Day 362 in a Year of my Life

*Jumping on my giant soapbox*

Every day, in every way, I'm led to believe that Drs are stupid.

They are like little sheep.

The pharmaceutical corporations have taken over the medical industry and are training our current and future doctors in a vacuum of limited knowledge, made up mostly of what new drug will mask the symptoms of that disease or illness.

All of these drugs have side effects and a lot of the drugs are effected by certain foods.

For example - the drug Warfarin is a common medication used to prevent blood clots.  If you take Warfarin, you must avoid eating kale, spinach, brussels sprouts, parsley, collard greens, mustard greens, chard, green tea, cranberry juice and alcohol.

These vegetables are rich in vitamin K, which plays an important role in keeping calcium 'in' the bones and 'out' of the arteries .. so while Warfarin is reducing your chance of having a stroke, it is increasing your chance of having a heart attack, because you can no longer eat the foods that protect you from this.

Another example - when the babies of breast feeding women are due for their vaccinations, mothers are often advised to stop breast feeding and supplement feed for the week before and after vaccinations, because the antibodies in the breast milk 'fight' the chemicals in the vaccinations and therefore the vacs won't be as effective.

If you think about it, this proves that the baby doesn't need the vaccination, because the breast milk is doing the job that nature intended - it is providing your baby with the antibodies to fight these diseases naturally.

Nature is so much more powerful than we give it credit for, because we've been brainwashed into believing that 'drugs' are the answer to everything.

The reason that I am sharing these small snippets of information, is because a friend of mine was recently told by his Dr that he must stop having banana with his breakfast every morning because bananas are full of fructose.

*look of genuine shock*

In 2010 the CSIRO published in their Australian Journal of Primary Health,  information which determined that Drs are poorly educated in the areas of food and nutrition.  see here

This is what I, (as an unqualified human being who believes in the health value of good food) know about bananas:

Bananas are one of the best sources of potassium, an essential mineral for maintaining normal blood pressure and heart function. Since the average banana contains a whopping 450 mg of potassium and only 1 mg of sodium, a banana a day may help to prevent high blood pressure and protect against atherosclerosis.

Bananas have long been recognised for their antacid effects that protect against stomach ulcers and ulcer damage.

Bananas work their protective magic in two ways: First, substances in bananas help activate the cells that compose the stomach lining, so they produce a thicker protective mucus barrier against stomach acids. Second, other compounds in bananas called protease inhibitors help eliminate bacteria in the stomach that have been pinpointed as a primary cause of stomach ulcers.

Bananas are a smart move if you suffer from elimination problems. A bout of diarrhea can quickly deplete your body of important electrolytes. Bananas can replenish your stores of potassium, one of the most important electrolytes, which helps regulate heart function as well as fluid balance.

Your mother may have told you that carrots were good for your eyes, as a child, but as an adult, fruit is even more important for keeping your sight.  Eating 3 or more servings of fruit per day may lower your risk of age-related macular degeneration (ARMD), the primary cause of vision loss in older adults, by 36%, compared to persons who consume less than 1.5 servings of fruit daily.

Build better bones by eating bananas regularly.  Part of your healthy way of eating can help improve your body's ability to absorb calcium via several mechanisms.

Bananas are an exceptionally rich source of fructooligosaccharide, a compound called a prebiotic because it nourishes probiotic (friendly) bacteria in the colon. These beneficial bacteria produce vitamins and digestive enzymes that improve our ability to absorb nutrients, plus compounds that protect us against unfriendly microorganisms. When fructooligosaccharides are fermented by these friendly bacteria, not only do numbers of probiotic bacteria increase, but so does the body's ability to absorb calcium. In addition, gastrointestinal transit time is lessened, decreasing the risk of colon cancer.

One average banana contains all of this ...

Vitamin B6 – .5 mg
Manganese – .3 mg
Vitamin C – 9 mg
Potassium – 450 mg
Dietary Fiber – 3g
Protein – 1 g
Magnesium – 34 mg
Folate – 25.0 mcg
Riboflavin – .1 mg
Niacin – .8 mg
Vitamin A – 81 IU
Iron – .3 mg

Now, explain to me, why any doctor in his right mind, with any education in the value of food, would advise anyone to stop eating their banana with breakfast in the mornings?

Honestly!?

*Leaping off my giant soapbox* 

Thank you for listening.

Today, I'm grateful for quiet 'alone' days that allow me to sit in silence and breathe and feel and appreciate my happiness.

Nite all.

Day 361 in a Year of my Life

I just made this delicious smoothie. I got the recipe from Kunara Organic Marketplace facebook page. If you're on facebook, and you're interested, go here to get all sorts of interesting information and recipes.

This smoothie tastes like a banana chocolate malted thickshake, but it's good for you!

