Friday giveaway: my Bonlook glasses

If I had a dime for every time someone asks me where I got my glasses from…I’d have enough to shout Jo (who has to field such questions via Twitter, Facebook and this blog) dinner somewhere posh. The answer to the question, to help things out, is this: Bonlook, an online site where you enter your specs (prescription details) and they send you your…specs. And the style I’m wearing here: Urban Dandy.

Screen Shot 2012 09 27 at 11.55.02 PM1 Friday giveaway: my Bonlook glasses After getting a curiously large number of requests from Australia for Urban Dandies, Bonlook got in touch and offered to create a page where you can buy a pair of my glasses direct. (Just click on ‘my glasses‘ to order!)

Plus today they’re giving away:

one pair of cool glasses, worth $US99. The giveaway is open to all. To enter:

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handsome man and an apology

First the dude. There. Done. Now a quick apology for a messy clusterf*ck of blog spewage that those who follow my RSS feed were subject to today at lunchtime. Some gremlin took over for a few hours and sent out draft and rejected posts and Lord knows what other flotsam. Needless to say I realised … Read more

who checks in on you?

This week I spoke at yoga brand LuluLemon’s national conference. It was a room full of people comfortable in their Lycra and a yoga hairstyle (bun up high on head; enables headstand and backbend poses). I was in comfortable company!

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photo by Neil Stewart

I spoke about How to Build a Good Life, based on advice gleaned from interviewing the Dalai Lama, tap-dancing from a plane with Sir Richard Branson, crying with Oprah’s life coach, and more, across  758 blog posts and 130 Sunday Life columns. As well as from almost 39 years on the planet. At the end I boiled things down to this: what makes a good life is the struggle to find a good life. It’s the striving, not the arriving.

At the end, one of the Lulu people asked me a pearler of a question. She pointed out that I’d mentioned a number of experts and gurus I’ve interviewed over the years had life coaches, or spiritual mentors whom they employed to guide them. She then asked: who checks in on you?

I immediately got what she was asking. She wanted to know how I remained accountable. It hit me as all truly challenging propositions do: with a thud.

I’m a loner. I live, work and float about on my own, most of the day, most of the days. Therefore, my life can become very one-dimensional and self-referencing. I could kid myself I’m a generous soul…because who’s going to question it? I can
go about my various habits and indulge my foibles without ever being challenged to confront them or grow them or question them. I have no mirror held up to me. Or, rather, the only reflection I get is of myself.

By stark contrast, when you’re in a relationship you have a mirror constantly held up to you. When the other person’s behaviour shits you, it’s generally more a reflection of what’s shitty about yourself. And so you’re forced to grow. To be frank, I admire people in relationships for being able to endure this process on a daily basis. I truly do.

So who checks in on me? How do I ensure I’m held accountable? Who or what do I rise up to? The answer I gave was

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a slow food guide to iceland

This is part three in my Iceland series. You can check out my Iceland style and Iceland hiking guide as well. But today…it’s all about food, the stuff that fuels all my travels.

You can also peruse my Slow Food and Hiking Guide to Provence and my Slow Food and Hiking Guide to Andalucia.

Food in Iceland is seriously good. Delicate, revered, off-beat-nutritious. Surprised? Me too. You might have heard of the Nordic Cuisine scene? I touch on it here. In Iceland it’s followed with much parochialism and the Slow Food movement here is loud and proud.

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Catfish with puréed peas (grown by the chef’s grandad), “may beets”, mushroom foam and dulce at VOX restaurant

Once more I’ll do this guide as a series of pictures, mostly because Maria’s pictures are so wonderful and they tell thousands of words. If you want to learn more because you’re heading that way, two ideas:

If you eat at one place only…

Make it Vox at The Hilton in Reykjavic. Chef Fannar Vernharðsson is a passionate Slow Foodie. Every single ingredient in his joint is Icelandic. So much so, they don’t even use olive oil. He grows most of the ingredients himself (or his Grandad does, see dish above). He hangs and cures his own meat. And he takes time to come chat through his

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five things to do with apple cider vinegar

I traveled recently. You might have noticed. I traveled with some truly odd things. One of the oddest was a bottle of apple cider vinegar.

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photo by Ditte Isager

To qualify for a spot in my pack, an item had to have a dual purpose. As a minimum requirement. Well, ACV certainly passed the test.

Read here about what else I packed to travel.

People often ask me, however, what the big deal is with ACV and what one is meant to do with it. Well, I’m here to say I can name five things…

1. Drink it with warm water in the morning and before meals

I take a tablespoon in slightly cooled, boiled water as soon as I wake up, and again before dinner.

