Seven Ways to Celebrate Spring ~ Mariella

Spring in South Africa does not start on the 1^st of September as we encourag to believe, but on the Spring Equinox which falls on Sunday the 22^nd September at 20:44 this year. An equinox occurs twice a year (around 20 March and 22 September), when the Equator squarely faces the sun. In other words, day and night are equal lengths.

It also means we’re on our way to Summer!

The birds are tweeting,

the bees are buzzing,

if you listen quietly you’ll hear

’Spring is coming!’

We’re going to be celebrating Spring Equinox in a big way this year, it helps that it falls over a weekend. It’s also my Wedding Anniversary! This is how we’ll be celebrating Spring:

 1. Balance an Egg

No really! Rumour has it that you can balance an egg on its end on the day of both Equinoxes. I’ve read some personal accounts and we will be trying this as a family on Sunday morning. I plan to make omelettes to either way we’ll be fine! Try it! Here is Wayne Osborn's (Physics Department, Central Michigan University) take on it, he reckons you can do it at anytime of the year. We will be proofing that!

http://francesa.phy.cmich.edu/people//osborn/egg1.html

 2. Go for a Walk!

Embrace prettiness! Dress up in blooming Spring colours, put flowers on your dog’s collar and take the family for a walk.

 3. Pick Flowers

Seek out beautiful wild flowers on your walk and do a flowers pressing project with your kids, they can turn them into bookmarks and Christmas Cards or works of art once dried.

4. Turn Spring day into Kindness Day

Even though we should be kind everyday, make a point of going out of your way to uplift and make someone else happy on Spring Equinox. Pick flowers along the way for someone you know who could use some Spring Cheer. A neighbour who has one car parked outside now instead of two, a friend who is going through a hard time. They don’t even have to know it was you!

5. Celebrate!

Have a Spring Ball and invite everyone. Tell them all to make their dishes as colourful as possible (without using food dye!) and dress as mythologically as they dare! You could make Spring Rolls! 

6. Gardening

Start a fragrant garden, include all your favourite herbs like Rosemary, Mint and Lavender and hunt down as many different types of Jasmine as you can. Next year this time you’ll be happy you did!

7. Spring Cleaning

Put some screechingly loud music on, order takeaways and commence with Spring cleaning. Look up your closest car boot sale, or set aside a charity box, a clothes swop box, 

http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2013/04/clothes-swops-mariella.html 

a donate to your local school box, recycling and trash. Occupy one space in the corner of one room and branch out from there. Be ruthless! 
This is the rule: 
If you haven’t used it in 6 months or if it hasn’t got any long lasting sentimental worth, hand it on to someone else. Also, if clothes are too big for you, either have them taken in, by Monday, or chuck them.

Spring is nature’s way of taking its first big yawn and saying wake up world! Lets do the same!

Green juice for Sore throat ~ Mariella

Oh goodness, when I hear that little voice saying,'Mommy I have a sore throat' my own chest tightens! I know its a game of timing, if we catch early enough, it blows over, if we don't it kinda loiters about for a bit like an unwelcome guest and invites it's buddies, common cold, flu, temperature. 

There is a super winter blues busting tea we drink in the colder months,

http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2012/07/my-winter-blues-poa-plan-of-action.html

But juicing the right stuff is like a shot of pure muti right to the spot. Here's a list of what I ferreted out of our garden and why:

~Nasturtium leaves - Yip you can eat the leaves too, and they are very effective at treating sore throat, add young leaves to your winter salad or just nibble on them if you feel a tingle in your throat.
~Peppermint - It tastes nice and it's immune boosting
~Calendula flowers - aids digestion and stimulates immune system
~Broad Leaf Parsley - Packed full of Vit A, B, C and high in iron
~Lavender - Just one little leaf, not more, for Iron, calcium and Vit A
~Bok Choi - Full of Vitamins
~Celery - very alkaline 
~Lettuce - any greens will do but lettuce is full of vitamins 
Then I add Ginger and a whole lemon, just trust me on this, cut the lemon up, and put the entire thing through the juicer, you'll never look back! These two ingredients are great for sore body, better assimilation of nutrients, anti-fever,immune boosting Vit C

The bottom line is that packing your body full of greens when you're sick will help you get better quicker due to their detoxifying and antioxidant properties.
I sugar coat this otherwise thoroughly unpalatable concoction with fresh apple juice and we see the results immediately! One more reason to grow your own!

