Hippie Healthcare: Body Butter

Hi there! SO I have a recipe for body butter that has changed my life.

(That may be slightly difference, but really, it’s wonderful!)

I adapted the recipe from several different sources and ended up with one that was perfect for me! It made about 2 and a half cups full so I keep a little pot full in my bathroom and top it up when needed – a little goes a long way though due to the use of coconut oil.

       the end result

I chose to use rosemary essential oils as I adore the smell and it has wonderful calming properties, as well as being great for skin and hair. I have also been using it in my weekly avocado hair-mask, but that is another post for another day 🙂 For now, here is how to make this sumptuous body butter!

You will need:

1 cup organic raw shea butter

1/2 cup coconut oil

1/2 cup almond oil

Drops of essential oil (whichever you choose and however much you need). I used 10 drops.

How to make:

• First, melt coconut oil and shea butter in a double-boiler (or a pan in a pan if, like me, you don’t have one!). Remove from heat and let them cool for half an hour.
• Then stir in the almond oil and whichever essential oil you chose.
• Place in freezer until oils start to solidify, at which point remove and whip until a butter-like texture is achieved.
• Place in a pot or jar and enjoy your soft, lovely smelling skin 🙂

There are no nasties in this recipe – all good, wholesome ingredients that will nourish and care for your skin. It feels amazing and the scent really lasts as well, which is lovely, and you know there is no way you are polluting your pores with anything yucky! I really can’t recommend this enough 🙂 Hope you give it a try!

Peace 🙂 x

Plum and Pecan Millet Porridge

❤

This is the best breakfast. Honestly – the best. Arrogance aside – the. best.

I went through a massive millet moment about a year ago and ate it every day for a month or so, but right after moved away from home and my millet mania kind of subsided…

…until now!

I am well and truly back in millet mode!

I apologize for all the alliteration but I am just feeling so sprightly and wonderful that I can’t seem to help it! I feasted on a bowl of this deliciousness shown above this morning after doing some yoga, and have breezed through the day. I have smiled at people I dislike and I have shown enthusiasm for things that are so hopelessly boring they usually make me want to cry – if I was a colour I would be perfect plummy purple and my mood is way through the roof of the happy scale 🙂

So yes – millet madness, but a good kind 🙂

This fluffy yellow seed is packed full of fibre, nutrition and all things wonderful, despite being the main ingredient in bird seed…we don’t talk about that…

So this is my recipe! I make enough for 3 servings and then refrigerate so I can enjoy it three days in a row , experimenting with different, delicious combinations of toppings each day. Today was plum and pecan, yesterday banana and pumpkin seed, and tomorrow I’m feeling apple and vanilla 🙂

Plum and Pecan Millet Porridge

You will need:

100g millet

200 ml each of water and almond milk

zest of one orange

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1/2 teaspoon fresh grated ginger

1 plum, chopped

4 pecan nuts, chopped

honey/date syrup to taste

Method:

1. Pour the water and almond milk into a pan and bring to a boil before adding the millet and simmering for 8-10 minutes, until the seeds are plump and fluffy, absorbing the liquid. You can rely on your own taste for this part – whether you like to leave a little liquid in or let it all soak up prior to eating!
2. After the millet has cooked take it off the heat, adding the cinnamon, ginger and orange zest.Separate a portion out, placing the rest in a Tupperware ready for the fridge.
3. Returning to your present breakfast add in the rest of your ingredients and stir it all up before putting it in a bowl and simply digging in!
4. Enjoy feeling amazing 🙂

I can honestly say I have been so satisfied today! I snacked in the morning on a banana and an orange, before eating my lunch of a spinach, carrot and avocado salad. Today has been good.

Please do let me know if you try this recipe out – I’d love to hear your variations and ideas 😀

For now,

Peace x

 

Hippie Healthcare: Deoderant

So this is an issue I’m weirdly passionate about…well, it won’t be so weird when I explain it – but I get that it sounds odd 🙂

Basically, there is aluminium in SO MANY popular brands of deodorant; even mainstream brands that claim to be pure and simple use this stuff – and we in turn buy this stuff and put it under our arms, at which point all the toxins and aluminium make themselves at home in our bloodstream by seeping into our exposed pores and through our body. Which is gross.

