Sarah Wilson

Quit Sugar New Year Program giveaway: Organic Acai powder

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Note: This post has been updated! The offer closes Tuesday 27 December 5pm AEST

In January I’m launching an 8-week I Quit Sugar Program – everyone is welcome to join in. What a stupendous time to get off the white poison, no? And just for added incentive we’re giving away:

200 x packs of Riolife organic acai powder, worth $20 each.

Foil Pack Shot HIGH res 50g Quit Sugar New Year Program giveaway: Organic Acai powder

 

This stuff is seriously great (and, so you know, it’s pronounced ah-sigh-ee). The bonus: RioLife’s pure Organic Acai Berry Powder is sustainably sourced and wild harvested from the Amazon rainforests of Brazil, it’s rich in antioxidants, good essential fatty acids omega 3, 6 and 9 and plenty of fibre.

And three more things of note for sugar detoxers:

1. Acai berries contain pretty much no sugar.

2. They’re one of the most anti-oxidising things going around….great for dealing with the toxins as they release over the next few weeks.

3. sprinkled on a range of different “treats” they make for a great dessert (see below) and are a KEY ingredient in my sugar-free pantry.

RioLife add absolutely nothing to their powder, they’re certified organic and the Australian boys behind the brand donate part of the sales to ACAIMU, a project of the Amazon Friendly Program to help build and fund schools in the areas where their Acai berries are sourced.

To try out the berries:

* Simply buy a copy of The I Quit Sugar ebook, $15, here. The first 200 buyers will receive a 50g pack of RioLife’s pure Organic Acai Berry Powder (although, sadly, this giveaway is only available to Australian buyers).

*  Since a few of you have inquired: we will email all giveaway winners and get postal addresses. Look out for Andrew’s note soon.

* Riolife founder Andrew will send your pack out in the New Year, in time for your reboot!

To gear you up, I’ve written before on some ways to use the acai powder here and here. I’m also loving this recipe:

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Q: what techniques do you *actually* still use, two years on?

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Since I quit my Sunday Life column I’ve been asked by many of you what tricks and techniques acquired along the way are still part of my life repertoire. As in, the things that actually worked and stuck. In all fairness, I’ve stuck to about 1/3 of the concepts I played with. Which is not a bad stat, really. I mean, there’s only so many techniques you can take on in a day! In a lifetime!

Picture 15 Q: what techniques do you *actually* still use, two years on?
photo via trendhunter

Here are some of my favourites, which I reckon you might like to try…a new year on it’s way and all.

1. I go Pomodoro

Developed in the 90s by an Italian efficiency enthusiast, it’s recently experienced a surge of popularity. It’s stupidly simple. You pick a task and take one of those kitschly 90s red tomato kitchen timers and set it to 25 minutes. Next, churn through your task, ignoring distractions, not stopping to make tea or stare at the ceiling. Rest for 5 minutes and repeat the cycle three more times, after which you rest for a good half hour and grab lunch or read emails. The aim is to work to these 30-minute cycles daily, building up the self-discipline muscle. Read more here.

2. I use a virtual assistant

A VA is someone you hire online to help you with stuff you’re, quite frankly, over doing.

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Announcing my New Year *I Quit Sugar* program – all welcome!

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Join my 8-week I QUIT SUGAR reboot program kicking off January!

It’ll be easy + not-boring-at-all + it WILL work

 

I get a sense that a few of you are thinking they’d like clean up their insides after the year that was. And, of course, the indulgent I-can’t-cope-with-being-discplined-right-now-I’m-too-exhausted Christmas and New Year we’re about to give in to.

Picture 4 14 55 50 Announcing my New Year *I Quit Sugar* program - all welcome!
photo via Ellieblog

2011 was harrrrrd. And lots of stuff built up, don’t you think? We were also so very harsh on ourselves this year, frantically trying to cope and not really being mindful of how we were treating our bodies. So, we’re a little gunked up, addicted, heavy, stuck.

If this sounds like you, what do you reckon of this:

In January we’ll be kicking off a program for everyone keen to start the I Quit Sugar program as a New Year commitment. If you’ve been procrastinating about getting on board, now might be a good time.

This is how it will work:

* Simply buy the I Quit Sugar ebook for $15 here.

* Start any time in the first week or so of January. No stress. Once you’re ready.

* Each week I’ll answer your questions as they come up. Ask dumb ones. Smart ones. All cool.

* I’ll also be holding a webinar where you can fire off your wonderings at me. Anyone who’s already bought the book or started the program is free to join in, too.

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my best-ever recipes #1

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Perhaps you’ve finished off at work? Perhaps you’ve done the shlepp back “home” to the parents and are a little bored? (Raining much in your neck?) Perhaps you’re dreading the mince pie/pudding/platters of lollies and Jatz onslaught and want to contribute a few edibles of your own…These might provided some inspiration. Jo and I have compiled a few All-Timers:

 

Picture 26 my best-ever recipes #1
image via Scandi Foodie

pumpkin chia muffins

Oh, it’s just snacks, snacks and more snacks…whip up a batch of these for those “anyone want another Iced Vo Vo” moments. The full recipe is here.

