Today I am grateful for the two best friends one could ever wish for. It is true that it is only in giving that we truly receive. One of my very special friends gives very healing, magical massages and the other is a beautiful mother to a gorgeous 10 month old and was therefore in need of some tender loving care herself for a change. I put the two together and the result was divine, the lovely mum was transported to heaven and back, little miss heavenly hands was yet again reminded what a gift she has and I had the undescribable honour of having a ten month old little gem fall asleep in my arms. Utter bliss, especially when motherhood is something that at this point in time is not in the cards for me for some reason..
I am grateful for my journey into healthy eating, although at times obsessive and frustrating, teaching me so much at the same time. Thanks to Aivanhov's The Yoga of Nutrition my awareness is shifting from placing obsessive importance of what I eat and how much to how I eat. It's brought up a need to make a physical and spiritual space for meals and a deeper mindfulness of everything around eating.... And also frustration for the time being being the insane perfectionist I can be, trying to get everything right even before starting haha!
I am grateful for the courage and initiative to deactivate Facebook, I really didn't like the information overload and the superficial nature of it, less is definitely more for me in terms of connectedness...
Thank you for quiet Saturday evenings, with your doggies lying by your side and your special other lovingly forgiving of your wild and often reckless nature, somehow always finding a way to love you even when you really struggle to love yourself...
Thank you for writing, which I've neglected lately but keep rediscovering as a very healing practice.
Thank you for the idea I got from my special friend today to spend five minutes a day visualising things that make me happy, I shall try it and expect good things to come my way...
Saturday, 22 October 2016
Sunday, 9 October 2016
Spelt bread recipe and other harvest inspirations...
Yesterday I promised a photo of the bread... It's not going to happen, it was too delicious and disappeared before I got the chance to take a picture.
This was not the sourdough bread yet, it was an improvisation, to have some home made bread while we're waiting for the sourdough to ferment.
Here's the recipe if anyone would like to try it:
Ingredients:
500g wholemeal spelt flour
400ml warm water
1tsp salt
1 tsp soda bicarbonate
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil
A sprinkle of sunflower seeds to go on top
Mix the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda together. Dissolve the honey in the warm water, mix in with flour, then add olive oil and keep working the dough thinking of happy things and what you're grateful for, perhaps singing :)
Let the mixture rest for a while, I left it a few hours then poured it onto a greased, floured tray. It doesn't make a perfect loaf, more like a cross between a pizza and a loaf :)
Brush with a bit of olive oil, sprinkle sunflower seeds and score with a knife, then bake in a preheated oven for 30-45 minutes checking depending on your oven.
Enjoy with a lovely bowl of seasonal vegetable stew with lovely grains and pulses cooked in a slow cooker, or on its own, I couldn't even wait for it to cool down and had to have a nibble soon after it made it out of the oven :)
I am so grateful for the inspiration to start practising yoga again. Today after a bit of a grumpy start to the day I managed to find some beautiful peace and stillness just by doing ten minutes of mindful breathing and some gentle stretching
Another blessing today was the very simple but tummy soothing dinner I enjoyed in the form of cooked organic millets from a Polish shop, sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon and a chopped up pear. My tummy feels really light and soothed at the same time. Oh and second day without meat, still working on the sugar and dairy especially as our sweet granddad showed up today with a fruitcake he had baked for us, it would have been so rude to not have any! ;)
I so cannot wait to start uploading photos to go with these entries, thank you for your patience with my technophobe and clumsy self when it comes to sorting things like that! ;)
Wishing everyone a peaceful Sunday night, may we drift off to sleep grateful for harvest, for all the wonderful things mother nature provides us with like beautiful grains, nurturing fruits and vegetables, not to forget the gorgeous autumn sunshine we were blessed with on this early October day :)
Night night xxx
This was not the sourdough bread yet, it was an improvisation, to have some home made bread while we're waiting for the sourdough to ferment.
Here's the recipe if anyone would like to try it:
Ingredients:
500g wholemeal spelt flour
400ml warm water
1tsp salt
1 tsp soda bicarbonate
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil
A sprinkle of sunflower seeds to go on top
Mix the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda together. Dissolve the honey in the warm water, mix in with flour, then add olive oil and keep working the dough thinking of happy things and what you're grateful for, perhaps singing :)
Let the mixture rest for a while, I left it a few hours then poured it onto a greased, floured tray. It doesn't make a perfect loaf, more like a cross between a pizza and a loaf :)
Brush with a bit of olive oil, sprinkle sunflower seeds and score with a knife, then bake in a preheated oven for 30-45 minutes checking depending on your oven.
