Tweak… and twerking would help too!
Reminder
Doing this is your choice. Everything is your choice. Everything you eat, drink, think and do will effect how you feel mentally and physically. If you have an illness, an auto-immune problem, lack energy, have hormone imbalances, mood swings, lack of concentration, brain fog, constipation, acne – you fill in the words for you – you can change how you feel if you choose to.
You only need to tweak really – tweak a salad for a pie haha, no, I am kidding! Well I am not but there are better ways; Tweak a good pie for a bad pie (suggestion in the last post), roast some sweet potatoes with cumin and smoked paprika in place of fried potatoes. Use Make almond milk instead of drinking pasteurised milk, homemade almond milk its cheaper, fresher and more natural than prepacked. Top some roast aubergine slices with onions, red peppers, mushrooms, garlic and some goats cheese instead of pepperoni pizza and so on. Lots more ideas will follow over the coming weeks.
As you tweak and add in good stuff, move more, sleep and look better you will be more inspired to do more of it.
Make it a habit to have a really fresh and juicy green salad with meals; if you don’t already love that you will start to. You just need a good dressing (recipes coming up over the next few posts) to make it just as you want it.
Be prepared
Be prepared for feeling a bit rubbish as you remove the bad. If you are used to drinking coffee and black tea all day, fluffy or stodgy white stuff (pasta, bread, pastry, cake, biscuits, pies you know what I am talking about) then as you remove them your body and head will probably complain a bit. Drink more water, rest if needed, move more to push the toxins through. Have warm salted baths to pull the rubbish out. You might be a bit bloated and windy (sorry) as you add more fibre to your diet – chew well, eat slowly, stop when full. Consider taking probiotics and digestive enzymes. You can find them in health food shops and online. They can help but you don’t have to. I take a course now and again and make my own probiotics which I eat and drink daily, more about that in another post.
MOVE
Walk, run, jump up and down on the spot, go for a swim, walk or run up and down stairs, dance, do whatever it takes and whatever you can to move. You need to use those muscles. They support you and hold you up, keep all your bits together. Moving raises your heartbeat, increases your oxygen intake, moves your lymph and so removes some of the toxins. It helps digestion, increases metabolism and mood. That’s enough for now, trust me, MOVE!
Humus Recipe
Drain and rinse 1 tin or jar of red kidney beans or chickpeas, put in food processor. Peel and chop 1 big courgette and throw that in too.
Add 1 big TBS Tahini,
Juice of 1 lemon plus a grate or two of zest.
1 clove garlic.
1 tsp cumin.
Pinch salt (GOOD salt!).
Blend adding a few drops of very cold water until you reach the consistency you prefer.
Serve as it is or with a drizzle of olive oil and lemon juice (please don’t be afraid of good oils, they oil your joints, your skin, feed your cells – olive oil, sesame oil, coconut oil, avocados all GOOD).
Serve with chopped veggies, in wraps preferably made from coconut or cabbage/ lettuce leaves, in baked sweet potatoes etc.
Bits and bobs meal
Last night I served this humus with:
Raw courgette, flax seed, physilium husk, onion powder wraps
Fried courgette, red onion, mushrooms, tomatoes, cumin and ground coriander
Chopped avocado, tomatoe, fresh coriander leaves, lemon juice
A pile of roquette and coriander leaves
Cherry tomatoes
Non dairy cheesy sauce made by blending soaked cashews, pine nuts, nutritional yeast, lemon juice, dash umboshi vinegar or a stoned umboshi plum, pinch salt and ground pepper. Actually I confess I used a few other ingredients (hence the interesting colour!), which have to remain secret for now, but that recipe will get you an amazing cheesy sauce!
There is no way you could feel deprived eating that!
Our diary for the last two days:
Monday
Me: corn crackers with butter and jam (homemade). Dates, soaked and sprouted almonds.
Robin: meusli type cereal (bought) homemade almond milk.
Both: 1 coffee with breakfast
Smoothie: celery, dandelion leaves, parsley, bananas, cherries, maca, spirullina, chia
Robin: Banana, Magnum ice cream!! (note to self make some sweet snacks to be at the ready!)
Humus (recipe in this post) carrots sticks and cherry tomatoes
Raw seed based Falafels with cucumber, tomatoes, tahini sauce wrapped in cabbage leaves.
Piece very delicious, old, hard cheese (using it up!) with Quince paste (homemade).
Apple cidre vinegar in water X 2, 1 ½-2 litres filtered water, green and red tea.
Walked over 10,000 steps (through forest, speedy), swam ½ KM (again, speedy).
Tuesday
Breakfast; Me as above, Robin whole grain toast.
Juice: celery, kale, cucumber, lemon.
Me: Chia pudding with homemade almond milk, banana, spirullina and acai.
Robin : Cereal with homemade almond milk and fruit. Ice cream (NB he is doing masses of physical work and when they are gone they are gone 😉
Grain free wraps, cooked veggies with spices, humus, chunky guacamole, Coriander and roquette from the garden, tomatoes, cheesy (non dairy sauce) recipes in the post.
Plenty of water, red tea, ACV in water x 2. Filtered water, green and red tea.
