Go bake a cake

102. Top Five Things I LOVED This Week:

1. Finally learning not to say my pin out aloud as I type each number into the eftpos machine.
2. Being the little spoon.
3. Learning the true definition of “house proud”. My husband and I moved into the brand new house we bought. We are so in love and content with our home. I’ve had countless moments like on that roof ad where the guy goes out to get the paper in his undies and ends up staring happily in a daze at his house while all the neighbours look on. However I’ve been fully clothed.
4. Isla Collective stripey-ness.
5. The funny moments of living in a new house like stumbling around in the dark in the middle of the night trying to find the bathroom not knowing where the hell you are. Or turning every single switch at the wall on each time you walk into every room to figure out which one will turn the light on.

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. Does anyone else love HONY (Humans of New York)? I first heard about the project on Triple J’s Hack about a year ago. A fantastic photographer captures portraits and does a mini interview with people he sees on the street in NY. I follow it on Insta and Facebook. They have just been SO GOOD lately!

This week there was a photo of a middle aged woman standing next to this vibrantly dressed older woman with a walking stick wearing bright red lipstick and a gorgeous smile. The caption read:

“What's your favorite thing about your mother?"

"She loves life more than anyone I've ever known. I hope she doesn't mind me telling you this, but recently she's had some health problems. And her health got so bad at one point, she called me and said: 'I was starting to wonder if there was any reason to go on. But then I had the most delicious pear!'

True inspiration.

How good is snail mail! There was a big parcel waiting for me in the post box this morning on my way to work.

My mother has always been the most thoughtful and selfless human I know. She sent a beautifully soft jumper she had been knitting my husband and just so I wouldn't feel left out, she sent me a little set of gardening affirmation cards! I just pulled this one out.

Enjoy this fresh new week. It's going to be a great one!

Hello to all the pregnant mamas out there!

Just a gentle reminder to keep an eye on your vitamin D levels this time of year as you are your bubba's only source of D while its chilling on the inside.

Optimal vitamin D levels will help bub grow strong bones and teeth, help the absorption of calcium and phosphorus as well as protecting against diabetes and heart disease.Vitamin D will also give your immune system a fighting chance this winter!

Aim to go for a walk daily in the sunshine and incorporate vitamin D-rich foods into your diet like free range eggs and organic butter. When looking at supplements, make your choice based on quality. I'm a fan of BioCeuticals D3 Drops Forte. Ask your GP for a blood test to monitor your levels.

Enjoy the sunshine!

*LOCALS SUPPORTING LOCALS*

I'm a massive fan of beeswax candles. Who wouldn't want their house smelling like honey!?

I met a lovely couple from Bucca (10 mins north of Coffs) in the shop recently. The husband is a beekeeper and his wife uses the wax to create gorgeous candles!

Needless to say, we are so happy to be stocking a variety of beeswax candles (starting from $1.75 for tea lights). When the bees come out of hibernation in Spring (learn something every day!) we will also be stocking their local honey!

"I don't feel very much like Pooh today", said Pooh.

"There there" said Piglet."I'll bring you tea and honey til you do".

-A.A. Milne

103. Top Five Things I LOVED This Week:

1. Chet Faker’s cover of Lover (You Don’t Treat Me No Good) for Like a Version. Honey to my ears.
2. Reclining on my gorgeous new purple lotus bolster from @O
3. The cheeky possum that ran out in front of me while I was walking home with the groceries the other night. I got such a fright that I dropped the banana I was eating (um, or I MAY have thrown it at him), then he picked it up and ran off with it!
4. Baking my head off this morning for our Sunday picnic with the fam: zucchini slice and carrot cake. Sharing the recipe with you all this week.
5. My oversized ‘Good Morning Sunshine’ mug that has a picture of a flamingo wearing sunglasses standing next to a pineapple. A dear girlfriend gave it to me for my birthday this year. As soon as I wake up I fill it with milky chai and sit in a patch of sunshine that hits our courtyard at about 7:35 each morning.

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. My routine has been totally out of whack for at least 6 weeks I reckon. But the dust has settled and my intention for this coming week is to put some positive lifestyle rituals back into place. I truly believe that we are only as strong as our daily habits.

Welcome back green juices, beach walks, my regular yoga practice, new recipes and journaling. Things that bring me back home to myself.

Have you been off track recently? Have a think about what you need MORE of in your life right now. You know those things you know you SHOULD be doing but you don’t really get around to doing? Let’s do them this week!!

*Photo of Emma the Naturopath chai-ing it up in Winter 2009 -taken by Brett the Physiologist.

