A Healthy Dose Of Domestic Simplicity.

A day of rest.

Yesterday was Sunday. A warm end of summer day and a day of rest. We sometimes forget that we do need those rest days as, quite frankly, the commercial world around us wants us to rest according to their liking...shop, shop and shop some more.

So far Austria has no Sunday trading hours and whatever you need for a Sunday gets purchased on a Saturday. Easy enough. Having moved from a country that trades what seems like 24/7, it was a bit of a cultural shock not to be able to shop on a Sunday. The first few ones we were caught out with lack of certain foods, but most of us have enough groceries in our kitchen cupboards to feed us a few days without going for a shop.

Thinking back to South Africa and Sundays, they were mostly spent in the mega avenues of a shopping mall. Be it for a mere meal out or another useless item bought. At times we drove to a bigger shopping center over an hour away, to squeeze with the hordes of other aimless Sunday revelers. Did we not like our home?

How my Sundays have changed...a nice walk, a great fry up for breakfast, a leisurely time spent reading, a sandwich or so for lunch, an afternoon snooze in front of the telly and the occasional strenuous forays into the kitchen.

Bob was on a roll and made a divine tasting loaf of bread after breakfast ( he thought ahead and wanted some for lunch ) and like the heathens we are, we almost ripped it apart and devoured a few slices with dripping butter. Yummy indeed.

As he was in a cooking mood, after the required afternoon snooze, he went up into our garden and picked bowls full of plums. They are almost passed their on the tree sell by date and with that in mind, he made two batches of plum jam. Enough to last us through the winter and enough for the odd birthday present.

Often Bob and I sit back and ponder on the rather alarming fact, that when we were living in South Africa, the birthplace of so much delectable fruit, we never even once made a batch of jam! And we were not the only ones...Don't people realize how great homemade jam tastes and how easy it is to make?

A Sunday like this might not be everyone's cup of tea, but it is more refreshing to my body and soul than a few hours spent at a mall, a mall where you still have to grapple with finding parking, not to mention the space for all those unneeded purchases.

Biggi