Green Sunday on my mind! | by Mariella

The reason why you didn’t hear from me last week was because I had nothing to say! I was in ‘do’ mode, with a week to go before our food Market opens and so so much to finalise, the only thinking I’ve been doing has been the full-steam-ahead-toward deadline kind. But one strategically placed day can disarm that crazy autopilot and that day was yesterday.

If I could have taken a colouring in pencil and coloured yesterday in on the calendar, it would have been green. Green kept making cameo appearances! It started with green juice. Green juice made to order! My husband and I had two different needs, he’s got ‘The cough’ that’s going around and I had a homemade rusk episode yesterday which would be of no consequence if I weren’t in the process of doing away with an insulin intolerance issue.

I juiced lettuce, nasturtium leaves (good for sore throat and coughs), mint, whole lemon (try it, just juice the whole thing, you won’t regret it!), ginger, Californian poppy petals (we have so many!) green beans (breaks down insulin), coriander (good to get Mercury out of the body).

I poured enough for myself and then juiced a bunch of pears (alkalizes) for my husband and mixed the balance of the super greens mix in with that. Mine was great until I had a sip of his! My son loved his too, which was a big surprise as it was still a mean mix.

In between all this I was going to make our yoghurt for the week but when I poured the milk into the pot it had already turned sour. I considered throwing it out but then remembered a friend telling me she had made Paneer, an Indian cheese prepared much like you would prepare haloumi, out of sour milk and it had worked well.

 Normally you bring the milk to the boil and add lemon juice to it and then wait for it to separate but it just separated on its own.

I waited for it to separate completely, removed it from the heat and poured it into a pillow case over the sink.

The whey drained through and once the cheese inside had cooled enough for me to handle; I left it in the pillow case and kneaded all the whey out of it.

I put it in the sink and then placed a heavy pot full of water on top of it to compact it nicely and left it to drain.

It came out solid and perfect and it was so easy to make. It also freezes very well.

When making it with fresh milk I usually keep the whey and freeze it in ice trays. It can be used in smoothies, added to cooking rice or in any sauce to add flavour. Millet cooked in whey is so yummy.

I then worked on the table for my market stall as I too shall have products to sell. My partner found an old wooden crate and as I am getting into carpentry, I volunteered to up-cycle it and design a table top for it which ended up Green! With the help of my coughing husband, I finished in time to head to the Harkerville Lookout to celebrate National braai day with family! 

Harkerville is a forest reserve on the cliffs looking out over the ocean. There are several single track cycle routes through dense indigenous forests and many hiking trails that zigzag along the coast. It’s a magical place. And as we passed under the boom I felt something happen in my system that I could only liken to the process of photosynthesis, the trees receive energy from the sun and I felt my body’s answer to being in the presence of green lush trees as a deep internal setting to let go of the static electricity I’d generated around myself all week and at the same time received this beautiful transfer of life force from the trees! 
I felt so clearly that this was the optimal state for my body to operate from, that ‘relaxation’ is not a luxury but the natural default setting of our bodies. We ran down to the coast and up a rocky staircase before lunch, a mere three kilometres but I can feel those steps load and clear! To be surrounded by all that green was what I needed to recharge for the week that lies ahead of me! The next time you feel the need to ‘Go pick tomatoes’ (see ‘The Ultimate in Stress management’ post) make them green! It’s the new black!   

A little on broad beans | by Mariella

      

Harvesting food from my own garden is such a rewarding experience. It calls to the hunter gatherer in me. It’s so satisfying to return to the kitchen with enough food to make dinner. It’s like harvesting effort, and it’s so simple, you put the time and work in and you get food out.

Last night’s food started out as little green shoots in a row of 5 litre bottles. Because we have a cutworm problem in our garden, we put bottles over all of our seedlings until they are strong and their stems are thick enough to not be cut down in their infancy by these voracious nocturnal predators!

