the shopping and cooking side of things, he comes into play more on the emotional side and with 20/20 hindsight we now know that much of what he did was down to him being bipolar (he was diagnosed about 5 years ago).

So I'm going to talk about my good food memories first.

Liz writes about the foods her mom cooked for holiday meals, dishes that were loved by particular family members -

"something that my mother [had] made for that person. Ryan's Stove Top. Jason's Roasted Potatoes and Carrots. Jeff's Angel Food Cake. Ted's Chocolate Cream. Martha's Cheesecake."

My mum did cook special things for us, I'm told I requested veal casserole, which featured regularly at our family table, for dinner on my 3rd birthday and I remember boiled fruit cakes being made, also for birthdays. What I don't remember much of is Mum cooking anything just for the fun of it, I don't think she really liked cooking very much, so most of my good memories of food and Mum are of once off type experiences. Except for when we were camping, there were lots of camping trips and something about an open fire seemed to demand frivolous fare - damper cooked in the coals, twist bread toasted on sticks over the open fire, marshmallows all singed and gooey, jaffles made in a proper jaffle iron with their edges burnt black and filled with hot baked beans and melted cheese. Good times.

Grandma (Mum's mum) and Nana (Dads' mum) both had special things they would make for when we came to visit. Grandma did the Christmas cake every year, there were always homemade scones (apparently she used to win prizes for her scones) and slices for afternoon tea, and baked dinners at Grandma's house were often followed by a baked fruit crumble. Nana used to make a fabulously sherry drenched trifle which I famously loved so much that when I was very young I was discovered after the meal with the empty trifle dish spooning the remaining sherry out of the bottom of the dish and exclaiming "Lovely gravy!" She also made rock cakes, I think I have her recipe for them somewhere but I've never made them, must do that one day, they were good and we'd get to take home the left-over ones with us when it was time to leave. Nan's Christmas specialty was hot brandy sauce which she would nurse over "a bead of gas" for hours on end, used to drive my dad nuts. We might mock but it was awesome with Christmas pudding. My brother makes it now, he's less precious about the slow heating, it tastes about the same but it tends to separate a little and I don't remember Nan's doing that.

When I was first going out with Adam and he started coming over to our place for dinner my friends all asked him if he'd survived the ultimate culinary test. Had my mother fed him the dreaded Chicken and Broccoli*? Of course the answer was yes, it was one of my mum's staple feeding of guests dishes, I loved it but I gather it caused much trauma to my friends over the years.

Oh, here's another one! Each year we would go to the Royal Easter Show, almost always on the Thursday before Good Friday. Mum and Dad would come and pick us up from school at lunchtime and we'd spend the afternoon and evening at the show, coming home after the fireworks display. The food that was available at the show back then was truly awful, overpriced and almost exclusively deep-fried, pretty much my mother's worst nightmare in food terms, so Mum would try and take food with us so we wouldn't have to buy dinner there. One year she made Cornish Pasties, they were awesome, I have the most vivid memory of unwrapping them from their foil packages, dolloping tomato sauce on them and savouring every bite. As far as I can recall this was the only time Mum ever made them.

When we were living in the US, in Boulder, Colorado, my mum perfected the high altitude pavlova. I gather her first attempt as per cooking in Sydney was not a success but pretty soon she had it down to a fine art and the Aussie dessert (yeah yeah, I know, shut up you Kiwis and let us cling to our illusions :P) was shared far and wide. Or, you know, with anyone who came to dinner or at any "bring a plate" function. I seem to remember there was some re-adjustment required on returning to Sydney, Mum being unable to remember what she used to do before the high altitude tweaks were made.

I'm actually really reaching for good memories here. I know there must have been many, many wonderful meals and a great deal of my mother's love for the family poured into providing for us. It kind of scares and saddens me that the not so wonderful stuff has overshadowed the good stuff so much. In fact, I'm getting a bit depressed thinking about it, don't know when I'll ever get around to writing Part 2....


*BBQ chook cut up, placed in a casserole dish with a layer of steamed broccoli on top. Then pour over a can of cream of mushroom soup mixed with some milk, thyme, lemon juice and maybe extra mushrooms, sprinkle with grated cheese and bake till hot and bubbly with the cheese nicely browned. Serve over rice and glare at any child that dares protest (my sister wasn't a fan and nor are my kids sadly).