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this is how my Christmas goes (boxing bags and bob-sleds). yours?

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This week in Sunday Life I anti-Christmas

Picture 1 13 47 59 this is how my Christmas goes (boxing bags and bob-sleds). yours?
Photo via twistedvintage.blogspot.com

Christmas is like cheap pizza – all cheesy, intoxicating promise, but somehow (so disappointingly!) winds up tasting like cardboard.

Actually, correction. Christmas is like cheap pizza to the violently lactose and gluten-intolerant – something everyone else seems to enjoy, while you get…tofu.

Why all the bah humbuggery? At the core of my festive deflation is the mass, crass, exhausting, relationship-compromising ritual of buying presents. Did you see that Black Friday footage from the US? The whole notion of massly, crassly buying up stuff for “loved ones” seems to send human nature to its most depraved base. And the fact that it’s such a far cry from the original premise of festive giving just deepens my malaise. As, I think, it does for so many.

Admittedly my family as a whole is particularly and notoriously awkward with the ritual of gift-giving. We always keep our receipts; invariably our Kris Kringle recipient feels guilty accepting anything isn’t wholly functional and necessary. Um, I just don’t think I’ll get maximum salad-making use out of the hand-carved bowl you paddled three days through shark-infested waters to some Solomon archipelago to purchase. I know, why don’t you just keep it?

Over the years, we’ve tried all kinds of consumerist-dodging approaches, but none have really hit the right tone. We’ve done Kris Kringle with an upper price limit of $20 (which pretty much gets you a Led Zeppelin CD from the discount bin). We went through a giving-a-goat-to-a-third-world-village phase. We spent lunch wondering whether said village ever got said goat, which was a bit of a cracker fizzler.  One year we all got a boxing bag from Mum and Dad. Not each. One to share between six. The next year it was one-sixth of a ping-pong table. The idea was to generate less “stuff”, a commons approach. Which would have been sound if we weren’t all adults living in different states.

So what’s the nourishing, satisfying, happy way to navigate one’s way through this? The thing is we humans actually do like giving. A bunch of studies show that one of the most effective way to get a happiness hit is to give away your money,

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sometimes things can be simple and real

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Three reasons why I’m sharing this.   1. My friend Johnny Abegg made the film, which won Best Food Film with The Chef’s Directory. Johnny is widely regarded as one of the best surfers in Byron. Just as an FYI. And he’s cosy with my friend Lizzy at Spell. Again, background. 2. The film is … Read more

“poke life and something will always pop out the other side”

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Just this. From Steve Jobs in some random interview in 1995 (when he had hair, a beard and not-so-fat-wads-of-cash).

It cuts through to something we all need to know:

When you grow up you, tend to get told that the world is the way it is and your life is just to live your life inside the world, try not to bash into the walls too much, try to have a nice family, have fun, save a little money. That’s a very limited life. Life can be much broader, once you discover one simple fact, and that is that

 everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.

Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.

And then again, a little later in the same interview…and frankly my favourite insight in a long time:

The minute that you understand that you can poke life and actually something will… pop out the other side, that you can change it, you can mold it. That’s maybe the most important thing.

It’s to shake off this erroneous notion that life is there and you’re just gonna live in it, versus embrace it, change it, improve it, make your mark upon it.

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some Christmas food gifts (and how to pickle daikon)

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I’ve been cooking a little lately. Experimenting. And I’ve found a few things that I reckon will make very nice Christmas gifts. I’ve got some friends coming around over the weekend to whip up some of the below to hand to Good People Who’ve Done Good Things By Me in 2011. And boy have there have been a few. Got some ideas yourself…share below!

05recipehealth articleLarge some Christmas food gifts (and how to pickle daikon)
photo via Andrew Scrivani

I love this idea, which I’m modifying from Martha Rose Shulman.

 marinated goat cheese

For a 1-cup jar:

  • 1 teaspoon mixed red, black and white peppercorns, lightly crushed
  • 2 garlic cloves, peeled
  • 2 bay leaves, broken into pieces
  • A 3 ounce log of goat cheese (I buy mine from the local markets here. Martha used a round log, but you could do squares from a block…I did)
  • 2 sprigs thyme
  • 2 sprigs rosemary
  • Extra virgin olive oil as needed

Whack peppercorns, garlic cloves and bay leaves in a clean, sterilized wide-mouthed jar. Pour in a film of olive oil.

Cut the goat cheese into rounds 1/2 inch thick (Martha uses unflavored dental floss to cut through the cheese!! Clever!!). Place one round in the jar and drizzle on some olive oil. Stack the remaining rounds, drizzling oil

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