If left unchecked, cutworm can level all of your seedlings and your hard work in one night. If you run out of 5 litre bottles, cutting any bottles up into rings and using those works just as well for cutworm, but because we have snails as well, we use the bottles. A few still get in but it's controllable 

Yesterday we had our first harvest of broad beans. The plants have come up in what I refer to as our mega area, a space in the garden where everything we put in the ground grows to at least double the size! Our broad bean plants are standing at just over a meter and are heavy with new beans.

We love broad beans best fried lightly in butter with a bit of salt. But yesterday we had them with Swiss Chard out the garden and some roasted sunflower seed and they were yum! My mother-in-law makes a delicious broad bean and pea soup.  

Not everyone is familiar with broad beans, they are easy to grow but not available in most supermarkets. The next time you see them I would strongly recommend trying them out. Because they are still green they take 5 minutes to prepare, they are a good source of fibre, Protein, Phosphorus, Copper and Manganese and are truly delicious!

My visit to a Chinese Doctor / Mariella

As a result of several tedious health issues that have arisen over the last year, I am currently undergoing operation fix-me-up. I have lined up some therapies I resonate with and it all looks rather promising. Today I went to a Chinese doctor.

I completely overlooked the fact that a Chinese Medicine and Acupuncture Doctor uses needles, long sharp needles, and that this could possibly constitute a problematic situation as I have an aversion to needles, even the small unimpressive kind, let alone the Kung Fu Panda variety that lay in store for me on the other side of the wall. This all slowly settled over me as I dutifully filled in my form in the waiting room. His receptionist interrupted my roost to escape through the bathroom window to inform me that I could go in. I was trapped and not about to make a scene, so off I went, like an animal…to the slaughter!

The Doctor before me didn’t seem inclined to do me any harm. He was rather friendly. I sat down and gave him my list of woes, among them; years of bad stress management and a ganglion,a very painful cyst formed from the tissue that lines a joint or tendon, on my wrist. He listened, checked my hand,  my pulse, my tongue, said I shouldn't eat chicken (interesting as I hadn’t mentioned my blood group, which apparently doesn't handle chicken very well at all). He then asked me to lie on the bed and attached a bunch of strange suction cup thingies on my back and left the room, they got hotter and hotter. 

I started to think about how I had to collect my daughter from a soccer match in twenty minutes and it suddenly seemed like I may be a little late! He came back a while later, removed the cups and horror of horrors, the ominous sound of something being removed from sterile packaging rang in my ears! He rubbed my shoulder and without so much as an ‘On Guard’,stabbed me with a needle! If that weren't enough to completely finish me off, he wiggled it around a little.

Whoever says that acupuncture doesn’t hurt, needs to have their nerve endings checked!

     

He did this twice, and then he asked if the ganglion was in my right wrist. I thought for a moment about making a run for it, in my bra, with needles poking out of my back to the car, or maybe just directing him to the wrong wrist, the one that isn’t already sore. I reminded myself that I was a consenting adult and was the one who had made the appointment, I lifted my right hand. 

He stabbed that needle right through the ganglion! He then wiggled it around and asked if it hurt. It felt like a mini epidural going all the way up my arm and you will never understand how one feels unless you’ve had one. ‘Yes’, I said. He then left me there, like a pinned moth, for whatever needed to happen, to happen. I have to say, once those needles were in, they didn’t hurt too much.

When he returned again I informed him that I had to get to school to pick up my daughter and he said,’Yes, yes, almost finished’. What followed reminded me of those Kung Fu movies where the Ninja, clad in black, steps out of the shadows undetected, and snaps the soldiers neck without a sound. It honestly felt as if he had decided that my head was a liability and the source of all my problems and it had to go! I felt my spine stretch all the way from my neck to my coccyx; he then confidently coaxed the kind of neck snapping, vertebrae crunching sounds out of my neck that you would expect to hear before the baddy drops to the ground, and then attempted to remove my head once more. ‘This no massage’, he said,’ This is ….(A name I couldn't possibly pronounce), this open all Meridian’.  

