Please meet my biggest, best book yet: Simplicious

Simplicious hits bookstores today. No drum rolls please. I’m just pleased as punch that it’s here. It was two years of work. It’s 306 recipes. And I’ve taken a gamble here…it’s about how to eat your scraps. This book is my career highlight, my passion project, my obsession.

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An assortment of my mish mash meals…using up leftovers is a big theme in Simplicious

Sustainability has always been at the guts of my books, albeit camouflaged behind pretty recipes and shiny, smiley pictures of myself. My recipes use leftovers and secondary cuts of meat and I’ve used my sugar-free platform to promote doggie bags and, um, cauliflower, to the masses.

But Simplicious gets bolder.

* It elevates leftovers and sustainability to centre stage. Every single recipe is designed to cut wastage (food, time, effort, pans, palaver). In fact, even the scraps from the photography shoots were repurposed…into soup, pestos and staff lunches. Event the leftovers from these soups, pestos and lunches were repurposed…into the dress I wear on the inside cover!

No food was wasted in the making of this book!

* I set out to be 100 per cent authentic and transparent. I did the whole project. Even the illustration and graffiti, which I use to have chats with all you guys throughout the book (you’ll see what I mean when you get hold of a copy!)

(And herewith a LOUD BUY NOW prompt…I’m sorry!)…

Buy-Now-Button-1

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Trend alert: Talking in full sentences (and nicer times ahead)

So shoot me down for being a bit hopeful, but I’m seeing a few “moments” that are adding up to a nicer picture than we’ve been dealt recently.

Found on fourtears.tumblr.com
Found on fourtears.tumblr.com

These zeitgeist observations tend to land you in trouble. Or they used to. You flag a personal thought or you simply put out an idea for discussion and you get shouted and trolled down, often for some pinnicky, side factor, or a typo, or a joke that lacked perfect nuance. That’s been the way for a while….for too long.

This has saddened me. This pouncing-for-the-sake-of-pouncing has shut down deeper, more reflective thought. It’s made women too self conscious to voice their feminism. It’s left bloggers, journalists and authors second-guessing and toning down their writing to avoid attacks from commentators who refuse to do the deeper thinking around an issue, instead putting their energy into shredding complex ideas with facile, destructive, binary judgement. And then click-baiting it.

And it’s left our political leaders talking in three-word slogans. Slogans that talk to policies that are facile, destructive and binary.

Stop The Boats.

No Carbon Tax.

No Queue Jumpers.

Sometimes Shit Happens.

Here in Australia we’ve had a very significant leadership change that we’re yet to absorb fully. But I found it telling

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What to leave out: The key to creativity

I highly recommend long reading. Not least because of the lovely knowledge that unfurls from it. I also think that committing to a long read narrows, focuses, hones and gets you still. It’s the antidote to the frazzle of short-form toggling.

Image by Steve McCurry
Image by Steve McCurry

It’s a Sunday afternoon thing for me, to read all the lengthy prose I’ve collated during the week from the The New Yorker, Atlantic, The New York Times, The Monthly and The Quarterly Essay. I “flag for follow up” or email links and tweets to myself during the week. And then open them all at once and dive in. (Out of interest, how do you go about it, if indeed you do?)

All of which is a funny preamble to today’s good quote share that I pulled from The New Yorker long writer John McPhee’s essay on omission which, ironically goes on…and on (worth a long read!). It’s an Ernest Hemingway quote:

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.

The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”

If you’re a writer, take note of this trick – cutting out stuff that you can gamble your reader will get, or will

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A listicle of toxin-free beauty goodness

Thank you for all the extra tips you’ve all shared following my toxin-free cosmetics and beauty oils posts. I’ve popped a stack of them into one post for easy reference. You’re welcome.