I do not like public speaking

It's not that I'm particularly bad at it, in fact people have been known to tell me I'm quite good at it. Unfortunately my body doesn't seem to know that. I get incredibly tense, heart racing, can't focus on things properly, really stressed and all the time I know I'm going to be perfectly fine but I feel like I'm about to do something hugely dangerous. It really sucks. (It's also why I understand David's anxiety issues, I don't have the same degree of anxiety as him but I sure as hell know what it feels like.)

So, of course, what am I doing tomorrow night? I'm going to be standing up in front of about 350 kids, all their teachers, most of their parents and some of their grandparents, and giving a speech.

Must remember to breathe.

Eeep.

Being everything I can be

I read a post on Nat's blog this morning that got me thinking. Here's the bit that gave the old brain cells a prod:

...even now, 'just' 52 kilos lighter I am much more of a person than I ever was before.

This seems so shallow but it reinforces my belief that we categorise ourselves and filter our world through our obesity...just like someone who is depressed. And this stops us from sharing so many of our good qualities with others. We allow ourselves to become less of a human being. We allow ourselves to watch the rest of the world go by. I am certain that there is the rare human who weighs 150 kilos and takes part in everything, but I'd be certain also that they are RARE! How many of us have sat back and said no to something, or not taken part in something that we really wanted to because of our weight? Or has our weight physically limited us in such a way that we can't do something because of it?

Having made the no more WW decision, I have to acknowledge that there are physical limitations associated with my size. I want to go horse-riding but unless there's a something like a Clydesdale-Thoroughbred cross on hand that's pretty much a no-go. I'm hesitant to go ice-skating because the last time I did I was in some serious pain in my feet in a very short time, I'm planning on testing the (frozen) waters on Saturday though. I wish I could do the free fall thing at Questacon, but I wouldn't fit in the jumpsuits they have and I can't support my weight with my arms. I'd like to fit easily into seats in restaurants, theatres, aeroplanes and the like. There's more but I'm actually having a hard time thinking of things to add to the list just now. There's lots of things that would be easier if there was less of me but which I do anyway.

The thing is, I've been on a bit of a journey of self-discovery too in the last few years. And it's happened not because I lost weight, but in spite of my weight.

Here's something I wrote back in September last year:

I made a conscious decision years ago that my feelings of discomfort would not stop me from doing with my kids all the things we should be doing together as a family. So I decided I would go places with them, swim at public pools and at beaches, run around helping with soccer coaching (that one only lasted as long as David's interest in soccer). And then I started doing stuff for myself. I wear sleeveless tops so I can be out when it's hot without expiring. I bought clothes using the primary criteria of comfort rather than to hide my body. I went out on a limb and met people I knew from the net. I stood up in front of a theatre full of strangers and led a sing-a-long. I ended up on film doing the same (it's in the Sydney Q&A bonus feature on the Serenity DVD) and when I watch that I DON'T cringe, laugh at the geekiness yes but the physical me? that I'm ok with.

Since then I've done more. I've taken up jewellery making and managed to sell some of my creations - I've never thought of myself as creative or artistic so this came as a bit of a surprise to me. I've dressed in dark ages period costume and participated in a living history display at a public event - being in the public gaze like that is hard. I've taken on the P&C presidency at my kids' school - each time I run a meeting I'm conscious of being the fat person sitting at the front of the room with everyone looking at me (I'm sure none of them care what size I am, they're all just grateful they don't have to do my job but still, I feel exposed). I went for a job interview and convinced someone to hire me - my last job interview was 14 years ago and I was sure at the time that my (then much smaller) size was the reason I didn't get the job (nonsense of course). I went out dancing and had a great time - need to do that more often.

Every day as I get dressed, as I move around, as I pass a reflective surface, I am confronted by my body. How I fit (or don't) into my clothes, how I get hot and sweaty so very easily even in the middle of winter, how my reflected image sometimes makes me smile giving me a spring to my step and sometimes makes me wince and yank at my shirt trying to cover up the bulges (as if another layer of cloth somehow makes them invisible :P). I smile at myself more often now than I used to.

I don't know why I was able to choose to at least sometimes put aside that filter Nat mentions. It's not gone, at best I see double, but that seems to be enough.

I like who I am. I'm happy with what I'm doing with my life. There's an effort involved but I suspect that's not unique to being fat.

Could I be more, if there was less of me? I don't know. But I do know that I'm being all that I can be now and that is good enough.