Why Appletizer is not always my friend and what to do about it! ~ Mariella

I’ve given up on shop juice!

Every box I check has ‘natural flavourant’. 

Its sad…they never used to! 

Appletizer was the only one left, an expensive option, but devoid of additives. And so if we wanted juice in the house, we would get Appletizer. 

Then, suddenly, this new bottle appears, it’s on promo in stores across the country and it’s a little cheaper. So we bought a bottle and checked the ingredients after we got home. Their buzz line is ‘Deliciously Good for me, everyday’ after all, except now its not so good for me anymore, because now, they have included Potassium Sorbate and Pimaricin to their list of Ingredients!

Let me give you a summary of the side effects of these two stow-aways:

Potassium Sorbate

In food: Nausea, vomiting, gastric upset, nutritional deficiency as result of impaired absorption of nutrients in food.

In skin care products: allergic reaction, rashes, extreme irritation when coming into contact with eyes.

The reactions our bodies have to preservatives compound over time, in extreme cases they can lead to renal or kidney problems.

Pimaricin

In medication: Changes in vision, clouding in the cornea, dyspnea (difficult and laboured breathing), chest pain, swelling, pain and discomfort in and around the eye, and increased tearing. Too rapid injection may produce lowering of blood pressure and cardiac syncope (loss of consciousness). Rather inconvenient as it is used in eye treatment!

In food: Aggravates allergies.

The plastic bottle in Question

I am such a fan of Appletizer so I called them and asked about the inclusion of these ingredients. The lady on the other end of the phone was very helpful and had me wait for quite some time while she found out the right answer from the right person. 

She told me that the juice eats/erodes the plastic bottle so they prevent that by adding the preservatives, I asked why they made the changeover to plastic. The Answer? Its cheaper and they have to compete in a financially pressurized economy. Tailor to the masses by making your product as cost effective as possible. I can understand why they've done it. 

And the one way to support them through it is to keep buying their products in glass or call their helpline and explain how much we love their preservative free juice and don’t want to support the plastic bottles!

0800 118 575 Call today and show them you care!

The Journey in search of my lost dog ~ Mariella

I have a dog…or a dog has me, I can never tell! And last week Wednesday he went missing, pinched out of the ether as if he were never there. This is a journal of my week of looking for him and of what I gained through losing him.

                         

Wed 14^th August – It’s Market day and my husband is away so there’s lots of carrying to be done, Rocket, my big black beautiful Weimeraner Dalmation hasn’t come back from his daily run on the hill behind our house, for every hole in the fence we close he digs two and he’s always one step ahead of us! If he does go out he’s usually back in time for breakfast, I fill his bowl and off I go, but it doesn’t feel right.

By 12 o’clock there’s still no sign of him. It’s never happened before. I call the vets and PAWS. No luck. Immediately I think, snare, but everyone tells me to stay positive. In the afternoon I phone a dog whisperer friend, she is incredibly gifted and even though I have done an animal communication course and have done it before to great success, I felt utterly emotional and incompetent. She asked me to send a photograph. I left the market early and called a friend as guys had been sighted on the hill that week and there had been an attack. We went up the hill at 4:30 and started calling. We walked through fynbos where there are no paths, through forests so impenetrable that the Alsatian keeping us company looked at me like I was a crazy woman! My brother-in-law searched all the roads and never ending paths on the hills between us and the location but by sunset we had found nothing. The animal whisperer told me that he was alive, unconcerned, close to home, could see lights, couldn’t move, had tingling in his leg, mentioned left front paw, showed her pine trees stumps and a driveway with a double garage, she explained that he could have passed these places at any time during the day. 

Thursday 15^th –  Early morning I took a drive, followed the sound of a dog barking into a driveway and met the owners on the property I had seen from the hill the evening before. After hearing my story they dropped everything and took me on a two hour drive over the hills in their 4x4 to look for him. 

