Happy Eating Day!

Whether you celebrate Easter or not, I wish plenty of amazing food on all of you today.

Image from Flickr

M & I are off to my parents' for lunch today to eat way too much food, then I imagine a quiet night with soup and holding our stomach's complaining a lot.  There's nothing better than too much food with family.


I have made a banana cheesecake which I invented myself! I am only just starting to experiment in the world of desserts without recipes, (I never use recipes for non-dessert meals, and if I do I alter it at least 50%), and I am rather proud of my banana cheesecake effort.  Healthy?  Hell no.  I'm thinking mastering the unhealthy version and then starting to substitute to make it a little more health-friendly is the way to go.  Trial & error - I love the learning process!


I am also a very lucky girl who received a cute little German chocolate bunny from M.  Made my weekend.


So what is the writer's challenge today?

Best conversation I had this week. Try writing script-style (or with dialogue) today to recap an awesome conversation you had this week.

It wasn't really a conversation, but there was a moment when Mum told me she'd made her sultana tea cake, (which she always makes as she likes something a little sweet with her coffee in the afternoon), but she'd replaced the sugar with Natvia and she couldn't tell the difference so she was going to use that from now on.  I think it's the highest compliment when my own mother, who is the whole reason I know how to cook, cooks something or changes something in her cooking on my recommendation.  She went on to say that every time she eats or makes something fatty/high in sugar etc, that she can hear my voice in the back of her head.  She also told me she can't eat milk chocolate anymore because it's too sweet and she needs the dark!  So proud!


Has anything I've written on this blog influenced what you do with your cooking?

Have you ever tried one of my recipes?

Are you someone that has known me in real life and you like reading my blog?

People liking my blog makes me so happy!

Enjoy your food this Sunday & stay well,
Nat x

My Week...

This would be a usual 'Week in Food' post, but I'm seriously lacking in the photo department. Why? My virus has come back & I am still not feeling great. Well that's a lie, I do feel great and I am bursting with energy, but my glands, ears and stomach are telling me a different story. As a result I lived on vegetable broth with soba noodles, rice and toast most of the week. Not the most exciting thing to photograph! But I did get the following in;

 Home made muesli with milk and grated apple

 First morning stomaching something that wasn't toast for breakfast, I was drooling at the site of this spoon of goodness. Yummmm!

Pistachios being chopped for some yummy pistachio & rosewater balls I made
 Recipe to follow next week.





 

 Prawns, home grown beans and roasted cauliflower
This was dinner last night, but my tummy wasn't quite ready and M ate half the prawns.

Ugh, is there anything more frustrating than a stomach that can't enjoy food? I hope your week was better than mine!

The writer's challenge today was to write about whatever you want... so I did that, tick!

Plans for the Easter long weekend are ... rest! Lunch at my parents tomorrow with loads of amazing food, so I hope my stomach is up to the task. I am making dessert - a coffee liqueur cheesecake and some caramel slice. Slowly slowly. I have to do something, I am so bored of the couch & day time television.

Have a beautiful Easter & enjoy your egg and bunny shaped chocolates, and please have a warm hot cross bun! With jam and cream. Best.

Stay well (according to my facebook wall and twitter feed, not many people are managing this. Must be the season!)

See you tomorrow,
Nat x

You're Not Stuck

What a beautiful day in Melbourne.  Sunny, 30 degrees, still; probably the last glimpse of warmth we'll get until November or so (let's hope not).  It's a shame I am still under the weather as the boyfriend has taken off to the beach!


But not all is lost.  Some early morning yoga (there are some great videos on You Tube, just have a look at the comments and views to ensure a safe practice), a cup of honey & lemon and a stroll in  the back yard (soon to be a beautiful garden when we get working on our make over).  I might go for a gentle stroll in the street after this, we'll see.


Yesterday was spent on the couch with day time television.  Say what you will about The Doctor's and Dr. Oz - I was glued.  My only concern is that they say something is good, and the whole of America suddenly goes out and buys it.  Oh well, better than Oprah (which I never really understood the fascination with, sorry).

