The weeks that lie ahead are infamous for being freighted with social challenges. With the tinsel and toddies comes trouble.
News flash: Life is hard. People let you down. Things end badly. Sometimes it feels like your fairy godmother stepped outside for a smoke and never came back.
On that cheery note, we begin today’s conversation on hitting the reset button.
The weeks that lie ahead are infamous for being freighted with social challenges. With the tinsel and toddies comes trouble. Expectations are usually well out of alignment with reality. It’s a season of unbridled expenses. Overfull agendas. Massive traffic problems. Undisciplined social conduct. The urge to sucker punch weird Uncle Harold simmers just below the surface.
None of this is new. Even Shakespeare recognized that life isn’t a bottomless bowl of Bings. In his first first soliloquy, Hamlet quickly identifies the low ROI he’s seeing in his life: “How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable seems to me all the uses of this world.”
Man … that Shakespeare! Four hundred years later and he’s still killing it. In fact, a great deal of Shakespeare pivots on a general cynicism about life. Here’s one chestnut that gets trotted out with great regularity: “Life is as tedious as a twice-told tale, vexing the dull ear of a drowsy man.”
So, if the season has you feeling defeated, you’re not alone. The world’s pre-eminent dramatist felt it, too.
But what can you do when life loses its lustre?
Are there tricks for improving your outlook?
Nobody knows who said it first, but I’m guessing it was someone’s mom. It’s called the “Eat, sleep, shower, go outside” rule. It’s a gem of advice and well worth committing to memory. It goes like this:
“If you feel like you hate everyone, eat something.
If you feel everyone hates you, go to sleep.
If you feel like you hate yourself, take a shower.
If you feel like everyone hates everyone, go outside.”
As operating systems go, doesn’t that make a whole lot of sense? There’s actually some science behind it all, too.
If you’re feeling out of sorts, there’s a good chance your blood sugar is low — so have a snack. This isn’t surprising as the brain is primarily fuelled by glucose. Symptoms of poor glycemic regulation have been shown to mirror mental health symptoms, especially anxiety, worry and irritability.
Everyone hates you? Paranoia is more prevalent in the fatigued. You’re less likely to feel singled out for mistreatment following a nap. Decent sleep has a remarkable ability to restore the ability to make a person better able to read social cues and feel at ease in the world.
Self-loathing is perhaps the worst of the scenarios. An overwhelming sense of inadequacy is often tied to self-neglect, but a shower can literally wash away self-blame. Five minutes of hot and steamy water may not solve all of your problems, but a shower feels like a fresh start and that’s sure to help bump up your mood.
What about when you feel it’s mano-a-mano out there — dog-eat-dog? To offset the overwhelming feeling that the world is a terrible place, something as simple as a walk or running an errand has the capacity to restore meaning to life. The trick here is to defy your isolation. Get outside. Say hello to a stranger. Smile. That same miserable world just might smile back.
I hope this helps. And try to remember: Weird Uncle Harold has his problems, too.
This week’s question for readers:
Question: Sailing, chopping wood, volunteer work? How do you hit the reset button?
Last week’s question for readers:
Question: Fruit, nuts, Grand Marnier, Cinnamon Bread? What are your stuffing secrets and traditions?
• Your column on Christmas stuffing was such a food memory for me. I have vivid memories of my mom’s stuffing from the turkey cavity. It was moist, savoury and delicious. It was the 1960s and who knew salmonella? Now, I make a separate mushroom stuffing with Trader Joe’s turkey broth because I couldn’t find any stock in Vancouver.
James Harcott
• Although we do a pretty basic bread stuffing for inside the bird, we also use an old family recipe for Scotch Dressing as a side dish. It is oatmeal and onions with grease (preferably suet, but butter is fine) cooked on the stovetop in a frying pan. It sounds pretty disgusting, but in fact it is quite yummy.