BANANA PEANUT BUTTER SMOOTHIE
Ingredients (serves two):
•1 banana, preferably frozen
•1 cup of unsweetened almond milk
•2 tablespoons of plain peanut butter (i.e. unsweetened, unsalted)
•1 teaspoon of raw cocoa powder
•Half a teaspoon of cinnamon

Directions:

Mix all ingredients in a blender until smooth and add some ice cubes or crushed ice if you like.

If you're wondering why there is a capsicum in the photo, it's because I'd just picked it from our garden!

We must have two different varieties, because, although the others are sweet and delicious, they are only a fraction the size of this one and the flesh is quite thin. This one is much bigger and heavier and feels quite thick in the flesh.

I'll let you know how it tastes.

Now I'm in the middle of a 'to pack' list, so that I don't forget anything next week when I go away. I booked my ticket this morning and have quite a lot of 'stuff' to take with me, but I have very good packing skills - even if I do say so myself - so hopefully it won't be a problem.

I'd best move my butt, because I also only have one hour to get ready.

I see a couple of glasses of wine in my immediate future.

Today, I'm grateful for all of the things that I've had to feel grateful for this past year. Only four days left til I complete the Year of my Life in blog. I think I'll go back over the year and see what interesting things happened that I may have forgotten about.

Nite all.

Day 360 in a Year of my Life

Two recipes from yesterday's post ...

Vegetable Slice.

Serving Size: Serves 4 (4 Large Slices if it's your main, otherwise 6-8 as a side)

Ingredients:

4 Whole Eggs
1/2 Cup Chick Pea or Coconut Flour
1 Large Carrot (grated)
1 Medium Zucchini (grated)
1 Cup Pumpkin (grated)
1/2 Large Red Capsicum (finely chopped)
1/2 Cup Chopped Onion
3 Tablespoons Fresh Parsley
3 Tablespoons Feta Cheese

Method:

Pre heat oven 180C.

Crack eggs into a bowl and beat on low until well mixed.

Once egg mix is smooth, add chick pea flour and beat again until smooth.

In a separate bowl, add the grated zucchini, pumpkin, carrot and the capsicum, onion and finely chopped parsley.

Then pour in egg mix and crumbled feta cheese and stir through.

Line a round oven dish with baking paper and slowly pour in mix. Spread the mix evenly into dish.

Bake for approximately 40 minutes or until cooked through, allow to sit for 5 - 10 minutes, remove from dish, cut into quarters and serve warm with a fresh salad or salsa.

(I was thinking of adding some toasted pine nuts next time)

For the Lemon Chilli Chicken (for which I don't have a photo, and this is a modified recipe from somewhere else)

Lemon Ginger and Chilli Chicken

Ingredients:

2 Chicken Breasts

Marinade:
2 x Small Chilli finely chopped.

2 Tablespoons of fresh chopped parsley
Juice of half lemon
2 teaspoons of finely chopped fresh ginger
2 Tablespoons Extra Virgin Olive Oil

2 Tablespoon of raw honey

pinch of salt and pepper

Preheat oven 180C

Combine everything except the chicken and mix well.

Put the chicken into into a plastic bag, or a container that can be sealed, and pour the marinade over the chicken.

Keep in the fridge for 30-60 minutes.

Place on a flat tray in the oven and pour the leftover marinade over the top.  Bake in the oven for approx 40 mins (depending on the size)

************

I get very excited on Thursdays because it's FROG box day!

We got lots of delicious fresh food again today as well as some extras that I ordered, like raw cashews, kale, eggs, coconut cream and juicing oranges among other things.

We also visited Nana's Pantry and stocked up on coconut flour, shredded/flaked/desiccated coconut, walnuts, cocoa powder and flaked almonds.

The seafood shop supplied some salmon steaks, whiting fillets and some other fish that Adoring Husband wanted.

So our fridge and pantry is choc-a-block and overflowing with all sorts of goodies!

Adoring Husband has requested some kale chips with dinner tonight, so I'd best get on that now.

Today, I'm grateful that Adoring Husband is warming to the idea of new and improved eating habits and hope that he will soon notice a difference in the way he feels.  We know he won't be cured, but if we can ease his symptoms, it will be worth it.

Nite all.

Day 359 in a Year of my Life

More good food!

I could grow broccoli in the last town that I lived, without any problems at all, but here, we have struggled to grow broccoli, cauliflower and cabbage.  The bugs adore those crops, so we gave up and haven't tried again for the last couple of years.

Broccoli is so good for you!

It contributes to strengthening the immune system, reduces the frequency of occurrence of cataracts, it supports cardiovascular health and participates in building bones.

Broccoli is rich in beneficial nutrients and, for those of you who care, has very few calories. 100 grams of broccoli contains only 28 calories, and 3 grams of protein.