Enjoy with a lovely bowl of seasonal vegetable stew with lovely grains and pulses cooked in a slow cooker, or on its own, I couldn't even wait for it to cool down and had to have a nibble soon after it made it out of the oven :)
I am so grateful for the inspiration to start practising yoga again. Today after a bit of a grumpy start to the day I managed to find some beautiful peace and stillness just by doing ten minutes of mindful breathing and some gentle stretching
Another blessing today was the very simple but tummy soothing dinner I enjoyed in the form of cooked organic millets from a Polish shop, sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon and a chopped up pear. My tummy feels really light and soothed at the same time. Oh and second day without meat, still working on the sugar and dairy especially as our sweet granddad showed up today with a fruitcake he had baked for us, it would have been so rude to not have any! ;)
I so cannot wait to start uploading photos to go with these entries, thank you for your patience with my technophobe and clumsy self when it comes to sorting things like that! ;)
Wishing everyone a peaceful Sunday night, may we drift off to sleep grateful for harvest, for all the wonderful things mother nature provides us with like beautiful grains, nurturing fruits and vegetables, not to forget the gorgeous autumn sunshine we were blessed with on this early October day :)
Night night xxx
Spelt bread recipe and other harvest inspirations...
Yesterday I promised a photo of the bread... It's not going to happen, it was too delicious and disappeared before I got the chance to take a picture.
This was not the sourdough bread yet, it was an improvisation, to have some home made bread while we're waiting for the sourdough to ferment.
Here's the recipe if anyone would like to try it:
Ingredients:
500g wholemeal spelt flour
400ml warm water
1tsp salt
1 tsp soda bicarbonate
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil
A sprinkle of sunflower seeds to go on top
Mix the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda together. Dissolve the honey in the warm water, mix in with flour, then add olive oil and keep working the dough thinking of happy things and what you're grateful for, perhaps singing :)
Let the mixture rest for a while, I left it a few hours then poured it onto a greased, floured tray. It doesn't make a perfect loaf, more like a cross between a pizza and a loaf :)
Brush with a bit of olive oil, sprinkle sunflower seeds and score with a knife, then bake in a preheated oven for 30-45 minutes checking depending on your oven.
Enjoy with a lovely bowl of seasonal vegetable stew with lovely grains and pulses cooked in a slow cooker, or on its own, I couldn't even wait for it to cool down and had to have a nibble soon after it made it out of the oven :)
I am so grateful for the inspiration to start practising yoga again. Today after a bit of a grumpy start to the day I managed to find some beautiful peace and stillness just by doing ten minutes of mindful breathing and some gentle stretching
Another blessing today was the very simple but tummy soothing dinner I enjoyed in the form of cooked organic millets from a Polish shop, sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon and a chopped up pear. My tummy feels really light and soothed at the same time. Oh and second day without meat, still working on the sugar and dairy especially as our sweet granddad showed up today with a fruitcake he had baked for us, it would have been so rude to not have any! ;)
I so cannot wait to start uploading photos to go with these entries, thank you for your patie nice with my technophobe and clumsy self when it comes to sorting things like that! ;)
Wishing everyone a peaceful Sunday night, may we drift off to sleep grateful for harvest, for all the wonderful things mother nature provides us with like beautiful grains, nurturing fruits and vegetables, not to forget the gorgeous autumn sunshine we were blessed with on this early October day :)
Night night xxx
This was not the sourdough bread yet, it was an improvisation, to have some home made bread while we're waiting for the sourdough to ferment.
Here's the recipe if anyone would like to try it:
Ingredients:
500g wholemeal spelt flour
400ml warm water
1tsp salt
1 tsp soda bicarbonate
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp olive oil
A sprinkle of sunflower seeds to go on top
Mix the flour, salt and bicarbonate of soda together. Dissolve the honey in the warm water, mix in with flour, then add olive oil and keep working the dough thinking of happy things and what you're grateful for, perhaps singing :)
Let the mixture rest for a while, I left it a few hours then poured it onto a greased, floured tray. It doesn't make a perfect loaf, more like a cross between a pizza and a loaf :)
Brush with a bit of olive oil, sprinkle sunflower seeds and score with a knife, then bake in a preheated oven for 30-45 minutes checking depending on your oven.
