Remember a time when people used these?

Not everything needs to be served in a mason jar.

Recipe: FODMAP-friendly Toffuti cheesecake with raspberry lime sauce (gluten and lactose free)

As you may have read if you follow my twitter or instagram, I have been advised to follow the FODMAP diet. Yes I realise this is rather ironic as I am always going on about health snobs, but I assure you this is after thorough consultation with GPs / gastroenterologist / accredited dietitian. It is based on legitimate evidence and designed for people with IBS. So anyway, if you wish to find out more about FODMAPs check it out here.

So yesterday I had a massive craving for cheese cake. I have NEVER made a cheesecake before but I thought it’d give it a shot. I looked for a few recipes on Pinterest but they were all too fussy or involved soaking large amount of cashews  and dates and just seemed rather labour-intensive (the FODMAP diet is a bit tricky when it comes to lactose, so I wasn’t sure about the cream cheese – long story).

Then I realised that I had a tub of toffuti cream cheese that I purchased for funsies other day in Cole. I used to eat it all the time when I was a vego so I thought I would give it a try. It’s seriously so yummy! Anyway, these two ideas came together to produce this delicious cheesecake. I googled “basic cheesecake recipe” which lead me to this one, which I subsequently tweaked to make it gluten and lactose free. You could easily make it vegan if you had egg replacer! I don’t think you would be able to detect that it is not real cream cheese either…. Sneaky!

Ps: these are the gluten free cookies I used. They remind me of McDonald’s cookies!

Ingredients

For the base:

• 200g packet of gluten free biscuits (or whatever biscuits you want)
• 1/3 cup of almond meal
• 100g melted butter/spread of your choice (next time I might try coconut oil)

For the “cheese”:

• 2 tubs of toffuti (about 500g)
• 1/2 cup castor sugar
• 3 tablespoons of lime juice (you could use lemon, but all I had was lime)
• 4 eggs
• 1 teaspoon of vanilla bean paste (or essence/extract)

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees C
2. Grease or line your pan / cake tin
3. Put biscuits in the food processor and process until they are crumbs
4. Add in the almond meal and melted butter/spread
5. Press this mixture into the cake tin to form the base and sides of the cake then refrigerate for 20 minutes
6. Beat the cream cheese with a hand mixer until it is smooth
7. Add in the sugar, vanilla and lime juice until combined
8. Add eggs one at a time, beating in between each egg.
9. Pour into prepared base/cake tin
10. Bake until just firm to touch – mine took about 35 minutes
11. Let it cool and then refrigerate overnight (mine wasn’t completely cool when I put it in)

For the raspberry lime sauce:

• 1 and a 1/2 cups of frozen raspberries
• 1/2 cup castor sugar
• 1 tablespoon lime juice
• 1 tablespoon of corn flour if required

Method:

1. Put all ingredients into a small sauce pan/pot
2. Mix together until the sugar melts and ingredients combine
3. “Mash” the raspberries with a wooden spoon  to desired consistency
4. if you want a thicker sauce, add some corn flour and let it simmer a little longer

 

 

 

Common sense, where has it gone? STFU, Naturopaths, homeopaths and other QUACKS.

Today, I will be ranting about natural medicine. Now let me just start off by saying, I’m sure natural medicine has helped a lot of people. Anything that helps people take better care of their health is a good thing, and sometimes simple changes can make a big difference to your wellbeing. Paying a bit of attention to your diet, nutrition and lifestyle can obviously have a positive effect on your health (DUH!).

HOWEVER. I do not believe that it can replace medicine, and um SCIENCE and stuff with evidence. I think that complementary therapies should be just that – something to compliment medical treatment, but not replace it. It’s not a case of “one or the other”. Medicine is not “against” proper diet, exercise, nutrition and healthy lifestyles. And NO, doctors are not in conspiracy with “big pharma”.

The fact is, most people neglect their health for so long that medicine IS warranted. That’s not the fault of doctors, it’s people not being responsible for their own health. And a few magical herbs isn’t going to fix a lifetime of poor choices. Likewise, some people get sick for no good reason – cancer, haemophillia, kidney disease, cystic fibrosis, metabolic conditions, syndromes, mental illness – the list goes on, and these people probably wouldn’t be around if diagnoses and treatments weren’t developed by science and medicine.

So, you probably heard about the shit storm that resulted from Sarah Wilson’s comments about vaccination as one of Kochie’s “angels” (puke). It was incredibly irresponsible of her to make ignorant comments that questioned the safety of vaccinations, considering she is completely uninformed and uneducated about the subject.