So I made the BEST CAKE of my life on Sunday. Big claim, I know. Adapted from my fave cookbook ‘Wholefoods’ by Jude Blereau (page 289 for those of you playing along at home). It’s as if a carrot cake and fruit cake made love. There’s an interesting visualisation for you… Dairy free and gluten free. A lot of natural sugars so share it around. Really dense and moist. Perfectly accompanied by a hot tea and good book.

CARROT CAKE
2 cups gluten free self raising flour
1 cup coconut sugar
½ cup shredded or desiccated coconut
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ginger
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup chopped walnuts
1 cup sultanas
4 cups (400g) grated carrot
3 pineapple rings, roughly chopped
¼ cup (60ml) pineapple juice from the can
½ cup olive oil
4 eggs, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

METHOD
1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees.
2. Combine flour, sugar, coconut, spices, walnuts and sultanas in a large bowl and mix lightly.
3. Mix together the remaining ingredients in a separate bowl then add to the rest of the mixture.
4. Line a cake tin with baking paper or lightly grease with coconut oil. I divided the mixture between a round 24 cm spring form tin and a loaf tin. Bake for about 1 hr and 15 mins or until the center is cooked when tested with a skewer. If the top starts to brown too quickly, cover with foil. Leave cakes to cool for 15 mins in the tin then turn out onto a wire rack. I actually turned my super powered oven down half way through, so just monitor.

Enjoy!

Emma the Naturopath xx

Essential Health
0266 514 533
carrots_and_apples@hotmail.com

For goodness sake, don't fear change!

ZUCCHINI SLICE

3 zucchinis, grated
1 carrot, grated
1 onion (or shallots), diced
2 cloves garlic, diced
1 cup shredded cheese
5 eggs
½ cup olive oil
1 cup gluten- free self-raising flour
3 rashes bacon, diced
                                                                   1 Tbsp dried Italian herbs
                                                                   1 tomato, sliced

METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees.
2. Combine all of the ingredients (except the tomato) in a large mixing bowl. Season with salt and pepper.
3. Line a baking dish with baking paper and pour in mixture. Arrange the sliced tomato on top (or you could use mushies).
4. Bake for 1 hour or until set. Serve with a fresh salad.

Excellent for lunch boxes or cut them into squares, wrap in glad wrap and freeze. That way you can pop one in the fridge the night before to defrost and you’ll have a protein packed brekkie without the fuss.

Top Five Things I LOVED This Wk:

1. The bravest human I know, aka my husband! Tonight he is doing a NIGHT SCUBA DIVE off of Split Solitary Island!
2. Watching the orange tulips sitting on my dining room table open up each day.
3. When I finish work and walk to my car on the roof of the carpark. It’s actually my favourite part of the day when I can just take a big deep breath of crisp night air, admire the clouds and watch the moon come up (especially that one of Thurs night!).
4. Navy stripes and leopard tights.
5. That my grandmother calls acupuncture “aqua-puncture”. Bless.

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. “The push of wanting it to change is sometimes is what keeps it from changing”
–Brian Yeakey

Ever felt like you were in an uphill battle? This is such a MASSIVE lesson to learn (trust me!). When something is meant to be, it’ll just flow effortlessly. Save yourself a lot of time and energy by realising that there are many things you just can’t control. Have trust.

“Close your eyes and imagine the best version of you possible. That’s who you really are, let go of any part of you that doesn’t believe it.”

-C. Assaad

Top Five Things I LOVED This Wk:

1. Realising that when I read texts from my Scottish friend that I actually read them in her accent.
2. Prototype by Outkast being played at high volume during a crazy yoga class at Mermaid this morning.
3. Finding someone else who would go to the theatre more to see musicals if there wasn’t so much damn singing
4. Lunch at BSKT at Nobby’s: a Miranda Kerr smoothie, half a dozen king prawns and an amber long neck beer bottle filled with purified water. It was just me and my book so I didn’t even have to share a thing!
5. Two sausage dog sightings. A dog shaped like a sausage… What’s not to love?

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. Remember the questions I posted this week? Well here are five of my answers:

- What do I need MORE of in my life right now?
Softness, solitude, reading before bed, sunshine, trust in my intuition.

- What do I need LESS of in my life right now?
Screen time (laptop, phone, TV), leftovers, clutter, rigidity, expectations.

Don’t forget to answer your own too. Feel free to share below or just have a scribble in your journal.

“In buying organic or biodynamic food we seek to live within an ecosystem rather than control it. The higher price charged for a lot of organic produce reflects the true cost of producing food.

We are now in the fortunate position of having farmers’ markets becoming a familiar part of our urban life: it is there that we can find a balance between the need to grow and produce food that can sustain and support life and the need to respect our environment.

At a farmers’ market we can come together, respecting and connecting with each other and forming a vibrant and rich community.”

