I have fallen off the coffee wagon. Thankfully the experience was so hideous that I lept straight back on without touching the road!
Back from an Easter celebration, good vibes and happy feelings, surrounded by colourful people and great friends. My Tuesday morning mission....go to the city of Cape Town council offices to sort out an account issue.
I skipped into the building still blissed out. The traffic was light, not many people in the building, all the right signs for a swift experience. I walked straight up to the counter, the lady looked at my paper, shook her head and pointed to another counter.
The queue was so long that it snaked back upon itself three times.
Now I don't understand what happens in my brain when I see a queue that long, but I am now quite certain that there is a gland somewhere which secretes something, making all rational thought impossible.
If anyone said to me "When would be the worst time ever to drink coffee, turn you into she bitch from hell and make the lives of everyone around you a sheer misery?" I would respond by saying "Sorting out an account with a lacklustre person who sits behind a sheet of bullet proof glass".
The next thing I knew I sitting in this queue with a coffee in one hand and a newspaper in the other.
I should have walked away when the lady next to me revealed that she had flown from Johannesburg to see this department about an electricity bill that remained unresolved for almost eight months.
I won't go into the detail of my shocking behaviour, but there was a swear word involved.
I watched myself plummet into a septic, sulky, moody cow which lasted the whole day. As usual, I finished off with two sandwiches and a cornish pasty. All my basic food groups covered for a particularly unpleasant outcome. For Noel.
I am told that the best way to see how much progress you have made is to indulge in the thing that you have avoided for some time. Point taken. This experiment works!
Friday 29 April 2011
Friday 15 April 2011
Mushroom soup
Sometimes I make something that takes my breath away. This was actually a group effort... Noel very much in on the assembly.
It is amazing what happens to flavours when you use the best possible ingredients. Yesterday I received a load of miso from Harrewyn Organics. It will most certainly hold a place of prominance in our shop. Sweet white miso is not a common ingredient and OH my goodness it is delicious.
The base of the soup is so easy. Avo, red onion, salt, pepper, hot water. Blend.
This is the good part: Punnet of Shitake mushrooms, sliced and tossed in a quarter cup of olive oil. Then take about a quarter cup of this sweet white miso and toss again. Dehydrate for about three hours. Add half the mushrooms into the bender and pulse. Save the rest for the top and serve with sprouts.
I was in rapture. The whole process (excluding dehydrating) took us 10 minutes to assemble.
And now to get ready for my party. Raw feasting and disco. What more coud a girl want?
It is amazing what happens to flavours when you use the best possible ingredients. Yesterday I received a load of miso from Harrewyn Organics. It will most certainly hold a place of prominance in our shop. Sweet white miso is not a common ingredient and OH my goodness it is delicious.
The base of the soup is so easy. Avo, red onion, salt, pepper, hot water. Blend.
This is the good part: Punnet of Shitake mushrooms, sliced and tossed in a quarter cup of olive oil. Then take about a quarter cup of this sweet white miso and toss again. Dehydrate for about three hours. Add half the mushrooms into the bender and pulse. Save the rest for the top and serve with sprouts.
I was in rapture. The whole process (excluding dehydrating) took us 10 minutes to assemble.
And now to get ready for my party. Raw feasting and disco. What more coud a girl want?
Tuesday 12 April 2011
So how's it going?
OK, so I'm sure you are wondering about my progress. Well it has been a very interesting time for sure.
Firstly, have I maintained 100% raw? No. More on this later.
So coffee is on the naughty chair with alcohol. The change in my mood and behaviour over the past (almost) two weeks cannot be ignored. Think 180 degrees. If anyone is suffering from PMS, mood swings, anxiety etc, try and kick the coffee for only three days and see what happens.
Apart from that I look much better. My skin tone has returned, the wrinkles have gone. Free face lift. Just kick the coffee.
Which leads me onto triggers. Triggers are the emeny. They need to be hunted down and shot. The way to deal with an enemy is to stalk it, trick it, make sure you know where it is and how strong it is.
I discovered a fantastic way to trick my enemy this week.
I was driving home on Sunday evening. We had had a very busy few days. Four catering assignments, two full days of workshops. I was buggered. As I was driving home (see, in my car), I started to dream of the Woolworths sandwhich bar. I was hungry and feeling run down and the last thing I wanted to do was prepare more food. So far we have the perfect environment for the trigger to win. My mind started to wonder, at which point I caught myself thinking about what was going on.
