Year: 2014

The bike accident I had to have

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Last week I came off my bike. It was spectacular to observe, I’m told by the kind strangers who lifted me off the road. But completely freakish in outcome. For, despite propelling several metres, my front wheel coming off and my face sliding along the asphalt, I wound up with just a popped couple of ribs, some gashes and fancy bruising.

xx
Image via Pinterest

Here’s some extra freakishness: I face planted and face-slid in slow motion, and remember clearly thinking “Bugger, this is not going to be pretty”. But got up and had barely a scratch to my face. Seriously. My sunglasses had taken the full brunt of my fall. They’re shredded; my face is merely bruised!

I find all of this a beautiful thing. This is why…

I’d been starting to work myself up into a frenzy over my competing deadlines on my next book. I was too close to it. I was losing

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A slow food and hiking guide to Hobart and Freycinet

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It’s become quite a thing…these slow food and hiking guides. I’m glad you like them. From my point of view, if I get 100 people to leave their comfort zone and get out of the city to move and eat real food in regional areas…well, I will die in peace knowing my job is done. This next installment saw me fling south to Tassie. I wanted to see What All This MONA Fuss was about…and to sample some of the incredible food offerings I was hearing about from out of Hobart. I was also itching for a hike. So was my best mate Ragni. So we made it a mate’s getaway extended weekend together.

A favourite dawn shot, climbing Mount Amos. WHAT A DAY!
A favourite dawn shot, climbing Mount Amos.

As always, I will tell the story mostly through pictures. You can check out my other hiking shots at the hashtags #sarahwilsonhikes #bushhikes #bushexcursions on Instagram. If you want.

Hobart

Visit MONA. I don’t need to bang on too much about the details of this incredible art experience. You can Google all about it. My take is this: my expectations weren’t grandiose, so I thought the experience was fabulous. Others, I know, arrive expecting (New York’s) MOMA.

And, yes, it was mostly the experience – the ride over in the camo-painted ferry with plastic sheep for seats and staff dressed in combat gear, was part of it. So, too, the fact you never quite know what’s art and what’s not. (For example, the

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Anxiety is love’s greatest killer

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Anais Nin wrote this in her diary, between 1947-1955 (it was later published in Volume 5 of her diaries)…”Anxiety is love’s greatest killer”.

photographer-javier-lovera

The next bit of the quote:

“It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”

And so anxiety doesn’t so much kill love. Love drops the anxious and moves on to sturdier ground. The anxious are left to fend for themselves.

Which is one of life’s cruelest ironies: the very people who need help, push it away at precisely the time they need it the most.

I’ve had many years alone to wonder why humans would evolve this way.

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Coffee almond gummy squares recipe

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As promised, a gelatin recipe to get you on your way to loving this MEGA POWER food. If you haven’t already, please read my post from last week outlining the thrills and spills of eating gelatin. It’s life-transforming stuff.

My chocolate coffee almond milk gelatin gummy squares - recipe below
My coffee almond milk gelatin gummy squares – recipe below

This one today is an easy one to start with and is a great breakfast-and-coffee-in-one solution. Three or four of these will fill you up a treat. In a good way.

I’ve spent the past few weeks experimenting with the best way to make these things. Everyone has a different technique…but many, I find, fail to recognise they’re destroying enzymes by heating things at the wrong point.  Or they use more dishes over more stages than required. So here, a simple technique to work to.

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I Give a Fork! You?

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So the wonderful team at Sustainable Table contacted me with their new wonderful idea. They want to get us all to give a fork about food waste and reckon if those of us who are fired up go ahead and organise a sustainable dinner party with mates then it might be a good way to spread the good word. I reckon they’re so right. The deal is this: during October you can take part in Give a Fork! by simply hosting a party.

Image via Favim.com
Image via Favim.com

I’m thrilled to be an ambassador. And during October I’ll be supporting it by hosting my own dinner party using all my waste-free tricks…like these and these. AND sharing pics of yours should you like to share them with me on instagram.

