Coconut oil - the beauty elixir!

While things are still going swimmingly on the sugarfree front, I'm going to undertake a couple of other committments. I'd really like to cut bread, pasta and pastry out too (though not as ruthlessly as I did with refined sugar, one has to be polite at others' houses, it's much easier to refuse dessert than mains!), and I'd also like to gradually increase my coconut oil intake.

According to the research I've found, particularly here at the coconut research centre, coconut oil is a veritable miracle worker. It's so antiviral that its capable of reducing the viral load to negligable levels in people suffering from the most debilitating viruses. It is also antibacterial and anti-fungal, and so a fantastic treatment for systemic candida. In case those credentials haven't impressed you, coconut oil is a FAT EATING OIL!!! That's right folks, you can consume this oil and it will munch away at your stored body fat! And just to be a total show off, it's anti-inflammatory too, therefore great for arthritis and autoimmune disorders. WOW.

The approximate dose required for inflammation and candidiasis, is 3 tablespoons a day. It's advisable to slowly advance to that amount if you'd like to try it, it is after all an oil and many of us who have particularly 'toxed up' livers may feel a little ill otherwise. I'd reccommend starting with a teaspoon and working up.

For particularly virulent viruses up to 6 tablespoons can be taken daily. If you like you can have your viral load tested before you start taking coconut oil, then again after, say, 3 months on the full dose. It would be interesting to make the comparison.

So far I'm up to one tablespoon a day. I notice I eat less of other foods for a few hours after I take it. My body feels nourished enough and doesn't ask for more, which could be a great weight management tool.

The other thing I noticed immediatelly is that it's really hard to swallow pure oil!!! So I've been experimenting with finding other ways to take it. This morining I put it in my smoothie which seemed to work well. Another option is to incorporate it into warm foods like coconut oil based curries, over some warm rice or, my personal preference, warm coconut and chai spiced rice pudding made with xylitol! I'll post the recipe as soon as I've got it down pat.

Coconut oil can be found at health shops, make sure you always buy cold pressed. If you have a great coconut oil story or recipe, please share it in comments!

Surprise Surprise!

Today I really surprised myself! I said I'd try to avoid lone shopping trips, but today it was necessary. Bubby was a bit tired and bored of my face, so instead of acting as my straight-and-narrow, he stayed at Grandma's.

Once the groceries were finished my mind turned to food, as usual. But this time my first thought was "is there any sugar free treat food around?" This seemed like a nice idea, but it was the next thought that really surprised me; "don't get food! Get a pair of shorts instead! It'll make you happy for longer." Oh Lordy, that sounds like reasonable thinking!! WOW! So I am capable of it! But only when unclouded by sugar addiction. So I took off in search of my shorts, lest the newfound rationality pass!

As I mentioned, I've cut sugar loose at least once a year for 20 years now. Only I've changed tack this time. Usually I group refined wheat products (bread, pasta, couscous etc) with sugar because, well, it is sugar. Refined wheat is only a little bit less toxic than refined sugar, and as far as our bodies are concerned, it's almost the same thing. So I avoid it. Only this time I decided that since it's really sugar that I want to kick forever, I'd tackle that first, and it's turned out to be successful. Funny thing is, now I find myself naturally avoiding bread and pasta! This has been another fabulous surprise. I noticed it just tonight; I'd spent the day thinking about how I'd 'reward' myself for getting through (most of) the housework with a big plate of pasta. But when I came to start, I made myself tuna coleslaw with organic mustard instead!

I'm really thrilled by this progress. It has honestly never been this easy before. From now on I'll use this tactic for clients when I prescribe diet changes. It's much gentler and more effective.

Speaking of housework, I found yet another wonderful surprise this week. Sugar freedom related? Not on the surface, but who knows? It might have been a karmic reward! I'll get to the point. This week I discovered the concept of the 'Kitchen Witch'. A Kitchen Witch is a woman whose spiritual practice centres around her kitchen, the hearth of the home. She is a solitary practitioner; her magic is in her food preparation and her worship is her time spent cleaning, both of which are performed with intention. Well, I'll tell you, my kitchen has never been so clean! I've been worshiping away, baby on hip! In fact, even he seems to like the kitchen more!!

Here comes the Sun

It's day 6 of sugar freedom (but who's counting??), and I'm beginning to feel serene. My face and tummy are a little less bloated and my skin feels clearer. My brain isn't screaming at me, the cravings have just evaporated! Jolly timely too, the shortbread biscuits I made with xylitol were a dismal failure!! Turns out sugar is what makes them crunchy. Oh well! I won't give up on the xylitol just yet!