*breathes*

A lot of my friends who I’ve ranted about this to where (along with being slightly concerned for my mental health) quite shocked that deodorant contained these things in the first place! It does seem odd, but this is why I don’t really use non-natural products. I just don’t trust ’em if I don’t know what half the things on the label are xD

But anyway, constructively, here are my favourite non-scary alternatives. This may seem all very hippie but I promise you won’t end up smelling funny – tried and tested, scouts honour 🙂

• Neal’s Yard do great natural alternatives to products like this, and I loved using their lavender and aloe-vera deodorant! Super effective and fresh-smelling 🙂 I have just accepted a job at Neal’s Yard in London so more product reviews to come when I start that! *bounces*
• Dr.Organic – all of their deoderants are so good! In fact, their products in general never disappoint and they all come from good, wholesome ingredients. No nasties!
• Coconut Oil. Okay, I know this last one seems odd, but I use it quite a lot and it is a miracle! A wonderful, natural miracle ❤ It works, smells beaut, and moisturises the skin – by far my favourite option out of these natural products 🙂

Rant over, but if you try any of these out please let me know how you get on in ze comments, I’d love to hear from you 🙂

Summer lovin’ – Watermelon post coming soon!

Nori Wraps! (Nom)

These were super, super good! Completely vegan, raw and delicious – perfect for a post-pilates dinner, or anytime really 🙂 Hope you enjoy!

Ingredients

1/2 yellow pepper

3 small mushrooms

two small tomatoes

zucchini noodles

fresh chilli to taste, chopped small

2 tablespoon soy sauce

2 tablespoon tahini

1 tablespoon olive oil

1 tablespoon peanut putter

1/2 lime

2 sheets of nori

Recipe

1. Chop the pepper into strips and the other vegetables into bite-able pieces (yes, I know that isn’t a word 😉 )
2. Marinate them by mixing the soy sauce, tahini, olive oil, nut butter and lime with the vegetables and leaving for a little while in the fridge, covered. The cold will make the flavours sink in and secure themselves – becoming utterly delicious!
3. After they taste great simply scoop out the veg onto a 1/4 strip of the nori sheet and roll – done!

Of course you can alter the quantities of things to suit your family or yourself, and the vegetables you put inside are also totally up to you but I ate it like this and it was awesome 🙂

So yes, please do give it a try and let me know – it’s super easy and tastes fab 🙂

In other news, I have been extremely happy and that is all! I hope you, the you who is reading this and all the other ‘you’s’ that you know, are happy too.

Peace and Nori, people. Peace and Nori

x

 

 

 

 

 

Cousin Collaboration

My wonderful cousin and I are starting a blog!

This is us on holiday together!

For as long as I can remember my cousin Tori has been my best friend – I’m incredibly lucky to have her. Growing up as we did on the island of Jersey, and being of adventurous dispositions (as we were), our days were filled with exploring and laughing. I can’t imagine happier times with anybody else, really!

We found secret caves and beaches and went rock-climbing for hours to be like Marco Polo; we scrapbooked our way through holidays and ran about so much we ate like starving people! We channelled Swallows and Amazons and trekked through woods and wastelands (parks) and everything seemed so exciting and full of life. She’s one of the most positive people I’ve ever met and if you asked me to tell you everything good about her I’d be here for years and years, so I’ll stop 🙂

The blog will be full of recipes and arts and crafts. I’ll be providing the vegan recipes and she will be sharing her amazing home skills with plenty of colourful photographs I’m sure.

You can find us at http://www.orchardhome.wordpress.com – please drop by! Our first joint post will be this Saturday.

Peace x

Mung Bean Dahl

 

Hello! I have one of my favourite recipes for you today and am writing this post enthusiastically right after enjoying a bowl of it 🙂

Mmmmm

Warning: This makes enough dahl to feed an army! But it’s SO GOOD! Plus, after eating this, the army would perhaps be more inclined to talk rationally rather than fight, because it makes you feel so lovely, zen and wonderful.

