Slow Living

Bread rising, calendula drying. This is what makes me happy. Slow living, cooking from scratch, growing and harvesting my food and medicine.

Drying and Storing Wild Nettle

Wild harvesting this nettle was such a beautiful experience of getting back to nature in our urban neighborhood. After washing and hanging our plentiful nettle harvest in the spare room I forgot about it for a few weeks while it dried. Mio was keen (briefly!) to help me to pull the leaves off the stems for storing.

It was messy but such a big harvest, countless cups of tea right there!

The stalks didn't go to waste as I boiled them in a pot of water and made a hair rinse. I poured the warm tea over my head as I leaned over my newly planted tomatoes. The cooked stalks then made it to the compost, so all in all it was a successful multi use harvest with many months of stored nettle leaves to use in tea and soups. 

Wild Nettle Harvest

Spring has just begun here in Melbourne, winter seemed to fly by this year. On one of our walks around the neighborhood Mio and I discovered a patch of nettle growing. We came back with India equipped with gloves, a bag and secateurs so we could harvest some of this amazing wild food. Urban living at it's finest!

Drawing Development 2 Years 10 Months

Mio is continuing to show her love and skill for drawing. Here's some My Neighbor Totoro inspired drawings she did this morning.

Totoro

Another Totoro (this was the first one she drew)

The Cat Bus

 

Gluten Free Focaccia

Creating gluten free bread and cake recipes seems to be my favorite thing to do in the kitchen at the moment. I'm really excited about this bread, it has a great texture and is really easy to throw together. It has a lighter texture than my buckwheat bread and is probably my favorite of the two. I haven't tried making it into a loaf but it works well as a focaccia, as well as little bread rolls made in mini muffin tins for picnics. I've tried other toppings like basil, garlic and cheese, and spinach and cheese which are both delicious.

The risen dough and the prepared baking tray.

The dough in the tray ready for the toppings.

Ready for the oven.

Bread

1 cup brown rice flour

1 cup tapioca starch

1/2 cup buckwheat flour

1 tbsp psyllium husks

2 1/2 tsp yeast

2 tsp sugar

1 tsp salt

1 1/2 cups warm milk

Topping
3/4 cup olives and sundried tomatoes
1 cup grated cheese
fresh basil to sprinkle on top

polenta for sprinkling on the bottom of the baking tray

Measure dry ingredients for the bread into a bowl and stir to combine. Warm milk on the stove (you should still be able to dip your finger in and hold it there without burning yourself) and then add to the dry ingredients. Stir until well combined, the mixture should resemble a thick batter. Leave in a warm place to rise for 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 230 degrees Celcius. Slice the olives and sundried tomatoes. Finely dice the basil and grate the cheese. In a 20x30cm non-stick slice tray sprinkle a small amount of polenta on the bottom.

Spoon small amounts of the dough evenly over the base of the tray and spread to cover. Cover the top of the dough with the olives, sundried tomatoes, basil and cheese and leave to rise for another 10 minutes.
Bake for 15 minutes and then leave to cool in the tray for a few minutes before transferring to a cooling rack.

My very patient 2 year old waiting to eat while I snap a few photos.

School Holiday Explorations

I love school holidays! I love having both the girls around all day and just hanging out together. I also love that we have more time to explore fun learning activities. Being the winter school holidays at the moment it's cold and often wet outside meaning we spend at lot more time indoors and we have to get creative with our play. Learning about the human body is something that has not yet been explored at school for India so I've been wanting to delve into that with her for awhile so today we got stuck into some fun learning.

We started by just getting India to lie down on some paper so I could draw around her. We are lucky enough to live close to a paper distributor and we can get some great end rolls of paper from printing machines for quite cheap, so we always have really big sheets of paper to get creative with. Today we just looked at the organs but I'd love to explore other body systems with India as well.

My Labour was 'Short' and that Doesn't Make it Any Less of an Incredible Achievement.

Birth experiences are different for every woman, and indeed, different for every child a woman gives birth to, but there's one thing I'm sure every woman will agree on and that is, giving birth is an amazing, life changing and intense experience.

