Hannie Mommers 
As a kid, I had to pray before meals and every night before sleep. As a rebellious teenager, I really didn’t feel like it anymore. “Am I grateful today?” Why does that matter?
In my twenties, I even deregistered from the Catholic parish. Seeing that misery in Northern Ireland or the Middle East, for example, only because one party believed in a different God than the other party. Not for me.
As a consequence, praying was off-limits for me as well.
The way we spend our time before breakfast sets the tone for the rest of the day. It even influences the way we will sleep at night.
Especially in these challenging times of the Coronavirus, it’s tempting to get sloppy. Not just with the things to do before breakfast but also in spending the rest of our day.
I can assure you from my own experience that when you give in to feeling down, it is the start of a slippery slope downwards. You will not care about your plans anymore, about how you look, or about what you eat and drink.
Food is wasted everywhere. That starts with the harvest, then with the distribution, followed by the shops and restaurants. But most of the food is wasted by us, the consumers. According to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, about 57% of total food waste occurs at home.
Any leftovers from the meal can be frozen for later when we don’t have time to cook.
But what should we use if we don’t want plastic in the kitchen? Is it safe to freeze food in glass jars? To answer that question right away: yes, it is possible, provided the glass meets a few conditions.
For a long time, I’ve had an aversion to supplements, based on what I saw at the gym. I have now overcome my prejudice and especially now, in corona time, I have added supplements to my diet to strengthen my immune system.
We usually think of dietary supplements in the form of capsules or tablets. Nowadays there are many different forms of supplements.
For a big part, it depends on your own preference which form is best to choose. In this overview, I will mention a few pros and cons if there are any.
For years, Tom and I have been separating our waste to the best of our ability. But can materials be recycled endlessly? And do we separate our waste correctly?
It is complicated that countries and even regions have different ways of separating waste.
In addition, there are sometimes urban stories about how eventually all the waste ends up back together and that separation does not work out.
And finally, it also turns out that certain materials cannot be recycled endlessly.
Tom and I want to grow old and we want to grow old healthily and active. For this, we pursue 3 goals in life.
Our first goal is personal: we want to feel happy and healthy and have an active life.
Secondly, we have a social goal: we want to be able to help each other and others in our social circle, if necessary and desired.
Thirdly, we pursue a collective goal: the happier and healthier we are, the less burdensome we are for others and public care.
Whether you should pre-germinate seeds or sow them directly into the ground, highly depends on the kind of seed, the season, or your patience.
I had a 4th reason to pre-germinate my beans this year because I wanted to show the process to my grandsons. They live in an apartment building and have a balcony that has some pots. I wanted to stimulate their enthusiasm to get started on their own.
Back in the Netherlands years ago as well as now in Spain I had tried several times to pre-sprout beans using methods I found on the internet. Until this year I rarely succeeded, they molded long before they sprouted.
An individual’s ecological footprint tells how much space he or she needs to live. We are not talking about how big your home is here, but how your lifestyle impacts the environment and how we can diminish our ecological footprint.
Ecological footprints are also referred to as CO2 footprints. Are you an emission-intensive person or do you live frugally?
You cause less environmental damage with a smaller footprint. It has been shown in a number of studies that if everyone had an average footprint of 1.8 hectares, nature could restore itself.