By the time I left everything hurt, I was so rattled that I forgot my medicine behind and almost got lost on the way to the school where my daughter and her friends were the only ones left. But now, a couple of hours later, I feel fantastic, like my meridians are open! I shall have to google the implications of having open Meridians but it all sounds favourable! I have not, however, had the courage to move my wrist yet! It’s swollen and blue, and I have no idea if that’s good or bad!      

Thank you India! / Mariella

I remember when I first heard “Thank you India”, by Alanis Moressette. It was one of many little hooks sunk into me, pulling at me impatiently. It took me another fifteen years to get to India. 

The White Temple, Jodhpur

It was for work and a little play and because we only had three weeks, we elected to stay in one area. This area was Rajastan, the land of kings, a desert realm of ancient palaces and home to the descendants of the warrior clans. My husband goes once a year and I hid behind him for a few days after we landed, I was terrified! The systems by which the nation conducts its daily business stupefied me! But then something started to happen, something in that head wiggle wiggled its way into me! The tight grimy streets began to carve themselves into the fibre of my being and the character of the people engraved itself into my sense of humour, my smile, my faith in humanity. How so many people can live in a country struggling under the weight of itself and still smile, laugh, sing, dance in the streets, haggle you out of every Rupee in your wallet, rejoice, pray, carry on in faith, embrace you and include you amazed me.

Mehrangarh Fort, Jodhpur

Here are a few facts about Rajastan:

-Taps drip and so do toilets, the only thing to consider is where they drip from!

-Hooters hoot.

-Shops are open between 10:00/11:00 am and 8:00/9:00 pm.

-Cows will eat trash more readily than old papads.

-The solid line in the middle of the road is treated more as a serving suggestion than a road rule.

-Indians have rocks, will build walls. They have been built everywhere and for no apparent reason, there are high walls, like the wall of China, climbing vast mountain ranges and disappearing into the distance, there are low walls criss-crossing through the sparse dry forests and between villages. India is held together by walls.

Pushkar, A view of the Holy lake from my window

Romantic Udaipur, the Venice of the East!

There is an iconic exchange for everyday that we were there, such as the conversation with our auto-rickshaw driver who, after negotiating us through a donga in the middle of the road in the middle of the night said it better in his crackled English than anyone could, ‘Oh my goodness, this is a very mountain road!’, or the gentleman who has known my husband for years, confiding with arms outstretched, ‘this man is like a bother to me!’.

Having gone from the lofty mountain shrines around Pushkar to the Romantic lake temples of Udaipur, I think I found the heart of India in a small home at the base of the mountain upon which Jodhpur’s magnificent Mehrangarh fort stands. The day after we arrived in Jodhpur, we decided to take the road less travelled by. We walked through the streets until contented by how utterly lost we had gotten ourselves! We headed roughly up the road intending to possibly approach the fort from the side and find steps going up. Once the road became a winding path in the shadows between high blue washed buildings we found the last houses built against the rock face itself and here there were children playing. A boy, with large bright eyes yelled, ‘Come, come!’ We followed. 

He led us to a cerulean blue building built from the same stone as the cliff face, which turned out to be his home. We were greeted with many smiles and immediately food came out of the cupboards. We gladly accepted, all the while thinking, eeck, my tummy’s not strong enough for home cooked food in India! They watched us eat without joining us. 

We spend the entire day with this boy and his family in their small home at the base of that overpowering rock, they showed us the small temple they care for, the well they tend, a hole in the solid stone, which took two elephants to empty. We looked through wedding albums and did each other’s hair! Before we left, the boy’s mother, whose name is Kishan, said to me, 

‘You Englishstani, me Hindistani, but blood is same’

I thanked her, and sent her photos after, if it were appropriate to hug her good bye, it would have been a very long hug!