So back to mental clarity! When I was reading for my research project during my naturopathic studies, I found many studies describing how sugar inflames the nervous system. There was one in particular that has stayed with me; the subjects in the study were scanned under MRI, then fed some sugar, then scanned again. The 'after' shots showed bright, glowing nervous systems, denoting aggitation, irritation. This translates physically to poor coordination and emotionally to stress and anxiety. I usually didn't notice I was feeling this way because it felt normal, this is obviously because it takes most of a week to calm down! Now I can feel the difference, and I highly recommend it! I kind of feel like I'm floating, rather than fighting through life. I feel successful! So far my mastery project is on track!

Even more encouraging is that I think sugar and I have finally called a truce. I feel now that I can maintain a sugarless diet, although the real test will be going to the shopping centre alone. Thats when I usually find myself scanning the cakes at Miss Mauds. Maybe I'll take Antonio shopping with me until I'm a little more sure of my resolve! I can't eat rubbish in front of him because he always wants some. The later he's exposed to that stuff the healthier he will be. For more info on that one check out Dr Robert Lustig, this video is worth the time. I think his presentation was a large part of my decision to swear off the sugar for good.

Sweet obsessions

It's nap time, but instead of doing some breathing exercises or meditating, I'm lying here googling xylitol biscuit recipes on my phone! I've found some good ones which I'll share once I've tested them.

Part of me doesn't really want to eat sweets. But it's obviously not the louder part! My brain is screaming at me to devour the last of the Christmas chocolate. My man dutifully hides it from me, since he's one of those weird, self regulating types! I've tried all my life to be like that, but it's just not in me. For me it's feast or famine, at least for now.

I've bought some supplies to help prevent cravings: Organic crunchy peanut butter is a favourite; high in protein and fats, both of which fill up quickly. It can also be combined with veggie sticks for fibre, also very filling.

Yoghurt is brilliant, and transportable too. Antonio and I often share a tub of Chris's Greek yoghurt. It's the sourest yoghurt I've tasted, but creamy too. We love it!

Ok, 10 minutes left of nap time, I'll dutifully spend them focusing on my third chakra

Mastery and Mummyhood

I had intended to write this post on the first day of the new year, but such is mummyhood!

This year, 2012, is my new beginnings year. I'm aware that many people believe this year is special and significant. I find it interesting that I spontaneously decided to make this year transformational for me personally. At-bloody-last!! I've finally decided to implement some changes I've been "thinking about" for years. Thinking about as well as preaching!

For example, my number one project is to give up sugar. To 'quit' the stuff like a smoker or an alcoholic. I'm a sugarholic. Or I was until Sunday. I've been clean 3 days now. It's not the first time I've quit sugar; I've done it at least annually since I was 9. That was 20 years ago now, and though I was very diciplined at first, each time I quit it was for a breifer period, until it became almost too dificult, I put on weight and found it hard to shift. This did, of course, coincide with my move to Melbourne, where the food is decidedly better, cheaper, available and more generously portioned. I may have lost control!!

In my youth (she muses wistfully!!) I imagined that someday, a vague timeframe occuring around the scary age of 30, I'd clean up my diet permanently, with the vain motivation of age defiance. Now my reasons have broadened to include my health, both mental and physical (nothing like sleep deprivation to inspire appreciation for mental health!), and my son. I believe role modeling is the best parenting tool, thus if I wish to protect him from the poison, I'll have to get off it too. There's a great story about a mother who went to Gandhi to ask him to tell her son to stop eating sugar. He told her to bring the son to see him in two weeks. She did this, and Gandhi simply told him to stop eating sugar. The mother asked why the two weeks were necessary and Gandhi replied "Because two weeks ago I was eating sugar."

And so I'm a dreadful hypocrite no longer! But so far I just feel hungry!! I do have 20 years of tricks up my sleeve though, and I'll share those here if you're interested in trying this for yourself. It does take time to detox sugar. If you were thinking of trying it I'd recommend Sarah Wilson's fabulous ebook, I Quit Sugar'. It's a quick and easy read and very motivational.

This is, as I said, my number one project, but it's the 'lead up' to my much grander goal of self mastery! I've become aware recently that the dissatisfactions I feel with my own life all seem to coincide with the themes of the solar plexus chakra. That's the third one, it's yellow, like fire, and it centers around ego, boundaries, decisions, personal power, will, that sort of thing. I'm so lacking in all that, so despite my creativity, I never really accomplish much! It relates to the pancreas, liver, spleen and upper intestinal tract, all of which are compromised when I binge on sugar. It all ties together so neatly!




