Day 5: Resilience and Saturday Soup

Saturday is that day of the week when I usually catch up on all the housework, get the fridge filled for the week ahead and have some social time with friends and family. There’s always a Saturday morning soak in the bath and some hobby time…. today will be sewing. If you like alliteration, my Saturday is just the thing - soup, soak, sew, socialise! 

Clearing out the fridge and looking at what is left over is always good. A few sticks of celery, an odd carrot, maybe a few mushrooms just about to go beyond redemption, half a pepper. Quick wash, rough chop without any concern for uniform sizes and within minutes they get bunged into a pan (size determined by the amount of stuff I have chopped). A couple of stock cubes, maybe some curry powder, chilli or herbs, cover with water and simmer for an hour or two while I’m doing the chores, then whizz the hand blender through it. Delicious bowls of Saturday Soup are never quite the same two weeks running! I have to confess, I even deliberately overbuy veg sometimes so that there can be a huge pot used and Saturday soup will last for days afterwards.  Today I even have a chicken carcass so will have the luxury of homemade stock. 

So what does Saturday Soup have to do with resilience? 

• We use what is there. During lockdown, we have to make the most of the food, activities, games, people that are there with us. Savour what we have, rather than yearning for what we don’t have,
  
• We might get different results because of what is there in any given week, but there’s often very pleasant surprises in the final outcome.  Accept that even when things don’t quite turn out as we would have planned, there may be positives in what actually happens. God might actually have a better plan than we did! 
  
• Just leaving things to simmer for a couple of hours can improve things. That row that you’re about to have with the person who is getting on your nerves may be better managed by stepping back from things, letting the initial strong feelings settle and then having a calmer, more productive discussion about resolving things. Not rushing into a task can give us time to think and minimise mistakes that happen when we rush in. 
  

God bless!