individual moments of restlessness

Kay Redfield Jamison is a psychologist and sufferer of bipolar disorder who wrote An Unquiet Mind, a book I read many years ago when my rough trots were more prevalent than my smooth.

Image by Arne Olav
Image by Arne Olav

This observation from her book has always stood out and I returned to it recently:

I long ago abandoned the notion of a life without storms, or a world without dry and killing seasons. Life is too complicated, too constantly changing, to be anything but what it is. And I am, by nature, too mercurial to be anything but deeply wary of the grave unnaturalness involved in any attempt to exert too much control over essentially uncontrollable forces. There will always be propelling, disturbing elements, and they will be there until…the watch is taken from the wrist. It is, at the end of the day, the individual moments of restlessness, of bleakness, of strong persuasions and maddened enthusiasms, that inform one’s life, change the nature and direction of one’s work, and give final meaning and color to one’s loves and friendships.

It’s all OK, you know. The storms and bleakness and madness count for something. The restlessness will lead to something. These parts of life are not to be constantly derided, moved on from. Once I get over this rough trot, then life will start.No. They’re part of it all and it’s all happening now.. There is no run-up. No dress rehearsal.

And: it is the “individual moments” that count.

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I love food, hate waste: 15 (more) clever ways to use your leftovers

I’m a fan of using up leftovers. I turn it into a sport, as anyone who’s a regular reader of my blog would know. I’ve recently shared how Maggie Beer and Poh use their leftovers and how to eat your scraps.

Image via http://www.flickr.com/photos/captainspaulding/
Image via Captain Spaulding

Today I’ve pulled together a few extra tips and tricks for using stuff you couldn’t eat the night before. I’ve also asked a few foodie friends to contribute, including Curtis Stone whose latest book What’s For Dinner is really very, very clever. Martyna Candrick is a recipe developer and photographer in our orbit. For regular readers of this blog you’ll recognise her name. And for the chocolate fiends, you’ll recognise two of her recipes in the Chocolate Cookbook. My mate Arabella Forge is a Melbourne dietician whose book Frugavore is a flippin’ excellent resource and cookbook for anyone wanting to cook real and mindfully. Jules Clancy is a food scientist and blogs at The Stone Soup, usually using five ingredients or less.

So now, wrap your chops around these ideas:

1. Grow your scraps.

Try growing some of your scraps. Like a fennel bulb you didn’t get around to finishing. Simply place the white root end in a glass jar with a little water, and leave it in a sunny position. I keep mine in the kitchen window. The green leafy part of the plant will continue to shoot. When it’s time to cook, just snip off what you need from the green growth and leave the white root end in water to keep growing. Freshen up the water each week or so, and you’ll never have to buy them again. To learn how to grow more of your scraps, this article is insanely good.

2. Cook by what’s in your fridge.

Non-profit Foodwise has a handy tool whereby you type in your ingredient (say, avocado) and it will find relevant recipes. It also has loads of recipes from food celebs from Australia (Neil Perry, Kylie Kwong) and Britain (Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall; Paul, Stella & Mary McCartney).

3. Freshen your carpets with rosemary.

Use leftover rosemary or ginger to freshen your carpet. Just sprinkle the spices on your carpet and then vacuum. (They’ll freshen your vacuum, too!)  Try an

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A Friday Giveaway: 20 Pepe Saya butter wheels!

Oh it’s been a big week here in the office. My. Oh. But it’ s Friggen Friday…why don’t we ram things up with a Nice Thing to Giveaway. This time, Pierre Issa of Pepe Saya artisan butter has generously donated:

20 handcrafted 225 gram butter wheels

 

Pierre is great. He puts the Pepe in the Saya. And my fridge always has one of his wheels in my dairy tray. The stuff is good enough to eat straight with some rock salt (anyone else do this??). He and I have crossed paths a few times lately, most recently at the TedX Sydney event (which you can catch up on here if you missed me leading a carving up of a 500kg grass-fed Wagyu carcass in the forecourt of the Opera House). I love his crafty passion which he makes with his family by his side. His dad makes the round metal moulds that give the butter its distinctive shape, while all of the staff wear hats made by his mum.

Raspberry Ripple, photography by Marija Ivkovic
Raspberry Ripple, photography by Marija Ivkovic

Pepe Saya butter is made from 100 per cent local ingredients: single origin cream from jersey cows in Allansford, Victoria or Picton, New South Wales, and locally sourced sea salt, along with Murray River pink salt. “We sour the cream down, we churn it, wash it with filtered water, knead it, get the water out, pack it and label it. That’s it. That’s butter,” Pierre says.

Real and simple.

We thought you could use some of his butter (they also make ghee, buttermilk, crème fraiche and mascarpone) to make a few of the recipes in my I Quit Sugar Chocolate Cookbook. Like the Raspberry Ripple pictured above, where a good, salty butter is

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living with a wobbly mind

Perhaps you have a wobbly mind, too? In my experience, living with a wobbly mind is akin to being charged with carrying around a large, shallow bowl filled to the brim with water for the rest of your life. You have to tread super carefully so as not to slosh it all out.