Kishan, on left, and her beautiful family 

On the way to Kishan's house

India is a rising star, and change brings with it shabeens in taxi ranks where there was once no alcohol at all, technology almost as quick as the kids and a direct link to the first world, but walking out of that blue house with a family of farewell waves at my back and a packet of leftovers in my bag, I felt like a desert nomad, stepping out into the setting sun, with my eyes set on the horizon and an ever elusive ancient world to discover.     

I'm starting a market! / Mariella

I am starting a food market in Plettenberg bay. Our first day is on the 26^th September. An auspicious day, according to an astrologer friend. And I’m very excited! We have space for twenty stalls and we already have seventeen! Fresh local produce is our priority, but we also have healthy meat, delicious local cheeses, a bakery on the premises, pickles, preserves, healthy snacks, wholefoods, chocolate and safe cleaning products. The idea was to create a locally stocked super market.

Worldwide trends point toward more sustainable solutions to food production and with growing economic pressures, going local is a logical option. It keeps the money in the community, ensures small scale crop diversity which reduces the need for pesticides, gives local entrepreneurs an opportunity to supply on demand and also ensures that the food you eat is yummy, healthy and fresh!

It’s important to think about where the product comes from, what it’s made from, what its total environmental impact is. It’s great to buy organic fruit but when it comes from across the globe, there’s an enormous carbon footprint to consider. And this is really the point that we are trying to get across, everything you need is right here and if it’s not here yet, once you create the space for it, it will quickly appear!

I’m learning a great many things through this process, for example, cheese makers are very busy people! I’ve also learnt that it’s almost as impossible to get healthy beef off a farm which sells its meat through the usual avenues as it is to buy raw milk. I remember going into a health shop once and asking the lady if she had any for sale, she asked me if I was an undercover policewoman! This is serious stuff; the health of the masses is at stake, steak…either way they’d get their fingers burnt!

It’s helpful to remember that this is very much a cultural thing which can therefore be amended. In Europe, for example, it is considered sacrilegious to use pasteurized milk to make cheese. And most Eastern and African countries consume mostly raw milk. It is just a mindset and based on that alone, maybe it should be a choice?

That aside, I’ve learnt that free range chicken and free range pork often come from the same farm, if you know why please let me know! I’ve also learnt that starting a market is all about dealing with produce, and it is also all about dealing with people! I have learnt so much about making myself understood, which can only happen once I truly grasp what it is I’m trying to say! And do not underestimate this simple truth, we all too often have a sense of how we feel and react on that before we have properly assessed our emotions and motivations.

I am starting this Market with a business partner whom I know quite well, which is very different from very well! But this process has given us the opportunity to concentrate on the job at hand, to compliment one another’s strong points, and communicate clearly, a trait often tossed by the way-side in the face of familiarity. And of course we both have the same vision for our market: healthy body, healthy planet, it’s so simple when you see it like that!         

Wish us luck! We are embarking on an adventure filled with appetizing delicacies and apathetic emails, tasty discoveries and deadline decision making, hidden ingredients, restrictive regulations, entrepreneurs, introspection, produce, press, pressure, and a deep knowing that if and when we get this right, it's going to taste great!    

Home made gluten-free breakfast cereal

I figured out early in life that carbohydrates don’t suit me very well, but somehow I forgot all about that as an adult. There is just something about freshly baked bread when it’s still steaming and how the butter melts on contact and with a bit of cheese and…….You see, it became a soft spot. You can imagine how tough it was to give up carbohydrates again. But six months down the line, the health benefits are like hundreds of new puppies running around my body begging to be let out to play, work, think, create, enjoy, live! I can’t help but pat myself on the back for sticking it out, and encourage myself to leave the room when fresh bread comes out of an oven. 

Not always easy, I can tell you!

