The Green Parent
Raising kids with conscience
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Feb 03 2012
Snow Moon
The Full Moon falls on the 7th of February – the Sun in Aquarius and the Moon in Leo. Astrologically, this is a Fire Moon as it falls in the fiery house of Leo, creating a powerful, if volatile energy. Conversely in folklore it is known as the Snow Moon. Read on to find out what energies to focus on at this time.
This full moon is named the snow moon because there is snow upon the ground or it is at its most deepest at this time of the year. Other names include Moon of the Seer, Storm or Quickening Moon. It marks a time when the night of the year is drawing to a close and we are entering the half of the year with greater hours of daylight and warmth. However, just as a storm can flare up just before it ends so too can winter be most fierce just before Spring. We may feel drawn to continue our inner work – working with and uncovering our personal truth. It is said that this full moon brings light to illuminate our own darkness.
I like that analogy although I understand that that means some challenges in acknowledging and accepting the darkness within. I am going to use divination to help illuminate those parts which I might not otherwise be prepared to look at. And to find out which areas I need to focus upon in the coming month. At the moment I am using Wisdom of Avalon cards, which are beautiful and work on many levels, the Druid Plant Oracle, which I love because I feel drawn to plants and for a fluffier and empowering reading, the Goddess Guidance cards. I thought it would be a good time to create my own divination tools so am going to make myself a deck of tree cards over the next month.
I am also going to deepen my practice of really observing the messages that nature offers us. Last week, when driving back from a workshop with a carful of friends we came across an amazing, majestic stag, standing motionless by the side of the road. We stopped the car and everyone became completely silent just watching this beautiful beast. He continued standing there, staring back at us. In Wiccan belief the stag represents grace, gentleness and swiftness. I will never forget the image of him, white against the dark forest behind. And a day or so later when late and rushing to pick up my children from a party, feeling anxious, a white dove flew past and settled on a rooftop nearby, bringing calm and a sense of perspective to the situation. So now I am trying to be alert to further symbolism from the natural world.
This beautiful painting has been created by Carol – here’s her myspace page.
Tell us about what this full moon holds for you. I’d love to hear from you.
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Dec 21 2011
Natural Nutrition
I am fascinated by nutrition and as well as having a seasonal appointment with a NatNut trained nutritionist, I also like to read anything I can get my hands on, attend lectures and experiment with different ideas in the kitchen.
The most enduring for me is the work of Barbara Wren, who I had the pleasure of meeting this spring, whilst on a retreat with the inspirational Kirsten Chick and Hayley North.
I discovered Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon a few years ago and unearthed a whole new way of thinking about food. It is a very traditional approach based in part on research done by Weston Price at the beginning of last century. He was a dentist who travelled the world in the 1930s and observed peoples untouched by civilisation, living solely on local foodstuffs. Most of these tribespeople ate seafood and animal proteins, including organ meats. They saw animal fat as vital to good health. Everything that they ate was in it’s natural unrefined state. The one thing that was noticeable about these groups was that they were free from degenerative disease, dental decay and mental illness.
Sally Fallon started the Weston Price Foundation in 1999 in the United States and wrote Nourishing Traditions (a recipe book literally packed with recipes for traditional foods) to bring his work to a wider audience. I use the recipes from this book regularly, although we’ve yet to cross over to the meat eating side (we enjoy raw dairy and eggs from our chickens instead). I really like her ideas for providing nutritious food for your family on a budget.
- DON’T BUY BOXED COLD BREAKFAST CEREALS, even those made of whole grains. They are very expensive, poor in nutrients and difficult to digest. A serving of the best quality oatmeal costs half the amount of the average boxed breakfast cereal and is infinitely more nutritious. For optimum nourishment, you need to think ahead and soak your oatmeal overnight.
- MAKE YOUR OWN SALAD DRESSING. You can make your own dressing using the finest ingredients for about the same cost as the average bottled dressings, most of which contain rancid vegetable oils, trans fatty acids and numerous additives. With practice, it takes no more than a minute to produce a delicious dressing for your salad.
- ALWAYS BUY BUTTER. Margarine may cost less but it is a false economy, one that leads to numerous impoverishing diseases. If the cost of butter is prohibitive, use lard.
- MAKE STOCK AT LEAST ONCE A WEEK.
- IT’S BETTER TO PUT YOUR MONEY INTO WHOLE FOODS THAN VITAMINS. However, most benefit from a daily teaspoonful of cod liver oil. Lacto fermented beet kvass contains a large array of nutrients in easily assimilated form.
- GOOD QUALITY DAIRY PRODUCTS ARE WORTH THE PRICE.
- THE LESS EXPENSIVE VEG INCLUDE SOME OF THE MOST NOURISHING. Potatoes, cabbage, carrots, courgette, onions, broccoli, chard, beets and kale are all easy to prepare. Always prepare or serve veg with butter for best assimilation of the minerals they contain.
