2013 July

Fancy a Cleanse? How about this 21 day reboot!

July 25, 2013 By Meg With 11 comments

So, I have been working away for the past few months on this project with the wonderful Jadah and Jen from Simple Green Smoothies. The end result is this beautiful, gentle but powerful cleanse to nourish, refresh and reboot your system. I am really proud of this, and our fabulous test group have had fantastic results.

I know, it’s the end of winter in Oz, not typically the most popular time for cleansing and rebirth. But this cleanse is a bit different. No starving or deprivation, or complicated meal plans with crazy ingredients (although I do love a crazy ingredient – don’t get me wrong!) The intention is to gently cleanse and then set you up on the right path to wellness-town.

This cleanse is simple, effective and empowering. Simple and delicious recipes with step by step instructions and printable shopping lists. Effective in removing junk from your system and leaving you with more energy. And empowering in the way that you will reconnect with the food you eat. Bring that on! There are 40 recipes, meal plans, extra green smoothie recipes, and a whole lot of fabulous, thoughtful and relevant nutritional information (if I do say so myself) to help you understand the whys and hows of it all.
Another great thing about this cleanse is that you have access to a private Facebook group to be able to ask any questions, share your experiences, and hold yourself accountable!

rawbuckwheatporridge

I feel like I should be throwing in steak knives or something at this point… ha! I did just want to share this with you though, and I’m really pleased with the results. Something I didn’t consider, but am thrilled to hear, is how this cleanse has given people the confidence not only to cook, but to enlist their own …

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Ten-Minute Silverbeet Soup with Turmeric Spiked Yoghurt

July 15, 2013 By Meg With 8 comments

10minsilverbeet soup

Good Monday to you all! A very quick one for today. I made this for lunch on a break from writing, and it was the most delicious thing so I had to share! I love silver beet / chard. It usually gets transformed into some sort of pie in this house, but today it’s soup.

As you know I am a green smoothie afficionado, but during the cooler months I am looking to get my greens in other means also. Sometimes I make a savoury green smoothie and warm it slightly, which is pretty much soup really isn’t it. So why is this soup so great? Well it takes 10 minutes from go to eat. You could whip it up the night before, or in the morning at a push depending on how organised your mornings are… It is packed full of nutrients – silverbeet, or chard is full of Vitamin A, Vitamin K, calcium and magnesium – it does have vitamin C but the cooking kind of negates that unfortunately.

By adding the yoghurt with the greens, it increases the body’s ability to absorb the lovely, delicious fat soluble vitamins in the greens. Plus it keeps us nourished for longer as you are adding a lovely fat and protein. If you don’t do dairy, you can try full fat coconut cream, or a nice coconut yoghurt. The turmeric is there mostly because I like the flavour with the greens, but it is also highly anti-inflammatory. I have also added the lemon/lime juice to help with the iron absorption from the greens. Go food as medicine!

Serves 2

1/2 brown onion, chopped

2-3 cloves garlic, smashed and chopped

1 tsp fresh ginger, finely chopped

1 bunch of silver beet / chard

1/2 zucchini, grated

1 cup vegetable stock / broth…

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A Breakfast for the Overwhelmed and Adrenally Fatigued – Overnight Oats

July 9, 2013 By Meg With 14 comments

overnightoatsfence So, I’ve had a bit on lately. It’s one of those situations where lots of opportunities come your way, and so you say “yes” to everything, and it’s all super fun and exciting and challenging….and exhausting! I am not complaining at all, but I am conscious enough to recognise that I need to put a few steps in place to make sure my brain doesn’t explode out of my skull which I was a bit worried about earlier today…

So, I thought I would write a quick post on adrenal fatigue – but I won’t go into great detail as I know we’ve all got smoothies to make, ha!

Our adrenals are lovely, small, walnut sized glands that hang out above our kidneys. They produce steroid hormones and help control our reaction to stress. The basic deal is that if we are stressed, a hormone called cortisol increases to help us to deal with it, and then returns to a baseline level. When cortisol rises, another hormone called aldosterone drops in order to lower our blood pressure slightly during this stressful time to keep us under control. Great! Our bodies can’t tell the difference between a lion attack, or the fact that you lost your car keys, and will respond physiologically the same way to different stressors. The problem is, this means that instead of short term lion attacks, we are responding this way long term to chronic modern day stressors like work, money, and figs only being in season for a short time… When we are chronically stressed, our adrenals are continually pumping out cortisol to cope – but there is only so far they can go. If our adrenals start to get tired, adrenalin comes to the party to pick up the slack and keep us going, but …

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