 

Something I discovered I want this week is to go and see Heston Blumenthal live.  At $195 a ticket, I'm not sure it's the most affordable idea, especially as The Boyfriend is not especially interested.  Is anyone else interested in going?  I might consider it if someone wanted to come along to the Melbourne show.

Onto the challenge..

  

 Ekphrasis Post. Go to flickr.com/explore and write a post inspired by the image. Can you link it to your health focus? Don’t forget to post the image!

 I don't really understand what this has to do with health writing, but OK... 

Well, that's a lucky dip.

Beautiful photo, obviously everyone would love to be as free as an eagle. I guess I think it's a misconception that we're not. A great friend, (the same one that got me my first nutrition book, C), said to me when I was in a job I hated and living a life without passion to not forget I can always change my life and I am never stuck. I find that incredibly comforting. Lola Berry posted on Facebook the other day as a status, "If you don't like your life, move; you are not a tree", or something to that effect.  So true, so comforting.  The whole exception to this rule, in my opinion, is when you are caring for loved ones - be they ill, or just healthy children.  Ill is difficult, but children are a result of an earlier decision and never mean you are stuck.  Think of Netball (I'm sure if I know this with my limited knowledge, you will too).  When you get the ball in Netball, you freeze.  One foot has to stay in the same spot it was in when you caught the ball, and the other foot and your arms can move freely.  You still have options.  I liken this to having kids or having a particular situation you will not leave due to love; yes, you may have to keep that particular activity going and would never dream of leaving it, but your other 3 limbs, or the rest of your life, can still be changed and if you're not happy, it should be!

There are a lot of unhealthy people in this world who literally do not have any choice in how they are living their life - I was one of them once.  Do not waste your life being unhappy.

Yes, all of that dribble from the picture of an eagle.. or is it a hawk?




Day 6 of the challenge, (today), involves writing a Haiku (poem) about your health focus.  They say you can have two free days off, and I have chosen this as my first.  I do not think my readers are particularly interested in my serious lack of poetic talent.


Enjoy the start of your Easter long weekend & I'll bother you again tomorrow.


Stay well,
Nat x

Day 4 of the Writer's Challenge

Day 4 of the Writer's Challenge;

I write about my health because… 
Reflect on why you write about your health for 15-20 minutes without stopping.

15 to 20 minutes, are you sure?  I type pretty quickly & I'm not entirely sure anybody would want to read 15-20 minutes of my blubber, nor am I sure I have enough content to answer this question to fill 15-20 minutes of typing.  But anyway, here goes..

Image from Flickr

I think anyone who has been reading my blog for more than 4.3-4.8 seconds (4.9 does have a chance), would now know that I spent a hefty chunk of my life, 'under the weather', to say the least.  In case you fall into the under 4.3 seconds of reading Natalie's blog category, you can read a post I wrote as I just started recovering from said period of ill health for Mia Freedman on her web site Mama Mia, here.  Or here.

Needless to say, that was the worst period in my life.  In fact, to be honest, it was such a bad period that my brain seems to have wiped it and genuinely can't remember the majority of it, I only know I experienced it because of the videos and writing I did.  I kind of remember the night I first became paralyzed and definitely became bed bound, (Easter Sunday eve 2006), and then I remember going to the supermarket again for the first time sometime in 2009.  The whole period in between, which I spent in bed, is gone from my mind.  Sometimes, I am glad.

My illness was not avoidable and certainly not preventable in mine and many professionals' opinions, however while I was ill and especially as I was recovering, I started to learn how I could help the management of my symptoms just with what I ate.  It made me sad to learn a lot of people with my illness, well, a milder form, got through their days eating fast food and downing energy drinks or caffeinated drinks as I had started learning what that was doing to their body in the long term.  Then I started to realise some people have illness and feel sick all the time, just like I did, (some just as severe), purely because of the food and nutrition choices they have made in their life/just because of the meals they choose to eat and the way they do their grocery shopping.  This bothered me, and still bothers me so, so much.  How can you have this one single body and treat it like crap every day?  Surely if you knew you'd end up sick, you wouldn't have eaten all that rubbish?  I figured people who did this didn't really know how fabulous they could feel if they just changed their diet and learnt how to cook, and so my passion for teaching people about food as a preventative medicine begun.