Okay, I’m done blowing my own trumpet – but seriously, make this!

Traditionally dahl is made with lentils but I’ve only ever made it with mung beans because I have lentils quite a lot and like a change sometimes 🙂 Plus, the beans are a fabulous source of protein and fill you right up without making you feel stodgy or gross.

So – the recipe:

Ingredients

500g mung beans (soak overnight)
1.2-1.5 litres of hot water or vegetable stock
1 tablespoon coconut butter (or coconut oil)
1 tablespoon ground cumin
1 tablespoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons ground coriander
4 large onions, sliced thinly
2 inch piece of ginger, diced small
6 cloves of garlic, diced small
4 carrots, diced
2 celery sticks, diced
2 tablespoons light soy sauce
Approx. 6 handfuls of spinach and watercress (or any greens really)
1 lime

Method:

• After you’ve soaked the mung beans overnight pour them into a large pot of the boiling water and cover, cooking on medium heat – they will take about 40 minutes to cook overall!
• Whilst the beans cook dry fry the spices in a large frying pan until they smell delicious and then add the coconut butter and onions, cooking for about ten minutes until they’re softening and taking on the flavour of the spices.

 

 

• Then, add in the garlic and ginger with the onions and fry together for a further five minutes, stirring often.
• After the mung beans have cooked for around 20 minutes add the celery, carrots and the onion mix in with them and stir around. Let them cook for the remaining 20 minutes and then add the greens, soy sauce and lime juice.
• Serve with a generous sprinkling of black pepper and enjoy hot!

I am absolutely in love with the taste of this dish and it’s so very good for you – you’ll feel amazing afterwards I promise 🙂 It’s a great meal to detox and cleanse yourself after a party or a busy week and all the ingredients have wonderful health benefits, especially the anti-inflammatory ginger and turmeric.

So yes! Please give it a go and let me know how it went.
Peace and dahl to you all ❤ x

 

Snacks in the Sunshine

The good life 🙂

Well hello!

After my last rather solemn post (apologies) I picked up my game and turned things round thankfully, as I was getting bored of feeling upset. As always I achieved this by taking care and pride over what I did, ate and thought. I am doing a juice and dahl cleanse which is going splendidly and I am also practising a lot of yoga.

If we rewind back two years or so I would have been coping very, very differently. It still would have been about food and exercise, but it would not have been in a healthy way. I have just come out the other end of an eating disorder (as much as one can, anyway) and when I was at my most ill I would cope with sadness by regulating every tiny thing about my eating and exercise until I was even more exhausted and unhappy…it wasn’t fun.

However two days ago I turned a real corner! I recovered from my problem with eating by transforming the way I thought about food, and this took place last year, but it is still difficult to change the way you think and I still struggle sometimes. Two days ago, though, I was walking at home on the beach and I saw an extremely thin woman running along the sea. She was so thin her body looked stringy and she had a manic determination in her eyes that I recognized. Her hip bones stuck out of her leggings and her stomach and inner thighs concaved horribly. I felt a kind of sinking feeling in my stomach to look at her, a sadness and empathy, and then I looked to my right where a group of normal, healthy looking people sat having a picnic. A year ago I would have only seen the curves the women had and thought they were frightening or not right, but now I saw that they were beautiful – so much more so than the obviously ill woman running by. I knew in an instant which life I would choose!

I walked home feeling stronger than ever. I am at a healthy weight, I have curves, I eat right, I exercise…life is good! And it’s good to feel that life is good 🙂

This week the sun has been glorious and I’ve been making the most delicious juices to enjoy! Here is a picture of my favourite so far:

Perfection

The ginger makes it taste so fresh, and the mango gives it a delicious sweetness

This is made up of:

1 Mango
2 small plums
2 small carrots and their leaves
2 handfuls spinach
2 small beetroot
1 inch ginger
2 celery sticks

It is SO refreshing and tasty I can’t even tell you – you have to go make it yourself 😀 I’m in love with ginger right now; ginger and strawberries ❤

Next post I will share my dahl recipe and a homemade facial recipe too, which I hope you enjoy! For now, enjoy the sun and yourself for who you are.

