When you’re talking about cooking nutritious, whole food, the words slow and low come in. Of course eating as much fresh food as possible is important, but also cooking food at low temperatures helps to preserve nutrients. Having a pot of beans soaking and then cooking on the stove, seasoned meat and vegetables in the crock pot, bread dough fermenting; all of these mean
wholesomeness is on it’s way and everyone can smell that mom is home and the home fire is burning!
This kind of cooking requires planning in time to cook. And it also means that the less fast, junk-type food we eat, the more the real will taste wonderful and right. Whole food desserts are rich in flavor, but only if your palette isn’t accustomed to high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavor/color laden food science products. You have to acclimate to appreciate!
Just as being committed to making the shift to a better diet, and all that that means in our lifestyle choices, so slowing down to the speed of life requires us to adjust our taste for speed and the variability found in all of the media that is competing for our attention.
Being with young children, really being with them, is a subtle experience. Particularly spending time with babies and toddlers requires our minds to slow down and listen to and watch for simple cues. The dilemma for mothers and parents today is that media has our minds re-wiring (literally) into short sound bite long attention spans. It’s fast, it’s provocative, it’s stimulating and it’s about as nourishing as an artificially flavored, boxed dessert that can sit on a shelf for three years and not rot.
And just like adjusting your taste buds by leaving the junk food out of your diet, we have to slow our minds down by firmly limiting our use of media. This is part of the fierceness we have as Lionesses! We have to make tough decisions and solid commitments to ourselves for the well-being of our families.
If your life is revolving around your phone and you are at home with young children all day, I strongly encourage you to set times (naptimes would be a great option) when you allow yourself to be on your device. Our children know when we are trying to get away, when we are disinterested in them, when we are tuning them out, when we are feeling lousy about our lives when we are comparing ours to the glam sham of everyone else’s.
As mothers we’re in the business of making human connections. Let’s not sabotage ourselves and our efforts when our opportunities are so rich and right in front of our noses.
Be well. On purpose.
I send my love and admiration for your hard work and goodness!!!