Testing the Parameters
Here are two tiny and insignificant examples of how just going along doing what you have always done, without questioning or thinking because of entrenched ideas, makes change seem impossible, and yet the moment you think and ask the question, it becomes impossible not to change.
Earlier in the week I mentioned my angst about school lunch packaging, and my conviction that the children were irretrievably wedded to it. Well, this week, I didn't buy any muesli bars. Not one in the house. Didn't mention it, just popped other stuff in lunchboxes. Not a peep. Don't think they have even noticed. This foodstuff they desperately needed once, it seems they don't need any more. Today, instead of over packaged chocolate frogs for their Junkfood Friday treat, choc honeycomb from the bulk food bin. 'Cool,' they said. It appears that sometime in the last year they got over their need to have food that looks like everyone else's but I never thought to check. In a couple of weeks I'll start working on the mini packets of chips...
Example number two, my quiche dilemma. In a bid to save electricity I bulk cooked quiches, only to remember that I need to use electricity to heat it up. So I was listlessly contemplating the microwave this afternoon and thinking about how I really hate soggy pastry. It was then that I realised that when we renovated the kitchen we put in a convection microwave so we would have a tiny efficient oven for small cooking jobs. I have just never used it because it would involve getting the instruction manual out of the cupboard and actually reading it. Yes, I hate instruction manuals that much. And I had put that job off so long that I had forgotten the existence of a whole kitchen appliance. In the end I only had to yell at Posy once to make her stop babbling while I interpreted the instructions, and then - magic, tiny oven reheats quiche to perfect crispness using fraction of time and electricity of giant energy gobbling oven. If I had never stopped to wonder, a few days ago, if we could save 20% on our electricity bill, I would maybe have gone for years not using that convection setting.
So asking the question. It seems to be worth challenging the entrenched idea.
Earlier in the week I mentioned my angst about school lunch packaging, and my conviction that the children were irretrievably wedded to it. Well, this week, I didn't buy any muesli bars. Not one in the house. Didn't mention it, just popped other stuff in lunchboxes. Not a peep. Don't think they have even noticed. This foodstuff they desperately needed once, it seems they don't need any more. Today, instead of over packaged chocolate frogs for their Junkfood Friday treat, choc honeycomb from the bulk food bin. 'Cool,' they said. It appears that sometime in the last year they got over their need to have food that looks like everyone else's but I never thought to check. In a couple of weeks I'll start working on the mini packets of chips...
Example number two, my quiche dilemma. In a bid to save electricity I bulk cooked quiches, only to remember that I need to use electricity to heat it up. So I was listlessly contemplating the microwave this afternoon and thinking about how I really hate soggy pastry. It was then that I realised that when we renovated the kitchen we put in a convection microwave so we would have a tiny efficient oven for small cooking jobs. I have just never used it because it would involve getting the instruction manual out of the cupboard and actually reading it. Yes, I hate instruction manuals that much. And I had put that job off so long that I had forgotten the existence of a whole kitchen appliance. In the end I only had to yell at Posy once to make her stop babbling while I interpreted the instructions, and then - magic, tiny oven reheats quiche to perfect crispness using fraction of time and electricity of giant energy gobbling oven. If I had never stopped to wonder, a few days ago, if we could save 20% on our electricity bill, I would maybe have gone for years not using that convection setting.
So asking the question. It seems to be worth challenging the entrenched idea.
Comments