Image via Jason Nocito
Image via Jason Nocito

Tips you’ve shared for blending and using oils

  • I make my own body butters with Coconut + Vitamin E + Shea + Jojoba oil, add the essential oils, et voila….change up the essential oils for different needs. – Sam
  • I tried Trilogy rosehip oil on my acne-riddled face a year ago and it changed my whole complexion! I’ve also since tried jojoba which seems to have worked just as well. Such a simply, lovely solution. – Maggie
  • I like a drop of vetiver oil on the soles of my feet at night – it’s very grounding. – Kristen
  • I add 10 drops each of frankincense, myrrh and lavender to a bottle of Kosmea rosehip oil, beautiful on my face and my skin has improved dramatically. It smells divine and is very calming at night. I also add the same oils to a blend of jojoba oil and sweet almond oil to apply to the rest of my body as well as a squirt of magnesium spray. – Anne
  • I use honey to wash my face, plain and raw. I use a face brush and rinse in warm water. I sometimes add a little jojoba oil to the honey. Honey is antibacterial so it works a treat. – Leonie
  • My oil tip is for killing nits! Instead of bombing them with poisonous concoctions I put olive or coconut oil in my kids’ hair so the buggers drown and then comb them out. Works every time! – Ms Jane

Tips you’ve shared for DIY bathroom essentials

  • Dry Shampoo: Just pop a little arrowroot on the scalp and brush through, if you have darker hair add in a little cacao too. Dab a makeup brush in it, dab it on the scalp and brush. Works as well as any dry shampoo out there. – Danielle

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Have an autoimmune disease? This Program will probably help.

I quit sugar to manage my autoimmune disease. And after almost five years of being off the sweet stuff, I can say this: Quitting sugar had the biggest impact on my disease (Hashimotos) more so than any other medical “fix”.

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Today I’m able to hike and bike and travel and function normally most days.

I have zero thyroid antibodies now, am on the minimum dosage of thyroxin and my hormone levels have fallen back into the right range. My doctors and endocrinologist confirm that the concerted changes I’ve made to my diet are the most probable cause. Which is high praise indeed (you’d know what I mean if you have an endo in your life!).

So will quitting sugar help you if you have an autoimmune disease? I can confidently say, yes.

Mostly because since doing the experiment for myself, I’ve looked into the science behind it all. It goes a little something like this…

Sugar mucks up your gut

Blood sugar imbalances inflame the digestive tract, causing leaky gut (literally, a perforated gut lining). In turn, leaky gut triggers the development of AI. Toxins are able to pass through the perforations into the bloodstream triggering an autoimmune reaction as our antibodies head out to attack the foreign invaders. These little antibody soldiers can then get confused and head off to attack parts of our bodies, such as the thyroid.

Screen Shot 2014 09 18 at 9.34.56 AM Have an autoimmune disease? This Program will probably help.

Sugar causes inflammation

The process above obviously creates inflammation, which compromises immune function. In addition, sugar

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In defence of bookstores

Here’s a bourgeois inner-city faux-boh statement for you: The death of bookstores is another win for capitalism.

Via Womenreading.tumblr
Via WomenReading.tumblr

Sounds like something people in fisherman pants said in the uni refectory back in 1993. But actually New York writer Adam Gopnik did. He argues that capitalism grew up with smaller, intimate institutions existing alongside – cafes, bookstores, etc – to keep things in check and keep humans connected to true progress.

“These intermediate institutions were where the real work of eighteenth-century mind-making got done. Enlightenment happened more often in a café than a classroom. It still does.”

“Markets don’t make men free; free men (and women) have to have the confidence to accept the instability that markets make.”

And confidence… where do we get this? I truly believe we get it from quiet moments where we get closer to

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This brutal trick for A-types will sift out mediocrity

I came across a book by writer and business consultant Greg McKeownEssentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. I’m rather a fervent fan of the “less is more” approach.