You will sometimes see me get fired up about fad diets, which is, in my opinion, anything that takes over the media and is non-stopped talked about, despite how warranted or scientifically proven is - fad to me is any trendy diet.  I think people lose sight of the middle ground and have a kind of all or nothing approach.  I hate that!  I want people to learn an approach to food and healthy living that is just a change in lifestyle and a new mind set.  OK, I get it, sugar is the devil and all that, but if I go to a wedding I am going to eat a piece of wedding cake and this does not make me an idiot or ill-informed, I know exactly what I am eating and how it is interacting with my body, but I choose to do it anyway.  This is what I want for the world, the knowledge; how people use it is completely up to them, as long as they are aware.


I think the sad thing is many people don't know what they're eating, not everyone reads the nutrition panels (or NIPS, as I've recently learnt they're abbreviated to in industry..), and not everyone reads the ingredients list.  Not everyone knows there's sugar and chemicals in foods they'd never expect.

I write about nutrition and health to make people aware and to educate.

If you came to me and had a chronic illness and decided to manage it with energy drinks, caffeine and sugar, and I told you what those items are doing to your body and you acknowledged and understood that and walked away to continue to consume them, I would respect your decision.  It's your body and you can do what you like with it, much the same as smokers and drinkers still smoke and drink; it's not due to lack of awareness.  I just can't stand the idea that people don't know what they're eating.

Also, I just plain bloody love it.  I am so, so lucky to have found such a huge passion in life and truly believe it's my life calling.  I live and breathe it, just asked poor M who's response to, 'Do you like it?' when I offer him something new to try, (like my recent walk over into sugar free brownie land), is, 'It's OK for something healthy / Yeah, you can tell it has no sugar, but it's OK'.

Phew, 13 minutes is enough!  Let me know if you read it all....

Whatever your blog is, why did you create it?

Stay well,
Nat x

Writer's Challenge; Super Power

Superpower Day

If you had a superpower – what would it be? 

How would you use it?

This one is far too easy for me;  After being ill for a very long time and learning the hard way that without health, you have nothing - my superpower would be to cure illness.  Once I had cured all the illness in the world, I would go on to cast a spell over all living things that stopped disease from ever occurring in the first place.  Prevention is better, cheaper and easier than cure!

So my super power would be to heal.

Now here's a real-life food super hero....

See you tomorrow when I share why it is I write about health...

Stay well,

Nat x

Health Writer's Challenge; Day 2

"Quotation Inspiration. Find a quote that inspires you (either positively or negatively) and free write about it for 15 minutes."

This quote was only sent to me this morning by my friend, C, when I was pondering decisions like leaving full time stable work for university, wondering if it was the right decision and all that (I know for sure I want to study nutrition, but sometimes question how I'm going about it or my timing).

It also reminds me of a lovely lady, G, that I used to work with, who once said to me, "If you're scared you know it's the right thing to do because you're challenging yourself".  I hope she reads this so she knows I remember.

I'm not interested in people being scared of me or being particularly feisty or loud, and I'm not really interested in being an extreme person, (in fact, I have spent a lot of time avoiding that exact personality trait), but I do hope to always be as strong as I can be and always tackle everything as head on as I can (comfortably do).  I'm not interested in disappearing and I'm  not interested in going with the flow, I like to make things happen, and super do not believe in 'luck'.  In fact, one of the most annoying things I find that people say to me in relation to my illness is how 'lucky' I was that I got better.  OK, a, super smidge, of luck was involved that the particular treatment I went on did eventually work for me, but I made the decision to tackle the most insane treatment protocol ever, which made me incredibly sick before I got better, and I chose to stick with it for years on end.  That bit was not luck , it was damn hard work.  