I love to finely crumble broccoli florrets into my creamy cauliflower or cashew cream sauces or add them to my green smoothies.  I also add them to fried rice and omelettes and frittatas and keep the stems to add to my home made vegetable stock.

They are also delicious lightly steamed, served with a splash of lemon juice and sprinkled with toasted flaked almonds.

Hmmm yum!

An updated photo of our lovely little Tawny Frogmouth chicks ...

Aren't they cute!?

I had some more fun in the kitchen today and made a Vegetable Slice and Lemon Chilli Chicken, which I served with a tomato, onion and avocado salsa.  I'll share the recipes for them tomorrow.

For dessert, we had the last of Adoring Husband's birthday cake with kiwi fruit and cream.

Loving the food at the moment... as you can tell.

Today I'm grateful for more perfect Spring weather, but feeling afraid for all the people in NSW whose lives and property are being threatened by the terrible bush fires that are out of control down that way right now and for the hundreds of volunteer fire fighters working round the clock to gain some kind of control.

Let them all be safe.

Nite all.

Day 358 in a Year of my Life

Thought I might keep my post a bit lighter today.

I LOVE avocados.

Avocados have no natural enemy and therefore don't require spraying with any chemicals.

Avocados are poisonous to birds.

We have two avocado trees in our garden.  One is five years old and produced one avocado last year and has three on it this year.  The other plant is only two years old, so should bear fruit next year.

The trouble that we have here, is that when the avocado tree flowers, it's the windiest time of the year and the strong winds tend to blow the flowers off the tree.

This is why we only find the fruit right at the base of the tree where it is slightly protected from the wind by the fence beside it.

So we've decided to keep it pruned so that it doesn't grow too tall.  Being tall it gets even more battered by the winds.

Still we persist.

Ten Things That Eating Avocados Regularly Will Give You:

1. Healthier Cholesterol
2. Healthier Blood Pressure
3. Healthier Blood Sugar
4. Improved Cancer Protection
5. Good Digestion
6. A Healthier Pregnancy
7. A Healthier Heart
8. Healthier Eyes
9. A Healthier Brain
10. Slower ageing

So ... NEVER feel guilty about gobbling up those avocados!

A few years ago, we planted some Asiatic Lily bulbs in our garden - right beneath the avocado tree co-incidentally enough - and they grow back thicker every Spring.

Today, I decided to pick a few for a vase on my desk, because they are so beautiful and I don't get to enjoy them when they are hiding away in the front corner of the garden.

They are the prettiest colour!

The 'love' sign, I bought from the markets in Brisbane last February and it sits against the wall beside my desk permanently.

It's such a glorious Spring day and I am feeling the love!

Another one of those days when the air is so clean that the colours are more vibrant and the air rushes into your lungs to give you a bit of a high.

I think I'll make myself a snack and go sit in the garden swing to take advantage of the fresh air for a while.

Today, I'm grateful that I have love in my life.

Afternoon all. 

Day 357 in a Year of my Life

Back in the eighties, I spent a lot of time fund raising for cancer research, as well as donating plenty of my tightly budgeted income in the hopes that 'one day soon' they would find a cure for the dreaded cancer.

Then in 1988, I had a bad result from a pap smear and was sent to a hospital out of my local area to have pre-cancerous cells burnt from my cervix.

I remember, as clearly as if it happened yesterday, sitting in that chair with my legs in stirrups wondering if this was the beginning of the end for me.

Three years later, after another pap smear, my Dr phoned me at 10pm one night to tell me that the results looked very grim, that it could be stage four cancer and that he had made an appointment for me the very next day, with a Specialist, once again, out of town.

The following fifteen hours were some of the most stressful that I've experienced.

I was a single mother with no form of transport, so I had to find someone to drive me 2 hours to the Specialist, and someone who could be available for my kids when they got home from school. (I lived 2000 kms from my family)

After frantically making all of those arrangements, I attended the appointment, went through a barrage of invasive tests, only to discover that there was absolutely nothing wrong. All tests came back completely clear.

That was the beginning of my distrust of the medical profession.

Since that time I have lost friends and family due to misdiagnosis, maltreatment and mismanagement by the medical industry and I watch and study and analyse every experience with a Dr or Specialist that my living friends and family have with treatment.

It's only in the last ten years (if that), that I have experienced the trauma of losing friends and family to cancer.

Of the thirteen people I know, who have been diagnosed in the last ten years, seven of them have passed on.

Of the remaining six, three of them are still receiving treatment and only one of those six has hit the five year remission mark.

All of those, still alive, have suffered horrendously with their treatments and three of them teetered on the brink of death.

So I can understand the people who have survived their cancer treatment, feeling very angry with me when I talk about how dangerous and ineffective chemotherapy and radium treatment is and how it causes long term effects that reduces the quality of life of those who endure it.