Over the years I've heard many opinions about my birth experiences and opinions on various other women's birth experiences. One opinion that has come up often is that I'm 'lucky' or that somehow birth is less of an achievement if the labour was 'short'. Giving birth to my children were two incredibly different experiences, both equally life changing but very, very different. My first labour and birth from first contraction to when my daughter was pulled up out of the birthing pool was five-and-a-half hours- definitely on the shorter side for a first birth as far as statistics go, but just because it was 'short' does not mean it was not incredibly intense and exhausting. From the very first contraction it was incredibly intense and required all my focus, in those five-and-a-half hours I threw up twice from the intensity, I couldn't wait to get into the birthing pool and when I was in it I had mum and Dave holding me up because I couldn't do it myself.
Now, the second time around was very different, I had a show in the early hours of the morning and the odd contraction like the Braxton Hicks contractions I had been getting every night for the previous couple of weeks. It felt like Braxton Hicks but I had a show so I was unsure if I was actually in labour or not. Fast forward a few hours and when morning came I felt like things were not going to happen that day, but after I thought it had all stopped the contractions came again with a little more intensity- but still nothing like that first contraction I had when I was in labour the first time. My second labour was challenging in different ways to my first, I was tired towards the end as I hadn't slept well and towards the end the contractions tripped over each other, never giving me a moment to rest; but I moved around a lot and gave birth standing up leaning over the bed without anyone holding me up which would have been unimaginable the first time round. From the time active labour started to when I pushed my sweet baby out all in one big push it was about five-and-a-half hours but if you include the early signs of labour that I didn't experience the first time round my labour was probably around 10 or so hours long (still on the 'short' side of statistics but twice as long as my first labour).

My 'short' labours were amazing and intense and just because they were 'short' does not mean that I didn't run a marathon so to speak. Being told that I'm just lucky for a short labour or hearing in general conversations the jealously and down playing of a woman's experience is not positive or supportive of the many and varied birth experiences that we as women have. Women who share their positive birth experiences or experiences of short labours do not mean to rub that experience in other women's faces, they are merely doing what we should all be able to do as women who have entered the important rite of passage of motherhood- that is, sharing our own experience. These are my thoughts and my experiences on this matter and overall I think that these things are said unconsciously or in an attempt to ease the distress of a long labour or bad experience, but I think on a cultural level there needs to be more care taken not to devalue someone else's experience whatever that may be in an attempt to make you at ease with your own experience.

An Afternoon With India

An afternoon to practice yoga, explore and be silly, just India and I.

Malasana

India does silly the best.

Vriksasana

In India's words, this one is 'Gollum'.

Virabhadrasana II

Adho Mukha Svanasana

Gomukhasana

Dandayamna Baddha Konasana

Paschimuttanasana

Baddha Konasana

Urdhva Upavishta Konasana

Garudasana

Hakini Mudra

Earth Plug Mudra- India described this as feeling like all her silliness was going out of her and calm was coming up through her fingers.

Shavasana

And the sun sets on a perfect afternoon.

A Day in the Life of a Yogi Mama

Your yoga practice will certainly change with children in your life. With a different routine and many more demands on your time it can be hard to find the time for a solid yoga practice but that doesn't mean you need to give up your practice entirely. Family life provides the perfect opportunity for you to take yoga off the mat and into your daily life. Here's a diary to show you the how, what, when and where of  yoga in my life so that you can see that not only is it possible to include yoga in your life, it's fun and rewarding too.


6am- Mio wakes for some milk, usually she goes back to sleep but not today. I stay in bed for a few more minutes while she plays but then give up on the idea of more sleep and I get up to take Mio to the potty and start my day. After using the bathroom, I do some tongue scraping, wash my face and moisturise from top to toe with my homemade infused body oil. Using these Ayurvedic cleansing practices is how I start every day, I find that tongue scraping wakes me up and clears my head, and using body oil keeps my high Vata constitution in check.
After dressing Mio we head downstairs to the kitchen to grab a big glass of warm water with apple cider vinegar. This hydrates my organs and kick starts my digestion. I drink half of it and head upstairs after Mio tells me all she wants to eat is probiotic powder (hmmm).

