Happy 2020! As wonderful and welcome as the holiday break was, it felt so good to step into a new year and do some thinking about intentions and goals for the year ahead. I love this passage from one of Ryan Holiday’s Daily Stoic emails last month on how we are what our choices make us…
“The Stoics believed that a beautiful life was the result of beautiful decisions. They also believed that the only way to freedom, to strength, to wisdom, was through continual effort. ‘Progress is not achieved by luck or accident,’ Epictetus said, “but by working on yourself daily.’”
This year I will to continue to simplify. To remove (or just as importantly to not add) what is not necessary. Beyond the obvious like having less “stuff” at home or in the closet, this also includes choosing where I direct my attention, what I read, what I allow into my headspace, being thoughtful about commitments, and continuing to create quiet space at home for cooking, reading and contemplation.
I think Derek Sivers writes beautifully on this point:
“No amount of adding will get me to where I want to be.
The adding mindset is deeply ingrained. It’s easy to think I need something else. It’s hard to look instead at what to remove.
The least successful people I know run in conflicting directions, are drawn to distractions, say yes to almost everything, and are chained to emotional obstacles.
The most successful people I know have a narrow focus, protect themselves against time-wasters, say no to almost everything, and have let go of old limiting beliefs.
More people die from eating too much than from eating too little. Most of us have too much baggage, too many commitments, and too many priorities.
Subtracting reminds me that what I need to change is something already here, not out there.”
One of the greatest benefits of going through this process of deliberately simplifying where my time and energy are spent is I have more time and energy to do the things that I truly enjoy like cooking at home.
Many people that I admire are amazing at doing weekly meal planning (I’m looking at you Pamela Salzman) and even show you exactly how to do it. It is always something I’ve wanted to do but it felt too overwhelming to get started.
But these last two weeks I made the time to get my meal planning, food prep and grocery shopping system dialed (or at least version 1.0)…
I organized my recipes and went through my go-to cookbooks and flagged the pages. I cleaned out and organized the pantry and also the fridge…
There is now always something healthy and satisfying to eat in the fridge or take to work, and I do only one trip to PCC and Trader Joe’s each week.The other huge benefit is hardly any food gets wasted.
I also learned about these great Vegibags (also available on Amazon) from the latest issue of Bon Appétit. Now vegetables skip the plastic bags at the store, get washed at home and put into the crisper bags and into the fridge. The extra-large size holds four big bunches of kale FYI…
The latest Bon Appétit is really great and full of recipes I’d like to make starting with the chicken-lentil soup on the cover, this cauliflower bolognese and this kale pesto…
And what a lovely surprise to turn the page and see this sentiment…
I think cook the way you want to feel is a great general “rule” to follow when it comes to feeding ourselves. I can’t think of a more powerful tool to change the body, how it functions and how we feel, than food. When we choose to “restrict” our eating in some way (no wheat, dairy, sugar, grains, whatever it may be) the response too often is “well what can you eat?!” The chef Seamus Mullen gives a perfect answer to that in his book Real Food Heals that I wholeheartedly agree with: Cooking nutritious food is not more restrictive. It’s more creative. We have to expand our minds and our repertoire by thinking outside the box and then a whole world of options opens up.
Also on the home front, our backyard studio is nearing completion and we can hardly contain ourselves. This dream has been years in the making…
We also gave the dining room a little refresh with some lime wash paint from Colour Atelier and a little Noguchi magic…
I love this quote from Helena Bonham Carter…
And these Stop Talking cards (which I bought locally at Peter Miller Books)…
“The problem is no longer getting people to express themselves, but providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say…. What a relief to have nothing to say, the right to say nothing, because only then is there a chance of framing...the thing that might be worth saying.”