Sarah Wilson, Author at Sarah Wilson

A trick for writers and artists: create with low expectations

September 16, 2020October 14, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

I did an interview with ABC radio host Mary-Lou Stephens the other day, chatting about food sustainability. Before I went on air she shared she’s just finished writing her latest book (she’s written several) and actually loved the process this time, churning it out in just three months. What was different this time, I asked (as most creatives do when they come across someone who’s found a smooth oeuvre in what is a painful process).

“I reminded myself daily that no one cares,” she said. “I swear, it gave me the freedom to just get the bugger done.”

Or as Seth Godin says, “real artists ship”. They. Just. Get. It. Out.

That same day I came across an Elizabeth Gilbert interview done in the wake of her latest book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear.

“Every time I hear someone talk about discipline all I see is the scratch marks on the walls they left with their fingernails. All that anxiety. You’ve got to take it easy on yourself. You’re doing an inherently weird thing. You’re investing time and money into making something that nobody asked you to do. It’s inherently a wacky

My Simplicious food waste cheat sheet for trolls

November 6, 2018October 13, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

It would seem my latest book, I Quit Sugar: SIMPLICIOUS, is a little contentious. The fact I advocate doggie bags, double dunk my teabags, and cook up my friends’ fish bones into stock apparently leaves some a little uncomfortable.

In fact – and this astounded me when I heard – I got wind a few weeks back that two major news outlets were wanting to do a “tear down” of my sustainability message. Why? For sport? Clicks? Because food sustainability is such an obnoxiously wrong idea?

xxxx — Eating beetroot leaves: offensive? Or good sense?

I like to be on the front foot. And I like to calm the Zeitgeist, rather than inflame.

To this end, I figured it could be good to get in with a guide to the issue for anyone planning a shredding of my message. I’m not too fussed if folk go after me. I’m old, hardened and have techniques for dealing with such trolls and snippities. But I’d really rather the importance of the food wastage issue not get sullied by incorrect information.

Feel free to onpass to snippities, doubters and shredders in your orbit. Or copy and paste to forums where light might need to be shed.

Food Waste: A Cheat Sheet of responses

“Seriously. You think food waste is an issue?”

It sure is. Globally, 1.3 billion tonnes of edible food is wasted per year. The organization FutureFood2050 estimates up to 50 per cent of food produced for human consumption in the world is never eaten.

“Aren’t there bigger eco battles to fight? Like car pollution?”

Nope.

Great art is born of great loneliness

October 23, 2018October 8, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

Today, just this from Anais Nin on the connect between emotion and writing:

“You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications.

“Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them.”

Does quitting carbs cause thyroid issues?

April 22, 2018October 7, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

Alright, this is a controversial one. Anything Paleo-orientated generally is. But let’s wade in. I have a number of reasons for distancing myself from the Paleo movement. I agree with many of the dietary principles inherent, just not the faddishness, the fanaticism and the insistence on basing it on a meta-theory of how we ate 10,000 years ago. I’m also cautious about the whole low/no-carb fervour in general. It’s not for everyone.

Image via with-grace-and-guts.tumblr.com

Like, for instance, anyone trying to get pregnant. But today I want to raise this one: cutting carbs might just trigger thyroid problems. Strap in. I recently came across American biochemistry and genetics expert, Dr. Cate, and have asked her to flesh things out…

People who run into trouble going low-carb seem to follow a pattern. First, they (make) a relatively abrupt switch to low carb (often less than 50 gm). Initially they lose weight as hoped but then, instead of feeling more energetic from their weight loss, they develop fatigue, sometimes accompanied by symptoms of low thyroid function including cold extremities, hair loss, and digestive problems.

A Simplicious homemade bacon recipe

October 14, 2015October 6, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

You might recall (it was a while ago; Simplicious has been an two-year project) I asked you what you’d like to see featured in the new book I was writing.

Whatever happened to THAT? Ha. Well, you’ll be pleased to know many of your requests made it into the end product. One request that came through I’d like to share today. Because it’s a nice story. Read to the end. It finishes with a sugar-free homemade bacon recipe.

Meet Nick, above. He and his Mum did the 8-Week Program some time ago and approached me at the “What Should I Eat Forum” in Sydney earlier this year. He told me it was he who’d requested a recipe for homemade bacon when I did the Simplicious call out.

Nick told me he works at Coles and always helps customers find healthy choices based on what he’d learned on the Program. What a legend. I got to tell Nick his request made it through and there’s a homemade bacon recipe in my new book. And Nick got to share a little of his story with me.

But it doesn’t stop there. After the photo above was shared on my Instagram, several people commented saying they’d been helped by Nick in Coles and that he was, indeed, a legend.

THEN… a few weeks later, I received a mail from Nick’s boss, Paul. It turns out that not only had Nick inspired customers at his workplace to make better choices, he’d also convinced his boss to quit

Your green shopping bag is making you eat crap

November 6, 2018October 1, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

Good morning, friends. Here’s an eco-conundrum to ponder. A study published last month in the Journal of Marketing found shoppers who brought their own bags to the supermarket tended to buy more chips, cookies and other treats than those who didn’t.

Toting my veggies home from a Saturday farmer's market trip — Toting my veggies home from a Saturday farmer’s market trip

How the goodness does this work?

The researchers found that the shoppers’ self-perceived righteousness ‘‘licensed’’ their self-indulgence.

Ha! I see this in action all the time. Possibly the worst case is the person who drinks bottled water (to avoid chemicals) then lights up a fag (seriously!).