Image by Fiddle Oak
Image by Fiddle Oak

So you must learn to walk steadily and gently.  And be super aware of every movement around you, ready to correct a little bit of off-balanceness here, a tilt to the left there. This is just the way it is.

Living this way requires vigilance and is about constant refinement. If you waiver and get unsteady, the water starts to slosh. And if you don’t bring yourself back quick enough, the sloshing gathers momentum and, well, you lose it. Right? And, just to really drag out this metaphor, this means you then have to return to the source and fill it back up again. Which is tiring. So tiring.

And just to push a touch further: to carry the bowl steadily means walking in a pretty straight line. Which means there will be scenarios and environments and people that simply are not conducive to your journey. They’re too bumpy or jarring or wobbly. Or crooked. Me, I can’t do late nights at bars and I struggle around people who live loud and fast. Don’t get me near people on cocaine – their frenetic energy drags me way out to the bumpiest of tracks.

My simple but noble aim in this lifetime is to build up more stability, bit by bit. Build up my core. Keep upright and

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how to live to 100: drink wine and walk

I’ve written about my visit to Ikaria a few times, through a little series that’s evolved on my blog titled “How to live to 100”. Paniyiris and wine, eating no sugar and eating pork are some of the tricks I came across.

Stamatis Moraitis tending his vineyard and olive grove on Ikaria.
Stamatis Moraitis, 102, tending his vineyard and olive grove.

Recently my mate Dan Buettner, a National Geographic adventurer and author of the New York Times bestseller The Blue Zones has been out and about spreading the word on the place, based on our trip there together last year. It’s been interesting to see what other journalists (who’ve since travelled to the island to see things for themselves) have found. Here a bit of a list drawn from Guardian and New York Times articles, from the mouths of the oldies themselves.

Drink wine and walk.

Gregoris Tsahas, 100: Drinks two glasses of red wine a day. And walks four hilly kilometres a day from his house to his local cafe and back.

Rest when you need to and sleep with the window open.

Kostas Sponsas, 100: “If I feel tired, I read. It rests my mind.” He never eats fried food. Always sleeps well and with the window open. Drinks herbal teas and red wine with his food.

Stamatis Moraitis, 102: Wakes up when he feels like it, works the vineyards til mid afternoon, has lunch and

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how to eat fish on the cheap.

I can linger at the fish monger. It can all be quite a bit to take in. I forget what species are sustainable and “good” to buy. And I dither about how to cook them. Recently, though, I decided to mount my monger meandering and learn a little more about what which fish to buy, and will now share my uncoverings here.

Image via Nicky and Max
Image via Nicky and Max

I’ve called on my friends at Greenpeace and Arabella Forge to join me. Arabella is a Melbourne dietician whose book Frugavore is a flippin’ excellent resource and cookbook for anyone wanting to cook real and mindfully.

Frugavore_cover - FINAL

She’s also the President of the Melbourne chapter of Weston A Price. So if that means something to you, you’ll very much like her work! Pam Allen who runs the sustainable seafood campaign at the Australian Marine Conservation Society has also weighed in. Plus I’ve thrown in some of my own findings, like…

1. Look out for salmon tails. I sometimes see these at my fish mongers. They’re the tail end of the fillet and often get tossed out. They have lots of lovely skin on them (the most nutritious bit of the fish…please don’t discard!!). They’re half the price of the rest of the fillet and cook up beautifully. And while we’re talking salmon…

2. Eat wild-caught instead of farmed salmon. Farmed salmon just isn’t sustainable. There are problems with the use of antibiotics and waste ending up in the natural environment. These might one day be overcome with very strict (and expensive) management to prevent any release into the ecosystem, but no one is getting it right here yet. Often wild-caught comes frozen, which is fine.

3. Favour herbivorous fish. This from Greenpeace: Most carnivorous species need to be fed a lot in order to be fattened, and this is having a significant impact on smaller species. For example, anywhere from three to over five kilograms of wild-caught fish is used to make the feed to produce one kilo of farmed salmon. Even if this feed is from sustainably managed species, it’s not an efficient ratio. The fish used to feed the salmon would be better used feeding humans.

4. Avoid anything on the red list. Pam: Some species on the sustainable fish “red list” (you can get hold of the list here) that are a big no-no are Southern Bluefin tuna, sharks (sold as flake in many fish and chip shops), striped marlin, swordfish. These

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my simple home: five ways to feng shui your joint in five minutes

If you’ve been following the My Simple Home series, you’ll know I’m on a mission to create the cleanest, most eco, minimal home possible and sharing each step, figuring you might like to learn from the process, too. I’ve shared on hazards you should avoid and how to detox your kitchen, and you can catch up on the full series here. I should add: it’s a very slow process. I’ve been so busy that, well, I haven’t even bought a couch yet. I know, I know…I’m sure many of you have much to say on this (um, commitment issues?). My friends certainly do.