-Jude Blereau, Wholefoods

On Thursdays I love watching our customers carrying their overflowing baskets of fruit, veg and flowers into the shop, exclaiming things like "Look at this luscious kale I bought"! It makes me proud to be part of the Coffs community.

If you find yourself down at the Coffs Coast Growers Market tomorrow morning, pop in and show me all the goodies you found!

Top Five Things I LOVED This Wk: (our 98th!!)

1. Climbing into bed after work on a rainy Saturday afternoon with a hot water bottle and watching this week’s episode of Offspring –bloody Origin on a Wednesday night grrrrr…
2. Chivalry. Like when a kind man rushes into the elevator as it is closing to carry the heavy box you’re wrestling. Thankyou Mr Bacio.
3. That yummy bread smell of a freshly heated wheat bag. The only purpose I can think of for a microwave.
4. A deeply relaxing reflexology session that can only be described as “heavenly”.
5. BUYING OUR FIRST HOME!!!

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. A lot of inspiring Maya Angelou quotes have been flying around this week. I couldn’t choose my favourite, so I narrowed it down to three:

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.”

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”

"Try something new, grow with the times and, for goodness sake, don't fear change".

-Ita Buttrose

You tell 'em Ita!!

Emma the Naturopath xx

Essential Health
0266 514 533
Boulevard Arcade (opp. Blush), Coffs Mall 2450

Facebook: Essential Health Coffs

carrots_and_apples@hotmail.com

Food as medicine

FUN WITH FERMENTS

On a rainy Sunday afternoon last week, I was at a workshop fermenting my little heart out! I’d been wanting to do the workshop for a few months now as everyone I’d talked to who had participated had raved to me about their digestion/skin/energy etc never being so good!

One of the things that really draw me to fermenting is the fact that it’s SO SIMPLE. It’s really just about adding 1 or 2 ingredients to a glass jar covering it with water and leaving it for around a week in a quiet part of your kitchen. Then you’ve got a bubbly little tonic that wants to be best friends with your digestive tract.
Good quality store bought probiotic powders/capsules still have their place for treating certain health conditions but this is a fantastic way to incorporate foods that are rich in “friendly bacteria” into your daily life.

I now have a special cupboard designated to my beet kvass, dairy kefir, red cabbage sauerkraut and wheat grain revulac all bubbling and fizzing away. Then this morning I acquired a bottle of coconut kefir and a kombucha mushroom. Like a whole other language right? Don't fret, it’s super simple.

Rosa is a wealth of knowledge and has such a calming, grounded energy. For enquiries, shoot Rosa an email at medicinewomantherapy@gmail.com or 'Organic Sauerkraut' on Facebook.





DID YOU KNOW.....?

Top Five Things I LOVED This Wk:

1. Picking up a Louise L Hay book off of the shelf this week and a black and white photo of 4 little hippies living in Byron taken exactly 10 years ago. I always hide old letters and photos in random books for myself to get a little nostalgic hit when I least expect it.
2. Read carefully: Chai chia pudding. Thanks JD
3. Watching the snowboarding GoPro footage on the plasma behind the teller’s head at the bank. I always look forward to doing the banking for a couple of minutes each Sunday afternoon so I can zone out and pretend I’m back in Japan.
4. Hearing wonderful news from one of my besties. I was so ecstatic for her that it felt like it happened to me!
5. Making a fig and mixed berry raw vegan cheesecake with a girlfriend. Half the fun was the planning. Texts flying around like “You bring the dates, I’ll bring the pistachios” and photo texts of nuts soaking (the cashews that is!). Recipe will be posted this week!

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. “When I loved myself enough, I began leaving whatever wasn't healthy. This meant people, jobs, my own beliefs and habits - anything that kept me small.

My judgement called it disloyal.

Now I see it as self-loving.”
-Kim McMillen

FIG AND MIXED BERRY RAW VEGAN CHEESECAKE!!!

INGREDIENTS:

Base
1 cup pistachio nuts
½ cup macadamia nuts
½ cup pitted dates (around 8-9)
1 tsp cinnamon
½ tsp nutmeg
½ tsp sea salt

Filling
¾ cup cashews, soaked overnight in 3/4 cup coconut cream
1 Tbsp coconut oil
¼ cup CoYo coconut yoghurt
1 Tbsp maple syrup
1 Tbsp cup chia seeds
1 tsp lime zest
Juice of 1 lime
½ tsp vanilla bean extract
1 ripe fig
½ cup frozen berries
To Decorate
2-3 ripe figs
¼ cup crushed pistachios
Handful of fresh or frozen berries
¼ cup coconut flakes

INSTRUCTIONS:
1. Line the bottom of a spring-form tin with baking paper. In a food processor, combine all the ingredients for the base and whiz until breadcrumb sized and the mixture begins sticking together. Press into bottom of tin and place in freezer.
2. Place all the ingredients for the filling in the food processor and blend to a smooth texture.
3. Pour the mixture on top of the base and place back in freezer for at least three hours.
4. Take out of freezer half an hour before serving (if you leave it overnight, leave it out for at least an hour). It should be like a mousse-like consistency. Get creative and decorate the top and serve with some extra coconut yoga. Enjoy!!!

