This is ashamedly a very long overdue post. I’ve been an ambassador to the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation’s Wall of Hands program for two years. I’ve posed for the photos, I’ve said I’d be all hands on deck (so to speak; the campaign uses a raised hand as their motif) and I’ve failed to properly rally the troupes (that’s all you guys) to get involved and give a shit about this issue.
This issue being that way too many Aboriginal kids are missing out on a decent start. This is something you should know:
one in five children in remote Indigenous communities can’t read and write at the minimum standard
We can be all jingoistic about the Aussie ethos and our fair go heritage, blah, blah, blah….Or we can face the facts. These kind of statistics are disgraceful and reflect 100% on us. There. Said.
The ALNF, then, is working with Indigenous communities and schools around Australia to turn these statistics around. Their specialised programs are making a real difference and transforming lives in places few of us have ever visited: Tennant Creek, Mungkarta, Elliott and Ali-Curung.. For example – the ALNF recently launched
As I mentioned a few days back, I came to Ikaria to look at food. Specifically the food the locals here have eaten for eons which might give an insight into why they live so damn long and well.
Athina and her mother Katina cooking Soufiko
I travelled around the island with the National Geographic team for a week chatting to old ladies who still cook like it’s 1856, and their first responses were:
fresh vegetables
olive oil
In all the food flotsam that gets flung about, I doubt few can dispute the value of these two ingredients. The thing is, here, they’re eating in abundance. Truly.
In Ikaria, it’s the norm to eat straight from the garden. Many, if not most, restaurants have gardens nearby and their menu features whatever they brought in early that morning. At Thea’s Inn, Thea’s husband goes off early to milk the goats and pick the vegetables. He’s back by 10am. Around which time, Thea’s cousin (second? third?) arrives with fish, some honey, herbs…it’s a procession I watch every morning as I drink my warm goat’s milk (Thea sets some aside for me before making the cheese for the following day). Thea and Athina, the other cook, then make the feta and the dishes for the day.
(PS I’ll share a little more on their meat consumption later…for now know, lots of vegetables are core.)
This is not just custom. Or the only option. It’s also a way of life that Ikarians are adamant is the only way to go. I’ve spoken (via translators) to a lot of oldies. They are vocal and passionate about eating fresh, to the point of
It’s a fun story behind how I wound up here in Ikaria, a small island all the way over to the east of Cyclades which has been formally freed from the Turks for exactly 100 years this week (I have the commemorative T-shirt to show for it).
I’m also here for a very fun reason. Here’s a little video I just did in which I interview Dan Buettner, a National Geographic adventurer (such things do exist) and author of the New York Times bestseller The Blue Zones, which kinda explains things. We’re sitting in Thea’s Inn, at sunset, in Nas, Ikaria. And, no, it couldn’t be more idyllic. (PS, I know I stumbled at the beginning, but finding video editors in Ikaria is a bit of an issue!)
Over the next couple of weeks, I’ll be sharing some insights and recipes and ideas from what I’ve learned from being here.
But to give you a little background, I’ll first share how things came about. It’s nice serendipity. Or miraio, which is what the Greeks call it.
About ten years ago, Dan set about exploring the regions of the world where people live the longest. These regions are called Blue Zones. Dan narrowed things down to five such zones, one of which is Okinawa in Japan, another is Icaria.
The population of Ikaria is only 8000 people; there are more than 90 people over the age of 100.
That’s not the half of it. The oldies also look 20 years younger than their years and get about on motor scooters,
Anyone who’s been on this blog for a bit knows I advocate using rice malt syrup as a sweetener in many of my sugar-free recipes. I use Pure Harvest, which is available in most health food stores and some supermarkets. Not tried it? Well…today’s your lucky Friday. Pure Harvest are giving away:
15 x rice malt syrup hampers valued at $40 each
chocolate peanut butter hot cocoa, photography by Marija Ivkovic
The fifteen hampers will each include:
three jars of rice malt syrup
almond milk
oat milk
rice milk
soy milk
sesame rice cake thins
linseed and sesame corn cake thins
Once stocked up, you’ll be able to make up one of my favourite I Quit Sugar Cookbook recipes – like this lush chocolate peanut butter hot cocoa above, which just screams Cosy Night In On the Couch.
