Chocolate Cravings

Normally, I'm one of those weird individuals who can take or leave chocolate. In fact, I dont normally crave much of anything (other than my morning smoothie but that's just hunger LOL). So when I started having strong cravings for chocolate 24/7, and a few obligatory morning headaches I knew something was up.

Turns out that something was magnesium deficiency. After a few blood tests, it become abundantly clear that I was magnesium deficient. This can come from a combination of things but for me most likely from malabsorption issues due to my mold exposure and potential food allergies (more to come on this one later). So I'm on supplements until I come back to a base line, and then I will maintain my levels through food.

Best magnesium sources are:

* Pumpkin seeds

* Spinach

* Almonds (not an option for me at the moment)

* Oats

- and it's helped most by having a calcium source at the same time.

So I'm alternating my favourite breakfast smoothie (now a green smoothie with baby spinach) with a warming bowl of porridge. I've also started including a daily handful of pumpkin seeds to my snack regime.

There's a lot of information out there on the web about chocolate cravings and magnesium deficiency as well. So if chocolate is ruling your world, this might be something to investigate.

Be Prepared Challenge - Acquire Week #2 - Stockpiling Food

This is week 2 of Gavin & Bec's "Be Prepared" Challenge. Gavin's post today is about doing an inventory to work out what you would like in your stockpile. Bec's post focusses on the questions you need to answer to work out what you might need (and it's a fab list which will really get you thinking). Julie from Towards Sustainability did a great post last week about what she keeps in her stockpile.

The best adage I've heard is to only keep foods in your stockpile that you will actually eat (I've learnt this the hard way - uht pineapple juice was not a good addition to our stockpile in times past). Our stockpile has changed over time...in the beginning it had some canned meals for Mr B, plus toilet paper & cleaning supplies and pasta. Then progressed to things like canned tuna, dolmades, canned fruit and beans.

Due to my distrust of BPA, I dont like to focus so much on canned goods anymore (though I do use some Fish 4 Ever canned tuna) and my New Years goal is to preserve more food in glass. I know some prefer plastic and in tough times I wont be picky but an earthquake is extremely unlikely where we live, so I'm not worried about using glass.

Now my stockpile holds more "from scratch" type foods and items:

- dried & BPA free canned beans (pinto, cannellini & adzuki)

- rice

- two kinds of pasta

- bread flour

- yeast

- SR & plain flours

- home-made jams

- a few uht milks (cow & oat)

- sugar (caster & brown)

- salt

- maple, rice malt & golden syrup

- weetbix

- oats

- dried lentils (red and green)

- oils (olive and sunflower)

- a variety of organic herbal teas (peppermint, raspberry leaf & rosehip)

- jarred capsicum

- tomato pasta sauce (hopefully soon to be home made)

- baking powder, citric acid

Laundry / Bathroom

- toilet paper

- borax

- soap flakes

- pure soap

- tissues (for illness, otherwise we use handkerchiefs)

- bicarb soda

Medicinal

- I always have 6 months supply of the supplements Little B needs to take for his allergies

- olive leaf extract

- Bepanthen first aid cream

- sambucol (elderberry extract)

- flustop

- up to date first aid kit

- tea tree oil

- manuka honey

- the herbal teas are good here too (i.e. peppermint tea for fever)

From this I can always make bread / rolls / flat bread, cook porridge / weetbix for breakfasts and make a variety of main meals from beans & lentils supplemented with veggies from the garden.

"Animal, vegetable, mineral: A year of food life" by Barbara Kingsolver is a great read for how to plan your veggie garden to feed you throughout the year BUT when you have anomalies in the weather like this year, your whole garden could be destroyed by flood / fire, or just stunted by bad weather.

So for this part of the challenge, my aim is to look at what veggies I could can / preserve to supplement this. Blanching / freezing is great but what if you suffered from power outages??

Take a look at Bec's post above if you are interested in which questions to answer to help you along in being more prepared. Think of a stockpile as insurance - sure its great during a disaster but it's also insurance against higher food costs, the loss of a job or even just as some security while you go about daily life.

