We painted, the children and I, last Sunday afternoon, newspapers spread out on the kitchen floor, fingers and old clothes smeared with those lurid colours of children’s paint boxes which nothing really ever is. In such moments, as idly swirl abstract patterns on my own piece of paper, I often think about how tempting it is for adults to take charge with children; to tell them what to paint, which colours to paint it, what adult-assumed detail to add. Adults do it with adults too: why else would most work performance reviews be really just a barrage of minor corrections equivalent to the adult suggesting the child add a nose to their gloriously noseless, pink, three-legged robot. The result? We become skilled in doing what we are told, but we don’t feel terribly satisfied doing it. Experience tells us that a real understanding of the basics followed by the odd helpful nudge is far better.

I joined Instagram in December: to see what all the noise was about and with the woolly hopes of promoting this blog. I could not resist following a few foodie gurus, so now it’s January and my phone is flooded with wheatgrass smoothies, braised kale and turmeric-infused chickpeas. I am not complaining – the images are beautiful and the ideas interesting – but there is something in amongst those many shades of green that reminds me of the children and their paintings.

The vast majority of these health-food recipes are complex. They require too many ingredients and too much preparation for a quick and nutritious evening meal. Following such recipes slavishly, morning, noon and night, would be to dedicate your life and finances to food preparation. However redemptive stocking your cupboards with chia, hemp and almond butter may feel, I am sceptical that it has a long-term impact on the way you eat.

Learning, in any context, is more incremental than that. It happens slowly in tiny self-motivated shifts, sometimes conscious, sometimes not, having seen that there exists a happier, easier, more accurate way of doing it. An example: I too have been learning to paint and each time I come back from the class, my children ask me to show them what we did. The second week was about faces. I talked about eyes and how they are only round beneath our eyelids and what we see on people’s faces is quite a different shape. I didn’t suggest they should draw like that but the next morning whilst they waited for their porridge to arrive on the table, I noticed my daughter drawing an eye just like an adult might.

Improving the way we eat must be the same. You begin by indulging a nascent interest: browsing recipes and trying out one or two which look appealing and easy. From there, you stumble upon a book or blog about nutrition (“Why We Get Fat” by Gary Taubes and “In Defense of Food” by Michael Pollen are good places to start) and use the odd bit that resonates to make gentle changes to your patterns of eating. It’s only then that exotic new recipes become just ideas, prompts, for flavour combinations or for new ways of using old things, because you’ll know enough about what you like and how the recipe might turn out to confidently omit the two spoonfuls of sugar in the tomato sauce. And, by the time February comes and you are faced with a fridge empty apart from a few sticks of celery, a lemon, some wilting spinach, leftover quinoa and half a tub of tahini, you will be able to create something pleasingly edible without having to resort to takeaway pizza (even if you’ve been “so good in January”).

So don’t clear out your bank account at Whole Foods or adhere to any exceptionally rigorous regimes this January. Instead, ask someone whose food you admire to show you how to make their signature stew or soup or whatever dish you like best (preferably nothing exceedingly rich, but if it is, just eat something lighter the next day). Along the way, you’ll be sure to find out something about them, about food and about what you like: just a small step in becoming more conscious about what you eat.

And to keep you going, a simple favourite of mine this winter…

Roasted cauliflower, sprouts and shallots with smoked mackerel

Serves four (or two for two meals)

Ingredients

• 1 small cauliflower
• A bag of sprouts
• 3 shallots
• Fresh baby spinach
• 2 ripe avocados
• A handful of pitted green olives
• 1 clove garlic
• Cider vinegar
• Olive oil
• 2 lemons
• Parsley
• 4 smoked mackerel fillets

Method 

Heat the oven to 200C and brush two baking trays with a film of olive oil. Wash the cauliflower and trim off its leaves. Then slice it, like you might a loaf of bread, into slices roughly 1cm thick. Place these on one of the baking trays, drizzle with more olive oil, sprinkle with salt and pepper and put into the oven.

Now prepare the sprouts. Rinse and take off the bottom and outer leaves (if necessary). Slice in half and arrange, flat-side down, on the other baking tray. Peel and cut the shallots into eighths and scatter around the same tray. Drizzle with olive oil and then sprinkle with salt, pepper, and cumin seeds. Add this tray to the oven as well.

In the meantime, rinse the spinach and share between four pasta / salad / soup bowls. Halve your avocados and de-stone. Run a knife horizontally and vertically through the avocado flesh without breaking the skin to make cubes. Leave in the skin for now.

Check the cauliflower. It should be starting to brown at the edges. If it is, then take it out briefly, flip the slices over and return to the oven. If your sprouts are taking to look brown too, also give them a flip.

Now make your dressing. Grate two cloves of garlic into a small jar. Add to this the juice of one lemon, a good dash of cider vinegar, pepper and plenty of olive oil. Rinse the parsley and chop into the same jar using the kitchen scissors. Screw the lid on tight and shake the dressing vigourously. Before taking out your vegetables (unless they are starting to look very crispy … !), slice the olives and take the skin off the mackerel (if you prefer it like that, otherwise leave the skin on).

Remove the vegetables from the oven when they have browned crispy edges. Over the sprouts squeeze the juice of one lemon. Then take a few pieces of each vegetable and assemble on top of the spinach in the bowls. Scoop out the already chopped avocado halves on top of this (one half per person). Break each mackerel fillet into a few pieces and add on top. Scatter with olives and, finally, drizzle each with plenty of dressing.

And our paintings, if you’re interested ….