When you give up carbs and sugars, breakfast can be the largest hurdle to overcome. Usually I would have made one big smoothie for everyone, packed with dates, honey, banana and other super goodies. I would generally be hungry soon after and the sugar lows came sooner and sooner as the years went on. I found that starting my day with sugar was not working for me.

I have since, with the help of my very ingenious brother-in-law and his wife, also ingenious, come across a fantastically delicious, raw, filling, sustaining breakfast. The only downside is that you need an Oscar or similar food processer.

You mix together                                                                                            

linseeds,

macadamias,

pecan nuts,

walnuts,

almonds,

sunflower seeds,

goji berries,

chia seeds

and any other seeds and nuts you’re partial to in a bowl and send them through the Oscar.

Do this slowly, as the oilier nuts tend to clog up the Oscar.

It’s best to premix the ingredients as the linseeds and chia tend not to crush sufficiently otherwise. I find a ratio of 50% nuts and 50% linseeds works for me, but it depends on you, and your budget.

Once it’s all minced up by the processer, add a third fine desiccated coconut and mix well.

This mix can then be stored in the fridge for about a week at a time.

You can add it to your smoothies, or sprinkle some over yoghurt (see How to Make your own yoghurt) or you can have it the way I like to have it:

Add a spoon of whey powder, dry goat’s milk, sprinkle of stevia, dollop of coconut oil and hot water, stir it all into a smooth porridge and have that with yoghurt. It is so yum and I’m not hungry till lunch time!

Faeries in my garden!

Today I stand before you in awe! I am amazed, overwhelmed, utterly grateful, physically tired! And why? Yesterday I experienced the absolute privilege of having seventeen people and their children descend upon my vegetable garden armed with spades, forks, buckets and other manner of garden tool with intent to put their hearts and backs into doing what ever needed to be done until the sun went down!

You know those moments when you allow yourself to ponder on exactly how, if you had the time/resources, you would extend, alter and improve an area of your life? I’ve had that often, while standing in my vegetable garden. My husband and I have carefully considered things, done what we could and then left the rest of the dream for another day.

When our Permaculture group decided to visit our garden, I thought we could prepare things, adjust things, and change a little here and there in line with permaculture principals (which I am only just learning about). I had no idea that we would tick off every single item on my wish list! Many hands make light work and outside insight is so invaluable. And it’s fun! Who could fault a Sunday filled with fantastic company, great food and shared manual labour? This is the stuff real community living is made of.

Gardening groups are popping up all over the country and you don’t need to know something about permaculture to invite some friends around to work together in your garden. As long as you know that the time will come to work in their gardens too!

After the group left and the garden grew still and sleepy in the late afternoon light I had a moment to just be, in my new garden which suddenly looks more like a farm, and I realized that the spirit of friendship is magically fertile ground which allows for magical things to grow! The proverbial cherry on the top came this morning when I checked the planting guide, and read that fertile time for planting starts today!

Afrika Burns 2012

Afrika Burns is nothing short of a life affirming experience. It will press your buttons, stretch your imagination, test your survival skills, shift your perspective, work your muscles, boggle your brain, catalyze your creativity and expand your heart. And it isn’t confined to the desert, it sneaks out and hitches a ride back to civilization in your clothes and hair and mind. It sticks to you like dust, like revolution, like memories so good they make the bad memories run and hide! But what is it about this event that reconstitutes the way that some of us see the world?

Is it the humbling empowering baring of the human spirit in every art piece you come across, the rejuvenating wind through your hair as you cycle around the Playa with your buddies on your way to a tea and cake rendezvous, is it the self-governance, radical self-reliance, extreme isolation, the music that coaxes every last step out of your feet, the presence of a thus far mostly conscientious society where you can truly allow your three year old child to get on his bike and ride? It may be the golden light of Lithium Sunsets over the far distant mountains, or just the opportunity to watch them without having to sit in traffic, answer the phone, feed the kids before your story comes on. Whatever the reason may be, this pop-up mirage of a town in the middle of the Tankwa Karoo casts an embarrassingly large shadow over what we see as the developed world. It’s more than just a great party; it’s possibly an ethos to base our future on!

