I took this photo when I got up really early one morning while on holiday. The calm and beauty of a sunrise reminds me of what it feels like to welcome the new year. After the chaos of Christmas, you get a chance to unwind for a few days to reflect on what’s been and dream about what lies ahead. Everything feels still and quiet for one precious, brief moment.
And then school starts, work resumes and you start thinking about appointments, booking trips, things to achieve and goals to work towards and once again the wheels creak into action. As I survey my year ahead, I’m grateful to be planning a busy schedule, full with projects that have taken many years to come to fruition. Patience has been my mantra in recent years.
My mission for 2016 is balance. It’s easy to charge ahead doing your thing, but the value of everything we do lies in the context. Most things lose meaning in isolation, and so I strive to create a life context that helps make my journey meaningful and rich with not only achievements but with quietude, relationships, conversation, reflection and striking a balance between giving and taking.
So with that in mind, I’ll move forward in 2016 by continuing to seek out more and tastier ways to enjoy vegetables, I want to keep encouraging my boys to try new food. I want to find ways to make dinner-times easier, tastier and more nutritious and balance that out with discovering new sweet treats to share and recipes that will become part of our family history. As ever, I strive to find balance between ease and results, to seek out food and techniques that give maximum results with minimum effort, because life is just so darn busy. I’ve still got my eye on Mexican cuisine, and I’d like to create the perfect tom-yum soup recipe, I’m on the look out for more biscuit recipes that the kids will love and I’ll be sharing tips about getting the kids involved more in the preparation of food and cooking.
In the meantime, it’s likely I’ll start the blog-year off with something truly wondrous; my mum’s recipe for baked sour cream cheesecake. Watch this space.