Check out my attempt to be witty and intelligent in 20 questions on the fantastic site newmatilda.
http://newmatilda.com/2010/04/27/wellresearched-answers
And yes I do update my own facebook page albeit I am not blogging as much as I should.
Mind and Mood April 2010
Twice a year Ipsos Mackay produces our Mind & Mood study. Our April version was released last week to clients and features in a story by George Megalogenis in The Australian today.
See: http://www.theaustralian.com.au/politics/jobs-not-voters-main-worry/story-e6frgczf-1225858135860
After finishing the fieldwork for this report, all the researchers were struck by the contrast between the Mind and Mood report we did in early 2007 and this report.
In 2007, all groups were showing signs of engagement with political issues and discussing the impending contest between Howard and Rudd. Here’s a snippet from that report:
We are finding a small but significant shift towards re-engagement with political and social concerns, partly sparked in part by the revitalisation of the environmental debate. Whilst participants in this study were rarely inclined to reveal their party of choice in the forthcoming federal election, there is a strong belief that at least there will be a choice this time around and that the election will be a genuine contest. For some who have been politically adrift over the last decade, there is a palpable feeling that politics has suddenly become interesting again. They are paying attention.
Rudd is a real contender. Before we had that fat bastard who made us fall asleep.
Federal politics has suddenly become a topic, after years of it not being a topic so much. I don’t talk much with my parents about it but when I recently went down to Melbourne to see them, we did, because it has suddenly become interesting. There is a real contest now. It’s not just because it is an election year.
Whilst some participants debated the personal strengths and deficiencies of Howard versus Rudd, the respective policies industrial relations and environment politics of Labor and the Coalition also evoked interest.
I think [John Howard] stuffed up with two things – IR and greenhouse. With greenhouse, suddenly everyone got interested and he hasn’t kept up. With IR, he has bitten off more than he could chew. He misread that. The environment, he has never been interested in that. And neither has the public until recently. With greenhouse he hasn’t changed, but the public has changed. With IR, he wanted change but the public didn’t.
In 2007, discussion about party politics merited an entire chapter in the report. This year it barely filled a paragraph as an afterthought in Chapter 1. There was some lively discussion centred on Tony Abbott and Julia Gillard however. Here are a couple of quotes about them from our recent report:
Man 1: I think Abbott was elevated quicker than even he expected to be. It certainly surprised me.
Man 2: The Libs are split down the middle and Tony Abbott put his hand up. He’s done better than anyone thought.
Man 1: Julia Gillard is a surprise package. It was a marriage of convenience between her and Rudd, but she’s got leadership written all over her
Man 2: Yeah, she’s a doer all right
Man 3: She’s a very intelligent woman. She’s tough too. Kevin Rudd will have to be careful
A future Abbott versus Gillard contest will be one Australians might perk up for.
For Mind & Mood fieldwork this time, I conducted groups in Melbourne but also Ballarat. It was my first visit to the town and it was just lovely, grander than I had anticipated but then I realised walking around that the beautiful buildings and wide streets suited its heritage as a gold town. I conducted a group at the Ballarat East Community Men’s Shed. See their link:
http://www.becs.shed.org.au/
Among many other things, they make wooden objects. See here for a list:
http://www.becs.shed.org.au/index.php/products-to-buy
I bought one of their newer products, a doll’s bed for my daughter’s second birthday.
One of the nicer aspects of my job is the chance to discover towns in regional Australia, meet and listen to the people that live there. As someone who lives most of her life in an inner-city, bourgeois bubble, these trips provide an important reality check.
Meal planning … have we lost the art?
I have blogged before about a report I was involved in last year called ‘Last Night’s Dinner’. One of the findings from the report was that most meal preparers only start to plan what they will have for dinner on any given night in the middle of the same day. Only Monday and Sunday main meals receive more time and attention, with Sunday dinner traditionally being an occasion for the family to gather together for a special meal like a roast. As the week goes on we tend to plan less and cook less, in part to do with our paid work commitments.
If you look at the chart from the report at the end of this post, depending on the dish, only 20% of less of us plan for a dish several days before we cook it.
I am a huge advocate of meal planning. I will get to the reasons in the minute but I thought I’d explain (or brag perhaps) about my meal planning process.
Every day Wednesday or Thursday night (depending on other commitments), I collect pen, shopping list and whatever cook book or torn-out-of-magazine recipes I have around. I check my schedule. What’s the next week going to be like? How many dinners do I need to prepare? How much time will I have? Lots of late nights or social commitments or not? I then work out how many dinners I will need to prepare and what types (quickies or those that are a bit more elaborate). I then start browsing through the cook books. I want a balance of red meat, chicken and seafood meals with at least one meat-less option. Once I have the weekly menu set, I write my shopping list. I check the pantry as well to see if I have any of the staples required.
I do this without fail every week. It sounds terribly anal, the height of food nerdyness but there are good reasons.