- DON’T FORGET EGGS AS A LOW COST PROTEIN. It pays to buy the best quality.
- MAKE SOUPS PART OF YOUR REPERTOIRE. Blended soups can be put together in very little time and are very nourishing.
- MAKE KOMBUCHA! The taste is better than the most expensive soft drink, beer or wine.
TRY NOT TO OVERECONOMISE ON FOOD. Instead cut out all the junk food, prepared cookies and cakes, soft drinks, frozen foods, fast foods etc. – and use the savings to buy good quality whole foods. Above all use good quality fats – they keep you healthy during times of stress.
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Nov 28 2011
Raw Christmas puds
Christmas is a time for all the family to enjoy the luxuries of life. Long walks, good company, roaring log fires, and of course plenty of good food. So when your diet is a little bit different from those around you, how do you make sure that you still can enjoy the fine things in life? For those who are on gluten free, dairy free and vegan diets, Christmas can be a little challenging. Raw Lisa, a little company based on the North Devon coast, has some big ideas about maintaining a healthy diet throughout the festive season – while still enjoying some luxury.
“There is no reason why eating our favourite things should be detrimental to our health” says Raw Lisa founder, Lisa Sture. Lisa turned to a diet very high in raw foods five years ago when she started to experience fatigue and general low energy. “I loved my new diet and felt fantastic on it. But when it came to my first ‘raw Christmas,’ I felt left out of the festivities at the dinner table.”
Following the success of her ‘raw bakery’ range – a range of bread replacement products including onion flatbreads and seed snaps – Lisa is launching for Christmas this year the UK’s first Raw Christmas Pudding. “I gave the pudding its first trial run last Christmas and served it with a raw vanilla custard. Everyone round the table was asking for the raw pudding over their shop-bought and I knew I was onto something.”
So is it a high-raw diet good for you? Much of it is in the way food is prepared. Temperatures over 118 degrees destroy much of the food’s nutritional goodness, including the enzymes. This means that the body has to work hard to digest any cooked foods as it needs to produce it’s own enzymes. Research is now suggesting that the body has a finite amount of enzymes and over a lifetime the energy used to digest cooked food takes it toll on the system.
Raw food alternatively, is a complete food in that the enzymes are intact and the body does not need to work overtime to digest. That sleepy feeling after eating a large cooked meal is replaced by vitality and the body can find other, more fun things to do with all that energy (board games anyone?).
The Raw Lisa Raw Luxury Christmas Pudding is the first product of this kind and is suitable for everyone to enjoy. Made from completely natural ingredients that are ecologically sourced and agro-chemical free, including fresh Medjool dates and cardamom, it is prepared by hand using a dehydrator, rather than an oven. This process ensures that the pudding’s nutritional content is maximized and, most importantly, that the enzymes in the raw ingredients are kept alive. So this pudding is not only delicious but also good for you. And because the nutritional content of the food is so well preserved, smaller quantities are generally eaten.
The lovely folk at Raw Lisa have a Reader Offer for Green Parent readers: Order any Raw Lisa products from the Raw Lisa website and receive a 15% discount. Just quote Raw Green Parent when you place your order. Enjoy!
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Nov 23 2011
Christmas Offers
ETHICAL GIFTS
Free delivery on fair-trade chocolate orders over £20 – Code: Green Parent
Free gift worth £7.50 with first order of child sized tools and toys to inspire – code: bbnGP011
20% off first order of beautiful traditional toys – code: TGP
10% off multicultural musical instruments and gifts – code: B1WOODEN TOYS
Free wooden toy for every reader
15% off first order of great wooden toys and more – code: GREENXMASETHICAL CLOTHING
Save 25% of all organic cotton baby clothes this winter – Code: GREENPARENT11
Save 20% on beautiful fair-trade fashion for newborn to 12 year olds – Code GR20
Save 15% on natural wool clothing for babies – code: GreenParenAW11
Save 10% on personalised organic clothing for children aged 0-10 years old – code: GP10
Save 10% on organic clothing for kids from Scandinavia – code: GPAW11NATURAL BEDDING
15% off merino wool bedding for babies – code: GREEN89NATURAL BEAUTY
20% off orders of natural therapeutic skin products for babies and children – code: Greenparent
Just £100 for 12 Beauty Boxes – one a month for the next year – packed full of green goodies. the perfect gift!