A. I was tired.
B. I felt run down and achy.
C. I was hungry.
D. I was in my car so I could drive anywhere for something convenient.
E. I was vulnerable! I started to make stuff up, like "I deserved it".
Thank goodness, Noel was right behind me. He was following me home from the course and I knew that he would see me shoot off. I have been very honest with him about my weaknesses, so he keeps an eye on me and helps me keep on track. How was I going to explain a ham and cheese sandwhich to him?
I stopped my car. What I really wanted was a nice warm meal.
Steamed vegetables. And I gave myself permission to eat potatoes. That was it. That was the trick. I had something that I did want in return for something I didn't want. It felt like win squared. All the head stuff disappeared.
So here's how it is for me. I now plan my meals to include some steamed vegetables and I'm loving it. I have some rice on the go for supper tonight which I'll eat with sauerkraut and a salad. I feel like I have connected with my food again, something which I definitely have no done for a while.
I'm drinking lots of tea and enjoying the new flavours I am discovering. And of course I have a supply of Yerba Mate, which I really love!
Firstly, have I maintained 100% raw? No. More on this later.
So coffee is on the naughty chair with alcohol. The change in my mood and behaviour over the past (almost) two weeks cannot be ignored. Think 180 degrees. If anyone is suffering from PMS, mood swings, anxiety etc, try and kick the coffee for only three days and see what happens.
Apart from that I look much better. My skin tone has returned, the wrinkles have gone. Free face lift. Just kick the coffee.
Which leads me onto triggers. Triggers are the emeny. They need to be hunted down and shot. The way to deal with an enemy is to stalk it, trick it, make sure you know where it is and how strong it is.
I discovered a fantastic way to trick my enemy this week.
I was driving home on Sunday evening. We had had a very busy few days. Four catering assignments, two full days of workshops. I was buggered. As I was driving home (see, in my car), I started to dream of the Woolworths sandwhich bar. I was hungry and feeling run down and the last thing I wanted to do was prepare more food. So far we have the perfect environment for the trigger to win. My mind started to wonder, at which point I caught myself thinking about what was going on.
A. I was tired.
B. I felt run down and achy.
C. I was hungry.
D. I was in my car so I could drive anywhere for something convenient.
E. I was vulnerable! I started to make stuff up, like "I deserved it".
Thank goodness, Noel was right behind me. He was following me home from the course and I knew that he would see me shoot off. I have been very honest with him about my weaknesses, so he keeps an eye on me and helps me keep on track. How was I going to explain a ham and cheese sandwhich to him?
I stopped my car. What I really wanted was a nice warm meal.
Steamed vegetables. And I gave myself permission to eat potatoes. That was it. That was the trick. I had something that I did want in return for something I didn't want. It felt like win squared. All the head stuff disappeared.
So here's how it is for me. I now plan my meals to include some steamed vegetables and I'm loving it. I have some rice on the go for supper tonight which I'll eat with sauerkraut and a salad. I feel like I have connected with my food again, something which I definitely have no done for a while.
I'm drinking lots of tea and enjoying the new flavours I am discovering. And of course I have a supply of Yerba Mate, which I really love!
Thursday 7 April 2011
That's what friends are for
I had another revelation yesterday.
I was chatting to an old friend about the social aspect of alcohol, you know, when you are the only one at the braai without a drink?
It is a pretty sad state of affairs that we feel the pressure to have a pretend drink in our hand just because other people will feel uncomfortable. What a lot of nonsense to rag someone because they are having a glass of milk instead. But this is common hey! We have all experienced this. And mmmm, I have definitely done it too!
Why as a species do we sabatage the success of another? I have seen it everywhere, more specifically in my places of work. Someone is doing well, talk a bunch of crap about them. Someone is promoted, feel jealous and undermine them. Have we not grown up? Carol reckons it's because we never weaned ourselves off milk. We stayed juvenile in our bodies and therefore in our heads.
So let me take this opportunity to thank you all for being so cool and supportive about the decisions I have made. You see I forgot to put that in my list of reasons why I have succeeded. You guys rock. And I love you all.
I was chatting to an old friend about the social aspect of alcohol, you know, when you are the only one at the braai without a drink?