Number 1: I hate food waste. (Paraphrasing Nigella Lawson, I am always extravagant but never wasteful). If you know what you are cooking, you are much better positioned to only buy what you need. Furthermore, the more recipes you have in your repertoire, the easier it is to work out what to do with 4 eggplants that need to be cooked today or else.
Number 2: Life is too short to spend it in the supermarket. Even though I love browsing supermarket shelves for research purposes, most weeks I am doing the shopping at night after a long day or with a toddler who may well lose it once the babyccino has been polished off. So I like to know what I am doing and don’t have time to waste in the isles food planning on the run.
Number 3: I like to mix up what I make. Before the days of meal planning, I found that dinner often defaulted to pasta and sauce and my diet wasn’t as varied as it could have been. Planning allows me to think ahead about making different kinds of dishes and also helps me make sure I have the right mix of red meat, white meat, seafood and veggie dishes.
Number 4: I like to know what I am doing. Meal planning means the end of wondering mid-afternoon ‘what should we have for dinner?’ No more trying to remember whether there is risotto rice at home or not, spending way too much on risotto rice at the local deli and then returning home to discover you actually have 3 packets of the stuff. Planning saves you time, money and angst.
So why don’t we plan more? Maybe it’s because we feel our weeks are so hectic and stressful, that even if we did plan our meals, we may not feel like making them when the time comes. Or that our schedules are such moveable feasts that planning is a futile exercise. This is understandable. I often have to rethink the weekly meal plan in light of changing arrangements, but then again I always plan a few meals around ingredients that will last beyond the week (frittatas for example) or meals that can be frozen to be enjoyed another time.
Weekly meal preparation is, like restaurant cooking, a skill and a discipline. For many of us it seems, it is also a joy (only 18% of respondents in the research for ‘Last Night’s Dinner’ reported that cooking was a chore). So even thought planning to make something next week might seem to be premature, if you do like to cook, just trust once you get there, if you know what you are doing, it will probably happen.
If you plan for it, you will cook.
If you look at the chart from the report at the end of this post, depending on the dish, only 20% of less of us plan for a dish several days before we cook it.
I am a huge advocate of meal planning. I will get to the reasons in the minute but I thought I’d explain (or brag perhaps) about my meal planning process.
Every day Wednesday or Thursday night (depending on other commitments), I collect pen, shopping list and whatever cook book or torn-out-of-magazine recipes I have around. I check my schedule. What’s the next week going to be like? How many dinners do I need to prepare? How much time will I have? Lots of late nights or social commitments or not? I then work out how many dinners I will need to prepare and what types (quickies or those that are a bit more elaborate). I then start browsing through the cook books. I want a balance of red meat, chicken and seafood meals with at least one meat-less option. Once I have the weekly menu set, I write my shopping list. I check the pantry as well to see if I have any of the staples required.
I do this without fail every week. It sounds terribly anal, the height of food nerdyness but there are good reasons.
Number 1: I hate food waste. (Paraphrasing Nigella Lawson, I am always extravagant but never wasteful). If you know what you are cooking, you are much better positioned to only buy what you need. Furthermore, the more recipes you have in your repertoire, the easier it is to work out what to do with 4 eggplants that need to be cooked today or else.
Number 2: Life is too short to spend it in the supermarket. Even though I love browsing supermarket shelves for research purposes, most weeks I am doing the shopping at night after a long day or with a toddler who may well lose it once the babyccino has been polished off. So I like to know what I am doing and don’t have time to waste in the isles food planning on the run.
Number 3: I like to mix up what I make. Before the days of meal planning, I found that dinner often defaulted to pasta and sauce and my diet wasn’t as varied as it could have been. Planning allows me to think ahead about making different kinds of dishes and also helps me make sure I have the right mix of red meat, white meat, seafood and veggie dishes.
Number 4: I like to know what I am doing. Meal planning means the end of wondering mid-afternoon ‘what should we have for dinner?’ No more trying to remember whether there is risotto rice at home or not, spending way too much on risotto rice at the local deli and then returning home to discover you actually have 3 packets of the stuff. Planning saves you time, money and angst.
So why don’t we plan more? Maybe it’s because we feel our weeks are so hectic and stressful, that even if we did plan our meals, we may not feel like making them when the time comes. Or that our schedules are such moveable feasts that planning is a futile exercise. This is understandable. I often have to rethink the weekly meal plan in light of changing arrangements, but then again I always plan a few meals around ingredients that will last beyond the week (frittatas for example) or meals that can be frozen to be enjoyed another time.
Weekly meal preparation is, like restaurant cooking, a skill and a discipline. For many of us it seems, it is also a joy (only 18% of respondents in the research for ‘Last Night’s Dinner’ reported that cooking was a chore). So even thought planning to make something next week might seem to be premature, if you do like to cook, just trust once you get there, if you know what you are doing, it will probably happen.
If you plan for it, you will cook.
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