So when I wake up in the morning I don't want the devil, or anyone, really, to think 'oh crap' because I am up, I want them to think 'oh crap, what is she going to make happen today'.  I want to continue to be strong and determined in myself and always aim high and chase after what I want, but I also want to be gentle in my approach to myself and others.  I am on a rampage, but I am only rampaging to make my own life exactly how I want it.

I'm not sure if that made sense.

Stay well,

Nat x

Week in Food / Health Activist Writer’s Month Challenge

Happy April!  1/4 of the year down, so far, so good!

As I've previously mentioned, I'll be participating in the Health Activist Writer's Month challenge. Basically, I've accepted the challenge to write a post a day for a month about the topic WEGO Health has set. You can check out the WEGO Health site here, their Facebook page here, or check out hashtag #HAWMC on Twitter.

Today's topic;

"Pretend you’re making a time capsule of you & your health focus that won’t be opened until 2112. What’s in it? What would people think of it when they found it?"

My capsule would have my Janella Purcell books, as her way of cooking and living is what I am striving for constantly and she inspired me to get into nutrition in the first place. It would also contain some Stevia, Agave Nectar, Coconut Sugar, Pure Maple Syrup etc, to reflect my current mission to not feel the need for sugar on a weekly basis.  It would contain the URL for my new web site (hopefully launching beginning of May!), as that is where all my thoughts would be and it would be interesting to see how it'd grown. I'd also stick a McDonald's Big Mac in there to see if it's true that they don't really ever go off... ew. 
I'm not sure what people would think when they found it, probably that I was crazy because by 2112, we will know SO much more about health, nutrition and food etc.  It would be naive to think we won't.  A part of my brain constantly thinks that going back to basics as the trend is now, (tracking back in time to find the way way to eat), will eventually go out of fashion and we will come back to the technology we use for everything else - food engineered to be easily digestible and best for us that mimics nature. Who knows? The future excites me!

Check back in tomorrow when I talk about a quote that inspires me....

Now for my Week in Food....


Where I made my first ever Hot Cross Buns.

They needed more spice and more fruit, but they were good for a first go.  I was sad that my criss-crosses disappeared.

I was sad to hear many kids won't be eating hot cross buns or Easter eggs this coming weekend as they contain sugar.  OK, if not giving any sugar to your kids is that important that's OK and I support that, at least offer an alternative that mimics the bun or egg; don't offer carrots instead (I seriously heard people say this; because 'bunnies eat carrots too'.)

Spicy Lentil Soup

Onion, garlic, ginger, chilli, diced carrot, rind of 1 lemon - fry off.  Add red lentils, canned tomatoes and some reduced salt vegetable stock, cook until lentils are tender.  Add spinach and cook for 2 more minutes.  Finish off with a squeeze of lemon juice.  Super tasty & good for the cold I've had for 4.8 million years (ie. 3 weeks).

The Easiest Curry Ever

Just add onions, garlic, cumin, ginger, sweet potatoes and chick peas to those cans.  That is by far my favourite packaged curry paste but go easy; it is hot.

Stuff that lived on my kitchen bench all week

Yesterday M & I went to the Flower & Garden show.  It was stunning, but I still have this cold (as does half of Melbourne, well, at least around where I live), and wasn't as enjoyable as it could have been as a result.  It still made me desperately want a larger block to have a bigger garden, though.  We are doing our garden in the coming months, so a lot of inspiration was taken (excessive plants randomly planted, please).

Hello, I also cut my hair off.

Love this, want this in our garden.



So I guess I'll see you tomorrow.. anyone else participating in HAWMC?

I have a physiology test tomorrow and I've got a good day of study ahead of me.. then my next few weeks are pretty cruise-y, a lot of catch up study and revision, and hopefully a lot of work on my web site.

Stay well, (& check back tomorrow)

Nat x