A few quick things you should probably know about Pure Harvest: it’s an Australian company; it makes and sells organic and natural foods; and it makes the most readily available rice malt syrup in the country.
I’m now in Icaria, Greece. I should probably explain why and how and what for before launching into a post about an Icarian experience I’m currently having. But, as you will soon learn, everything on this island is topsy-turvy. So an introduction will have to wait.
Since arriving in Icaria I’ve been getting looks from the locals. And comments. Knowing comments and looks, like they know something about me that I don’t. Yet.
Photo by Rachel de Joode
Eventually someone said something. It was Elias. He said to me one morning, after a hard, tortured night of no sleep, “You’re here for a reason. Icaria will change you.” He then told me that if I didn’t sleep that night that the next day I was to join him goat herding for the day, that we’d drink a litre of wine watered down with water when it got hot in the afternoon, eat some cucumbers and goat and then come home late. “And then you sleep…we do it the Icarian way,” he said
Icaria is changing me. And I asked for this. And so this place found me. Or the other way around.
If you’ve followed my travels via my social media outpourings you’d be under the impression I’m having a Fabulous time with a cap F over here in Europe. Don’t get me wrong, I am, but not just in a cap F Fun way. Often in a cap F F*ck This is Full On way.
Icaria is a truly strange place. Everything you thought you knew about life is turned on it’s head here. The locals drink a lot, eat a lot, eat at odd hours (lunch can be anytime between 3pm and 7pm) and they sleep…whenever (some villages head to bed around 5am, with the shops open all night, shutting at sunrise). And yet they live longer and healthier than anyone else on the planet. I’ll write more on this paradox shortly, but for now I need to share what this can do to a girl. Especially a rigid, fearful girl.
It breaks you down.
There’s also a strong energy here. Someone else said something. It was Thanai. She said Icaria will either embrace you or spit you out. “If you fight the energy, it will win,” she said. Others have shared with me how the first time they came they couldn’t handle the energy. All their issues suddenly surfaced and they had to leave immediately. I’ve heard this over and over. People have almost drowned. The National Geographic team almost lost a team member last time they were here. The camera guy fell and had to be rescued via a CNN-funded jet from the bottom of a cliff. The team tell me he’d been pushing way too hard in the lead up. Connected, perhaps?
I should say, though, that all who talked to me about this came back and went through big shifts when they did…for the better. The island did it to them, they say. The locals confirm it. They’ve seen this phenomenon a lot.
It breaks you down.
Me, I didn’t sleep for my first six nights here. I felt I was going insane.
Over the next couple of weeks I’ll be sharing some of the details of my travels… as little guides that you can cut’n’keep for later. Or be inspired by. Each one will have a “slow” (mindful, deep-rooted, social, life-loving) ethos and be centred on food and hiking. Because that’s what I do.
So to start, I’d like to do a rundown of my wonderfully dry, minerally rich, sweltering hot time in Southern Spain. A list of highlights. And wonderful lessons learned.
Sardines at El Lago
If I were going to Spain, would I do much differently? Nope, I had a perfect time here. I focused on small towns. This is where things are at.
What would I recommend? Focusing on a region. Andalucia (in the south of Spain) would be my pick, absolutely. It’s mad and wild and relatively poor and basic. But herein lies it’s beauty. Artists and hikers and foodies and conquerors and Kings and Queens have gravitated here. I can see why. You will too.
What else? Get away from the ocean into the hills… only really 30 minutes from the beaches.
But to some highlights, blow by blow… and in some sort of order.
Malaga
Eating sardines cooked in a boat (they use an old tinnie and pile it with coals and grill the fish on the beach in front of you). Simply head out east toward Pedregalejo from the main part of town. Look out for Las Acacias… apparently the most authentic place on the beach. The servings are huge!
Doing a tapas tour with Casey from Biznaga Travel Company. She’s an Australian who went wandering and found herself in Malaga… eating. She now runs boutique foodie tours of the south of Spain. She works with Frank Camorra, the big guy from Melbourne’s Movida restaurant.