One concept which shines brighter than the others for me is the idea of a Gifting Economy. The first year I went I really didn’t get it! When I gave a baker some over-ripe bananas to make banana bread I made sure that I was there when the bread come out of the oven! So insecure was I about the fairness of our transaction! He just smiled. I was not conditioned to truly believe that if everybody gives, then no body needs. It really is a very simple concept, but it required trust in my fellow human beings that I seemed to not have. I have it now, not everything you expend time and effort on must have a monitory value. It is a place where money is left at the gate, you give into the pool of human need and you receive equally. This is a very ideological notion and possibly may work so well because Afrika Burns only lasts for a week, but, as I’ve said, it’s reaches stretch further than those seven days, it reaches into our relationships with those we go home to, and it’s infectious! It’s neighbourly and once you try it out, it’s a very natural way to go about things! 

Every year I hear the same thing when I get back from Tankwa Town, “Wow! I didn’t make it again this year but I am really going to go next year!” or “Things came up, but next year definitely”. But what I hear is, ‘it all sounds awesome but I’m ill-equipped and terrified’ and that’s ok. It’s not for everyone! You have to be tough, well prepared, well informed and brave!

How to make your own Yoghurt | by Mariella

As I have said, I love making yoghurt (see Bees, honey and Yoghurt). You put two things in a pot and a completely different thing comes out, a thing that is so much more than the sum of its parts! The other reason I like yoghurt is that it is so easy to make. With all the toxic ingredients and additives like thickeners being added to yoghurt, I had no choice but to start making my own and now, there’s no looking back.

First, you want to make sure that the milk you are buying is free from hormones and antibiotics. I only make yoghurt with full cream milk.

-      Pour the milk into a steal pot and bring to the boil, I make yoghurt when I know I’m going to be in the kitchen for a little while! Take the milk off the heat once it’s starts to rise. Allow to cool, testing the temperature with your finger every so often. You need to be able to comfortably keep your finger in the milk for a count of ten.

-      Once the milk has sufficiently cooled, stir in four tablespoons of yoghurt. I keep yoghurt from the previous batch and use that to make the next batch. If I run out for any reason, I purchase a little tub of healthy yoghurt to start up again.

-      Put the lid on the pot and wrap the pot in a thick blanket or place in a hot box, if you have one. Give it about ten hours to colonize, just to be safe.

And voila! Delicious home-made yoghurt in just three steps. Super easy! If you let the milk cool too much, heat it up again as the yoghurt wont take if you allow the milk to get too cold.

Now….my favourite thing to make with my own yoghurt is lassi! Lassi is a traditional Indian drink made with yoghurt and, generally, loads of sugar. I make it with Stevia. Vanilla essence, little water to thin it out to a drinkable consistency, and then top it off with a spoon of lightly roasted desiccated coconut and cinnamon. Try it out and feel free to ask me any questions if you have trouble making it. 

Weekend in the garden | by Mariella

To forget how to garden is to forget ourselves’- Mahatma Gandhi.

This is one of my favourite quotes from “Jane’s delicious Garden”, by Jane Griffiths. It’s all about growing organic food in South Africa and has been my garden bible since I decided that I indeed have green fingers. I cannot recommend this book enough. It’s sensitive, insightful and easy to understand. Reading it makes me feel very capable of not killing everything in my garden!

I can also recommend spending a sunny weekend in the garden. It gives you time to focus on the details, the beauty of your garden. To meet the creatures that live there, like this little Slug eater and his 2 siblings hibernating under some cardboard mulching, 

and to meet the interesting vegetables and fruit that live in your garden too! We grow some heritage veg, like this ‘Purple beauty’ pepper which does go bright red eventually and this stuffing tomato, the last of the season, which dried on the vine and looks like a cartoon character! 