It is a pretty sad state of affairs that we feel the pressure to have a pretend drink in our hand just because other people will feel uncomfortable. What a lot of nonsense to rag someone because they are having a glass of milk instead. But this is common hey! We have all experienced this. And mmmm, I have definitely done it too!
Why as a species do we sabatage the success of another? I have seen it everywhere, more specifically in my places of work. Someone is doing well, talk a bunch of crap about them. Someone is promoted, feel jealous and undermine them. Have we not grown up? Carol reckons it's because we never weaned ourselves off milk. We stayed juvenile in our bodies and therefore in our heads.
So let me take this opportunity to thank you all for being so cool and supportive about the decisions I have made. You see I forgot to put that in my list of reasons why I have succeeded. You guys rock. And I love you all.
Wednesday 6 April 2011
Goodbye 40
So today is the last day that I am forty.
It has been a brilliant year.
Launched a business, already profitable, have a great team, my relationship with Noel is styling, my relationships with my family rock and I have the best friends ever.
And my relationship with me?
Why do you think it is that we treat ourselves so badly when we wouldn't dream of, in a million years, treating anyone else that way. Think about it. If I spoke to Noel the way I speak to myself, we would have lasted about five minutes.
Enter Peter King.
Truly blessed am I that this man has arrived. I can't think of a label that would do him justice, so we'll go with Life Coach, Inspirational Speaker, Motivational Something. He's the "Look at your Life and Wake Up" guy.
Peter runs workshops that expose our behaviour patterns so that we can see them clearly and do something about them. So I am on a course at the moment that is focused on mental repeats, you know that stuff we say to ourselves over and over again, until we believe it? My favourite "you are a delinquent", up there with "you are fat" and "you are an idiot". But also "you are repulsive" and depending on what kind of day I've been having "how could anyone possibly love you".
Pretty grim.
This nonsense has been floating around in my head for years, these are the words Myself uses, when she is disapproving of my behaviour.
Peter works with these patterns and shows us how to dismantle them and replace them with positive affirmations.
This is nothing new. We all watched The Secret, we all know how the Law of Attraction works (in our heads anyway). I have worked with this material for years, yet the chatter continued, the beliefs remained unchanged. Why was I still stuck?
Until now.
I can feel a change has happened. In only four days chatter has quietened. I am not feeling those awful things about myself. I have been given a plan of action, which I have stuck to, and OMG, it is really working. Already!!!!
This is the very best gift I have given myself. I have an action plan, not a mental plan, of what I need to do over the next 30 days to permenantly change how I think and therefore how I feel. And therefore how I experience the rest of my life.
Bliss.
Isn't the timing interesting? Goodbye coffee, bring on the greens, add into the mix some disciplined mental work and.......presto.
:o)
It has been a brilliant year.
Launched a business, already profitable, have a great team, my relationship with Noel is styling, my relationships with my family rock and I have the best friends ever.
And my relationship with me?
Why do you think it is that we treat ourselves so badly when we wouldn't dream of, in a million years, treating anyone else that way. Think about it. If I spoke to Noel the way I speak to myself, we would have lasted about five minutes.
Enter Peter King.
Truly blessed am I that this man has arrived. I can't think of a label that would do him justice, so we'll go with Life Coach, Inspirational Speaker, Motivational Something. He's the "Look at your Life and Wake Up" guy.
Peter runs workshops that expose our behaviour patterns so that we can see them clearly and do something about them. So I am on a course at the moment that is focused on mental repeats, you know that stuff we say to ourselves over and over again, until we believe it? My favourite "you are a delinquent", up there with "you are fat" and "you are an idiot". But also "you are repulsive" and depending on what kind of day I've been having "how could anyone possibly love you".
Pretty grim.
This nonsense has been floating around in my head for years, these are the words Myself uses, when she is disapproving of my behaviour.
Peter works with these patterns and shows us how to dismantle them and replace them with positive affirmations.
This is nothing new. We all watched The Secret, we all know how the Law of Attraction works (in our heads anyway). I have worked with this material for years, yet the chatter continued, the beliefs remained unchanged. Why was I still stuck?
Until now.
I can feel a change has happened. In only four days chatter has quietened. I am not feeling those awful things about myself. I have been given a plan of action, which I have stuck to, and OMG, it is really working. Already!!!!
This is the very best gift I have given myself. I have an action plan, not a mental plan, of what I need to do over the next 30 days to permenantly change how I think and therefore how I feel. And therefore how I experience the rest of my life.
Bliss.