Sheer heaven...

Picture courtesy of www.lovehabibi.com

...is a 3 hour belly dance workshop :-)

I had the best time today at a 3 hour belly dance workshop. I was hoping that my body was ready for this and in the most part it was. I hit the wall in the last 30 minutes, so sat that out and watched everybody else.

Some advice from my rehab guru Paul helped as well. I ate like an athlete yesterday and this morning (lots of carbs & vegies), drank HEAPS of water (an un-airconditioned factorette on a 33 degree day) and in the first 10 minutes after exercising inhaled 2 cups of diced watermelon and some chocolate milk.

Interesting fact, chocolate milk is a better recovery drink than most sports drinks.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.  Inspired by soulemama

 

 

Gotta love slime

With the school holidays still upon us we have been doing lots of crafty things, but this has been the hugest hit (with both of us LOL).

Basically you take one cup of cornflour, then add any food colouring you like, and slowly add in water. When it mixes well together - you have slime.

The thing I love about it is that it is gooey and dry at the same time. You cant really make too much of a mess with it as it holds its shape, but Little B will spend a good hour playing with it. It sort of melts in your hand and you can even cause a drip, but it still stays together kind of firm.

Aaah the joys of cornflour!!

Be Prepared - Organise Day #1

 Yesterday's first tasks included organising a space to store a stockpile / emergency gear and to declutter to make space for such a space.

As I mentioned yesterday, we have had a stockpile for at least the last 5 years. But prior to that I had always worked on 1-up philosophy. We always had 1 extra of whatever we used, i.e. pasta sauce, mayo etc. I just did this as a matter of course as it was what my mum's family had been raised to do by my grandma. But we initially started our stockpile as a frugal measure. We had just bought our first house and were keen to pay our mortgage down as quickly as we could. So if I saw something we ate on sale, then I would stock up on it.

Then I had an allergy child. Not only was I a SAHM but what he ate was/is so limited, that I needed to have it on hand if we ran out. I cant always just run out to the shop and hope it is on the shelf. Plus he was so sick in the early days, I would have been lucky to even get out. So my stockpile grew.

But back to organising a space for your stockpile / emergency gear. We have always kept it in 2 shelves in the linen cupboard plus 1-up on a single kitchen shelf. Granny B had already taken this idea on board and it has been replicated at her house for the last few years. So yesterday I had no need to declutter, instead I just reorganised the pantry and noted what we were low on.

Which resulted in an afternoon of jam making :-)...I made 6 jars of pear jam after seeing some ripe pears at a local farm stall. As this is something I cant buy and the only jam Little B can eat, it doesnt hurt to have a few in the cupboard.

Floods :-(

As so many, I have been really affected by all the stories coming out of Queensland about the floods. But this hit even closer to home on Friday as the floods hit north west Victoria. My dad lost his house to the flood early Friday morning. His house was completely flooded and unfortunately it is mud brick - the house started to melt almost immediately and now has massive cracks through the walls, ceilings, not to mention mud throughout. He has been very brave through it all and says "if it can be fixed by money, then it's not a problem", but I know he is heartbroken as most of his belongings have been ruined as well and the flood has not peaked in the area yet. He just missed out being flooded in the September floods.

The most amazing thing though has been the community spirit. Neighbours turned up to try and help move things to higher ground (which was impossible in the middle of the night, knee deep in water). They have again been trying to help salvage anything.

So in the community spirit, I've decided to join in Gavin (from Greening of Gavin) & Bec's (from Eat at Dixibelle's) "Be Prepared" challenge.

They are running the challenge over 4 weeks and using the OARS principle - Organise, Acquire, Restock & Rotate & Spread the Word.

As Bec says:

"Together we are hoping to help other people, and ourselves, to increase our preparedness for short term emergency situations".

Here at the House of B we like to be prepared anyway as we live in a bushfire prone area, and our trusty stockpile held us in great stead when Mr B was between jobs a while back. Plus it never hurts to be prepare just in daily life. But I love the idea of this challenge and cant wait to see what their tasks involve :-)