Peace
x

Choices

Mini me

The last few days, I can say with complete honesty, have been some of the hardest days of my entire life. I have had to make some very emotional and serious choices and cut someone very important out of my life. Even though I made this choice for my own good and in the knowledge that the person was unhealthy for me, it still made me feel incredibly low and guilty…normally I’m very much a ‘put others first’ type of girl.

I have learned the hard way that sometimes things just aren’t going to change, and you have to accept them and move on, but it is easier said than done. Forgiveness can be a vicious circle!

I promise though, I’m not just moaning and trying to ruin everybody’s Wednesday – I have a point, and it is a positive one 🙂

The answer to making good choices is to know yourself and be honest with yourself.

If you are uncertain of your own needs and goals then you will never be able to justify a difficult decision, because you won’t see past the immediate consequences; you need to think ahead and have confidence in yourself. I have happened upon this theory quite late in the day and it certainly would have been useful earlier on, but I’ve made mistakes and I’ve learned by them.

I chose this weekend to be happy! After I had made that conscious decision everything else fell into place and (even though it was really, really hard) I put myself first. I said things I’d always wanted to say but had never been brave enough to this person and I told them I couldn’t be around them anymore…and that was that.

Afterwards I felt shell-shocked and as if someone was wringing my stomach like a dish-cloth…but it was worth it. I feel cleansed and strong now, just two days later! At the beginning of the post I wasn’t going to go into detail, but I feel I can be honest and I will say that the person was my biological Father. He left my mother and I when I was four years old and moved thousands of miles away, leaving us in heavy debt. My Mother is an incredible woman and she worked hard and long to make a solid, happy life for us both, but he did nothing. He has never paid anything towards my life or happiness and made very little effort to keep in touch. When I was younger I still idolized him even though I didn’t remember him and occasionally he would telephone and be his funny, charming self, promising me the world…except he never came through for me. I can recall many times when he’d told me he had booked me tickets to visit, I’d tell all my friends and then a week before I was meant to go he would phone saying something had come up. It made me feel so small and worthless that I would just cry and cry after I’d hung up the phone, and this happened far too often – it wasn’t healthy.

Nothing changed as I got older except, little by little, I began to see his true colours and realise it was his fault and not mine. He is flaky and unreliable and he is a coward. This weekend, as I’ve said, I told him I wanted nothing more to do with him after he let me down yet again, and I know it was the right thing to do.

SO. That got a bit deep! Sorry!

What I’m trying to say is this: You are important and worthwhile. If you are faced with a tough decision and are scared you won’t be able to stay strong – you can!

Sometimes you have to fight to be peaceful

x

Green Juice is Good for the Soul

London being lovely

The last few days have been very peaceful. Blue skies and sunshine make London a lot more bearable to me, though they also serve to make me long for my island home! The heat at home is a lot less oppressive, I’ve noticed – probably because of the sea breeze. Nevertheless I refuse to complain about any type of sun!

I love the feeling of sun on my skin, but the sun doesn’t quite love me back sometimes and I often get burned if I stay out in it. Up until about a month ago I’ve been using regular sun cream to prevent this, but after reading an article about the harmful chemicals involved in sun cream, deodorant, shampoo and conditioner, I’ve switched brands to natural, homoeopathic versions which have worked a dream and left me glowing! It hasn’t been as hot today but my housemate took this picture of me because she said I looked ‘all vegan’.

Isn’t it interesting that there is a stereotypical look for being vegan?! When I asked her to explain why she said my skin was glowing, my hair was healthy and so did my body overall, which in turn makes me wonder why so many people turn their noses up at the lifestyle choice. I personally have never felt better and I know it is because I have chosen to put good, cruelty-free things into my body.

Here are a few of my favourite things!