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Forming a relationship with the place your food comes from is like investing in getting to know yourself better!

I also learnt all about levels this weekend. It was one of those Mercury retrograde situations where, no matter how my husband tried to explain the concept, I just didn’t get it! After some time, I eventually understood how to work out the contour lines of the land in order to plan our new beds. Our vegetable garden is on a gradual slope and we do this to ensure that the water is evenly distributed and doesn’t dam up somewhere or create erosion somewhere else.  We used a long transparent pipe filled with water and two sticks with lines drawn on them in the same place. One person stands roughly where you would like the bed to start and the other plants stakes at intervals, making sure the waterline in both ends of the pipe is level with the lines on the sticks at each spot, simple really! We measured and planted stakes every meter. The row of stakes planted is the edge of your bed, and it’s good to do this several times down the slope as the eye often has trouble reading the incline correctly.

‘A year from now you may wish you had started today’, Karen Lamb.  This is another quote I really like! Even if you start like I did, with a small unintimidating garden box, you’ll be so happy you did, once those first little green shoots poke out of the soil. And now is the time!

In Mercury Retrograde and smiling

With Mercury in retrograde, it seems that communication foibles may be a constant companion until the 7^th of August. So if I appear to be reflecting a lot, it’s because there'll be a natural inclination towards that at this time and I’ve decided to just go with it! It’s apparently not a good time for taking action, public speaking, decision making, dealing with authorities, husbands, wives, ex-husbands, ex-wives, bank managers and the like! Oh goodness! What shall we do for the next five days?

I have set up a "Make the most of it" list for the next week of my life and I’m going to share it with you!

01. Make sure that my family knows that I love them, even though when I open my mouth to say something, it comes out all wrong! Try leaving them notes in funny places, draw smiley faces on their smoothie glasses in the morning with white board marker, and other forms of non-verbal communication!

02. Remind myself that if the Buddha in my garden can still sit peacefully with spiders crawling all over him, I can too!

03. Drink at least two liters of water a day even though it’s absolutely freezing outside and it's the last thing I want to do. If you are even slightly dehydrated, your short term memory can get so fuzzy you can forget simple things like names, have trouble doing basic maths, forget where you put stuff, have trouble focusing on the k@yb@#rd...i mean key board. Adding these kinds of minor mishaps to Mercury retrograde is asking for trouble.

04. Remember to laugh at myself. Actually remember to laugh daily. When you laugh, it strengthens your immune system, boosts energy levels, de-stresses, and diminishes pain (which is why I giggle incessantly when I hurt myself!). It also brings people closer together.

05. Eat raw and home-cooked food that I’ve picked myself out of the garden (see ‘The ultimate stress management’ post on 28 May 2012) Note to self: Do not be lazy about this, do it immediately as you get home everyday after work.

06. Go do something awesome out in nature this weekend. A winter picnic on the beach after a long hike down the cliffs to the coast may do the trick, failing that; a picnic on the lawn in the garden would work just as well! That way, if the temperature drops, we can put the kettle on! It may seem obvious, but there are real health benefits to getting out into nature that we don’t even consider, for example; it’s good for your eyes! It increases the attention span of children. It boosts energy, mental clarity, decreases mental fatigue, leads to faster recovery from injury and surgery.

Mercury retrograde can really be your friend, if you know it’s happening. If you don’t know, it’s fertile ground for feeling victimized by ailing electrics, blitzed mobile phones, car problems, miscommunication, and other patience pushers! Happy Mercury retrograde everyone! May the next week bring ample opportunity for clarity, introspection, re-budgeting, re-planning, reflection.  

Lessons from inside a Tipi

There is a notable difference between how people used to react when I told them that I currently live in a tipi, and how they react now, when I say that I lived in one. As if I have returned to the realm of sanity and they can now entertain the notion of having anything in common with me at all! That we lived in a tipi for two years has them itching with need to see cracks in my smile, confessions that it had all been a bad idea, a momentary lapse in reason!

