How to take care of yourself

by making a chicken broth. Not using a spoonful of instant broth with a bit of water, mind you! I am talking about the real deal. A healthy boost from scratch.

I believe a lot in the body being clever enough to show when it's time to put up your feet and take a break. I know it is easy to feel threatened by the slightly itching throat in the morning. You can't afford having a cold now. You've got this important meeting/interview/project/thing coming up. And you need to function.

All the grannies of generations can't be wrong if they started to stir some veggies and chicken in a pot to get you back on track. That's how I see it, too. I understand an itching throat and the imminent cold as the most natural and actually adorable way of my body telling me it's time to lean back a little, dial it down a notch.

And the best thing to do now, besides lounging around on the sofa for a bit, is to support your defence system with some homemade goodness.

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This is a very basic recipe of a selfmade chicken broth.
It takes a little effort. And yes, it takes about 2 to 3 hours.
But good things come to those that wait.

What you need:
- soup greens (2 onions, 3 to 4 carrots, celery, leek)

- some chicken drumsticks, unseasoned of course (I used about 600g)
- peppercorns, allspice, salt (try to use sea salt if you can), 1 or 2 bay leaves
- noodles for soup (I personally like to use letter-noodles - but that's really just for the joy of finding words on my plate)
- butter and oil
- peas (you can use tinned or frozen ones)
- patience

Wash and dry your chicken, peel the leek, onions and 2 carrots (keep one for later), take off the ugly parts of the celery. If rather long, cut leek and carrots in half. But keep the onions as a whole.

Melt some butter and oil in a large pot on a medium high heat, add the chicken drum sticks and keep stirring for about a minute, so the butter won't turn brown.

Now add the greens, peppercorns, allspice, salt and bay leaves.

Cover everything with hot water and leave simmering on low heat.

After the first ten minutes you'll already notice some foam appearing on the surface. Gently skim this off, it will turn your broth a little bitter if you leave it.

Stir every now and then and keep removing the foam for the next hour/hour and a half (the longer it simmers, the more intense your broth will taste later).

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Now it's time to remove all ingredients from your broth.

Pod the chicken and keep all those parts you'd like to see in your soup. I am rather picky and tend to remove a lot of the fat and gristly parts.

Add your chicken meat, some peas and another carrot, cut in small pieces. Depending on your taste, you can always pimp your soup with any other greens, like zucchini for example. Or some more leek as well.

Add your noodles, stir and boil for another moment and finally enjoy with some bread.

Oh, and let me know how you got on should you try this recipe. I'd love to know the little extras you add to your chicken broth.

Day 3, 4, 5 and 6 - The healthy week project

So you might be wondering how my healthy week project went ahead?

Of course it was interrupted by a slightly unhealthy weekend. I went to see old friends in the north where I used to live before, and there's nothing I enjoy more than a good old chat over some delicious food.

I was still very determined and motivated on Saturday and started the day with a mouthwatering fruit salad after I went running in the park at 7:30(!). The day is still so young and undisturbed at that time, and it feels like as if there's nothing that could bring you down.

We went to the flea market, but found nothing in particular. Maybe because we weren't really looking for anything in particular, and preferred staring at our shoes in the mirror, toecaps turned inwards of course. 

It felt nice to be back there. Few things have changed since I had left. Which was reassuring, too. Like those tasty croissants at the Portuguese. You'll have to queue up for them, but they are ever so worth the wait.

The late afternoon was for baking (the slightly unhealthy part). But I'll tell you all about the mishaps and pet peeves tomorrow. With pretty pics that definitely look better than the baked goods tasted. Unfortunately.

Day 2 - the healthy week project

I'm starting the day with a fruit salad. Do you remember my biggest fear I mentioned yesterday regarding this project? Well, it came true.

Getting up so early on a day off does have one disadvantage - it makes the day a lot longer. I only had to do some paperwork yesterday, and my biggest challenge was to find a store that sells still water in glass bottles, not plastic.

Rummaging through my papers, cycling around on my bike, writing mails and making a few phone calls lead to me having achieved my daily goal at around 1 o'clock. In the afternoon, mind you. Of course it's nice to have a lot of time at hand when usually we only rush through our days and wonder where time has gone. However, this made my healthy diet project into more than just a project. A real endeavour.

I simply had too much time all of a sudden, and that usually misleads me into having a few more snacks here and there. Bits of chocolate, maybe some pizza, lots of toast with whateverthereisstillleftinthefridge. What a trap.

Stuffing salad, fruit and vegetables into my mouth all day long can hardly fill the gap all those yummy unhealthy goodies left. I'm terribly hungry all day long. However I am positive my body will accustom itself to this change, but of course in its own time. If it was this easy, we'd all be eating a lot healthier, wouldn't we?

Day 1 - the healthy week project

Unfortunately I don't eat healthy at all. It doesn't show in my physique yet, thanks to my mother's genes, but I know it won't always stay that way.

Especially in the past months I've been starting to get all kinds of pain I actually correlated with the elderly. I caught myself complaining about back pain, its intensity depending on the weather (I always thought the weather-pain connection was just something to gain attention with), and a subtle chronic pain in my hipbone and knee have been spoiling most events I've been looking forward to attend at.

It frightens me that I speak about my body in this manner at this age. So today I started my little project, got up at 8 in the morning (yes, this is rather early for me, since I am not an early-morning-person), went running for a bit and got myself some fresh vegetables and fruit for the day. I'm already afraid I might feel too hungry to get through the project, since I am so used to munch some little (unhealthy) snacks all through the day. But I'm determined. And this salad up there is seriously delicious.

I hope your week is starting just as motivated and inspiring!