But I digress.

This post I’ve got building biologist and feng shui expert Nicole Bijlsma sharing her top five tips for getting the energy in my place sorted. It’s a snappy three minute video, if you’ve got the time. Otherwise, I’ve shared the highlights below.

1. Get rid of clutter.

Clutter represents the past. Hanging on to stuff? You’re hanging on to old stuff. Figuratively and literally.

2. Watch for the highs and lows.

Hidden clutter under the bed has an impact on you as you sleep. It stores in your body, and can make you sluggish. And clutter up high suggests the feeling of having things rain down on you. Remove the highs and lows.

3. Sit with a solid wall behind you.

Furniture placement is important. In a room where you spend lots of time – sitting at a work desk, or on a couch – make

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Relax your nostrils

This is a rippin’ technique for highly strung, nervous types. Like me. We can’t “just relax”. We have to trick ourselves into it. Go about it from a different angle. This is OK. Truly it is. But we must do it – trick ourselves, do whatever it takes – so we can continuously,  slowly, slowly, not-all-at-once unwind. We have to keep working on it, little pocket of tension by little pocket of tension. This matters. We can’t keep going as we do. It’s not the point of life to be forever brittle and ready for attack.

Photo by Terry Richardson
Photo by Terry Richardson

So…

Relax your nostrils.

Soften the inside of your ears.

Release your toenails.

Let go of your teeth.

Let go of your eyelashes.

Repeat.

Did you just do it? It works, yes?

A yoga teacher once told me to relax my nostrils. I took it further and released more ridiculous parts of my body, one by one. And I found my whole body released when I did.

It’s just too much to relax one’s shoulders or to release tension all over. By targeting inconsequential parts of my body, there’s less pressure, less onus. It’s like my exercise theory: if I tell myself I have to head out for a one-hour gym session, I’ll baulk. But if I merely commit to a 20-minute walk and I’ll not only do it, I’m likely to walk for longer,

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my new love: cauliflower

I’ve found a new love. It’s an autumnal love. She’s versatile. She spreads herself generously. She’s sweet, but not toxic and, OK, she’s cheap.

Parmesan roasted cauliflower. Image via Pinterest
Parmesan roasted cauliflower. Image via Pinterest

I’ve been playing with cauliflower for a few weeks now. I think you should have a go, too. These clunky white nuggets are full of antioxidants, rich in fibre and Vitamin C, a natural detoxifier and an anti-inflammatory food. Yep, they’re a cruciferous vegetable and contain goitrogens that meant to be problematic for those of us with thyroid issues. But my take on this issue: there are far worse triggers to dampen thyroid. Plus, the goitrogenic enzymes are partially destroyed by heat. If you don’t binge on the things and only eat them cooked, you’re all good…IMO.

So…some ideas worth spreading:

1. Cauliflower Fried Rice

Serves 2

  • 3 cups cauliflower (approx half head of small cauliflower)
  • 1 tablespoon coconut oil or olive oil
  • 2  eggs
  • 2 garlic cloves, minced
  • 1 carrot, diced
  • ½ cup frozen peas
  • 3 green shallots, sliced
  • 100g prawns shelled, diced*
  • Tamari or soy sauce to taste
  • sea salt, to taste

Grate the cauliflower on the larger side of a cheese grater, or pulse in a food processor until it’s rice sized. Wrap the riced cauliflower in a couple paper towels and squeeze it to remove any excess moisture.

In a small fry pan, skillet or wok, fry the prawn meat in one teaspoon oil until almost cooked, then set aside. Beat the eggs then cook as a flat omelette in another teaspoon of the oil. Remove from the pan and slice into strips using a knife or a pair of

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a friday giveaway: 30 Wild Patch chocolate gifts

Because it’s a Friday, and it’s a long weekend, I thought it might be nice to giveaway chocolate. This time, Linda from Wild Patch has kicked in to share:

30 x fructose-free chocolate gifts, worth $15 each plus shipping 

I’ve shared a bit of Linda’s story before. She’s a chocolate maker from Olinda (near Mt Dandenong) in Victoria, who did my I Quit Sugar program a while back, prompting her to create a fructose-free line. Nice!

Chocolate Granola Clusters
Chocolate Granola Clusters, from my Chocolate Cookbook. Photography by Marija Ivkovic

Linda’s been importing German brand Frusano’s fructose-free chocolate bars for a while (“mainly for our own consumption” she says). Now, along with selling Frusano bars (these are the ones I’ve mentioned here on this blog before), she sells a range of fructose-free chocolate products that she makes. She also sells sugar-free chocolate supplies, including 100% cacao mass (unsweetened chocolate), cacao nibs, cacao powder and cacao butter – if you’re looking for ingredients to

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