For a number of years now, I have questioned where the millions of dollars worth of funds raised for cancer research is actually going.

But that story is for another day, in another post.

This is what I found today ...

... and if you want to read more, follow this link

This kind of reinforces the statistics that I provided in yesterday's post.

The incidences of cancer are not declining.

The survival rates of cancer are not improving.

We are losing more and more loved ones because the medical and pharmaceutical industries do not care about healing us.

They will never provide our cure.

We must find it ourselves.

End soapbox rant.

I found this interesting creature on our stove top this afternoon.

I've decided to use it for the 'macro' challenge in flickr, instead of using the photo of 'Lolly'.

Last, but not least, today is Adoring Husband's birthday. We had cake!

Today I'm grateful that Adoring Husband enjoyed the gluten-free, sugar-free birthday cake that I made for him.

If you would like to enjoy it too, here is the recipe ...

Flourless Chocolate Cake

4 large eggs

1 Cup of unsweetened cocoa powder

3/4 cup of pure maple syrup

1/4 cup + 1Tbsp organic coconut oil

2tsp vanilla extract

1/8 tsp himalayan salt


1/3 cup pecans or walnuts

Method:

Preheat your oven to 180C

Line your loaf tin with baking paper.

Chuck all of the ingredients (except the nuts) in your food processor and mix it til it's all smooth and creamy.

Pour into the loaf tin, sprinkle the top with chopped nuts and bake in the oven for 30-35 minutes.

Serve with whipped cream and kiwi fruit or berries.

Nite all.

Day 356 in a Year of my Life

I've been doing lots more research and reading about diet and health in 'the olden days' compared to 'now'.  In summary, this is what I've found:

Obesity, heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic modern disease only became an issue in the 1900s. The first documented case of a heart attack was in 1926.  By the 1950s, heart disease had become common, and so experts were scrambling for solutions. Unfortunately, they picked the wrong one.

Saturated fat was targeted as the culprit, but saturated fat consumption dropped 83% in the 1900s. And, consumption of vegetable oil, margarine, and shortening increased 535%. 

This is the scary one - sugar consumption rose by 1150%!!!

Skeptics often use the argument that our bacon and lard eating ancestors didn't live very long, but this isn't actually the case.  The averages that they use for this argument, include the high numbers of infant deaths, which reduces the lifespan age considerably.  In actual fact, people lived to their 80s and 90s and their later health was of a higher quality than today.

And, what few people know is that we have now reduced our lifespan—and often our later years are spent riddled with disease and taking numerous medications.

Even if we have long life expectancy, diseases notably reduce our number of years in health.  Children are now expected to die ten to fifteen years BEFORE their parents.

We need to get the message out that real fats like butter and coconut oil are healthful, and in fact, eliminating them from our diet has drastic consequences.  We need to remove processed and refined sugar from our diets, because THAT has a profound negative effect on our health.

Our ancestors didn’t worry about heart disease, cancer or diabetes.

They didn’t fear Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s disease.

These diseases were so incredibly rare before the 1900s and our ancestors simply ate food – real food, and were nourished. Chronic degenerative diseases rates were incredibly low.

The leading cause of death before 1900 was one of three things: infancy death, death from infections & death from accidents (read more here).  Today, the leading causes of death are heart disease & cancer. (statistics here) If you add all the cancer statistics together .. they outnumber heart disease .. and seem to be increasing every year.

Makes you wonder where those millions of dollars worth of charity raised funds are going doesn't it?

We really must take a closer look at our diets

I set myself a task of taking notice of the ads on television that promote food (usually I zone out during the ads and use that time to write this blog lol) and when you really watch and listen, the words that they use to trick people into believing that the food is full of natural goodness, is quite shocking.

Honestly, the only foods that are natural (not counting meat), are the ones that you pick from the plant.  If the food comes in a packet or in a powdered form or with a list of ingredients that contain numbers or words that you can't pronounce, then it is not full of natural goodness!

Ok I'm off the soapbox.  Thank you for listening.

I've submitted my photo for 'Minimalist' in the flickr group ...

My Tawny Frogmouth chicks have not come out to say hello for a couple of days.  It's been very windy here, so perhaps they feel safer tucked under Dad's feathers.

Adoring Husband is off playing golf - perfect day for it - while I am listening to OB (the cockatiel) talking and screeching and whistling and chirping and squealing and generally being a nuisance.  SEB (the other cockatiel) sits quietly on her eggs in the nesting box.  We still have no idea if they are fertile or not, but we'll probably know in the next week to 10 days.

It's a lovely bright sunny Spring day with a nice breeze blowing and all is right with my world for the moment.

Today I'm grateful to be looking forward to seeing my little Chicklet in about a week and also an exciting mini road trip with The Nikonian.  I'm very excited!

Nite all.