Image via ville-noire.com
Image via ville-noire.com

Actually, to be frank, I came across a read that mentions Greg’s book. In said read, one of McKeown’s ideas is fleshed out: that the busyness of the go-getter can lead to mediocrity just as much as the lethargy of the lemming. Go-getters tend to throw themselves at every opportunity. The spray gun approach. Which invariably means they end up doing a lot of unimportant stuff, and often badly.

McKeown’s antidote for the over-zealous, A-type achiever wishing to avoid luke-warmness is the “90% Rule”:

When considering an option, ask, “does it score at least 9/10 on some relevant criterion?” If not, say no.

In essence, it’s a rather extreme boundary aimed at steering types like myself from doing the unimportant stuff.

The criterion might be “Is this fulfilling?” (ideally), “Is this exactly what I want?”, or “Does this align with the company’s values?” And so if a new opportunity comes around don’t consider

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I’ve gawn fishin’…

I’m off. Not quite fishing, but off to write my next book (yes!) so I figured I’d leave you with a bit of a teaser for Simplicious in my absence…

Done. Out of here. Gawn fishin'...
Done. Out of here. Gawn fishin’…

As you might have picked up from my blog, I’m fired up about waste. Mindless consumption. All of it, but also very specifically food waste.

I’ve always eaten the whole apple, core and all. My tiny apartment kitchen is littered with recycled jars filled with the drippings from last night’s chops (which I use to sweat my veggies, thus adding the right fats for absorbing the essential vitamins), the water from steaming my silverbeet (perfect for padding out soup) and the olive oil from the marinated feta my friend was going to chuck when I was at her place for lunch (ready-made salad dressing, people!).

My fridge is a rainbow of fermented vegetables made from the ‘ugly’ veggies my local markets can’t sell on. My freezer boasts a plastic bucket containing three fish carcasses that I retrieved from guests’ plates at a friend’s dinner party. They’ll be turned into fish stock, a litre of which I’ll send back to said friend as a

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The Simplicious book cover my publisher rejected…

My new book, Simplicious, arrived on my desk this week. It was more than 18 months in the building and hits book stores at the end of this month. Here’s the cover…you can probably get the rough vibe. It’s fat, it’s sustainable, it’s about sticking it up Big Food and Over Consumption, it’s geared at gut health and…it features a recipe for Cheeseburger Dim Sims. Yeah, that.

Sarah Wilson Simplicious Cover
The approved, real cover of Simplicious

But, the original cover concept was to go a little something like this…

Sarah Wilson Simplicious Cover
The cover I planned for…

I had this idea: I’d take a dress I bought for $3 at the dump when I was 18 and sew food scraps into it. PLUS create a ridiculous bouquet made with bones (which the team on the shoot had to chew to get clean) and veggies sourced, um, from the bin.

Buy Now Button 1 The Simplicious book cover my publisher rejected...

Then I’d pose like Beyonce in the whole silly get-up in a way that delivers a certain nod to my past as editor of

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Louis C.K. on the pain of always being “the one who copes”

Love Louis? I’d be surprised if you didn’t. He’s humanely and humanly funny. By which I mean, he plants the basics of life in front of us and does little more than tickle us with our own absurdity. And pain. And reality.

Here's how I cope... I head bush.
Here’s how I cope… I head bush.

I trawled through some interviews with him recently, to learn more about The Guy Himself. I discovered he was as raw and ugly and normal as I wanted him to be.

He shared his experience of a rough patch and his struggles with life in general (PS, make sure you consider the below quote in the context in which I flesh it out here):

“It never stopped getting worse. I remember thinking, This is too much for me to handle. I wanted to give up. I knew it was my right to. But then a few minutes would go by and I’d realize, I’m still here…

“There was no escape from it. And I’d be a little disappointed at not being truly suicidal. I hated being ‘all right.'” 

I have to be careful here. I’m not wanting to gloss over his – or anyone’s – experience with suicide.
I’d like to, if I can, focus on that last bit – that being “all right” was a hard experience in itself.

When I was in my twenties, I felt the same. I was struggling terribly with life and, yet, I kept on coping.

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