I learnt much about neighbourliness that day, about the concern and care that 'strangers' show when your plight is one of the heart, a missing animal. If I wasn’t so worried I’d have enjoyed the drive. It was so beautiful! Undulating brush bursting with yellow flowers and open fields with grazing cows, paths crisscrossing like a spider’s web, little dams everywhere. I called until I couldn’t call anymore. In the book I’m reading a lead character says,’ If you say something enough times, it loses it’s meaning’. My dog’s name became the only sound that left my lips, the only thing I knew how to say. I wasn’t beside myself, hadn’t shed a tear, I was bush woman and I was going to find my dog! We found nothing. I spent the rainy afternoon in the bushes in a rain suit ignoring the feeling that I shouldn’t be out there alone but I had turned into She-Rambo! Explorer and Dog finder extraordinaire, only slightly terrified of possible baddies and armed with a panga, not my weapon of choice but useful in fynbos! I found nothing. A friend told me about poacher-finding trackers and I booked them for Saturday.

Friday 16^th – It was getting tough, my animal whispering friend said Rocket hadn’t moved and was a little thirsty, people started telling me I should assume he’d been taken and that he’d found a good home. My mind was a mess but I still hadn’t shed a tear, resolute, life without him felt strange, as if some creature had ripped the fabric of time and snatched him through the hole, like he was just just on the other side of a thin curtain and all I had to do was reach out and he’d be there. I put posters everywhere because perhaps they were right, perhaps he’d been taken, a guy friend offered to chaperon me in my searching of our forest. 

I can now describe in detail, the vast array of thorns in our forest, the ones that hook, gouge, suspend you mid-barb-wire-fence-climb, like washing on a line! The Alsatian looking at me all the while, evidently wondering why I wasn’t crawling, I tried, there were more thorns on the ground!

It was about Friday that I started to feel changes within myself, that what Rocket had taken from me when he’d run into my knee almost a year earlier, he was giving back. I was told I needed an operation, but I don’t do operations! So I went to a kinesiologist instead and healed fast in some ways and slow in others! I felt a little unable, but after days of jumping, climbing, crawling and covering ground I felt stronger than I had when I injured my knee, he’d forced me to move and challenge myself, to creep through thorny gaps a little smaller than myself and for the first time I really had a clear picture of where I live, where the marsh begins and ends, especially where it ends, with a splash, the dams, cow trails, buck trails, fence lines, forest gullies, open paddocks, whose cows were whose, which neighbour’s dogs had killed which neighbour’s chickens. I received so much love and support, people I‘d never even met asking after him, neighbours phoning to find out the latest. My friend had spoken with him but had no more information to share and said that she has been way off in the past. It was hard. The thought of him dying out there because I hadn’t done right by him plagued me.

Saturday 17^th – I was tired. I’d had enough of the bush, picking thorns out of shins and hands and hair, the scratchy wilderness and a name sounding over and over. I left the trackers, all three of them and a sniffer dog to do what they do best. They came back at the end of the day, disappointed at not having picked up his scent, it seems the rain had washed every trace of him away, but there were no snares they said, which was reassuring. But being as thorough as they were meant they hadn’t covered the entire area and there was nothing more to be done as the trail had gone cold. It rained again that night.

Sunday 18^th – Still no sign, I searched more areas with no success. But I had woken up with the strong feeling that he wasn’t stolen, he was up there and in need. I journalled that night. Forgot about the ‘how’ and focused on the result I wanted, focused on holding him, hugging him, the feeling of his thick black fur under my hands, him in his bed, happy and home, I wrote, ‘you are coming home Rocket, you will be here by the full moon’ I left the wondering behind, I chose instead to remember something I’d read about the number 11 in numerology, my number, that we are the most intuitive and when we focus our minds on it, we can achieve anything, I used that as my inspiration. He’s coming home before full moon. My friend said, keep talking to him, he can hear you, it’s giving him strength.

Monday 19^th – I had a full day of work and couldn't search but felt strongly that he was on the hill. Feeling a fool for wasting time on posters, I hired Happy, a guy who has worked for us in the past for Tuesday morning. I felt a pull to a certain area, my heart was leading the way instead of my head,a place I’d walked past too many times but when dogs are trapped they won’t call out, not even to you, because instinctively they feel threatened and vulnerable. My friend, the whisperer said she had a vision of him floating above the Bitou river, she didn’t say that it was him showing her he was giving up, she knew that I needed to stay positive. I wrote in my journal that he will come home before the full moon.Tomorrow! 