Or health nuts who binge drink.

Prius drivers who no longer walk to the shops.

It all feeds into contemporary psychology theories that tell us that we have a “self-discipline muscle” that can get worn out if overworked.

So what is the gentle salve here? The mindset that can see us push through a little more consistently? I’d suggest it’s to

Please meet my biggest, best book yet: Simplicious

September 29, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

Simplicious hits bookstores today. No drum rolls please. I’m just pleased as punch that it’s here. It was two years of work. It’s 306 recipes. And I’ve taken a gamble here…it’s about how to eat your scraps. This book is my career highlight, my passion project, my obsession.

Sustainability has always been at the guts of my books, albeit camouflaged behind pretty recipes and shiny, smiley pictures of myself. My recipes use leftovers and secondary cuts of meat and I’ve used my sugar-free platform to promote doggie bags and, um, cauliflower, to the masses.

But Simplicious gets bolder.

* It elevates leftovers and sustainability to centre stage. Every single recipe is designed to cut wastage (food, time, effort, pans, palaver). In fact, even the scraps from the photography shoots were repurposed…into soup, pestos and staff lunches. Event the leftovers from these soups, pestos and lunches were repurposed…into the dress I wear on the inside cover!

No food was wasted in the making of this book!

* I set out to be 100 per cent authentic and transparent. I did the whole project. Even the illustration and graffiti, which I use to have chats with all you guys throughout the book (you’ll see what I mean when you get hold of a copy!)

(And herewith a LOUD BUY NOW prompt…I’m sorry!)…

Trend alert: Talking in full sentences (and nicer times ahead)

October 23, 2018September 28, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

So shoot me down for being a bit hopeful, but I’m seeing a few “moments” that are adding up to a nicer picture than we’ve been dealt recently.

These zeitgeist observations tend to land you in trouble. Or they used to. You flag a personal thought or you simply put out an idea for discussion and you get shouted and trolled down, often for some pinnicky, side factor, or a typo, or a joke that lacked perfect nuance. That’s been the way for a while….for too long.

This has saddened me. This pouncing-for-the-sake-of-pouncing has shut down deeper, more reflective thought. It’s made women too self conscious to voice their feminism. It’s left bloggers, journalists and authors second-guessing and toning down their writing to avoid attacks from commentators who refuse to do the deeper thinking around an issue, instead putting their energy into shredding complex ideas with facile, destructive, binary judgement. And then click-baiting it.

And it’s left our political leaders talking in three-word slogans. Slogans that talk to policies that are facile, destructive and binary.

Stop The Boats.

No Carbon Tax.

No Queue Jumpers.

Sometimes Shit Happens.

Here in Australia we’ve had a very significant leadership change that we’re yet to absorb fully. But I found it telling

What to leave out: The key to creativity

November 6, 2018September 24, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

I highly recommend long reading. Not least because of the lovely knowledge that unfurls from it. I also think that committing to a long read narrows, focuses, hones and gets you still. It’s the antidote to the frazzle of short-form toggling.

It’s a Sunday afternoon thing for me, to read all the lengthy prose I’ve collated during the week from the The New Yorker, Atlantic, The New York Times, The Monthly and The Quarterly Essay. I “flag for follow up” or email links and tweets to myself during the week. And then open them all at once and dive in. (Out of interest, how do you go about it, if indeed you do?)

All of which is a funny preamble to today’s good quote share that I pulled from The New Yorker long writer John McPhee’s essay on omission which, ironically goes on…and on (worth a long read!). It’s an Ernest Hemingway quote:

“If a writer of prose knows enough about what he is writing about he may omit things that he knows and the reader, if the writer is writing truly enough, will have a feeling of those things as strongly as though the writer had stated them.

The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water.”

If you’re a writer, take note of this trick – cutting out stuff that you can gamble your reader will get, or will

A listicle of toxin-free beauty goodness

July 17, 2018September 23, 2015 by Sarah Wilson

Thank you for all the extra tips you’ve all shared following my toxin-free cosmetics and beauty oils posts. I’ve popped a stack of them into one post for easy reference. You’re welcome.

Tips you’ve shared for blending and using oils

I make my own body butters with Coconut + Vitamin E + Shea + Jojoba oil, add the essential oils, et voila….change up the essential oils for different needs. – Sam
I tried Trilogy rosehip oil on my acne-riddled face a year ago and it changed my whole complexion! I’ve also since tried jojoba which seems to have worked just as well. Such a simply, lovely solution. – Maggie
I like a drop of vetiver oil on the soles of my feet at night – it’s very grounding. – Kristen
I add 10 drops each of frankincense, myrrh and lavender to a bottle of Kosmea rosehip oil, beautiful on my face and my skin has improved dramatically. It smells divine and is very calming at night. I also add the same oils to a blend of jojoba oil and sweet almond oil to apply to the rest of my body as well as a squirt of magnesium spray. – Anne
I use honey to wash my face, plain and raw. I use a face brush and rinse in warm water. I sometimes add a little jojoba oil to the honey. Honey is antibacterial so it works a treat. – Leonie
My oil tip is for killing nits! Instead of bombing them with poisonous concoctions I put olive or coconut oil in my kids’ hair so the buggers drown and then comb them out. Works every time! – Ms Jane

Tips you’ve shared for DIY bathroom essentials

Dry Shampoo: Just pop a little arrowroot on the scalp and brush through, if you have darker hair add in a little cacao too. Dab a makeup brush in it, dab it on the scalp and brush. Works as well as any dry shampoo out there. – Danielle