6:30am- I set up my yoga mat in the bedroom and practice a few rounds of sun salutations while Mio plays. The flow is interrupted by Mio climbing underneath me so we practice downward dog together and giggle at each other while I peek through her legs. Mio disappears again to play and I practice a few gentle twists and forward bends to finish warming up. Mio is back to climb on me again as I lie down on the mat and we play see-saw for a few moments. Off again to play, Mio talks to (or should I say- screams at) the traffic through the closed bedroom window (lucky Dave and India sleep through anything!). While practicing a headstand Mio insists I drink from the empty kombucha bottle I left in the bedroom last night- lucky I have enough balance in my headstand to play this game while I'm upside down- Mio thinks it's fantastic. I practice a few challenging transitions before resting in a butterfly forward bend while Mio babbles emphatically and shows me her book.

7am- I sit down to do some work on the computer and breastfeed Mio again while I drink the rest of my apple cider vinegar water.

8am- Time for breakfast. Put some toast on and do a few handstands in the kitchen. Put a load of nappies on and hang out some sheets that have been in the machine since yesterday morning. Potter around the kitchen while eating toast with Mio. India comes downstairs at 8:30am and I make some buckwheat pancakes for her and Mio. While cutting vegetables for my carrot, beetroot, ginger and apple juice I stand in tree pose. I make my juice and a cup of mumma tea and do a few things around the kitchen. Breakfast didn't happen while sitting down today which doesn't follow the guidelines of Ayurveda but unfortunately we can't be perfect all the time.

9am- Back upstairs with my tea to get dressed. I manage to get half dressed before Mio gets grumpy and tired from her early waking. After putting her to sleep I practice some more inversions and some backbends with the yoga strap before I finish getting dressed.

I do some cooking and make Dave a coffee while he makes phone calls. I remember to breathe deep and be mindful through India's challenging behavior.

10:30am- Mio wakes, she goes to the potty and I finish making food. We eat outside in the sunshine and I watch the girls play hide and seek.

11:15am- I do some arm and shoulder stretches and have some down time sitting in half lotus while I crochet.

12pm- Handstands at the train station while we wait. Lunch in the city at the Hare Krisna's restaurant, then off to the park for some yoga and much needed barefoot grass play. Home by 4:30pm and the last of the day is filled with end of day play, dinner and the bedtime routine. I squeeze in some computer time and a few seated yoga poses on the bed before I put Mio to sleep.

8pm- I enjoy some crocheting on the roof as the sun sets, and then some computer time and hanging with Dave for the rest of the evening.

Healing My Teeth

After having a piece of my tooth break while eating I was hurled into a fear for loosing all my teeth. Unfortunately I have been blessed with poor teeth and knowing that my mother had lots of problems (and breastfeeding five children probably didn't help) I was quite scared I was headed down the same road.

I knew I had some holes for quite some time but I never got around to addressing the problem but when my tooth broke I knew it was time to look at what I could do naturally to strengthen and hopefully heal my teeth. I had dabbled in oil pulling after being introduced to it in my yoga teacher training so i knew the benefits and I wanted to make a real effort to do it and see if I could get some good results before I booked in to the dentist and drained our bank account in the process.

So here is my journey through healing my teeth, at this point I have no idea if it will be successful but I plan on seeing what I can do over the next 6 months before I return to the dentist for another check up and clean.

Day 1- I struggled through the 20 minutes and felt like gagging but I did it!

Day 4- I've never looked in my mouth as much as I have in the past few days. There is one hole in my wisdom tooth (that looks like a small piece chipped away) and I've been using that to gauge how things are going. After oil pulling today I was surprised and excited to see that the little hole was no longer black! I couldn't believe it so I was looking in my mouth all day. At some point the hole began to turn black again but the fact that it had changed at all seems very promising.