Sometimes you just need a change. A radical, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is kind of change! We needed to feel the earth, the seasons, to know what the moon was doing, to no longer have walls between us and our world, to sleep outside. A friend offered us her tipi, and we packed our bags, and started giving things away.

Living in a tipi is very much like living on a sail boat! You’re always turning the flaps to the wind. It was hard constant work. But I had started to feel like a domesticated cat, and I needed to know that I could fend for myself out in the wild!

It made me much stronger and I developed skills that I now take for granted, that I never thought I’d need, like making fire, using a cordless drill, securing loose ropes on my own in hurricane weather with the rain beating down on me in the middle of the night, sick kids inside and a fireplace that won’t stop smoking!

What did I learn in those two years?

-Having fireflies flapping through your kitchen at night when you switch the lights off to go to bed is cool!

-Rain spiders are not poisonous.

-Outside showers rock, no matter the weather.

-Community grows when someone is in need.

-You are tougher than you think.

-A view of the stars from your bed on a clear warm night through the open flaps of a tipi needs to be experienced at least once in your lifetime.

-We are better designed to sit on the floor than on chairs.

-Wet things dry.

-It’s important to understand your cycles and the planet’s cycles. When you fight against your natural context instead of understanding it, you put your body under stress and you stop coping.

-Kids like tipis!

-Life is simple.

-When you stop hiding for cover behind walls and windows, you find a humbleness in the face of the enormous natural elements of this planet which forever helps you to make decisions based on them instead of just yourself.

-Living in a tipi taught me to not take any comforts for granted. We de-consumerized ourselves and down-scaled without feeling deprived or lacking and we've never turned back.  

Do I miss living in a tipi? Nope! Would I take it back, given the chance? What do you think!?

Why normal toothpaste is NOT my friend!

When I started to look at the ingredients of everything I consume on a daily basis, toothpaste was one of the first things I checked. Something about this daily frothy soapy experience made me suspicious! After doing a bit of research I took the family off normal toothpaste. 


We tried all sorts of natural substitutes, amoung them, charcoal of Aubergine (homemade). I don't recommend it!
The cause of this hasty exploration into completely natural personal hygiene and beauty products?


Sodium Lauryl Sulphate. 


There are loads of other nasties, but this is my personal fav as it is in almost everything!

Both Sodium Lauryl Sulfate (SLS) and its close relative Sodium Laureth Sulfate (SLES) are commonly used in many soaps, shampoos, detergents, toothpastes. The reason? We have come to expect products which have a cleansing action to foam up and both of these chemicals are very effective foaming agents.

SLS has been linked with skin irritation, skin corrosion, eye irritation and cornea damage, scalp irritation, swollen hands, face, arms, fuzzy split hair, menopausal symptoms, drop in male fertility, baldness, and in a few cases, blindness! In research done in 1983, the Journal of The American College of Toxicology found that some soaps, which had concentrations of up to 30% SLS, were "highly irritating and dangerous".

It is often used as an absorbing agent to allow other ingredients like vitamins, moisturizers and minerals to be more easily deposited below the skin's surface. The problem is that many beauty products come with a host of other toxic chemicals which can now enter the blood stream easily. SLS has shown up in the tissues of the brain, liver, heart and other vital organs! And can we expect anything less from an ingredient which started off in Industrial cleaners? It's all a bit disturbing really and even though many sources say that there is nothing wrong with SLS, i'd rather take my chances with the charcoal!

There are many more options available than there used to be. We use Vicco tooth powder now, it’s an ayurvedic toothpaste made from many different plants. It doesn’t foam. It makes your teeth brown while you’re brushing so best not look in the mirror! 
It took a while, but we rooted out all SLS in our home. And I’ve educated my kids too. It does mean that we need to pack toothpaste for sleep-overs though!