Domestic Diva Wannabe

We notice that our electricity bills have really gone high over the years. I could still remember my first year here in Thailand in which our monthly bill was only 200 plus baht. Of course, we didn’t have a lot of electrical appliances by then and it was just my Hubby and I. As the years have gone by and as our family has grown, our bill has gone so much higher. Plus, it has also been 2 years now since we got 2 air conditioning units  from our organization and I guess, that’s where the bulk of our bill is from.

So, what’s our solution? Well, we just have to go back to the very basic like turning off the lights or fan when no one is using it. We are also trying to just let the aircon be on for an hour or two in the afternoon and at night. But sometimes, it’s just too tempting to let it be on for the whole night specially during the summer.

But I guess the best solution for this will be to use solar energy. Yeah, I know that installing all these solar panels will be expensive, but I guess in the long run, it’ll still be cheap and we can also help save the environment. Using solar energy is not so common here in Thailand yet but I heard that in UK, many of the houses have these. I’ve heard that solar is made easy in UK and other countries so, I guess that’s why more and more people prefer to have them.

I was craving to eat pancake this evening and so I decided to make one. Then my daughter who has always been wanting to cook or make things my herself, asked if she could make the pancakes instead. She has actually helped me make pancakes a few times and this time she wanted to do everything herself. So, I consented and was just sitting at the living room while she busied herself in the kitchen.

After like 3o minutes, she called out that her pancakes are ready for the pan. Then I saw her proudly showing the pancake batter on one hand and the empty bottle of oil on the other hand. As what I remember, there was at least 1/8 of the oil left in the bottle 30 minutes earlier and only 2 teaspoons of oil are needed for the pancake. Then I immediately knew that she made a mistake. When I asked her how much of oil she put, she pointed the measuring cup and said, ‘ oh, it says 2/3 in the recipe’. I checked the recipe and it was ‘ 2-3 tablespoons’ of oil. Opppsss…  she thought that it was 2/3 and she overlooked the tablespoons.. So, there goes my daughter’s first pancake attempt. I had to console her that it’s okay to make mistakes and I also made several mistakes when baking or cooking when I first started out, because she felt so sad for ‘failing’. But it’s okay, even if the pancake batter went straight to the sink, but I’m sure my daughter has learned a precious lesson to carefully read instructions and measurements.

I constantly find it a struggle to make healthy choices. If I’m not on a ‘diet’, I could easily choose a burger over a healthy salad and a Coke over a fruit juice. Though at the back of my mind, I KNOW which is better for me, but my actions say otherwise.

I wonder how I can change all this… that’s why I find it ‘easier’ (well, that’s an understatement) to just simple be on a ‘diet’ so, I can force myself to make healthy choices. But then repercussions come when I’m already off the diet. Do you experience the same things, or is it just me?

Anyways, I did read a lot of stories in which people has come to a complete lifestyle change after they’ve gotten too obese or too sick to the point of using ekg machines to monitor the activity of their hearts. But I don’t want to wait for that to happen to me. That’s why I better act on changing my eating habits now before it’s too late.