Isn't the timing interesting? Goodbye coffee, bring on the greens, add into the mix some disciplined mental work and.......presto.
:o)
Monday 4 April 2011
Coffee, the trigger
I love coffee. I love coffee houses, especially the ones in book shops. How cool, lounging around in the middle of the day when millions of other people are at work. Drinking coffee, classical music, reading the newspaper... aahh. Living the life!
Bummer when I discovered that coffee is my new trigger!
What is a trigger? A trigger is the thing in one's life that starts a chain reaction of unusual, destructive and undesirable behaviour.
Let's go with undesirable for a moment. I have noticed that when I leave home with personality A and go out for a coffee, I have flown back in on my broomstick with pesonality "Kak Attitude".
If I start my day with a a green juice, smoothie or such, my day is generally full of fairly concious and sensible behaviour.
If I start my day with a coffee, it is generally not.
Coffee also messes with my food choices.
I like the feeling of having a light system. So coffee for breakfast ticks a whole bunch of boxes for me. Quick, easy, delicious, flying high, woohooo, just what everyone is looking for to start the day. I then tend to launch full tilt into my activites for the day with great gusto, much like a dog being fed. By lunch time I am crawling the walls, and here's the thing. I'm almost always OUT! So I head off to the nearest convenience shop which supplies my favourite snack. Woolies sandwich bar. I know I am not suppose to like pre-sliced white bread, but I LOVE it. I buy two sandwiches and eat one while I am standing in the queue.
This is the beginning of the end. Sometimes I even leave the queue to pick up something else like, I don't know, a custard slice. That's for the car on the way home.
See what I mean about junkie mentality? These are not the choices made by concious switched-on people. This is addiction. With an agenda!
We all need to find our triggers if we want to change behaviour (and by this I also mean choices around what we put into our bodies). I thought I had dealt with that when I kicked the booze. Not.
You can imagine my resistance. I LOVE my coffee. MY coffee. Such an attachment! A 30 year relationship coming to an end?
I was lying in bed this morning thinking about my life. It is my birthday in few days and I often contemplate around this time. What percentage of my life have I already lived? I hope it's only a third. But if it is only a third, I need to make sure that this vessel can carry me around for another 80 years. So me saying anything like "I could never give that up" is out of place now.
Mmmmmm.
Bummer when I discovered that coffee is my new trigger!
What is a trigger? A trigger is the thing in one's life that starts a chain reaction of unusual, destructive and undesirable behaviour.
Let's go with undesirable for a moment. I have noticed that when I leave home with personality A and go out for a coffee, I have flown back in on my broomstick with pesonality "Kak Attitude".
If I start my day with a a green juice, smoothie or such, my day is generally full of fairly concious and sensible behaviour.
If I start my day with a coffee, it is generally not.
Coffee also messes with my food choices.
I like the feeling of having a light system. So coffee for breakfast ticks a whole bunch of boxes for me. Quick, easy, delicious, flying high, woohooo, just what everyone is looking for to start the day. I then tend to launch full tilt into my activites for the day with great gusto, much like a dog being fed. By lunch time I am crawling the walls, and here's the thing. I'm almost always OUT! So I head off to the nearest convenience shop which supplies my favourite snack. Woolies sandwich bar. I know I am not suppose to like pre-sliced white bread, but I LOVE it. I buy two sandwiches and eat one while I am standing in the queue.
This is the beginning of the end. Sometimes I even leave the queue to pick up something else like, I don't know, a custard slice. That's for the car on the way home.
See what I mean about junkie mentality? These are not the choices made by concious switched-on people. This is addiction. With an agenda!
We all need to find our triggers if we want to change behaviour (and by this I also mean choices around what we put into our bodies). I thought I had dealt with that when I kicked the booze. Not.
You can imagine my resistance. I LOVE my coffee. MY coffee. Such an attachment! A 30 year relationship coming to an end?
I was lying in bed this morning thinking about my life. It is my birthday in few days and I often contemplate around this time. What percentage of my life have I already lived? I hope it's only a third. But if it is only a third, I need to make sure that this vessel can carry me around for another 80 years. So me saying anything like "I could never give that up" is out of place now.
Mmmmmm.
Friday 1 April 2011
The glory of water
One of the first things I learned to do when I discovered raw food preparation was all the incredible things I could do with nuts. Milk, cheese, cream, add to soup to make it creamy, add to curry to make it creamy. And so on.
