One Bowl Book

I just wanted to plug this book about mindful eating because I enjoy it so much: One Bowl: A Guide to Eating for Body and Spirit

I ordered the book a few years ago. I've never implemented all the advice present in it, but I have had a series of small bowls as my primary eating vessels. It makes us humans sound a little, well, stupid, but the size of our plates and bowls does have a lot to do with how much we eat.

As time has gone on, I've moved to smaller and smaller bowls. Recently, I bought a hand-turned wooden bowl off eBay that's about 3.5 inches across at the top, and then flares out slightly. It fits nicely in my hand. I've been using the To-Go Ware bamboo utensils with it, mostly the chopsticks. If I only eat one bowl's worth of food, I'm usually pretty satisfied.

The bowls that came with our dishes are monstrosities by comparison, and I unmindfully fill them up when I use them, or at least I put a greater amount of food into them than I can fit in my little wooden bowl.

The other side of the problem is making too much food. We always have leftovers, and, as I've mentioned before, I end up eating what my children don't eat, or I end up eating the leftovers during the day between meals. I'm trying to cut that habit out, and to do so, I'm trying to cook less. It's a difficult thing to do. If I cook too little, I have a hungry family looking at me with disappointed eyes. Usually, out of habit, I cook a cup of beans, or a cup of rice. One cup equals one serving, or one meal, or whatever. Actually, one cup is too much. Yesterday, I made dal for lunch, and cooked one half cup of yellow split peas and a cup of rice. My son and I ate it for lunch, (Sadie can't stand dal). There was little enough leftover that it wasn't reasonable to save it, but I did feel compelled to eat more than I would have liked to finish it off. Today, I'm seeing what one third cup of mung beans looks like cooked.

Why did I not think about what's the right amount of food to cook at a time until I was forty-five?

Sorry there's not much carfree content there. Today, we're going to put the triple back together so we can bicycle up to Music on the Hill on the St. John's College soccer field. I'll report in on whether it's easier now that the children are older. Riding the triple when they were younger was quite a chore. They really didn't throw their all into climbing hills.