A few weekends ago I took the first step towards realising my New Year’s resolution for 2017 by attending a beginners’ workshop in Ashtanga yoga. I had such an amazing time, and when I came home on Sunday afternoon I was fully resolved to practise my new moves every day. I envisaged a year of physical
I’ve been meaning to write about dairy for months, but my original intention was to write about why we were prepared to spend more on organic dairy. Well, now we don’t drink milk anymore and we’ve cut out all dairy except for milk kefir and cultured butter from our family’s diet! The old me wouldn’t have
Hmm, the title of this blog post sounds a little bit like one of Jane Austen’s novels, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, my story is far less civilised and subtle than anything she would have written! In fact, I doubt Ms. Austen’s heroines ever farted, much less talked about it. Well I am about to do both,
In the weeks leading up to Christmas last year, I did two crazy things: I quit coffee, and then I quit sugar. Neither of which were premeditated at all! The decision to quit coffee came first, sometime in November, when a prolific blogger I occasionally follow published a blog post about coffee. The article wasn’t
A few weeks’ ago I was really excited at the prospect of writing this post about hay fever because I planned to proclaim that for the first time in my adult life, I don’t have it! No sneezing, no itchy dry eyes, no fuzzy head, no runny nose… nothing! Unfortunately, after three plus weeks of wind,
When I was a kid, I don’t recall ever using sunscreen (although perhaps that’s just my flawed memory). What I do remember is lying out on the lawn as a young teenager with a bottle of Johnson&Johnson’s baby oil (shudder…) slathering it over my skin in the hope of getting a quick bronze tan. I
If you’ve taken even the smallest interest in healthy eating over the past couple of years, you will have noticed that fermented foods are all the rage. Yoghurt as a source of probiotics is just so yesterday; now everyone’s talking about kombucha, kefir, kimchi and sauerkraut, and some of us are making them too. But perhaps
Hmm, the trouble with relaxing is it makes you realise how tired you are… and then it’s very difficult not to relax more! Last weekend I went on a little family holiday to Waiheke Island. It was my first real holiday in over 2 years! Consequently, I now realise it was far too short because
When I was a teacher of design, I did a project with my senior students that encouraged them to learn a little bit about design history. The two significant design eras I focussed on were Modernism and Post-modernism because I just loved to teach them all about the social, political, technological, and ideological changes that
If you’ve had a go at sourdough or have taken an interest in it already, you will know that a sourdough starter, as a living, growing thing, needs to be used regularly, so that you have a reason to continue feeding it with fresh flour and water daily (or a little less frequently if you