So this year will be dedicated to balancing my solar plexus chakra, using tools like my diet, yoga, meditation, breathing, herbs, and general mindfulness of these issues in my everyday life. I intend to blog for accountability. At this end of proceedings the idea of a shiny new self is very exciting, but I know it will get ickier as the year wears on. I know there will be steep challenges, balancing my self and my journey with my responsibility to my family. And I suppose I don't really forsee true balance eventuating at all, since mummyhood and family harmony are my first priorities. I'll fit 'me' in around them. Which means I'll do a little bit during nap time and a little bit in the evening, and a very little bit while someone else cares for Antonio. But it will be done! And for now, the most important thing is what I'm not doing; eating sugar!

So now I'll finish off my chai spiced cocoa with coconut oil and take myself to bed.

Wholefoods for Baby - recipes

Here are some of the wholefoods recipes Antonio loves best.

Baby Dahl recipe

This is a recipe I've addapted from my Harre Krshna cookbook, which I love. It's fantastic because I can make a large quantity if we're having Indian food for dinner and we all eat the same. Always preferable to cooking two different meals! These quantities make about 2 meals for baby.

1/8 cup masoor dal
1/8 cup quinoa or rice
2 cups water
1 tomato
70g sweet potato
2tsp butter or ghee
2tsp grated fresh ginger
2tsp cumin seeds
1tbsp organic shredded coconut
pinch aesefetida (if you have it)
sea salt to taste

Boil dal and quinoa/rice in a small pot with the water. Add sweet potato and chopped tomato, boil again, cover and turn down heat. When the dal has dissolved turn off the heat and cover.

In a small frypan heat ghee or butter, add ginger and cumin seeds and fry. Add coconut and brown a little, don't burn the spices. Add aesefetida and remove from heat. Add spice base and some salt to the dahl. Blend with a stick blender and serve.

Cauliflower soup

Another one for the whole family. These flavours compliment fish well, so I sometimes poach a slice of a mild, white fish in the soup, then break it up with a fork.

one whole cauliflower
2 large potatoes
1 cup quinoa
1 leek
1L homemade chicken stock
sea salt

Fry off leek in a heavy casserole pot, add potatoes, cauliflower, stock, quinoa and salt. Boil then blitz!


Baby Breakfast Smoothie

This fun, fabulous recipe is made possible because Antonio learned to drink from a straw! It was so easy to teach him, and makes it easy to keep his fluids up. The following can be blizted in a processor or in a milkshake cup using a stick blender.

half a banana
1/3 cup of fresh or frozen berries
2 tbsp whole natural yoghurt
1 tbsp coconut cream
one raw egg yolk



Baby Bucco recipe

1 small slice osso bucco
half carrot
half celery stick
small onion
small garlic clove
1/2 cup homemade chicken stock (or water)
splash of olive oil
2 fresh tomatoes or half tin chopped tomatoes
sea salt
optional dried herbs

Chop veggies and saute (all but tomatoes) with the oil or butter til soft. Add dried herbs. Brown osso bucco in another pan, then add to vegies. Add stock, chopped garlic and tomatoes, then season and pop the lid on over low heat and cook 1/2 to 1 hour, til the meat is soft and the bone is empty. Chop or blizt, depending on the age of your baby.


Baby Lamb Korma recipe

This is a recipe I pulled from an online Indian recipe database years ago, and I've made it so many times since then that I no longer require the recipe, my hands do it on autopilot! You don't have to use lamb, I've done it with beef, chicken and vegetarian. This makes a few meals worth.

1 clove garlic
same amount fresh ginger
100g lamb cubed
half a cup cubed veg, anything works
half a tin chopped tomatoes
3 tbsp whole natural yoghut
1 small onion
2 tsp cumin seeds
2 cardamom pods
2 whole cloves
tsp garam masala
tsp turmeric
sea salt


Mince ginger and garlic and put into 1/4 cup water and set aside.
Heat ghee and add cumin seeds and onion. Fry til the onion softens, then add other spices. Add tomatoes and allow to reduce. Add yoghurt and veg.

In a separate pan, heat more ghee and brown meat, then add to the curry. Cook until the meat is soft, gradually adding the garlic/ginger water. Remove whole cardamoms and cloves, and cut up or puree.

Wholefoods for Antonio

Having finally emerged from the sleep deprived daze of my child's first 10 months, I feel ready to take up my blogging anew. I'll begin with a topic dear to my heart; little Antonio's journey into solid foods. I feel it's an interesting one since there are such strong controversies surrounding the subject of a baby's diet, as with diet in general, however in addition to the controversy, parents become emotional about the food they choose for their kids. There is much conflicting information about this, and as Mums we read or ask our female kinfolk in search of the best advice.

The wisdom I found satisfactory was provided by nutritionists such as Sally Fallon and Jude Blereau, who espouse a return to the traditional cooking methods of our ancestors which our bodies are evolved to, rather than following the often misguided and unhealthy advice of the current "pollitically correct" (cereal box) nutritional models. In practical terms this means offering whole foods to provide the 3 macronutrients; fats, protein and carbs, and the many micronutrients (vitamins, minerals etc)required for good health.