Still doing the Weight Watchers thing

It just went a little haywire there for a while. For most of February I'd been feeling really down, overwhelmed by the smallest things, unable to get going on anything much, grouchy, stressed, wanting to spend my days curled up in a corner in denial of reality and generally pretty unpleasant to be with. Then suddenly, for no apparent reason, in the last few days the grey clouds have lifted and life is good again. It's weird but it's good, I wish I knew why 'cause then I might be able to do something if things go bad again.

I was trying on clothes this morning and found myself grinning at my own reflection and thinking "you're ok girl, we can do this" (apparently I became plural for the purposes of self pep-talking), which may have something to do with recording a 1.1kg loss this morning after several weeks of gains due to out of control binging, or maybe it's just because I suddenly feel like me again. So here I am almost back where I started and very oddly feeling pretty damn good about myself, my body as it is here and now, and life in general.

I also had one of the people I weighed tell me she loves coming to the meeting because I and the other staff are so wonderful - that helps with the ego boosting too ;-)

(If you're wondering what happened to my weight loss ticker, I got sick of looking at it every time I blogged so I stuck it right down the bottom, it's still there and I'm still updating it but you have to scroll all the way down to see it.)

Thinking differently & Weigh-in week 12

There's this thing that happens when every thought you have about food is about restrictions, when there's a moral overtone to decision making, when all the time the idea of failure is lurking in the back of your mind. It drives you slightly nuts.

I was starting to feel like I was fighting with myself all the time, it was all about what I shouldn't do, what I couldn't have, what I ought to avoid. Switching to Core has helped a little, much less of the counting and calculating and having to assess whether I could "afford" to eat even something that I knew to be perfectly healthy. It wasn't enough though, I could still feel the rebellious me waiting for a moment of inattention, poised to spring into the driver's seat and take me careering down the path of binge eating, takeaway dinners and a total lack of vegetables. This past week I was VERY distracted apparently and it has been less than wonderful on the food front. The scales at weigh-in this morning showed just how bad, 2.5kg gained. Bugger. That brings my total back to 7.6kg lost. Plus, I felt really crummy.

So I've been mulling it over and I think I'm beginning to find my way towards a solution, these aren't new ideas, but this is the first time I've felt the truth of them rather than just giving a token nod and not actually taking them on board.

I need to turn it round so that I'm concentrating on positives instead of negatives. I need to convince myself that there is no forbidden food, that I can in fact have whatever I want, whenever I want on one proviso - the food I eat must be feeding hunger and not just emotion.

I want to get to the point where I only eat food that will make me feel good for longer than the time it rests in my mouth. It must be the food my body really needs. Otherwise there's nothing to be gained by eating it. I need to be engaged in a process of finding the right answer to my body's and my mind's demands for comfort.

There are questions to ask myself before eating: Am I actually hungry? Will this food satisfy this hunger? Will I feel good 20 minutes after eating this food? If I can answer yes to all of those questions then well and good. If the answer to any of those question is no then the next step is to work out what's really driving the urge to eat and find other ways to satisfy that drive, because if hunger isn't the problem, food won't fix it and I just end up with something else to feel miserable and stressed about (or possibly even physically sick, which NEVER helps).

In the spirit of baby steps, this week I plan on concentrating on the first question, "Am I actually hungry?", and see if I can't get my head around the whole listen to your hunger signals thing. It's something I haven't been willing to tackle up to now, so I'm feeling quite excited to discover that I'm ready to go there.

I want to gain health, fitness, energy and enjoyment of physical activity for its own sake. I want contentment, peace and to have enough emotional reserves to be the mother, wife, daughter and friend I aspire to be. I want to spend more time feeling capable and less time floundering around barely scraping through the day.

And I'm going to have those things.

Confession is good for the soul

Last night at about 1:00am I ate: 1 piece of vegemite toast, 1 piece of peanut butter and honey toast, 2 slices of grilled Bega Vintage cheese on toast, some dried cranberries and 1 square of Lindt chocolate.

After which I felt somewhat ill.

Hmmm...ponders...why did I do this? Let's see, no complex carbs for dinner, stayed up way too late, getting cold, pissed off with myself over wasting so much of the day yesterday, feeling guilty about all the housework that is un-done. Of course! The obvious answer was to comfort/punish myself in a way guaranteed to make me feel a) physically bleh and b) extremely silly. Why on earth didn't I just heat up one of the 0.5 or 1 point serves of yummy soup in my freezer? Would've warmed me up nicely, been within points for the day and made me feel good all round. I did think of doing that but went ahead with the other instead.

We humans are weird creatures.