Are you Fed Up?

As you may have noticed from my previous posts and if you know me just a little bit I love everything to do with clean eating, healthy living and feeding my body and soul real food. 

My friend over at The house called Abe  recently told me about a documentary called Fed Up, which talks about how everything we’ve been told about food and exercise for the past 30 years has been manipulated to suit the large corporations including Coke etc. 

It furthermore highlights how child obesity is worse than ever. Although it mainly focuses on the U.S. market, it’s not going away and it’s already a huge issue on our shores too.

It made me feel even stronger about continuing what I am doing but what’s also important is:

1. teach each and every generation how to cook
2. stop the obsession with light/fat free products
3. make sure you can pronounce the ingredients on the back of the label

It made me appreciate being brought up by parents who enjoyed fresh food, cooking and keeping us active. But it also made me scared – scared for what the next generation will be fooled by, the deceases that will get you at an even younger age and the absolute and total power of the large corporations. 

It has made me even more determined however, to not give up on my quest to keep my family healthy, avoid the marketing jargon and stick to what I believe in and most importantly enjoy!

Let’s fight the fight together, support each other and create consumer demand for real nutrition. This and a bit of common sense and morals along the way will get us far!

Have you recently watched something that shocked you but made you even more determined? 

Discovering that gardening is therapeutic

Our house on the lake is still a place I look forward to returning to after a day at work and I still can’t quite believe it’s ours. As you know we’ve been doing lots of DIY on our little gem and although there is still lots to do it’s spring and that means our DIY takes us outside!

One of the essentials when we were looking for houses was an outdoor space and we’re lucky that we have 33 meters of garden at the back of the house:  

Its actually quite difficult to design a garden that’s that long and narrow (I know, first world problems) but we’ve decided to divide it up into four parts – a patio, a classic english garden, a herb garden and an outdoor kitchen. Again Pinterest has become an absolute obsession, it’s very easy to get carried away 😉 

However, we’ve started with the classic English garden, which we dug out to fit beautiful lavenders, box hedging, hydrangeas and hornbeam:

A few before and after photos:   

               In total we planted 180 box hedges but being outdoors, sitting in the sunshine and letting your mind run wild is actually quite therapeutic. Although I had a lot of this:   Finishing one section of the garden gives you a real sense of achievement and puts us one step closer to finishing our project, which puts a big smile on my face 🙂 

What’s your spring project?

Getting back into the swing of things

Happy 2015!!

I had the most amazing Christmas break this year. I was lucky enough to have two Christmases – a Danish one with my parents and sister on the 24th and an English one on 25th December with Welly and his family. It was awesome, everything from the food to the wine to the company was excellent – big smiles all around.

But all good things must come to an end right?! It’s probably for the best or I would be obese in no time.

This week I’ve been ready to get back into the swing of things. We met our diy deadlines which means I have more energy and my evenings back.

I’ve really been loving being able to cook nice homemade dinners but I’ve also taken the opportunity to prep my lunches for the following day. My main tips are:
– choose your meals for the week – breakfast, lunch and dinner
– order them online for delivery
– love preparing and eating each one

Its been an incredibly busy week and I’ve had more red flags in my inbox and more lunches at my desk than I care to remember so having my meals prepped was an absolute lifesaver. These are ‘some I prepared earlier’:

Homemade pea soup (onion, stock cube and frozen peas) with marinated turkey breast (dried coriander and cumin)

Homemade quinoa with mint and coriander accompanied with a green bean, broccoli, beetroot and lime salad. For protein it was leftover roast chicken:

Homemade Mexican burgers (turkey mince, jalapeños and spices) with a red onion and tomato dressing accompanied by a lentil, green beans, beetroot, feta and fresh herb salad:

How do you prepare for the week?

DIY can actually be quite relaxing…

DIY is often said to be the make or break of a relationship and I’m definitely not about to say that my experience has been blissful and romantic – it has not…

Now that’s out of the way I want to make my point. DIY can be quite relaxing when you’re waiting for the next step – such as varnishing your newly sanded wooden floor – after and before the sanding:

Welly did an amazing job with the floor and my job on my day off this week was to varnish it, sand it and varnish it again. Now this might seem like quite a lot of work and it is BUT there is quite a lot of waiting around in between to allow the varnish to dry and the dust to settle.

So what did I do to entertain myself in between?
– Absolutely nothing 🙂 well I watched lots of cooking programmes, drank lots of tea and got even more excited about Christmas

I’m pretty happy with the final result and can’t wait to crack on with the next room. The countdown for Christmas is on!

Appreciating my hood

I think the last six months have been about the act of appreciation. When I say this I mean appreciating the people I love, my love of food, my new house, finding new ways to exercise and of course my holiday. However, now I’m starting to have time to admire and explore my hood.

To me Christmas is the time of year where family and friends make the most time for each other and, you guessed it, appreciate each other the most. This week I’ve had time to really wonder around and see my hood during the week so what did I do?
– I went for a run – I love sprinting and the outdoors here is fantastic, this is my garden:

– I went to the market in my town and realised I have a date with the French in a few weeks – I love diversity:

– I went for a walk to find my advent decorations for 2014 – red cheeked and happy I made a few:

– I enjoyed the last few days of autumn and it was beautiful:

Have you taken time for appreciation this year?