Enjoy with a lovely bowl of seasonal vegetable stew with lovely grains and pulses cooked in a slow cooker, or on its own, I couldn't even wait for it to cool down and had to have a nibble soon after it made it out of the oven :)
I am so grateful for the inspiration to start practising yoga again. Today after a bit of a grumpy start to the day I managed to find some beautiful peace and stillness just by doing ten minutes of mindful breathing and some gentle stretching
Another blessing today was the very simple but tummy soothing dinner I enjoyed in the form of cooked organic millets from a Polish shop, sprinkled with a bit of cinnamon and a chopped up pear. My tummy feels really light and soothed at the same time. Oh and second day without meat, still working on the sugar and dairy especially as our sweet granddad showed up today with a fruitcake he had baked for us, it would have been so rude to not have any! ;)
I so cannot wait to start uploading photos to go with these entries, thank you for your patie nice with my technophobe and clumsy self when it comes to sorting things like that! ;)
Wishing everyone a peaceful Sunday night, may we drift off to sleep grateful for harvest, for all the wonderful things mother nature provides us with like beautiful grains, nurturing fruits and vegetables, not to forget the gorgeous autumn sunshine we were blessed with on this early October day :)
Night night xxx
Saturday, 8 October 2016
Thoughts on food...
Food, especially healthy eating is something I've been obsessed with for as long as I can remember.
I was made fun of for being a chubby little girl from about the age of 6, I have been anorexic as a result without a period for almost a year, I have tried pretty much every form of exercise to lose that extra weight that is especially in my head, I have tried food combining, vegetarianism, juice diets, rice detox, lentil detox, this detox, that diet only to almost lose the will to live with all the contradicting food advice out there.
In the last year or so I pretty much gave up trying to follow any set of golden rules and just tried to eat as much real food as possible, such as vegetables, fruits, healthy grains plus whatever my body was craving, very often a bit too much of the latter...
Although in most areas of my life I am happier and better balanced than I've ever been, in regards to eating, to this day I struggle with an anxiety around what to eat and what not to eat, how much, how often, and most annoyingly how to tackle Candida after 3 failed attempts to cleanse myself from it completely...
My head was spinning with food related chaos for months until about a week ago following lots of prayer and asking for guidance, my inspiration arrived in the form of a YouTube recording of a Hungarian man, Somlosi Lajos, who in a very unique Hungarian accent, pours out wisdom after wisdom passed down through the generations, about how our ancestors used to keep healthy. I found myself hanging on every word as if quite literally my life depended on it and as if he was helping me remember things I already knew deep down inside.
I feel this is the beginning of a very rich and wholesome journey and I will do my best to pass on his gems as accurately as I possibly can.
My first steps that I've taken from the recordings are the following:
1. Chewing my food properly (ideally 30 times) my goodness has that proved challenging when you've got an appetite like mine and want to automatically scoff your food down! He tells the anecdote of a man who goes to the doctor and says he's ill. The doctor replies 'chew your food 30 times. If you're sicker than that you need to chew it 50 times. Even sicker 100 times...' You get the message. For me 20 is even proving a challenge but determined to persevere and become more and more mindful.
2. Reminding myself to breath properly and rediscover breathing exercises from my yoga fanatic days when I couldn't imagine a day without some form of yoga practice. Breathing exercises make you feel calm and centered, peacefully energized, they aid your digestion and make your skin glow. Lots of reason to learn, relearn how to breath properly.
3. Advice for women especially, your body is a temple, it is no place for dead carcasses ie meat, the urge to return to vegetarianism has been coming up stronger and stronger in me so he just confirmed that.
4. Avoid sugar as it blocks you from experiencing your true self. I so get that. It numbs me, controls me and throws my energy levels all over the place, gives me tummy aches, candida! And stops me from having restful sleep, pale skin, need I say more? Another piece of advice divinely timed.
5. Avoid fluoride by all means! It not only kills bad bacteria in your body, it kills all bacteria good and bad and apparently Hitler back in the day wanted to put it in all the water systems - reason enough for me not to have it. I only buy toothpaste from health food stores now.
6. Try to cook on fire, gas at least because apparently electric hobs bring chaos into our food. Fire brings back old traditions, if you have to cook on electric hobs it helps to light a candle on the side to bring the fire element back into your cooking.