Walked over 10,000 steps (through forest, speedy), Me danced 30 mins, Robin active work. Ten minute meditation.
Wednesday so far:
Similar breakfast.
Smoothie using the large quantity of juice I made and stored yesterday with banana, mango, frozen cherries, pollen.
Boiled eggs (me 1 Robin 2).
Tonight I am not sure but probably heading for roasted veggies as I haven’t given it any thought and my hands are still covered in wax from renovating a floor!
Take it easy, be kind to yourself, keep hydrated and think about your left hand (see last post here Feel better!).
Learn MoreQuick, tasty and bursting with energy.
Here are a couple of recipes for you. Easy to make. Quick. Very good and won’t give you that saggy feeling after eating it AND you will feel as though you have eaten!
I didn’t actually weigh or measure anything, just threw it all in. You can do the same or follow my measuements. When I need something to eat fast or have other things to do rather than enjoy the food prep I like to throw it all together, no fuss. I used what I had, there are substitution suggestions at the bottom of the post so that you can use what you have.
Falafel.
6 soaked sundried tomatoes chopped small – I didn’t wait for these to soak (I hadn’t planned to make this, if I had I would have soaked them an hour or two earlier). I put them in a cup of warm water when I started then used them as soon as I need them.
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds ground in blender or food processor or with elbow grease with a pestal and mortar.
1/4 cup pistachio nuts ground in blender or food processor or with elbow grease with a pestal and mortar.
1/4 cup hemp seeds
1 hand full of basil, parsley and coriander chopped
1 TBS chia seeds
Juice half a big lemon
1 TBS olive oil
1 TBS tomatoe soak water
1 tsp dried herb de provence
1 tsp ground cumin
Several grinds of black pepper
Good pinch of Himalayan or other mineral rich salt
Mix it all together and roll into balls.
At this point you could serve with the sauce or store in the fridge till later or dehydrate for a few hours and serve warm.
Tahini sauce.
1/2 cup Tahini
Zest of half a lemon
Juice of one lemon
3 cloves black fermented garlic
1 Umboshi plum, stone removed
1/2 cup warm water (or more if you want it runnier, wait until it is blended up to decide)
Dash Braggs
Blend it all up. If you do not have a high speed blender chop the garlic and plum finely or squidge through a garlic press then whisk it all up. Add more water if needed.
To serve
Plate with salald leaves, any salad ingredients you like, drizzle with the sauce, scatter with sesame seeds and nasturtium flowers – or any flowers or fresh herbs, make it pretty!
If you want to stuff it all in a pitta bread or a wrap. Wholemeal is best.
Substitutions
Braggs – pinch salt/ tamari/ soya sauce
Umboshi plum – Dash Umboshi vinigar or leave out.
Black garlic – one clove fresh, remove central shoot
Herbs de provence – Italian herbs, dried oregano
Pumpkin seeds – sunflower seeds
Pistachio nuts – wallnuts/ almonds/ pecans/ mix of all or any of these nuts/ more seeds for nutfree version
Hemp seeds – replace with any of the seeds or nuts
Sundried tomatoes – half a fresh tomatoes and 6 chopped black olives.
Fresh herbs – use any mix of the herbs I used, even just one.
Bon appetit!
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What is that?
“It’s a Papaya”.
“What do you do with it?”.
Where shall I begin?!
Here’s a few things you can do with papaya:
1 Cut it in half and remove the seeds. These are very good for killing certain parasites in the gut, I know but you probably have a few…at least…. If you are making a smoothy keep a reaspoon full to add in, gives a slightly spicy tang.
2 Sprinkle with lime juice and just eat it. Delicious any time and a great start to the day.
3 Dry the seeds and use them in a pepper mill, they add a nice punch to food and extra nutritional benefits too.
4 If you eat a protein heavy meal, for example red meat, have some Papaya as a refreshing desert or starter. It is full of papain, proteolytic enzymes, that help digestion. It is also high in vitamins A, B and C, potassium, calcium and of course fibre which we love!
5 Delicious in a salad.
I make a big mixed salad using various leaves, all the summer standards such as cucumber, radish, tomatoes, onions etc and chop in a papaya ( or half, depends on the size and how many people!) and avocado.
Sprinkle with sea weed flakes and toss in a dressing of your choice. My fave for this salad is: juice of an orange, about 1 desert spoon (to taste) Braggs, same of really flavoursome olive oil, tsp honey or agave, a crushed clove of garlic.
I sprinkle the whole thing with some chia seeds (to soak up all that lovely dressing) and help seeds.
6 Don’t throw away the skin! Rub in on your hands, your face, elbows, knees, all over. It softens your skin, eats away the dead skin cells, cleans it really. Leave for up to ten minutes (avoid your eyes) then rinse off; like a baby’s botty.
7 I went to an Ayurdedic retreat and it was served steamed (traditionally Ayurveda is not so cooked as depending on the dosha some people find raw foods harder to digest). It was actually delicious, I couldn’t tell it had been cooked so maybe it hadn’t been steamed much; I’d stick to raw personally.
So, there you have it, a few ideas to enjoy the magic of Papaya.
I think I’ll print it out on cards and carry some around with me to give to the people on the super market tills!
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