Tueday 20^th – We climbed the hill at 10:00. I tried to communicate with him and for the first time, it was clear as a bell, no weird images of him in turmoil, writhing like a snake until I opened my eyes in despair. He was clear, his eyes looking at me. I said to him, today you are coming home, I am going to call you, if you can hear me, you call back, I am finding you and bringing you home, to your family, your bed, your food, aren’t you hungry? Come home, I screamed in my mind. I opened my eyes and called him. I heard something, like a seagull being strangled! I called again, heard it again but softer. I ran. Ran up the path, felt the worlds of unknowing between us slipping away. I found nothing at the top of the path. I phoned my animal whispering friend, asked her if she could confirm that it was him, but she was driving (as luck would have it!) but said I should just keep telling him to let himself be heard. We walked up and down that small area for four hours and stopped for lunch. I explained to Happy that I wanted him to search a specific area, close to home, while I collected my son from school. Don’t go far I said, stay in this area and call me if you find him. Five minutes from home I got a call. It was Happy. He was screaming into the phone in his lyrical broken English, I find him, I find that one! But his leg is not right. Can you carry him? I asked, turning around. I saw his tail wagging from beyond the fence. A snare wrapped so tight around his paw it had cut into his flesh, causing it to swell to more than double the size, but his wagging tail and his relieved eyes made me give up the tears that hadn't come all week. I could hardly see the steering wheel as we drove down the drive way to the vet. We had found him! 

 

The snare was removed under mild sedation and after 1 litre of water and three suppers, he went to sleep by the heater. A deep sleep. No dreams. His thin frame lifting and falling slightly with each breath. He was home.

I phoned everyone, my guy friend who’d done much of the searching with me said, Ah my faith is restored! And he was spot on, it was Rocket's left front paw, he was close to home, close to cut pines, he could see the lights.

I cannot advocate doing an animal communication course enough, find one in your area, it's an enriching ability to foster and useful. When I phoned the animal whisperer she said, he had given up and if I had given up he wouldn't have made it. It rained on Wednesday night, an icy deluge that flooded the paths and hillside, but it didn’t bother us, in our home next to the heater for full moon had passed. 

Poetry and 5kg of Hummus! ~ Mariella

What could hummus and poetry possibly have in common? Well, today, Me!

On Wednesday evening I received a phone call after the MidWeek Market asking for Hummus for the Annual Vernissage Art exhibition in Plettenberg Bay.

http://showme.co.za/plett/events-entertainment/vernissage-v-a-celebration-of-life-creative/

A few things blossomed in my mind simultaneously, firstly, that I hadn’t made any hummus that day because of the ominous weather forecast, that I am no caterer, and that I’d wanted to apply to contribute a poetry performance to the next Vernissage which was now squarely upon us.

Was I too late?

As I was working for the rest of the week and had no chickpeas in the house I passed on the number of a catering supply company for the hummus and inquired about possibly submitting a poem for approval to perform at the exhibition. I was told the evening’s schedule was already carefully choreographed but I could bring it along and see what happened.

Did I have anything appropriate? was the question. Yes, yes, was my reply, omitting that it could be found neatly filed away in the recesses of my mind.

The brief? Woman’s day, drawing the female form, art. 

I had some work to do.  

As it turned out, the caterer couldn’t provide hummus by the deadline and there was no where in town which would have the amount they needed and so I offered to make it, I was then told they needed 6kg!

‘6kg !’, I said, ‘Are you sure? That’s a whole lot of hummus’. 

We got it down to 5!

After much phoning around I ordered Chickpeas from the same caterers and had a friend pick it up. That was yesterday, and the exhibition is tonight, so guess what time I went to bed~!

Quantity is a funny thing; I can now tell you how to make roughly 7 kg of hummus and enough chickpeas to make chickpea dishes for the next week! 

I should just have googled it! 

1 kg dried chickpeas yields roughly 2 kg cooked.

I returned home by 6:00pm and dumped 4 kg of chickpeas in water, waited four hours and then boiled them for an hour and let them cool overnight.

This morning I woke up at the crack of dawn, all the while walking around with a piece of paper in my hand reciting a poem I may not perform!

