Some like it simple

Ciao folks!

It´s time to talk about food again. Even though I´d rather not recommend pasta I want to share a couple of my favourite pasta sauce recipes. According to my philosophy one must not give up something you absolutely crave for... like a steaming bowl of spaghetti after sports! I don´t mesure while cooking so I can only give you ingredient lists. My pasta sauce always starts with frying onion. Fresh herbs are surely welcome; just add them in the very end. Trust your instinct with seasoning and keep tasting! Add olive oil in the end aswell.

 Tomato sauce

Onion
Garlic
Chopped tomatoes
Splash of cream
Grated cheese/cream cheese
Paprika
Chili
Salt+Pepper
Fresh rocket
Olive oil


Beetroot sauce

Onion
Boiled and chopped beetroot
Cream
Nutmeg
Marjoram
Salt+pepper
Fresh rocket
Olive oil


Isn´t it pretty! :)

A perfect dessert would be this sin-free Banana icecream with cacao sauce. For one portion freeze a banana in pieces. Smash it with a blender stick and, believe it or not, it turns amazingly creamy. For the cacao sauce mix coconut cream and raw cacao powder. Sweeten with agave syrup or honey. On top toss a few mulberries or other berries. Awesome!

And it gets even more exciting! My new thing is Chaga mushroom which got "legalized" recently. It has 500 times more antioxsidants than blueberries. Need I say more? Last time I visited my hometown I collected a lot of Chaga, chopped and ground it. It looks like coffee! I don´t know how to describe the taste because it´s not very strong. I drink it as tea.

I´m planning to have a raw food week as to experiment how it affects my energy levels. Whenever it happens I´ll keep you posted and tell you everything! I´ll be a volunteer guineapig.

Peace!

Success is in your reach

Setting goals and achieving them might sound easy and something everyone does. You might set goals in your career or studies. You decide to earn good grades or start exercising. You might want to learn to play the piano and you take up piano lessons. Everyone sets goals: in their mind, that is. It´s easy to loose your grip whenever things feel too hard. Do you really achieve your goal after all?

My unofficial hobby is to watch all sorts of motivational and educational videos on Youtube. There are plenty of videos from really inspirational people from who I´ve really learned a lot. I came across a video where Finnish Marko Kaarto talks about setting goals and achieving them. I realised why I have failed in some things I should have been able to do.

I´ve always known that I have certain skills and I´m able to do almost whatever I like. I believe in will power. (If you believe you can´t do it, you can´t. If you believe you can do it, you can.) However, there are some dreams and goals I have failed to achieve because I´ve made mistakes already when setting goals. Actually, I haven´t set goals in the right way. It´s impossible to achieve anything if you don´t make a concrete plan. It´s easy to think “I could do this and that, I´m capable of doing it”... But actually making it happen is another thing. That´s actually a good expression: making things happen. Things don´t happen by themselves.

A way to set goals is quite simple and here I want to present what I learned from Marko Kaarto.

1. Make the decision. It´s good to tell people about it or write it down (=make it concrete).
2. Consider if you are able to do it. The answer is of course “yes”. In other words, you need attitude.
3. Think of a plan. How can you achieve this goal? It´s also important to set a deadline!
4. Take concrete (small enough) steps towards your goal, preferably every day. Keep your goal in mind and don´t let anything distract/discourage you.
5. Hardships are part of the game but always keep going!

Achieving goals requires hard work and maybe giving up some things. It´s about prioritizing and channeling your energy and time in your goal. Apart from not taking concrete action you might lack persistence. You have to make a commitment and a long-term plan. Be prepared that achieving your goal takes time.

My New Year´s resolution was to stay healthy even during the flue season and I really thought about it often and worked for it. I didn´t reach that goal, though, since I was ill for two days and now I have no voice. I don´t feel I failed that much because two days is nothing: maybe when the next influenza arrives I´ll be sick for one day! Works go on...

I highly recommend setting goals and achieving them. That´s what real success is about even if it wasn´t anything big. One summer I decided I want to learn how to make a cartwheel. I started practising and I practised until I could do it. I feel good about it even years later. I want more of that feeling!

 

Oh, I forgot the very very first step in achieving goals...

DREAM!

Me and my neighbour´s shovel

I´ve lived in my current apartment for two months and I don´t know my neighbours. It´s supposed to be normal these days: people are scared of strangers, no sense of community whatsoever and everyone minds their own business. But when I moved in I was told that many people here know each other and they even organize BBQs in summer time. Getting to peak into your neighbours´ shady apartments filled with black and white photographs sounds like a French movie but I didn´t expect any less.

Remember the time a couple of weeks back when it snowed probably more than is legal? Now that I live in a flat with my very own entrance I have to keep the porch clean. I consider the porch mine even thought I share it with a couple who live above me. They´re just not that into sweeping.

Anyway, the other day when my steps were covered with thick and heavy snow and since I don´t own a shovel I was trying to clear them with a broom. Suddenly a neighbour that I call Sourpuss comes out and sees me sweeping desperately. He greets and offers to borrow his shovel which is standing in the snow by his porch. I thank and grab the shovel gratefully. Atleast someone cares about his neighbours!

I see Sourpuss relatively often because he´s outside every second hour. He wears a blunt expression on his face and one of those hats that are like a mix of a beanie and a cap. He looks like an over-grown teenage boy. It looks like Sourpuss thinks he´s a caretaker; he likes to clear snow off the yard even though there´s a tractor that ploughs everybody´s yards after heavy snowfall. He sprinkles rocks around when it´s icy. He walks across the yard to get firewood. I would be invited to sit by that cosy fireplace if he wasn´t that sour.

Other neighbours I´ve met only very briefly and no one has ever initiated a real chat. I was hoping they would so I didn´t have to. They would ring my doorbell and bring me apple pie, just like in the movies, and offer to lend things over coffee. No one has come but people always say hello if I meet them outside. There´s a man on my left side who, according to my landlord, is called Policeman. He´s the only one with whom I exchanged a few words which makes him a nice policeman.

It snows more and my next-door neighbours still choose to sit on their asses and watch tv. Snow piles up in front of my porch but I can´t bring myself to borrow Sourpuss´s shovel again. I know that he wants me to. It´s right there, two meters from my porch, available and innocent, a symbol of a community of good neighbours who borrow things to each other and have BBQs in summer.

I can´t take the shovel without permission and nor do I dare to ring the doorbell. I´m afraid Sourpuss would say, bluntly: “Of course. It goes without asking that you can borrow the shovel!” And he would think I find it unnatural that all we good neighbours borrow things without being too ceremonial.

Normally I´m interested in people and I like talking to them. I can approach strangers without thinking twice and I can talk about the weather. But whenever I meet neighbours my mouth refuses to form more words than a simple “hi”.

I know what´s the problem (apart from the deep-rooted cultural trait of avoiding neighbours). Neighbours are too close. They might already know things about me and I don´t want them to know more. Don´t all neighbours love gossiping and stalking? Neighbours can easily know too much because you already live in the same building! Walls are thin. I don´t want awkward moments in my very own yard. Maybe I´m just not suited for living in a city.

The weather is getting really warm now and people fear for their lives because snow and ice can suddenly fall from roofs. On my porch, too, there´s a heap of snow and massive blocks of ice. I heard it coming down with a crash earlier today. I felt a cold shiver because I knew that Sourpuss would see the mess and feel sorry for me because he knows I´m too shy to borrow his shovel. If he was friendly enough, he would clear the stairs for me.

He left the shovel right next to my porch. I´m going to borrow it. One day we´ll be good friends and I´ll have to delete this post.