Denise Goodkey
• Mom and dad immigrated from Slovenia to Canada in 1958 with two kids and two suitcases — the suitcases were made of cardboard and I still have them. Times were difficult in Slovenia, so there were not a lot of luxuries to be had. If it didn’t come from the land, you just did not have it, so a special dinner was a chicken (from the coop) with stuffing and mashed potatoes. The stuffing was made from day-old bread, sautéed onions and parsley, a few eggs and some milk. Spices were not to be had, so it was just salt and pepper for seasoning. Mom carried this tradition for the next 50 years. To this day, the thought of her stuffing makes my mouth water. I’ve made it many times, but it’s never quite as good. Once the chicken was cooked, mashed potatoes would be added to the pan and all the savoury bits of chicken and drippings made those mashed potatoes heavenly. My kids always try to modernize the stuffing and I will often acquiesce to their request by adding a second stuffing to the meal, but I always stuff the bird with mom’s stuffing. It’s not a festive dinner without her stuffing and mashed potatoes.
Maggie Basa
• I have a small cloth bag in the freezer to keep breadmaker bread ends. I thaw those knobs of bread, add diced onions, apples, celery, fresh sage, thyme, rosemary. Cooking juices from the giblets give it a moist texture. Cooked outside the turkey along with other sides.
Deb Moynahan
• Well, turkey stuffing to me is a crap shoot, but my mom had a tried-and-true recipe where we ground up the giblets and then fried them in butter with onions and chopped celery. In a large bowl — as there were eight without guests — was a large quantity of dried, home-baked, cubed bread which was then resaturated with a bit of hot water and then milk — just enough to make it not too moist and not too dry, but just right. Then in went the fried giblets, etc., salt and pepper and sage. How much sage? Well, one would put in maybe three teaspoons to start, then a spoonful of the stuffing would be pan fried and tasted to see If it was the right amount. She never varied or tried to experiment with sausage or cranberries because we all liked it the traditional, family way. Did we ever get sick? Not that I know of. The farm-fresh birds in those days always took longer to cook, so the dressing was always done with no leftovers to worry about.
Trudy Halliday
• I had to laugh just a little when I read your column regarding the obsession with uncooked stuffing. I have cooked stuffed turkey for over 60 years and never made anyone sick. There is no secret to it. You simply cook the sausage and all the rest of the ingredients separately from the bird, even the day before, if you want. It’ll taste better that way, anyway. I have always used the tried-and-true sage and sausage recipe and, if you can’t figure out what it is supposed to taste like, add poultry seasoning. I also pour boiling water through the cavity and out the other end. After being stuffed, most recipes will tell you to roast an uncovered turkey at about 400-450 degrees for about a half an hour, then reduce the temperature to about 350. This I have always done and with the lid on for the allotted time, basting as you go. Always a moist, amazing bird. And great gravy.
Lynda Oxley
• After 40 odd years of being chained to the Christmas turkey, I finally found the stuffing recipe of my dreams. Wolfed down by all family members. It can be made in advance, omitting the apples and adding the day of. It also eliminates the need for two stuffings and any risk that entails.
Sausage And Apple Stuffing
1/2 pound pork breakfast sausage
2 tablespoons butter (any substitute)
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup onion
1 4oz can water chestnuts
1 12 oz package seasoned dry bread stuffing
3 apples (peeled,cored and cubed)
1 tablespoon chicken broth
Cook breakfast sausage. Drain and set aside
Melt butter and saute celery,onion, and water chestnuts until tender
Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees
Prepare seasoned stuffing mix and mix in sausage, celery mixture,apples and chicken broth.
Transfer mixture to medium baking dish and bake for 30 minutes.
Isobel Demkiw
• I cannot imagine that you have never seen Harding’s Poultry Stuffing Bags. These were invented by me 30 years ago. Virtually every grocery chain store carries them year-round from Manitoba west. This polyester bag inserts into the cavity of the bird, then stuffing is inserted. Once cooked, the stuffing bag is removed, intact, from the bird with all the stuffing inside it.
Richard Harding
• Christmas dinner is just too much work for one person. Our solution? We make up sections of it early in December, freeze it and thaw the whole thing out on Christmas Day. Turkey and gravy and stuffing freeze beautifully. Roast up some sprouts and yams and you’re done. It makes for more fun for everyone.
B. Liu