Eating fouie caliente con huevo frito (foie on a potato stack with a fried egg on top) at Danni Garcia’s La Moraga. Danni is like Spain’s Jamie Oliver and worked at El Bulli. Also, his “Burger Bull” – bull’s tail cooked osso bucco style…on a burger bun (I ate without the bun). These are tapas… I drank with a Pedro Ximenez.
Over a bit of wine the other night with the National Geographic team that I’ve joined here in Ikaria (that’s where I’m based just now…more on this phenomenal place later), we were talking about the best way to arrive at happiness.
I said I don’t dig happiness, at least not the way it’s fluffed up in our culture. If it’s a byproduct of moving towards what really matters to me, then it’s a boon. But having happiness as my prime pursuit, the carrot that dangles, seems selfish and just doesn’t gel with what I believe I’m here for. I’m also not great at happiness. I get sad. To have as your prime pursuit something that you’re just not good at…well, that’s unwise. I’m pragmatic like that.
So, instead, I seek meaning. I want my life to be meaningful. I chose this a while back. Yep, pragmatic.
I’m sure happy is fun. But “rich” and “deep” light up my fire so much more. When I get close to meaning, when it tickles past me, when I touch it gingerly, when I connect with life via a dark night alone on a tiled floor with my fear, or on a mountain in searing heat with cicadas filling the gaps, or when an old lady touches my arm with tears in her eyes to tell me something in a language I don’t understand….oh, the joy, the fullness, the incredible, indescribable… prick of lifeness!
While I was hiking through Andalucia I read Austrian psychiatrist Victor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. He wrote it in just nine days after being released from a concentration camp and it outlines what he thought about for the three years he was imprisoned – the importance of finding meaning.
Southern Europe so far: je marche, Je mange. That’s pretty much been the picture for the past five weeks. I don’t really do museums or galleries. I travel to eat. I hike to eat. I eat to hike.
At Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid: oysters and alborino
If you’ve been following me on Instagram and Twitter you might have noticed that I’ve been eating a lot. Like, more than ever. And I’ve done so on a paleo(ish), gluten-free, sugar-free regime with a healthful, robust, full-fat, fully passionate focus.
How, so many of you keep asking me? How am I staying healthy? How am I staying starch-free in the UK, Southern Spain, Provence, and now Greece when pretty much everything comes on top of, surrounded by and engorged with potatoes and bread? Or a croissant?
I’ve been offline (off blog, off emails, off Facebook and Twitter and just posting via Instagram) for four glorious weeks and I feel FRESH.
I asked Jo to choose a nice photo for this post…she opted for this. Here, I’m off horse trekking in the Alpujarras in my Qantas-issue pyjamas
I have energy, I have new ideas, I’m fired up about life. I tell you, just getting off a computer adds years to your life. And not knowing what’s happening in your microcosm via constant iPhone pinging is like an injection of Vitamin B in the bum.
While I’ve been away Jo has been posting some pre-written bits and pieces and generally running The Show. She’s better than me at The Show much of the time. Anyway, that’s why there’s not been a yawning vacuum for a month.
Since early June I’ve been in Europe wandering. I’ve got a better idea of why and for how long and where next….but more later. For now just a little video I made tonight in my hotel room.
I hear it’s cold down your way in Australia! Don’t mean to rub it in, but it’s 43 degrees here in Greece as I write to you.
But – and don’t you love this segue – you, too, can get warm and comfortable (I actually do find 43 degress comfortable) by cooking up some healthy, hearty soups. If you’ve checked out my I Quit Sugar Cookbook, you’ll have noticed some great detoxing soup recipes, and I include instructions for making them with a “soup maker”. Yes? Well, today Tefal are giving away
2 x $540 soup making packs, each including a Soup & Co and a Breads of the World
I recently posted my trusty cheesy mish mash soup video recipe here… which shows how a Soup & Co soup maker works.
In a sentence: you pop all your ingredients in the machine, press a button and 30 minutes later it’s cooked, AND blended for you…seriously!