It didn’t take long for hoards of equally uninformed and uneducated supporters to post on her blog about the subject and refute any comments made by logical vaccination supporters. I honestly could not fathom how completely delusional these people were, and how they apparently lacked any skills in evaluating what they read. Some quack says that vaccines contain “toxins” and they quote it as gospel? Yet when they are provided with solid evidence from medical journals that explain how the risk of vaccinations is minuscule compared to the risk of serious disease, they believe it is some kind of “conspiracy”. Seriously, madness.

It doesn’t help when this sort of idiocy is supported by publications such as the Herald’s Body and Soul, citing naturopaths who reckon vaccines contain “toxic” ingredients. And for fuck’s sake – vaccinations do not cause autism, learn the difference between causality and coincidence.

Sadly, the quakery is not limited to vaccinations. It seems to be popular to ignore all medical advice and seek your health care from some form of hippie, homeopath or other self-confessed health guru. Medicine? No way! Just eat some organic paleo superfoods, you’ll be fine! Oh and you better give up sugar, don’t you know how TOXIC it is? Forget food, actually, you better just start a juice cleanse.

 

http://www.skepticalraptor.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/homeopathy-water.jpg

 

Another hot topic is fertility. Now, as a nurse, I have spoken to a couple of fertility and IVF experts about this, and the overwhelming answer about why women are having trouble conceiving is, (DUH) – AGE. Women are waiting until they are older to have kids. Some people smoke, they drink, they are overweight, they don’t have a good diet. This is not good for our eggs and not conducive to getting pregnant (again, DUH). Obviously if you want to get pregnant, you should be healthy, have a good diet, exercise, and limit alcohol. However, this has opened a whole new market of bullshit – natural fertility.

Just a quick google search and you will find a myriad of natural fertility services, making some pretty big claims. I’m not trying to personally target any particular people, but just trying to highlight the fact that some “natural” health practitioners make some pretty extraordinary promises, without much evidence.

One fertility naturopath claimed that the pill is draining your body of nutrients. Sorry, but how exactly does that work? Which evidence-based, peer-reviewed or double-blind study did you use to come to that conclusion? Do you have any statistics or laboratory data to back that up? What does this process involve? The same naturopath also claims that all contraception comes with “Seriously nasty” side effects. You know what else is a pretty nasty side effect? PREGNANCY AND UNWANTED BABIES. She goes on to suggest that cervical dysplasia detected from abnormal pap smears should not be treated… yeah because cervical cancer is awesome!

If you’re like me, you’ve had enough of this bullshit. It’s bad enough that there are people out there making extraordinary claims with little evidence and questionable credentials, but even worse that they take advantage of gullible people, AND charge them a small fortune for the privilege.

If you want to see a natural practitioner, good for you. Just don’t start getting all high and mighty about how you’re not vaccinating your kids because some misinformed celebrity said it’s messing with nature. You are not an expert. Celebrities are not experts. The scientists who conducted thorough experiments to assess the safety, effectiveness and importance of vaccinations ARE EXPERTS.

https://www.facebook.com/RtAVM

Please don’t rub everyone else’s face in it, and please do your research. Ask them for their credentials or qualifications, and do so in collaboration with your general practitioner. Are they registered with the relevant regulatory boards? Can you claim them with your health insurance? Do they have a provider number?

And if they start lecturing you about how bad western medicine is, RUN AWAY.

Everything is stupid and I’m going to rant about it.

Hi y’all.

Obviously I haven’t been posting lately. Mainly because I have been busy being consumed by trying to deal with the insanity that is Cairns and Far North Queensland, starting a new job, studying online by correspondence and just generally being really lazy / stressed / insane / trying to enjoy life.

So basically I have come to the conclusion that I am way too unorganised and lazy to be a “proper” beauty blogger. That’s not to say I won’t ever blog about beauty, but I can’t afford to keep buying new products constantly (plus the cosmetic department in Cairns Myer is shit house)… and I don’t want to rely on getting free shit from PR people. That’s just not really my scene.

But I did enjoy my last post about how health snobs should STFU. And I do get enraged by things on a fairly constant basis, so I thought I would combine the two and rant about stuff that makes me rage on my blog. Seeing as everyone gets offended if you rant on social media… IT’S MY BLOG AND I’LL SAY WHAT I WANT THANK YOU.