7. Last but not least for today, try to make sure that the biggest percentage of your food comes from the area where you live, ideally within about 50 km or 30 miles. For the time being I'm starting with aiming for at least the same country, however his idea has inspired me to visit a local farm just up the road that does biodynamic agriculture. My plan is to volunteer there a few hours a week to get a bit more green fingered and become more aware of what grows well here and what grows in each season, as we don't need to be eating everything all year round especially if it comes from Peru and was picked unripe...
My first tiny step on this foreseeably lifelong journey was to start making my second ever sourdough which fingers crossed will be ready in three days. In the meantime I have baked a spelt bread using bicarbonate of soda instead of yeast, yummyyyy, photos and recipe to follow tomorrow once I figure out how to upload photos again!
So much more to share but needing some beauty sleep now, may the angels watch over us all tonight xxx
I was made fun of for being a chubby little girl from about the age of 6, I have been anorexic as a result without a period for almost a year, I have tried pretty much every form of exercise to lose that extra weight that is especially in my head, I have tried food combining, vegetarianism, juice diets, rice detox, lentil detox, this detox, that diet only to almost lose the will to live with all the contradicting food advice out there.
In the last year or so I pretty much gave up trying to follow any set of golden rules and just tried to eat as much real food as possible, such as vegetables, fruits, healthy grains plus whatever my body was craving, very often a bit too much of the latter...
Although in most areas of my life I am happier and better balanced than I've ever been, in regards to eating, to this day I struggle with an anxiety around what to eat and what not to eat, how much, how often, and most annoyingly how to tackle Candida after 3 failed attempts to cleanse myself from it completely...
My head was spinning with food related chaos for months until about a week ago following lots of prayer and asking for guidance, my inspiration arrived in the form of a YouTube recording of a Hungarian man, Somlosi Lajos, who in a very unique Hungarian accent, pours out wisdom after wisdom passed down through the generations, about how our ancestors used to keep healthy. I found myself hanging on every word as if quite literally my life depended on it and as if he was helping me remember things I already knew deep down inside.
I feel this is the beginning of a very rich and wholesome journey and I will do my best to pass on his gems as accurately as I possibly can.
My first steps that I've taken from the recordings are the following:
1. Chewing my food properly (ideally 30 times) my goodness has that proved challenging when you've got an appetite like mine and want to automatically scoff your food down! He tells the anecdote of a man who goes to the doctor and says he's ill. The doctor replies 'chew your food 30 times. If you're sicker than that you need to chew it 50 times. Even sicker 100 times...' You get the message. For me 20 is even proving a challenge but determined to persevere and become more and more mindful.
2. Reminding myself to breath properly and rediscover breathing exercises from my yoga fanatic days when I couldn't imagine a day without some form of yoga practice. Breathing exercises make you feel calm and centered, peacefully energized, they aid your digestion and make your skin glow. Lots of reason to learn, relearn how to breath properly.
3. Advice for women especially, your body is a temple, it is no place for dead carcasses ie meat, the urge to return to vegetarianism has been coming up stronger and stronger in me so he just confirmed that.
4. Avoid sugar as it blocks you from experiencing your true self. I so get that. It numbs me, controls me and throws my energy levels all over the place, gives me tummy aches, candida! And stops me from having restful sleep, pale skin, need I say more? Another piece of advice divinely timed.
5. Avoid fluoride by all means! It not only kills bad bacteria in your body, it kills all bacteria good and bad and apparently Hitler back in the day wanted to put it in all the water systems - reason enough for me not to have it. I only buy toothpaste from health food stores now.
6. Try to cook on fire, gas at least because apparently electric hobs bring chaos into our food. Fire brings back old traditions, if you have to cook on electric hobs it helps to light a candle on the side to bring the fire element back into your cooking.
7. Last but not least for today, try to make sure that the biggest percentage of your food comes from the area where you live, ideally within about 50 km or 30 miles. For the time being I'm starting with aiming for at least the same country, however his idea has inspired me to visit a local farm just up the road that does biodynamic agriculture. My plan is to volunteer there a few hours a week to get a bit more green fingered and become more aware of what grows well here and what grows in each season, as we don't need to be eating everything all year round especially if it comes from Peru and was picked unripe...
My first tiny step on this foreseeably lifelong journey was to start making my second ever sourdough which fingers crossed will be ready in three days. In the meantime I have baked a spelt bread using bicarbonate of soda instead of yeast, yummyyyy, photos and recipe to follow tomorrow once I figure out how to upload photos again!
So much more to share but needing some beauty sleep now, may the angels watch over us all tonight xxx
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