I drained the chickpeas and ran them through the Oscar, it took hours off my prep time.

http://www.freshearth.co.za/store/p-2179-oscar-juicer-da-900-chrome.aspx

I seperated them out into batches

To a 2kg patch of minced chickpeas I added about 400ml water

4 cloves of garlic

A quarter raw onion

1 Table spoon ground Cumin

1 Table spoon ground Coriander

1 Table spoon ground Paprika

Juice of 6 tiny lemons

4 Table spoons Tahini

A Cup of Olive Oil or close to that!

Salt to taste (I added 3 teaspoons)

And then blended it all up using a hand held blender

I would say it took me less time to write the poem! 
But it was fun and not a little strange to know that I’m contributing to the food and maybe the entertainment too! Creativity finds all sorts of ways to express itself! Wish me luck and here is my poem:

Eyes on her
Pricked at her skin
Tickled her toes, ears, waist
Eyes on her
Inescapable 
But not those eyes 
That want
Appraise
Condescend
Disregard
These eyes invited, redeemed, enjoyed
These eyes saw
The curve of her spine
The shallow dimples at its base
the easy character of her hair
her expression, 
how it oscillated between focused thought and void

in a vast suspension of time
They saw the parts she loved
And the parts she hid
And in these places found a playground, battle ground, holy ground 
for their hands to render 
A stolen hiatus on paper
The sound of their tools like soft traffic over her
They pressed and coaxed and lifted her form

from the tips of their pencils
And she felt the pressure of it on her skin and in her soul
Pressure like a turning hand to her cheek drawing her attention to some vital message
I am woman, I am perfect

About those Chickens.....~ Mariella

Remember how excited we were about our new little chicks? 

Well….things don’t always go as planned on the ranch, especially when dogs are concerned. A week after we got Star and Chomp, I came home after work and walked down to the house to drop my basket and goodies and then go up to bring the little chicks in. My son sweetly offered to take my basket down for me so I went straight to the chickens.

http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2013/03/we-have-chickens-mariella.html

I got there just in time to find a very self-satisfied Alsatian with a feathery submissive looking parcel in his mouth sauntering off to find a pleasant spot to conclude his snack! I’m sure they heard my screaming in Plettenberg Bay! He dropped the chick and it bolted, suddenly revived, into the fynbos.

I was so grateful that I’d trained them to come to me using the same call every time I fed them because even after having them for so little time, Star came running out at me from bushes like a trooper when I called. With no feathers on the lawn to mark her demise, we've deduced that Chomp, the stronger of the two, made a run for it and is lost to the great wilderness forever. The kids were a mess and I was troubled, as we were due to leave for a Crystal show in a week and what oh what to do with the surviving chicken?

After much deliberation we organized to take him back to his old farm to hang out with other chicks until our return and that he would live in our house for the rest of the week with daily outings to his earthy box. 

‘In our house’ soon became ‘In our laps’ which led to ‘On my shoulder’ and so the week went on, me feeling like a farm yard pirate and Star slowly healing from a dropped wing. Suffice to say we got attached! It was a dog show when we dropped Star off before we left, and even more so when we were told that Star is a Rooster! 

Anyone who has roosters will tell you that they do not, contrary to popular belief, cock-a-doodle-doo before sun up. They do it whenever it suits them, on the hour twenty fours a day to be more precise, which is the reason we didn’t want one, the chicken hok being so close to the Grandparents house and all.

So, with a very heavy heart, we bade Star goodbye and he has grown to be the biggest rooster in the hen house!

Moving along, we went ahead with reinforcing the fig cage, a seven meter cage which stops birds from ransacking the very fruitful fig trees. We sank steel mesh we bought secondhand from Birds of Eden thirty cm into the ground (see what the mongeese say about that!) and built them a cute little chicken house with a ladder and everything! We will be painting it this weekend, will update images once it's done.

We decided on koekoeks, which are a breed developed in South African. 

The Research Council of South Africa has the following to say about them:

http://www.arc.agric.za/home.asp?pid=2706

We have six, and got them at six weeks old instead of two. They are so fascinating to watch, incessantly peck-pecking as they do, but they don’t sit on my shoulder or fall asleep on Rocket, the non-hunting dog. They are not the Star in my night sky but they are strong, safe chickens and I can’t wait to hunt for our first eggs!

About Hopes and Dreams ~ Mariella

Hopes, dreams, aspirations, delusions of grandeur ~ those wispy tendrils of impulse that crawl their way into and out of your everyday thoughts. They tease and cajole and taunt and creep sadly away when ignored, only to rage another day, perhaps during moments of discontent, when you can least tolerate them!