So yeah. Basically what I’m saying is I am pretty disorganised but I’ll try to hopefully post some entertaining stuff on here. If not, well I don’t care because it might make me feel better having written it down.

To start things off, here’s something that makes me rage fairly regularly

 

xxx

STFU, health snobs.

I eat gluten, dairy and fruit. Occasionally, I even indulge in something with, gasp, sugar in it. Get over it.

Let me preface this post by saying: I think eating healthy is important. I consider myself a healthy person. I am actually quite disciplined with what I eat 90% of the time and I think exercise is absolutely essential. It saddens and frustrates me that obesity and health-related issues are increasing in Australia.

However…

Some people take it too far. Yep, food snobs are everywhere. These days everyone is a food expert, a health coach, or a specialist in naturopathic, free range, organic, vegan, paelo, macro, grain-free, gluten-free superfoods. I’m sure you heard about a certain Chef’s activated almonds, alkalised water and emu balls. Oh please. Why must healthy eating be so complicated… and douche-y?

Image Source

What is the big deal about alkalised water anyway? According to some, drinking water that is more alkalised is good for us as it is a better pH for our body systems. Our body is DESIGNED to deal with  changes in pH though a number of physiological processes… and the stomach is naturally acidic anyway! IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE!  Anyway, I digress, but this basically confirms my notion that people will believe anything that is trendy, even when there is little to no supporting evidence. But why let a small issue like science get in the way of the truth…. and making money.

I don’t what to offend anyone for their personal choices. If you feel fantastic when you subside on a diet purely based on organic cultured veggies, coconut oil and cacao nibs, then that’s great, good for you. But what works for YOU, might not be the best choice for everyone else. And if you don’t have the credentials to back it up (like, um, I don’t know, a degree or something?), then you don’t have the authority to put your opinions on other people’s’ plates and down their throats. And besides that, giving out phoney health information is DANGEROUS. Oh you’re a health coach? Forgive me if I’d rather take the advice of an accredited dietitian who has studied nutrition at a legitimate university.

Yep, I eat fruit, dairy, caffeine, gluten and sugar. No, I don’t claim to know everything there is to know about nutrition. Why would I? I’m not a dietitian.

I refuse to cut out entire food groups without any sound reasoning! Contrary to popular belief, sugar won’t kill you. Sure, a sedentary lifestyle combined with a diet high in processed foods might, but the occasional treat won’t. Just because it is trendy to avoid gluten doesn’t mean I am going to…. no, I don’t have coeliac disease or a medically diagnosed gluten sensitivity. Sure, I’m not going to chow down on white pasta every night. But that’s my point, making good nutrition choices doesn’t have to be an expensive, judgemental, organic exercise in douchery.

And it certainly shouldn’t be a competition about whose diet has the most restrictions, or is the most virtuous, or has the highest number of ingredients that the average Australian can’t pronounce. It’s those kinds of attitudes that make healthy eating seem confusing, and scary and expensive, and enough to make people just give up and buy a cheeseburger.

To quote Michael Pollan…

Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

 

 

Loving Lately…

Good evening! Just a quick post tonight. I thought I’d give you a quick rundown of some of the products I’m enjoying at the moment. Life is cray cray at the moment. We are in the process of relocating to Queensland and moving our lives to the other end of the country and consequently are pretty busy. So, here’s what I have been loving lately.

The Body Shop Hemp Body Butter

I’ve mentioned before I get pretty dry skin as well as eczema. In the past I have stuck to boring old QV cream but when I have heard good things about this range for people with skin issues like mine.  It is a great moisturiser with (not surprisingly) a very buttery, smooth texture. I have noticed less flaky patches, but it does smell a little funky. It is $29.95 from The Body Shop and you can get other products in this range, including a body wash and hand cream among others.

Skinfood Rotorua Mud Masque

Lately I’ve been getting the odd pesky pimple and noticed some areas of congestion in my skin. This is weird because I’ve always had dry skin so this hasn’t ever been an issue for me. Anyway I have stepped up my game with exfoliation and this has helped. So while I was tidying up and packing today, I was pleased to come across this masque that I bought earlier in the year while I was in New Zealand. I think I bought it in woolworths (or whatever their equivalent was) but I believe you can shop online. It’s not the most pleasant of products…. the mud is thick and grey-brown, and it feels dry and kinda constrictive once it dries…. but my skin feels fresh, soft and deeply cleansed after I used it. I also love that it does not contain fragrances or parabens because they tend to upset my skin. I think this will become a weekly ritual!