1 Month- So it's been a month since I started and I've been successfully oil pulling every morning for 20 mins as well as through the day if I'm home and get the chance. The hole in my wisdom too is still black most of the time but it does change after oil pulling.
I've just got India onto oil pulling after her first trip to the dentist revealed the beginnings of a cavity. I'm hoping we can heal it before it turns into a cavity. She also has some pitting in her molars which the dentist thinks is probably because her Celiacs was undiagnosed until she was 3 years which made her 6-year-old molars not quite form properly due to lack of nutrients when they were growing before they broke through the skin. The dentist wanted to fill the dents because they can get food caught in them and easily become cavities but I would rather teach her to take good care of her teeth than get some work done that will inevitably need to be redone again as she grows as fillings don't last forever. She does oil pulling while she's watching a cartoon or playing a computer game and she seems to enjoy it.

2 Months- Oil pulling has been going well, I'm looking in my mouth less often but the hole is white quite often and when it is black it does seem to look a little smaller than it did originally. I've been reading a bunch of stuff on Weston A Price and his recommendations for healing tooth decay. I've started taking high vitamin butter oil for the past couple of weeks and I'm eating less grains but I haven't cut them out completely.

3 Months- Oil pulling is still going well, there have been a few mornings where I've been in a rush so could only do it for a few minutes but anything is better than nothing. I decided to add a cod liver oil supplement to take with my high vitamin butter oil. Weston A Price recommends taking these together for healing tooth decay, I was reluctant to have cod liver oil as I've been a vegetarian my whole life and I believe strongly in the health benefits and ethics behind it but with my health already compromised due to low stomach acid as a result of Celiacs I felt that using an animal product as a medicine would help build my body back to perfect health.
I'm pleased to say that the hole in my wisdom tooth is always white or slightly grey so it looks like things are really working which is great to see now that I'm half way to 6 months. There is still quite sizable dent in my tooth where it looks like the bit of tooth originally chipped off. The tooth in front of it has a tiny hole that is still black so I still have a way to go before my teeth show perfect results.
India has continued to do oil pulling with me in the mornings and with my good results I'm keen to see how her teeth will be when I take her back for a check up in a few months.

4 Months- I've been oil pulling daily (but some days it has only been short as we've been in a rush). The hole in my wisdom tooth is about the same as it was last month- white or greyish. On the whole my teeth are looking pretty good but I still have a long way to go before they are fully healed.

6 Months- The past couple of months life has got in the way and I haven't really done any oil pulling but I have been eating foods and taking food supplements high in fat soluble vitamins- in particular vitamin A and D and trying to keep a low intake of grains. I've really been working hard on healing my gut and eating clean and have been making lots of fermented foods. My teeth still have holes in them but they are smaller than they were and with breastfeeding so much and working on other things I need to heal (mostly to do with my gut and low stomach acid) I'm surprised that I have made any progress at all. Originally I wanted to give myself 6 months to attempt to heal my teeth and if by then I hadn't succeeded I would get the work done on my teeth at the dentist. However, I feel that I need some more time to work on it before I head back to the dentist and with breastfeeding being high on the agenda at the moment, progress with healing is obviously going to be slower than I if wasn't supporting the life of another little being. I will be posting updates as I progress, I am positive that my body can heal and that I just need to feed it nourishing food and give it time. My body has made some amazing progress with healing so I'm happy to take things slow and see how they go in the coming months. To be continued...

Mio Turns One

Oh my how this year has flown by, it has been a whole year since I gave birth to my little peace baby. This past year has been so blissful, I'm so lucky to have such a placid, peaceful little girl in my life. Mio's been starting to show her cheeky side and is giving India a run for her money with all the cheeky faces she pulls. She's so chatty and smiley and every day it's a blessing to wake up next to her. She is absolutely the easiest baby to take care of, teething doesn't bother her which is wonderful for all of us.
Pottying is fun and we get most poos on the potty and some wees but with busy days, cool weather and an already ridiculous amount of washing I like to keep her in nappies. It would be lovely if I had nothing to do so I could get up through the night to take her to the toilet and have long rests with her through the day to catch up on sleep but life is so full these days which means elimination communication is much easier if we practice part time.

An Autumn Afternoon

Autumn is just delightful, it's so lovely to spend afternoons after school climbing trees and throwing leaves.