The Pottery Night
Meditation Cookbook
Stuffing Fit for a Fowl (July 2010)
I’m not sure when this stuffing came into my life but it probably was because we had a supply of oats on the shelf. What is great about this stuffing is that it is slightly sweet. It also expands. It can be cooked inside the bird or if the cavity is too small the rest can bake along side in a pottery bowl covered with foil.
BASIC INGREDIENTS
Oats
Finely diced onions
Chopped fresh garlic – lots of it
Fresh or dried thyme
A cube of chicken stock or powdered chicken stock
Freshly ground black pepper
Sunflower oil
ADDITIONAL INGREDIENTS
For those of you who love the combination of fowl and fruit try adding a few chopped dried apricots
METHOD
Mix all the ingredients together but add a sprinkling of sunflower oil at the end so that mixture is not too dry. Spoon into your fowl but do not press down hard. This will enable the juices from the fowl to infiltrate the stuffing and expand the mixture. Close the entrance to the backside with some toothpicks and tie the fowl’s legs together.
If you have stuffing over put in a pottery bowl. Add a pat of butter and a sprinkle of water. Cover with foil. Occasionally check on your stuffing that it is not too dry and mix it through.
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Strut Your Stuff
Our rooster is the epitome of the saying ‘Strut your stuff’ as he exudes confidence; it is part of his authentic ‘cocky’ nature. He knows his surroundings; he isn’t ‘cooped up’ and he is free to be who he is - ‘cock-of-the-walk’.
With humans this kind of demonstration is either admired or it ‘ruffles our feathers’ as we can see from the following image.
So what makes us admire confidence on the one hand or have the type of reaction where our ‘feathers’ are ruffled by it on the other hand?
At Change Matters we have the view that when a person is admired because they ‘strut their stuff’, it is because there is a recognition that this display is coming from a space or a position of authenticity. The person is not doing it to impress, they are doing it because that is who they are. This is a display of their true nature and they don’t have any problems expressing it.
Some people might see this as a display of self-confidence. So where does this come from? We mentioned the word ‘authenticity’ but what does that mean?
Words and concepts that come to mind are:
- Genuine
- Congruent
- Feeling comfortable in your ‘own skin’
- Knowing what you can and cannot do and accepting these capabilities and limitations
- A balanced self-esteem, self-image and self-worth
- Emotional competence
- Understanding where your learned behaviours come from, what you value, what are your beliefs, what is justice (right and wrong) for you, what your needs, your goals and your motives are
- Choosing to be content
- Taking responsibility for yourself
- Doing what you say and doing who you are
- Being able to integrate thought, word and deeds with your values and beliefs
- Living the life you are born to fulfill
- Regaining the passion, excitement and confidence locked inside
Often the goal of change is to return to that position where ‘strut your stuff’ becomes a natural way of being again. At Change Matters we take a journey that examines those stumbling blocks - where we fell over, got distracted or side-tracked, and took a different path that made our lives painful. We retrace our steps back to the point where something happened that made us ‘buy’ into a belief or value system that made us forget who we truly are. We metaphorically pick it up and re-examine it. We ask ourselves was this really true, what was the pay-off at the time, what have been the consequences because of this and what have been the costs of having this belief. Once you can see the damage you then have a choice to drop it, create a new belief about yourself or carry on believing the same old same old stuff.
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