Antonio's solid food journey began when he was around 5 months old. Until that time he was exclusively breastfed, and although the WHO recommend that continue to 6 months, my big boy was clearly displaying signs of starvation! I judged him to be ready for foods, and began by handing him spoonfuls of mashed avocado to put into his mouth (the first destination of all grasped objects), which were sucked down and how.

It was mostly avocado during this first month. Avo, how do I love thee, let me count the ways!

1. It's RAW and packed with life force, live vitamins like A, E, C, and K, and minerals like iron, magnesium, zinc and selenium


2. it's green, therefore packed with antioxidants


3. it's high in fats, therefore perfect for little growing brains, very like breastmilk


4. It's an uber convenient, portable baby food


5. it's anti-inflammatory, therefore perfect for emerging teeth


6. it helps with blood sugar balancing

Other than avocado, Antonio had some mashed sweet potato, some flaked quinoa mixed with expressed breastmilk, and some fruits like pear, apple, rockmellon and late season blood plums (he loved those!).

After an early experience with baby rice cereal which constipated the poor little thing, I did some reading and concluded that I should have followed my instinct not to feed it to him. No one does well on refined grains. I threw out a full box.

At that early stage of fooding, I was more interested that it was a fun experience and generally allowed Antonio as much autonomy as safety permitted. We laughed throughout, and he usually wore at least as much as he ingested. He always licked the bowl.

After the early stages of single tastes, when he began to take 2 and then 3 meals a day, I began to mix his veggies into stews, added some such as carrots, peas, pumpkin, green beans, zucchini, brocoli (loved that...still does!), and grains such as whole oats and whole rice. At this point I tried egg yolks, which were a raging success and I wish I'd started them sooner! I often give them as an appetiser because they increase his interest in dinner.

The value of egg yolk is in the fats, vitamins and minerals. The phospholipids found in runny egg yolk are invaluable brain nutrition. High levels of zinc, calcium, selenium and iron as well as vitamins A, E, and K make it an important food for all of us, but most interesting is the levels of vitamin D, about 110 IU per 100g, means we should consume these all winter long. In fact 2 egg yolks contain 60% of the daily requirement of vitamin D.

Many people are scared to give eggs to their infants because they're on the no-no list of the handy hand-out we get from the child health clinics. This is because infants can't yet digest egg whites, but it's such a shame to ignore the enormous benefits of the yolk. Here is the preparation method that best worked for Antonio and me:

Take one or two free range organic eggs. Boil a small pot of water. Separate white from yolk with your hands. Store the whites in the freezer to make friands, pavlovas etc. Have a small cup (like a little espresso cup) and a soup spoon at the ready. Drop the yolk into the boiling water and wait a minute. Fish it out with the soup spoon and gently peirce the yolk, squeeze the runny stuff into the cup, eat the 'skin' yourself (this way you wont unwittingly serve an off egg to bubby. Trust me it happened last night, thank god I realised!) and serve.

For some current information about egg consumption:

www.whfoods.com

After another while, around 8 months, Antonio tasted meat for the first time, which probably should have been fish, but was organic chicken instead. As it turns out, he loves fish, which I poach for him in coconut cream and water, with a few complimentary veg such as zucchini, peas or broccoli. He enjoys his chicken, beef and lamb too, and his favourite meals from this range of foods include my Grandma's chicken stew, lamb stew, "Baby Bucco" which is his own version of Osso Bucco, and poached fish. I am careful to space out his intake of meat to go easy on his little liver, and I tend to give yolks on the non meat days. I try to give him home made chicken stock as often as possible, as this mineral rich brew is arguably the most beneficial thing he could ingest.

His favourite vegetarian meals include dahl / lentil and veg soup, pumpkin risotto, potato and broccoli, minestrone with quinoa, banana and avocado with coconut cream, and the very recently added plain, full fat, natural yoghurt. He also enjoys nawing on some of my avocado rye bread toast.

The foods Antonio has not yet tasted are those I consider to be on the unhealthy side; sugar and refined wheat products like bread and pasta. The later his body has to deal with these insults the better he'll be set up for health in later life. You may find yourself thinking "I was given pasta as a baby", and many people do this, but consider that the cultures whose chronic and increasing ill-health are those that consume refined carbohydrates, while the healthiest people on the planet do not. Rather than emulate your own parents, move forward with what science has shown our ancestors knew; food comes from nature, not factories.

I encourage anyone in charge of a childs's diet to pick up a copy of Jude Bereau's Wholefoods For Children, and also Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions. Both are exceptional and very complete nutrition advisers.

As I refine the recipes Antonio prefers, I may post them in subsequent blogs.

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