Sarah Wilson, Author at Sarah Wilson

“Something’s crossed over in me and I can’t go back”: Thelma & Louise turns 20!

November 6, 2018September 7, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

When things that were a big part of my life have a birthday I’m taken aback. Twenty years!? Thelma and Louise!? I first saw Thelma & Louise smack-bang in the middle of my vocal feminist period. I was women’s officer at my university. I ran a mountain bike group (for men and women…but mostly to get women into it) and set up rape support and eating disorder programs. In 1994 I took a scholarship to study women’s studies in California. Do people do such things anymore?!

I loved this movie. I loved the strong women with their muscle t-shirts and bad-ass jeans. Their friendship, which wasn’t girly or sappy or based around a wedding. It was robust.

I loved the end. When they have to choose between being arrested (and facing the death penalty) and flinging off a cliff. Something about what they did (fling… we’re led to presume) left me feeling, “Yes, that’s what life is about”. Even if it’s the last few minutes of it.

Atlantic ran a great read on how the film was the last great film about women. They make a really compelling argument. Slapped me in the face. Especially the bit about where women are at today. The stats are American but the Australian ones are much the same. That is, they explain why movies about chicks are so rare and only ever involve weddings:

Sally Fallon’s tips for eating breakfast

August 10, 2018September 6, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

I’m a big fan of Sally Fallon and her “bible” Nourishing Traditions (in fact it’s my all-time favourite manual…I VERY much recommend it). She’s an adherent to the Weston A Price way of living, which is similar to Paleo living, which is similar to how I eat (I’ve personally found it the best approach for my auto-immune issues).

Picture 3 Sally Fallon's tips for eating breakfast — photo via The Alkaline Sisters

Anyway, in a recent edition of WAP’s Wise Traditions Magazine (by Jen Allbritton), they ran a rundown on the best tricks for eating breakfast based on Sally’s principles. So I’ve shared a few below. I recently shared a post on how to eat breakfast without sugar and grains…this kinda builds on it. I know a stack of you were interested in reading more. Yeah?

5 Weston A Price breakfast tricks:

fats and protein should be the featured nutrients, as they are critical for brain chemistry balance (these include egg, meat, fish, full fat dairy including yoghurt, kefir, nuts and seeds, coconut oil, butter, avocados).
fruit, veggies, tubers and whole grains make a wonderful side note.
make at least a portion of breakfast food easily digestible through soaking grains, or sour leavening, culturing dairy, fermenting fruits and vegetables.
don’t rush. Relax through your morning meal.
plan ahead.

Some breakfast favourites from fellow WAP foodies:

Sally Fallon: bake no-nitrate bacon in a pan with fruit (such as apple slices, apricot, peaches or nectarines, or with cherry tomatoes and mushrooms). Serve with eggs of any style – scrambled, fried. Enjoyed with a glass of raw milk. Breakfast tonic favourites include swedish bitters, beet kvass, cod liver oil, high vitamin butter oil mixed with warm water.

the peculiar beauty of being forced to splat!

September 4, 2011September 4, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

This week in Sunday Life I simply get stopped

anna zakusylo by jamie nelson the peculiar beauty of being forced to *splat*! — by jamie nelson

During the week there was a moment – a very brief one – in which I was flying through the air, superman-style, and cruising towards a pile of rocks, when it occurred to me, “this is going to be majorly inconvenient”.

I landed on all fours, putting out my neck, and gouging a neat, golf ball-sized chunk of me-ness from my knee. But, in that brief moment, all I could think was, “Goddamn, this is totally putting a stop to my plans – three months in the making – to go surfing for four days with my best mate who’s just flown in and has three kids and so never, ever gets four days to surf with a friend”.

Then, splat.

Indeed, I spent the next four days, after a stint in emergency, shuffling about like Gumby. (Have you ever tried going to the toilet without bending your knees? Definitely funny, in a Gumby kinda way).

Quite obviously I was stopped. In my tracks, unable to do any activity as every limb was accounted for with stitches or gashes. (And it was definitely funny that it was specifically every corporeal surface required for surfing – feet, palms and knees.) This is my idea of purgatory and it’s happened many times over, and always just prior to Big Plans for Something Important. Yeah, you too?

Is your lifestyle “terminally jangled”? here! some Hunter S Thompson advice…

November 6, 2018September 1, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

I could stare at that photo below for an inappropriately long time. It’s evocative and in-someone-else’s-moment-ish and makes me want to meet a man in trunks.

Mornings. Spent writing. Calmly. Alone. In sun. Yep.

I came across this rundown by Hunter S Thompson of his morning routine. Morning routine’s are key to life, I’ve come to learn. I’ve shared mine and others before. But this ode lifts my spirit:

“I like to eat breakfast alone, and almost never before noon;

anybody with a terminally jangled lifestyle needs at least one psychic anchor every twenty-four hours, and mine is breakfast.

In Hong Kong, Dallas, or at home—and regardless of whether or not I have been to bed—breakfast is a personal ritual that can only be properly observed alone, and in a spirit of genuine excess. The food factor should always be massive:

Read more

the most heart-full interview I’ve ever given…

November 6, 2018August 31, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

I recently did an interview with Joi Murugavell who does “oodlies”. Oodlies are cartoon-y embellishments that tell the intimate back stories of people Joi meets online. She cyber stalks people that grab her interest, learning about their quirks from Twitter, FB, blogs and so on and forms an intuitive picture of them. She then sends the quirkiest interview request in Christendom and from the answers she gets back, she “oodlies”.

I was her latest victim. The experience was expansive, real, raw, risky, exhilarating, kind, true. I got super teary typing out my responses because I was so grateful for the depths she’d gone to to ask questions that dug deep.