Rimmel Kate Moss Lasting Finish Lipstick

This is my new favourite cheapie lipstick. I originally bought it for halloween because I wanted dark purple lips, but have since bought 2 more. Whoopsies! I justify this by telling myself I could buy 1 Clinique or Mac lipstick for the cost of 3 of these babies… Anyway. I have number 16, 12 and 4. It has a fruity scent and has good staying power if you use a primer. They are pretty pigmented so after it wears off a bit, it still stains the lips slightly too. I like the formula – it applies smoothly and doesn’t dry out my lips either. It’s a winner! Buy them anywhere you buy Rimmel…. Priceline, Target or K-mart.

Garnier Youthful Radiance Anti-dark circle roll on

Another budget friendly find. I bought this on impulse when I was grocery shopping because I LOVE the Garnier BB cream. I suffer from hayfever and sinusitis a lot so I often have puffy eyes and dark circles. Combine this with frequent late nights and 5:30am starts and I am at risk of looking rather scary. This is also the perfect lazy/busy girl solution: it combines hydration to and refreshes the eye area whilst simultaneously concealing. I love a beauty multi-tasker:  Because I refuse to get up any earlier to make time for concealer application. Sorry, I am a bad blogger and forgot how much it cost, but it was around the $15 mark from Coles.

I heart my body.

… Well, most of the time.

Me.

I haven’t always hearted my body. In fact, it has caused me a great deal of pain and frustration over the past few years, and that’s not likely to ever go away. I still don’t heart it every day but it has been through a lot and come out the other side from a barrage of surgery, scans, sutures and scars  relatively okay so I am thankful for that. My tibia has been drilled into and distracted out of place, my ankle has been debrided 3 times, drilled and fractured with surgical tools and then stuck back together with cartilage grafts and lots of bone glue. I have a 7cm scar to prove it and my ankle always looks a little discoloured.

Yes, I hear you say, there are plenty of other people who have way worse things going on than I do. I realise this, and I try to remember and be grateful every day. But, chronic pain is a hard thing to deal with when you are young, and supposed to be carefree and happy. And it’s really fucking depressing. Especially when you are told that there is nothing else to be done, your ankle will never be normal, and you just have to “deal with it”. I still have regular rehabilitation with my physiotherapist. I still wake up with a slight limp every morning until the joint warms up. My foot still gives way from underneath me randomly (though less often, which is nice). I feel like my personality has changed. Sometimes I resent people who take for granted their fully functional ankles… and who can run and jump pain free but are too lazy to do so.

My tattoo and scars.

But, despite this, I still heart my body. I’m proud of how much it has overcome. It has survived a few health near-misses, which I am eternally grateful for. This whole thing has taught me that no matter what crap happens you, you are still in control of how you react to them. I still have down days, but I am so proud that I (mostly) didn’t give in to the sometimes overwhelmingly depressing feelings and spiral into self-pity. I’ve worked hard every day to make the most of what I have, even if it will never be as good as I want it to be. I respect my body enough to eat healthily 90% of the time. I don’t drink excessively, or smoke. Sometimes I still struggle with my relationship with food, but I’m learning that I don’t need to guilt-spiral every time I have a treat.

I go to the gym 5 or 6 days a week. I heart the fact that my body has some definition and some actual muscles are starting to show. I heart that it enables me to walk my dogs around this beautiful neighbourhood. I heart my body by reminding myself that so many “perfect” fit and toned bodies touted as “inspirational” have probably had some kind of surgical intervention…. No matter how many chest presses or push ups I do, I will never have a chest like THAT! And that’s okay. But I’ve always hated my lack of “curves” (ugh I hate that expression!). I could  (and sometimes do) obsess for days over how that makes me less feminine, how I wished I looked different. But on the flip-side, being slim means I can confidently rock skinny jeans, black milk leggings and I have a flat stomach to be proud of.

I heart having abs.

There are a lot of things about me that are a bit weird. My eyes are different coloured, both are greeny-blue but one has a brown stripe. I have freckles due to my complete inability to get a tan. I have 5 tattoos which I love. My hair colour seems to change frequently from blonde to purple to pink. Some people might think that these are imperfections, and sometimes I do too. But its genuine, and it’s better than being boring, which I think is something to heart.

Check out We Heart Life and their I Heart My Body 2012 campaign.