~Am I following my heart? 

~I have one life, am I being true to me?

~Is this what I want to be doing right now opposed to……the thing is, if you are having a phenomenal time at work, the weekends would not seem so desperately alluring!

~The final stanza in the poem ‘The Road not Taken’ by Robert Frost rings in your head

‘I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.’ 

If these sing and ring and ping impatiently in your heart, perhaps it’s because you are not following it!

Bronnie Ware released a book called ‘The top five regrets of the dying’, and which regret do you think tops them? I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me. In our ‘liberated’ modern society it goes further than that, we have expectations of ourselves, we expect to not be able to make a living by pursuing our eccentric mad dreams so we end up chopping them up into thus far acceptable slices through prearranged avenues, or we claim them as hobbies instead of plotting a new course.

The problem with unrequited dreams is that they make you restless. They bite at your ankles, whisper through your days and yell through your nights, be brave!

https://www.facebook.com/ShotgunTori

Presently I’m listening to 'Be Brave' by Shotgun Tori, whom I went to see recently, she’s singing as loud as the customers in my shop will tolerate, ’Throw caution to the wind, be brave!’ but as responsible mortgage paying members of society we may have a hard time running off in different directions pursuing dreams as concrete as wind but her words speak of not waiting another day to turn your sail in the right direction. 

A wise friend once said to me, ’If you spend just 10 minutes everyday working on your dreams, you’ll be further than you were the day before, and a year from now you’ll be glad you started today!’ 

The world needs a workforce, but what it needs more are people alive with the creative light of following their dreams, the electric buzz of excitement when standing up and doing something that means so much to you that you have goosebumps on your goosebumps, its more contagious than flu, it’s enviable and addictive to the point of continual and welcome repetition!  

Home made Cream Cheese ~ Mariella

I love cheese, cream cheese especially. But I’m not mad about the preservatives and additives that come with it, especially as many of them are known to aggravate existing allergies. So in other words they turn mild intolerance into adverse reaction! 

And you thought it was the dairy! 

I now make my own cream cheese and its so easy!

First you need to make yoghurt:

http://freshearthorganicfood.blogspot.com/2012/08/how-to-make-your-own-yoghurt.html

I find that it works out well to make the yoghurt in the evening, leave it overnight and prepare the cream cheese before work so that it’s ready by the time you get home.

Step 1:

Separate the curd and whey - Tip the yoghurt out into a clean cloth. The easiest, tidiest way to do this is to lay the cloth out in a colander in the sink, tip the yoghurt into it and close it up with string to make a little bag. Then tie up the bag above a bottle to catch some of the whey which can then be used in smoothies and cooking. If you’re short on time you can leave the bag in the colander and place a heavy weight on top, placing the colander in a bowl to catch the whey.

 

Step 2:

Turn the cheese out into a bowl. Depending on what consistency you like, you can leave it as is and stir in some salt and pepper/chives/Cayenne pepper etc and serve straight away or bottle and store in the fridge (remember to sterilize your bottle) or you can add your flavourings and blend with a handheld blender to make it smooth.

That’s it! It practically makes itself!

No place like your family home! Now plant a Tree! ~ Mariella

The culture shock upon arrival in Gauteng for another Gem and Mineral show is lessened by the knowledge that we get to play catch up with family. And my family home is the stuff of dreams, well, my dreams anyway! The image above shows my parent's house from the front, don't worry, I can't see it either! And the entire property is like this. When my parents moved onto the land in 1982, there was a house with a fence around. They started planting trees and established a vegetable garden almost immediately.

Yip, that's me on the right, with the pigeon-toed cowboy boots on! The open range you see in the distance is now well developed. Good thing they don't keep cows anymore!

Their vegetable garden is now smaller, but they still eat out of it everyday. Lettuce is a Winter crop but the birds are so hungry for fresh young leafy greens that my parents cover their crops with shade netting, leaving the sides open for quick access.

If I were to think on what eating habits I have most impressed on others, it would have to be the size of my salads! Every night, for dinner, we all ate a salad of fresh lettuce and herbs out of the garden roughly the size of any other family's family salad!