I made this as an early Mothers Day present to my mum on the weekend. The cheesecake was adapted from a recipe on the Frankie Magazine blog.

WHY DO YOU DO WHAT YOU DO?

A girlfriend of mine teaches gymnastics. She took a break from that for a while to do a meditation course. She returned back to the gymnastics world to realise how fiercely competitive the industry is and how much pressure is placed on the students to perform.
She sat down with her students the other day to talk to them about WHY they fell in love with gymnastics in the first place, to rekindle the passion they originally felt for the sport. She told me it was a really uplifting session as they replaced the stress they were feeling with joy.

We can all ask ourselves those sorts of questions when we’re feeling a bit lost or overwhelmed:

*At the end of a hard day, why did you decide to become a teacher/vet/mother/nurse?
*During a rough patch, what made you fall in love with your partner?
*You feel like you don’t have time for your hobbies, but why do you love surfing/dancing/sewing?

I opened my journal and asked myself: Why did I become a naturopath? 

I wrote these words…
To INSPIRE
To TEACH
To SUPPORT

I don’t run a business that does “discount days” or order products because my franchise has done a deal with that company, purely because I didn’t become a naturopath to make bucket loads of money.

I run a resilient little shop with butternut pumpkin coloured walls where I get to spend quality time with my customers and clients and have a really good chat to figure out how I can help them best. I employed Vanessa based on the fact that she genuinely cares for people as much as I do. This is why I go to work with a smile and the reason I sleep well at night; because I’m aligning with my passion. The universe loves that shit, and will reward you for your efforts.

However we all need a little reminding from time to time when life gets busy and tangled. So ask yourself WHY DO YOU DO WHAT YOU DO and gain that deeper sense of gratitude or maybe make a few improvements.

Top Five Things I LOVED This Wk: (Our 95th!!)

1. Watching the steam swirl upwards from the hot boiled oranges on the windowsill. They later turned into a beautifully moist flourless orange and almond cake. Recipe posted this week!
2. My clients all wanting afternoon appointments + midday Offspring re-runs.
3. Annihilating my lunch at Happy Frog after a two hour yoga class.
4. Experimenting with different foods to accompany the bright pink sauerkraut I made: spag bol, pumpkin soup, hummus and avo on toast, lamb roast and veggies, baked salmon and mash. However there has also been a lot of eating it straight from the jar with the fridge door open too. My digestion has been magnificent in case you were wondering.
5. Trying out new mattresses at the bed shops. Those big fluffy marshmallows sure left my poor old Ikea bed I bought at uni for dead.

Emma the Naturopath xx

PS. During a strong forward bend yesterday, my yoga teacher said “Observe if you are pushing yourself to go further… now let that go”.

Perhaps take the pressure off of yourself this week. There’s no need to be Super Man or Wonder Woman. There’ll be no one waiting for you at the end of the week grading your efforts, ready to present you with a medal. Just enjoy yourself.

WHOLEFOODS

Every time I admire my parent’s healthily stocked bookshelves (they used to own a book shop), I pick up my mum’s copy of ‘Wholefood’ by Jude Blereau. They set off on another adventure again last week and after we had the “last supper” mum handed me the book to keep.

I was reading the intro last night and felt so inspired and uplifted as the author’s philosophy towards food and nourishment totally aligns with my own. I thought I’d share some of it with you now:

“Food is not something that simply stops us feeling hungry. It is exactly the same as love –an elemental human need. Together, they sustain and nourish us, providing fuel for our bodies and hearts to grow and our lives to fulfil their potential. But for food to do these things, it must be authentic and real.

When you cook for your family or friends, you are providing more nourishment than packaged food ever could. I assure you that those meals you make contain powerful medicine –love medicine.

Never, ever accept mediocrity posing as convenience. Never, ever accept glitter over substance. Care about what you eat: absolutely insist that it be delicious and true; and never, ever accept anything less. When you sit down to a real meal, with real food, the body is fed and, having been fed and delighted, the soul is nourished. And only then are you able to become the amazing being you were born to be”.

-Jude Blereau

Emma the Naturopath xx

Essential Health

0266 514 533

Boulevard Arcade (opp. Blush), Coffs Mall

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