To get involved:

  • simply sign up as a Give a Fork! host
  • register your October event
  • set a ticket price and invite your mates to purchase a spot at the table.
  • now….cook. You can find a bunch of ideas in my various books. Perhaps my Beetroot Leaf and Fennel Soup? A great one is to cook up a roast chook…and then show your mates how to turn it into 15 meals. Serious!

If you’re worried about the awkwardness of asking your mates for cash or how you’ll manage pulling off a #wastefree meal,

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Wanna be in my new cookbook?

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Alright, put your requests in now! Last week I invited you to suggest your favourite IQS recipes that you wanted to see pimped.

Your wish is my command
Your wish is my command

Oh, how I love a e-brainstorm! I’m working through all of your suggestions now…

Now to Part Two of bringing you along for the ride that is my next cookbook. I’m taking requests for IQS versions of your

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My latest gut health obsession: gelatin

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You know how a growing number of modern ills particularly autoimmune diseases are now deemed to stem from the gut? And how more of us are suffering with crook guts that are leaky, nervous and cranky? Yeah?

The simplest gut-healing breakfast a girl can eat: coffee almond milk #gelatin chews (two ingredients: grass-fed beef gelatin with coffee almond milk).
The simplest gut-healing breakfast a girl can eat: coffee almond milk gelatin chews (two ingredients: grass-fed beef gelatin with coffee almond milk), recipe to come soon.

Well, you’d really have to agree that that would make fixing your gut our number one health priority. No?

The boon is this: It’s also something we can do now to fix our various compromised situations. I write about this often and about how food really is the best medicine (not just a jaded slogan). Truly, it is. We can take charge now.

And, so I introduce gelatin. Gelatin is basically cooked collagen and comes form the bones, hides and connective tissues of

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Wondering. Could you please help me with my next cookbook?

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Right now – as in RIGHT NOW – I’m madly recipe developing for my next cookbook. Oh, the adventures and obsessions and kitchen disasters I’m having! Some of you have caught wind and have put in requests for me to jazz up a few of my classic recipes. So I thought, gosh…OKAY…

Help me choose!
Hey, I’ll do whatever you ask.

…and got the go-ahead from my lovely publisher Ingrid to ask you guys what you’d prefer me to pimp (that is, give a seductive, sexy

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Spend five more minutes, go a layer deeper

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At the I Quit Sugar office at the moment I’ve become a tedious boss. I’ve gotten an idea in my head and I’m banging on about it. Worse, I justify it by thinking to myself, “But I’m right!”.

Image via Favim
Photo of Sarah from Wellness with Willow. Photography by Elena Kalis.

I’ve been picking up on some frantic busy-ness. Too many things. Too many decisions made too quickly unsupported by enough mindful reflection. And so I’m walking around like a cockie repeating this mantra: “Spend five more minutes, go another layer deeper.”

Which is to say, pause, reflect, sit on a task or a decision or a blog post or a brainstorm for a bit longer.

And go in deeper. Discuss it a touch more. Throw it around, chew on it. And allow The Right Thing to percolate to the

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Why folk with autoimmune disease do the 8-Week Program

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This much I know: I quit sugar because I had a raging autoimmune disease.

This much I’ve just learned: Tens of thousands of others with autoimmune disease are now doing the same thing. And getting results. In fact, according to our latest survey of I Quit Sugar 8-Week Program participants…

Steak and five veg
Steak and Five Veg: The 8WP meal plans feature 7-9 serves of anti-inflammatory veggies a day.

For folk with autoimmune disease, half experience “significant” changes to their condition from quitting sugar.

Some feel that they have reversed their PCOS (in fact, I get dozens of emails from sufferers who’ve been able to fall pregnant after doing the Program). Many say they have come off their AI medication. Others have simply – but soooo importantly – improved

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