They also planted an orchard. I have great memories of climbing peach, apricot, plum, lemon, pecan nut trees in season and eating them warm in the garden. If we all planted fruit trees on every property we lived on, whether we were renting or not, we'd all be picking naturally grown, fresh, healthy fruit from our own gardens. 

My mom's lemon trees hang heavy every year and my daughter decided to make lemon rind to sell at my Food Market in Plettenberg Bay. 

http://oldnickmarket.weebly.com/

This is a hibernating apricot tree, it's huge and still bares enough fruit for my mom to make enough jam for a year at a time! 

Spring is on it's way and this Nectarine tree is clearly feeling optimistic. There is an old Chinese Proverb which says it all: “The best time to plant a tree was 20 years ago. The second best time is now.” 

Sugar Free, Gluten free, Gelatine free pudding ~ Mariella

I felt like something sweet, a puddingy thing of sorts, something deliciously creamy, so I dug around in the fridge and cupboard and came up with an experiment, and it worked! I'm not about to say that it is a healthy pudding! 

It's rich, decadent and not low fat by any stretch of the imagination! But it's something I can eat and my family seems to like it! It's a work in progress but I'm so excited about it that I had to share it with you! 

If you have any ideas on how to improve the recipe please comment!

700ml fresh cream, raw if you can find
Big handful of Almonds
1 Free range egg
Half tea spoon baking powder
A splop of Natural Vanilla
2 table spoons xylatol or more to taste
Cinnamon

Serves 6. It's so rich that a little goes a long way

Blend together until frothy and pour into a metal container and place into double boiler for as long as it takes for the egg to stall. I've been wanting to try steamed dishes so that is why i chose to do it this way but i'm sure baking it under low heat with a lid on would do the trick.

I placed it in the fridge as that seemed to stall it more and then served still slightly warm, but do as you wish and let me know!

Here comes the Sun this Winter ~ Mariella

SAD or Seasonal Affective disorder is seen as a lethargic, depressive state experienced by those in countries which get very dark and gloomy in Winter and it does not occur to us that we could be in danger of feeling the effects of less light. Funny, how people who spend time outdoors are a great deal more active, vibrant, energetic than those who elect to spend most of their time indoors. It’s the chicken and the egg story, am I lazy because I don’t spend enough time outside or do I not spend enough time outside because I’m lazy?

This Winter my husband has implemented an ‘Anti-SAD Routine’. And he fervently plans to stick to it…sounds cold!

Here's why we’re kicking the couch and getting out there, even though we’d rather stay indoors with a hot chocolate and a good book:

~Vitamin D. Research indicates that Vitamin D may be the one Vitamin which truly has disease fighting properties and combats everything from osteoporosis, through calcium balancing, to cancer to depression to heart attacks and stroke. Vit D can help combat Type 2 diabetes! It assists the digestive system absorb nutrients like calcium and phosphorus, strengthening bones and immune system, it prevents osteomalacia and rickets, regulates blood pressure, reduces stress and tension, relieves body aches by reducing muscle spasms, helps heal respiratory infections, fight depression, prevents preaclamsia by improving kidney function, reduces hyperparathyroidism by reducing parathyroid numbers, hypophosphatemia by controlling the phosphates in the body, hypocalcaemia by preventing abnormal deposition of calcium, and reduces renal osteodystrophy by regulating calcium content and fibromyalgia.

~Chances are you’ll get more exercise which makes you happy! Researchers at the University of Essex in England are advancing the notion that exercising in the presence of nature improves self-esteem and mental health.

~Improved concentration. Children with ADHD have been observed to focus better after being outdoors. Ever notice how, when you’re trying to think about something, you turn to face the window!

~You’ll heal faster! Hospital studies have shown spinal surgery patients experiencing less pain and stress and requesting less pain medication during recovery when exposed to natural light.

The good news is that you get all of this for free, by spending time in the sun. Here is an interesting thought though, there’s a theory that the eyes are the Vitamin D portal for the body and you mess with that when you wear sun glasses! I only wear mine while driving. Remember you weren't born with sunglasses strapped to your head!

If you’re in the sun for your daily dose of Vitamin D, hold on the sunblock too! It takes only 15 min to get what you need and you don’t need to cover up for that, especially during Winter. Go lie in the sun this weekend, hot chocolate in one hand and a hot water bottle in the other! It’ll be good for you!