Our first Christmas in our first home

I’m so excited, not only is it almost December but we’re also hosting Christmas for the very first time and we’re doing it in our first home.

I love Christmas and my Danish family Christmas is full of traditions – firstly, Christmas is on the 24th, we eat duck and pork for main and finish it off with rice pudding (omg it’s good):

We dance around the Christmas tree singing carols and we then open our presents. Last year’s tree (sissy and Welly’s heads included too):

This year I’m wanting to make the house on the lake into a cosy cave of loveliness, my inspiration is a Scandinavian Christmas. Again my obsessing with Pinterest is coming through and I’ve created a bit of a mood board: I love bringing the outdoors inside:

Or this:

I’m hoping for a big tree too and love the red, white, gold and woody colours of the decorations:

Now I just need to go get it all 🙂 what will your theme be this year?

Commuting – Me time

If you read this blog regularly you will know that I’ve recently started commuting as for five years I was lucky enough to be able to walk to work.

I thought I’d miss it and dread the commute but I’m actually liking it. At first I thought it was just due to the excitement of change but I’ve realised that it’s a lot less stressful then walking to work – something I never thought I’d say!

Sure there’s rude people and the delays are never exactly thrilling or welcome BUT mostly everyone minds their own business because it’s ‘me time’.

So often we don’t make enough time for ourselves and although commuting isn’t glamorous I’ve been able to do things I was never able to do when walking to work:
– I’ve read lots of books including Gone Girl (omg it’s SO good)
– I’ve read blogs on food, life, health and well-being
– I’ve written blogs
– I’ve planned my mood boards for Christmas (I love Christmas)

It’s not all glam of course as I’ve also spent full commutes starting/finishing work, heck I’ve even written a press release on the train but for me that’s just using my time productively so I’m OK with that!

Sure I’ve gained a few pounds by not walking an hour a day but I’ve gained so much more and really is it all that bad?!?

The seasons are changing

I love seasons. I’ve always said I love New York because it has all the seasons – crisp and snowy winters, bright springs, warm and sunny summers and gorgeous autumns. Now, I don’t live there but that’s another blog post for another time.

I love nature. I’ve always loved the outdoors and as a child my sister and I would play outside until dinner. I often think back on those days, those we’re good days.

Moving to the house on the lake in the summer was great, nature was great and I fell in love with my surroundings:

It’s a place that I look forward to spending every season and now that the first frost has hit I’m actually a little excited about what’s next:

I’m hoping for snow this year (well after my parents arrive for their/my first English Christmas) as winter is my favourite time if year!

What’s your favourite season?

The bread revolution – baking with alternative flours

The bread revolution began a year or so ago with bakers, health specialists and independent shops starting an uprising against supermarket bought bread.

The thing is bread should only have 3-4 ingredients and no artificial adjectives however, if you look at the back if your shop bought loaf you’ll see a list of 8-10 so called ingredients (say what?!?!).

Azodicarbonamide (even the name scares me) for example is used in the food industry as a food additive, a flour bleaching agent and improving agent – these type of adjectives can be harmful and cause deceases which you don’t want to have. I’m not a preacher of health as I believe it’s a life choice however, I do think that as we have one life we might as well do our best to stay here for as long as possible – to me that means treating my body right!

Also my philosophy in life is if I can’t pronounce a word I shouldn’t go near it – now, this proved fun in our each for a house as I implemented the same philosophy. That’s a perfectly insane sane one right 😉 anyway each to their own!

I attended an alternative bread making class by thehornbeam bakers in the winter where we made a variety of breads with alternative flours and I was hooked!

Now that I have my own little kitchen I tested out my skills last weekend.
This one is spelt, cinnamon, honey and chia seed cookies – I’m not the best baker but they tasted better than they looked 🙂

You know my obsession with rye bread so I had to try and make it myself – It turns out my rye and flaxseed bread was out of this world!

These flours are no more expensive than the normal white nutrition less flour you get in the shops so next time you want to bake maybe try the flour next to your usual buy. It’s so worth it!

What’s your favourite bread?

Herbs – growing my own

I love herbs, I put anything from tarragon to paprika in my scramble eggs, love a good flavoured water with mint and cucumber and my homemade guacamole is full of coriander and chilli! I don’t go a day without adding a herb or five to my meals.

It might come as no surprise that I couldn’t simply stick with the shop bought dried herbs and had to not just buy fresh ones but actually grown my own too!

First things first – select your herbs. Then all you need to do is get some soil from the garden, find a pot to grow them in and remember to water them. That’s it!

I picked mint (because it’s just fab), parsley (because I need to eat more of it) and oregano (because I love Italian food) – all perfectly fine reasons right?!

Here’s how they looked at the beginning:

The good thing is that herbs are incredibly low maintenance so after a few weeks we got to this stage:

We’re currently at this stage and I’m hoping to start using them in two weeks time 🙂

Which are your favourite herbs?