Why? Personally, it gets my appetite going (in the morning) and it gets my juices fired up ready for food (before dinner). Having an autoimmune disease, I lack the crucial HCL required for proper digestion. ACV kicks in and does the job of the missing acid. That said, everyone can benefit from the practice – it alkalises, and as I’ve said before, disease is unable to exist in an alkaline system.

The more you alkalise, the better you are.

Here’s some stuff to know:

* ACV works by correcting acid issues. It acts as a buffer in the body – the acetic acid reacts with base or acid compounds to form an acetate, therefore rendering them chemically bioavailable for the body’s utilization.

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i love copenhagen style: a perve

When I was in Copenhagen a few weeks back, Marija and I came up with a great way to meet locals. Especially the men.

Seen my Slow Food and Biking Guide to Copenhagen yet?

We would approach, explain that I’m an Australian journalist and that the two of us were doing a small photo essay and could we take their photo. Well. It worked. The Danes are notoriously reserved (not shy or necessarily cold; they just keep to themselves), but once you approach them first, they’re really rather open and warm and chatty. And not judgy of a stupid tourist antic like the one I describe.

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UM. Some of you might recognise these from somewhere? Those Danes…stylin’!

And so, a photo essay evolved.

The men are very handsome in these parts. We were dumbfounded. We named the phenomenon: CopenhagMen. And we coined our series of photos: “CopenhagMen with…”

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nuts are less fattening than you think

Sometimes I read things too interesting not to share. I came across this interesting read about calories in Scientific American. It involves nuts. And backs up much of what my body has been telling me for years. To illustrate today’s read – and to celebrate what you’ll learn below – I’m sharing another recipe from my I Quit Sugar Cookbook, for those of you who don’t have all 108 in a nice easy format. Activated nuts!

ACTIVATEDNUTS nuts are less fattening than you think
image via Marija Ivkovic

Here’s why you should activate your nuts. (Yes, I laugh every time, too.)

Want the recipe? Scroll below.

Inspired to buy the rest of the cookbook? Click this button below.

gb nuts are less fattening than you think

But for now…some interesting stuff to chew on…

I’m anti-calorie counting. It’s just not the way to eat.

For one, it’s miserable. When I’m miserable, I eat more.

For two, the “calories in calories out” formula just doesn’t make any sense. Surely our bodies are more complex than that?

For three, I eat close to double the amount of calories an adult woman is meant to. I can tell you, I need every one of them. I don’t fit the maths. Ergo, I abort the maths.

But now I read this: the way calories are calculated is completely unreliable. This explains why I can eat a lot of high-calorie food and it really doesn’t seem to have an affect on my weight. While sugary, carby foods do.

Some factoids from the article:

* The calorie counting formula was developed over a 100 years ago. Surely things have been updated since then? No?

* Some veggies contain a lot less calories than listed on the label. Cell walls in some plants are tougher to break down than those in others. If the veggie has more of it’s cell walls broken down we take more of the calories from the guff inside. Cooking ruptures most cell walls (so cooked veggies have more calories, generally); but in very fibrous vegetables

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a hiking guide to iceland

Another country, another guide. Thinking of going to Iceland? Do. Why? To see the landscape (hike, ice climb, frolic in a Fair-isle jumper on moss-covered lava fields aka this video), to eat the food and to just absorb the kookiness of the place. I’m going to do a three-part post, kids, because there’s too much to cover. First up was Wednesday’s guide to kooky Icelandic style. Today, it’s all about the hiking.

QYFUbyL a hiking guide to iceland

I’ll do this as a series of pics and tips. Cool? The magical Marija, once again, took the snaps.

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First thing to know: Iceland is so set up for tourists. Various tourism boards fall over themselves to help you. For free. You will find dealing with things at info centres a delight. We did. And found ourselves buying gifts for the staff to thank them. Ditto the tour guide company we dealt with. We went with Icelandic Mountain Guides. They didn’t just set us up on a few guided trips, they emailed us to advise on great places to eat in town, suggested unguided walks and secret hot springs to explore. Just because. And always with a joke.

They also run – you ready for this? – hiking and knitting tours…with elves.

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how are we all so brave?

I came across this image by Manhattan-based writer and illustrator Maira Kalman via Maria Popova, one of my favourite bloggers. I, too, ask myself this, with tears in my eyes: how are we all so brave? Because, God, we trip. The whole of humanity is constantly tripping and hurting and failing and trying to make things better. … Read more