Nuts were not something we had very much of when I was growing up (unless you count the bowl of roasted salted peanuts dad ate with his whiskey when he came home from work). So here I was given the green light to go nuts on the nuts. I went completely nuts.
Raw desserts are something quite incredible. Those of you who have done "Elements of Health" with Superfoods, will know about the blueberry cheesecake, pancakes and cashew cream, strawberry ice-cream (frozen strawberries blended with cashews and honey). The list goes on.
I would like to point something out here.
Has anyone ever tried to open a macadamia nut? Even a hammer is no match for that shell. If we could only buy nuts in shells, our recipe books would look somewhat different!
I think nature intended us to eat nuts with a dose of moderation.
I was reminded of this fact this morning.
Jump out of bed. Walk the dogs. Everything on track for a good start. Hunger pangs are starting and I reach over for the first thing in front of me. Nutty granola. Eat a stack. Hey, it's raw, go mad!
Stomach ache.
So here is a much better way to start the day.
One litre of spring water. Our bodies de-tox while we sleep and we wake up in an acidic state. To give the system a good flush first thing is considered a life prolonging habit. One litre is also a good amount as it means that you have put at least half your daily quota into your body already. If you are anything like me, you probably won't drink much more water during the day unless reminded.
You can also build up to this amount. Start with half a litre if you need to. This is easy to get down as we wake up thirsty already. Wait for 20 minutes and drink another half. You will soon see how easy it is to work up to drinking one litre.
The benefits are numerous. If you want them all Call Carol, but here are some that I am aware of:
More energy
Less fatigued
Faster recovery when sick or injured
Better assimilation of food
Better digestion
Skin tone and texture will improve
Muscles will be looser
Aches and pains will not be as acute (I have experienced this specifically with lower back pain)
Better mood, less anxiety
Collect the best water you can find. There is a spring in Newlands (Spring Crescent, off Kildare Close) where we collect our water. It has a noticably sweet taste and is easy to drink.
Here's the link :http://www.findaspring.com/newlands-spring-cape-town-south-africa/
Remember we are about 70% water, so it is worth paying special attention to this, perhaps even more so that what we are eating!
And people, slow down on the nuts.
Nuts were not something we had very much of when I was growing up (unless you count the bowl of roasted salted peanuts dad ate with his whiskey when he came home from work). So here I was given the green light to go nuts on the nuts. I went completely nuts.
Raw desserts are something quite incredible. Those of you who have done "Elements of Health" with Superfoods, will know about the blueberry cheesecake, pancakes and cashew cream, strawberry ice-cream (frozen strawberries blended with cashews and honey). The list goes on.
I would like to point something out here.
Has anyone ever tried to open a macadamia nut? Even a hammer is no match for that shell. If we could only buy nuts in shells, our recipe books would look somewhat different!
I think nature intended us to eat nuts with a dose of moderation.
I was reminded of this fact this morning.
Jump out of bed. Walk the dogs. Everything on track for a good start. Hunger pangs are starting and I reach over for the first thing in front of me. Nutty granola. Eat a stack. Hey, it's raw, go mad!
Stomach ache.
So here is a much better way to start the day.
One litre of spring water. Our bodies de-tox while we sleep and we wake up in an acidic state. To give the system a good flush first thing is considered a life prolonging habit. One litre is also a good amount as it means that you have put at least half your daily quota into your body already. If you are anything like me, you probably won't drink much more water during the day unless reminded.
You can also build up to this amount. Start with half a litre if you need to. This is easy to get down as we wake up thirsty already. Wait for 20 minutes and drink another half. You will soon see how easy it is to work up to drinking one litre.
The benefits are numerous. If you want them all Call Carol, but here are some that I am aware of:
More energy
Less fatigued
Faster recovery when sick or injured
Better assimilation of food
Better digestion
Skin tone and texture will improve
Muscles will be looser
Aches and pains will not be as acute (I have experienced this specifically with lower back pain)
Better mood, less anxiety
Collect the best water you can find. There is a spring in Newlands (Spring Crescent, off Kildare Close) where we collect our water. It has a noticably sweet taste and is easy to drink.
Here's the link :http://www.findaspring.com/newlands-spring-cape-town-south-africa/
Remember we are about 70% water, so it is worth paying special attention to this, perhaps even more so that what we are eating!
And people, slow down on the nuts.
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