My medicine cabinet…and my lucky wooden turtle

The sun block is from the brand ‘yaoh’ and it is made with organic hemp seed oil. It has no harmful ingredients, parabans or unnecessary chemical additives and it works a treat. What’s more it smells lovely and fresh – my friends always comment! There is also my ‘Origins’ GinZeng moisturiser which I alternate with a Neal’s yard one each morning. At night I use the ‘Tiana’ coconut butter to both take off my make-up and moisturise, leaving it on my face, neck and chest for about half an hour before washing my face and applying bio oil. Another summer staple for me are the Pollinosan tablets – an all natural cure for hayfever. Lifesaver! My perfume comes from L’Occitane, sourced with organic, natural ingredients which don’t irritate my skin – the delicious scent is amber and vanilla…so heavenly.

I think becoming vegan has made me mature quite a lot in terms of aesthetic values. Before I would automatically go for the pretty bottles or smells and not stop to look at ingredients or additives, but now I go for the label first. It is the same with food for me – the appearance doesn’t matter, nor even the taste sometimes! Wheatgrass, for example, I should hate. It looks vile and tastes kind of disgusting (in my opinion) BUT I have a shot each morning because it is ridiculously beneficial, so the negatives are cancelled out by a long way.

Another good example of this is green juice! I have found, unexpectedly, that the worse/more mudlike a juice looks, the better it is and the better it tastes! I have been known often to sit in my college’s canteen sipping a jar full of what looks like pond scum with the biggest smile on my face 🙂

For visual effect – here is a picture from today…the recipe will follow. Try it! Don’t be put off by the colour!

Recipe:

4 small plums
3 small carrots
1 handful spinach
1 handful kale
1 inch ginger
5 stalks celery
1/2 lime

It really is so delicious! The ginger adds a lovely kick, the plums and carrots give it sweetness, and the whole flavour is so fresh and fragrant. You will glow visibly after you’ve drank it! I know I do. Juicing gives us so much nutrition and raw vegetables will make you feel so great if you incorporate them into your daily diet – I promise 🙂

Let me know what you think if you give it a try! Next post will have some natural face-masks and skin treatments that I do regularly and adore.

For now – peace x

Vegan on the run

My last morning at home ❤ feeling peaceful

I have been travelling today for most of the morning. In three hours I have taken a plane, train, tube, car and bus, and now I'm rather exhausted! As always when travelling I drank an inordinate amount of water to keep hydrated and had a banana for energy. Plane food, as a rule is full of sodium and nasties to make it keep well and in order for the companies to mass produce it, so I always stay away.

As a vegan travel can be tricky if you don't prep your snacks carefully in advance (the 'box-a-chips' on the in flight Bistro menu can start to look appealing if you haven't) but if you've planned and prepared it's all fine. Today I chopped up a mango and took that with me in a tupperware box, which worked a treat! For as long as I can remember my Mum gave me a mango at easter instead of a chocolate egg – not quite sure how the tradition started but I love it! My adoration for mango's is here to stay.

One of the things I really notice about healthy food is that – no matter how appealing a quick sugar fix may seem at the time – you will always feel better after something nutritious. That sugar high given by a chocolate bar will not last and it will leave you feeling sluggish, dense and dehydrated, whereas tuck into a part of nature's rainbow and you're away! Mango, for example, is super and leaves you feeling energized. In fact, all orange and yellow fruit and veg will give you a healthy boost as they contain vitamin c, potassium and many other vitamins that we need in order to feel our best. I think if we judge what we've eaten in a day by how many colours and fresh flavours we've consumed, instead of calorie counting and nit-picking, we'd be happier.

I enjoy making food rainbows 😀

natural rainbow ❤

Juicing is a great way to get all your vitamins in and you absorb so much more of the nutritional potential of the fruits and veg too. It also tastes delicious – just saying 😛

Here are a few of my top combo's:

Apple, spinach, cucumber and ginger
Carrot, celery, apple and pear
Mango, lemon, kale and orange

Next post I'll break down some of the benefits of juices and recommend which relates best to which type of day, as well as talking about superfood powders and probably moaning quite a lot about hayfever…the only part of nature I mildly dislike!

For dinner tonight I kept it simple after a long rehearsal and an even longer day. I cooked myself amaranth pasta with mushroom and broccoli, cooked in tahini, coconut oil, lemon and fresh spices. It was wonderful, quick, and very welcome!

Thank you for reading, and for the kind comments already left 🙂

Peace x