Oh, how I’d love all journalists to dig like this, to reach for the humanity in a person and share something true and gutsy about the people they meet.

For the full interview go here. She’s also ‘oodlied’ a children’s book which is just gorgeous and has lovely adult lessons for us all throughout.

But I’ve pulled out some of the bits I enjoyed answering the most….

Joi: What do you often think about before the cameras start rolling?

Sarah: I have a phrase that goes around in my head when I’m about to do something big and a bit scary and a bit lonely, “This is serious Mum”. It started when I was a kid and I think I started saying it before TISM. Somehow it reminds me of all the times life has been vast and boundary-less and confronting and I’ve been alone… and all the times I’ve managed to get through it, regardless. It calms me down.

Then I don’t think anything at all and I concentrate on connecting with the person I’m meant to be talking to

if you’re stuck creatively, this might help

August 28, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

This week in Sunday Life I trust the process

I had dinner with a guy recently who dedicated entrée to telling me that all writers are self-indulged w*nkers. “You all go on about the pain of writing,” he said. “Plumbers don’t write about how hard their work is, you don’t read about ‘plumber’s block’.”

I’m a writer. I had to respond. First, I said, with the spine tingle of a good comeback, plumbers don’t write. “Perhaps they take out their frustration on an S-bend,” I suggested gently. “We know about writer’s pain because we read their work. “

Second, writing is a creative process. And any creative process – whether it’s painting or interpretive dancing or inventing a new S-bend wrench – is the expression of the human struggle to share our inner selves. Displaying our inside, or “true”, selves is all about standing out on the farthest limb, exposed and vulnerable, and saying “here!”. We all have, at our core, an important urge to do this, and yet at the same time a primal fear of it. Ergo, creative block.

Funnily, not long after I found myself at the Byron Bay Writer’s Festival chatting to a bunch of writers about the pain of the creative struggle. (Here’s a new collective noun for you: “a writer’s festival of whingers”.) Whether you’re a writer or wrench inventor or embarking on a big, formative project, you know this struggle. It’s an important one. A damn tough one, too.

There was consensus from most of the writers: just start. It doesn’t matter if you produce crap. From the crap, something always emerges.

great bike satchel ideas, from you!

August 25, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

I recently shared my fixation of finding the perfect bike satchel so that I can ride light and free. To be honest, I think you guys provided some infinitesimally good suggestions. Here they are, if you’re still in the market.

And many cheered triumphantly about a Crumpler bag being the perfect solution…

Some other ideas for stylish satchels or bags:

Gala Darling says: I loooove C.S.C. but zatchels have some great options also!

Alison: Another satchel I was tempted with was from the Canadian company Roots – they have some really classic designs

what’s making your life better right now? wade in!

November 6, 2018August 24, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

I’m going to put it out there. What technique or course or mantra or philosophy or book or practice or sport or “thing” are you engaging in that’s taking you closer to you, making life richer and deeper, facilitating a deeper connection to what matters? For, to my mind, that’s what making life better is … Read more

Tuesday Eats: a green detox for spring

July 31, 2018August 23, 2011 by Sarah Wilson

It’s almost spring. Which, for all kinds of reasons, is a good time to get fresh with our foods and clean things up a bit. Our bodies respond so well at this time of year to a “cleanse” – it shakes us from the winter heaviness and gets us digesting light and breezily ready for the heat. Oh yes, heat!

From an ayurvedic POV, it’s all about enlivening kaphic energy (spring needs an alert kaphic energy to withstand the dampness). (I’ve written rundowns on ayurvedic doshas, and the vata effect previously)

Personally, I’m not a massive fan of full-on, restrictive eating detoxes. And, indeed, it’s the principle behind the new show I host Eat Yourself Sexy, which launches THIS THURSDAY!!! Our bodies naturally detox far better when fed good food, aided with a few tricks. Honestly, eating our way through a clean out is soooo much more fun.

If you feel like cleaning things out ready for the warmer weather, a few tricks and recipes (and please add your own ideas at the bottom…these are just the things I’m going to be doing):

1. Get plenty of sleep – our bodies detox throughout the night. We need to get to bed by 10pm to align with the detox/cell regeneration processes throughout the night.

2. Eat ginger. And other digestive herbs and spices as much as you can: cumin, fennel, cayenne pepper, turmeric.

3. Drink digestive teas. Licorice, fennel, mint, dandelion…

4. Eat green. As much as you can. Green cleans. Silverbeet, spinach, kale, broccoli…and be sure to start to move into the cooler green things as the weather warms: avocado and cucumber, mint and parsley. I love this recipe for rawvocado soup from wholeliving (pic above). It pretty much combines the top cleansing ingredients in the one little package….

Chilled ‘Rawvocado’ Soup with Coconut Water

This recipe makes two servings. If you want more soup, double the amounts accordingly.

2 large, ripe avocados
1 cup coconut water (you could also use nut milk or filtered water)
juice of 1 lime (about 4 tablespoons)
½ cup coriander leaves
¼ cup chives
1 shallot, minced
pinch of cayenne pepper (optional)

Cut open and pit avocados. Scoop out flesh, reserving a small portion of one half for garnish.

Place all ingredients in a blender or food processor and blend on high until smooth. If the soup is too thick, add more coconut water until the desired consistency is reached (it should coat the back of a spoon, but not be solid).

Pour into a large jar with a tight-fitting lid and chill in the fridge for at least 1 hour. Serve when cold. Garnish with avocado cubes and chives or coriander.

5. Chlorella is great. The benefits are

some tips from Michael:

Chilled ‘Rawvocado’ Soup with Coconut Water