15% discount oN handmade organic skincare – code: GPDEC11
10% off natural and organic skincare and beauty gifts – code: GREEN11BABYWEARING
15% off handwoven fair-trade and lambswool slings – code: GP
10% award winning baby carrier – code: GCP11
10% off slings and baby wearing accessories – code: GP10REAL NAPPIES
10% off entire range of natural nappies and accessories – code: GRP11
10% off reusable cloth nappies and accessories – code: Green 10
10% off award winning brand of washable nappies – code: GCP11NEW CAREER
10% discount off baby massage and yoga teacher training – code: Green ParentTagged as:Bookmark: -
Nov 04 2011
Raw Food Delights
One of my beautiful friends is a raw foodie who makes us delicious goodies, such as her speciality flaxseed crackers, bursting with italian flavour and an incredible chocolate shortbread. Those in East Sussex might be lucky enough to find some for sale in Sunny Foods, Eastbourne or Brighton. You can also find her online where she provides a coaching service for those looking to improve their health, plus a recipe book containing some of her most tasty creations. I have recently come across another lovely lady, Lisa Sture who makes her own treats and sells them at Raw Lisa. I have some of her fab sounding breads and crackers to try today for lunch. Anyway, these gorgeous treats have inspired me to get a bit more creative with raw foods again (rather than just turning to the same recipes over and over). Here are a few of my favourite raw food recipe books to get your juices flowing.
I AM GRATEFUL
From Café Gratitude in San Francisco and LA, this book is stuffed full of delights to tickle Californian tastebuds. And mine too. Each recipe in this book has an empowering moniker, such as I am Beautiful. Some of my favourites from here that I’ve rediscovered recently include “I am Spirit Teriyaki Almonds” – delicious sweet and sour nuts, with ginger, garlic and dates, great for a party, “I am Bueno Spinach Tortillas” – a winner with the kids as lunchtime wraps and a truly decadent “I am Magnificent Chocolate Mousse”. Filled with sumptuous photography and recipe titles that make you feel all loved up, this book is a real pleasure to own.LIVING FOOD FOR RADIANT HEALTH
Elaine Bruce’s authentic guide to using fresh and raw foods is a brilliant introduction to live food cuisine. Packed with advice and inspiration, Bruce is a powerhouse of information. She trained with Dr. Ann Wigmore and now runs the Living Foods Programme in Shropshire. The best aspect of this book is how it encourages readers to set up their own sprouting/growing area for live greens at home. She really inspires you to revolutionise your kitchen. Love it!RAINBOW GREEN: LIVE FOOD CUISINE
Gabriel Cousens is the director of the Tree of Life Rejuvenation Centre in Patagonia and huge on the raw foods scene. His approach combines ayurvedic medicine with raw foods and this book is a bountiful collection of great recipes to help you eat as nature intended. I like the fact that he uses very few grains in his dishes and relies more heavily on seeds rather than nuts as this suits my ayurvedic type. A useful book with plenty of information besides the recipes. Not for you if you like glossy images of what you are making though, this only has a few.NAKED CHOCOLATE
David Wolfe and Shazzie have combined forces to manifest a love letter to the cacao bean. This beautiful book is packed with info and heaps of recipes (including savoury delights). Some of my favourites include chilli con cacao, chocolate pizza (oh yes!) and little fudge cakes. This is my go to book in the winter months when I need a little extra boost of energy. Many of the recipes are superfood rich so they provide you with a healthy buzz when you most need it.RAW MAGIC
Kate Magic has put together a selection of recipes for the revolution. And the revolution will be full of love, light and magic. And it will not be televised. And there will be much enjoyment of super foods. This is my favourite of Kate’s books, although others such as Eat Smart, eat Raw or Raw Living, might be better starting points for those just discovering raw foods. This book iOS packed with superfood delights and my all time favourites have to be Best Ever Breakfast Cereal, Buzz Cake (packed with bee pollen) and Superbeing Tea. Yum!RAW: THE UNCOOK BOOK
This is the only raw food book in our local library but I guess we are lucky to have even one. When I first started getting interested in raw foods about seven years ago, this was one of my first sources of inspiration. My mum bought it for me for my birthday many years ago. I love the outlandish recipes, some of which are crazily complicated and over the top. I love the imagery of author, Juliano leaping around in brightly coloured dungarees. But best of all, I love that there are plenty of recipes in here that aren’t too complex and that make fabulous tasting raw delights. That’s what keeps me coming back, time and again to the old classic favourites like this and Nomi Shannon’s Raw Gourmet.Happy healthy eating!
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Welcome to the new blog from the Green Parent office. Here we'll talk about what's going on in the small and quite leafy headquarters of the UK's leading green lifestyle magazine. We'll share news that interests us and talk about green issues and natural parenting. We'll share advice and information from our own experiences of living a green lifestyle. And we'll even tell you what we are reading, eating, drinking and thinking. Hope you get plenty of food for thought here.
The Green Parent is the UK's leading green lifestyle and natural parenting magazine. A truly inspiring read, TGP is like nothing else on the newsstand, with insightful intelligent journalism covering topics from babywearing and attachment parenting to home-education and alternative medicine. Each issue features regular columns on Organic Gardening, Seasonal Food and Drink, Green Travel, Ethical Fashion and lots more.