Orange and Poppyseed muffins (whole, dairy free)

I know, believe me, I know. Gluten, grains and sugar = bad these days. But I am not strictly paleo or gluten free. I don’t actually believe in following any kind of fad to the letter. Yes, there are messages in each that we can take with us as we go. Take the Atkins diet for example, eating good fats to lose fat – brilliant! But Mr Atkins did die of a heart attack.  And in any case, how can we assume that just because we are the same species that we are all exactly the same at a cellular level, because we’re not. We have different genders, lifestyle factors, blood types and DNA, even. Our ancestors grew up in different parts of the world, eating only the food available to them in that time and their bodies grew accustomed to such foods and thrived on them. Then, suddenly, here in today’s society we have access to foods from all over the world, out of season and, perhaps, out of place.
Which brings me back to my mantra, the only thing I know for sure; that we are supposed to eat food, only food, in its whole form and nothing to excess.
And while we’re at it, we can get smart and make food work for us. One such example of how to do this is by completing protein. That is, using a combination of nuts, seeds, legumes and grains to get all of the fatty acids necessary to sustain our bodies for longer, make us feel fuller, and fuel our systems more efficiently. As in the case with the following recipe. I have used wholemeal wheat flour, mixed with poppy seeds and orange in its whole form (I have also used rapadura sugar in place of agave, but that’s a whole other blog). So, yes, these have gluten in them, but they are undeniably closer to nature than those that are made with commercial gluten free (white rice) flours, and will be more sustaining than those made with nut meal (as the nut protein is incomplete on its own). I will experiment with this more over the coming months and no doubt come up with a grain free protein muffin, but for now, this is what I had in my cupboard, I’m eating gluten anyways and I like something sweet with my afternoon tea – so these just make sense to me.


 Orange & poppyseed muffins (complete protein, dairy free)

You will need:
2 cups wholemeal self raising flour
1 Tblsp poppy seeds
1 cup rapadura sugar
¾ cup almond milk
2 eggs
½ cup grapeseed oil
Rind and flesh of 1 orange

How to:
1. Preheat oven to 190 degrees. Line a muffin tray with 9 paper cases.
2. Combine flour, poppy seeds, orange rind and sugar in a mixing bowl.
3. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs, milk and grapeseed oil.
4. Take the flesh of your orange and blend/macerate it using a small food processor or bar mix.
5. Add wet ingredients and orange to your flour mixture and mix well.
6. Divide mixture evenly among your cases. 
7. Bake for 25 minutes.

Food, inglorious food.

I have a confession to make. Sometimes, when a meal is approaching, I feel as though I’d rather hide under a rock for the rest of my life then have to decide what to eat. I have been blessed with a ‘type A’ personality, so if I can’t do something right, I feel as though I don’t want to do it at all. I’d rather miss a meal completely than live with the annoyance of having eaten “the wrong thing”. But what the hell is the “wrong thing” to eat anyway? You’d think that with all of the research I’ve been doing lately that I may have come up with a good answer – but I have, in fact, come up with nothing but a headache.
One thing I can say for sure about food is that ignorance really is bliss - because the mental convulsions I have experienced at times when planning my next meal are not enjoyable, necessary or normal. In my "professional opinion", I seem to be overdosing on too much of a good thing.
I’ve also realised that there is a lot of money to be made out there with fads, because if you can give people just the right amount of isolated information on a certain way of eating, you can convince them that you have the key to unlocking skinny. Oops! I mean, healthy… and they will buy your book and chant your name – at least until the next one comes along. But by then you’re laughing all the way to the bank, so, who cares? If fads really worked then you could follow them all and be a supernova of health and well being, right? Wrong. You’d be freaking starving. I know this – because I am. And I will tell you why. Not just for your sake (sorry) but for my own, I decided to write down all of the information and research I have been collecting in my quest to heal the damage that has already been done, and prevent any further assault on my body – the body that feeds my child and the body that brought her into the world. Also I’d like to wring the most out of this life and set my daughter on the path to a beautiful life of her own (one day, let’s not go nuts. I haven’t even sobbed hysterically outside of an unsuspecting preschool yet).
So what have I found out? Everything, and nothing at all. I’ll start at the top and let you in on an example of the conversations I have with myself. Mind you don’t trip over the multiple personalities here. And, yes, they’ve got to stop.

Dinner time
Let’s organise some of the contents of your head, shall we? Because it truly is a mess, woman. And you’ve only got yourself to blame. You need to decipher all of this information that has accumulated in here and make some hard and fast decisions about what makes sense and what does not. Because you can’t keep panicking every time you’re next meal rolls around because a) You’re going to give Evie bizarre food phobias and b) You’re being ridiculous. So let’s have a look and see what we can come up with, shall we?

OK, first of all, Sarah Wilson and the Paleo movement (these are two separate entities) are freaking out about fructose – and, seemingly, with good reason. Our bodies convert it to fat and store it around our precious organs for a rainy day (a survival process that probably suited our ancestors who didn’t know where their next meal was coming from and couldn’t just walk ten steps to the fridge).

So it’s settled then, no table sugar, no agave, no honey, no maple syrup and no fruit.

Sarah Wilson’s I Quit Sugar book suggests one dines on bacon and cheese instead of sugary counterparts.

But bacon is filled with additives, chemicals: nitrites! For the love of god, woman, what are you thinking? You can’t disregard pre-existing health information simply to make your point. Jeesh.

Alright then. Well, the paleos are all about the regular meat?

But the vegetarians say that eating meat is cruel, unnatural and can lead to anxiety and depression as we absorb the cellular memories of grief, rage and terror of the mistreated animals whose flesh lay on our plate. So, maybe just don’t eat any meat, to be safe.

How about the cheese then, dairy?

No, no, no, no, no! Haven’t you been listening to the vegans? Dairy is acidic in our bodies, you idiot. Cow’s milk is made for baby cows, not adult humans! Humans do not need milk beyond infancy and certainly not the milk of another species. Not to mention the fact that it’s laced with feces, blood and antibiotics. Forget dairy. Forget cheese and cream and yoghurt. Forget you ever knew they existed, it’s the only way.

OK then… So we’re NOT eating: additives, fructose, meat or dairy.

Oh, and don’t forget gluten, gluten  is Satan.

So there go most grains.

But don’t think you can eat white rice instead because that, my friend, is an anti-nutrient. And don’t even think about running into the arms of brown rice because that’s still a grain, and if the inflammation alone doesn't kill you, the Ayurvedics and Paleos will - for your treason.

Oh! Heres something I can eat: nuts and seeds! Yes!

But only if they’re activated… and I assume you have a $400 dehydrator sitting out the back for this exact purpose?

Who doesn’t?

But don’t eat too many because they will carve up your gut lining and you will get diverticulitis and a few extra chins for your troubles.

Moving on… How about vegetables?

Yes! Wonderful! There’s nothing wrong with vegetables. But they must be organic. And don’t even think about cooking them, you’ll kill the nutrients. Unless you’ve got potatoes – you absolutely must cook potatoes because the toxins inside a raw potato will kill you, and everyone you love. So cook your potatoes, but then don’t eat them, because they’re too high in carbs.

So, I can eat raw vegetables and activated nuts and seeds (that are worth their weight in gold).

But are you getting any protein?

Some, from the nuts and seeds but this is incomplete protein, and as I’m banned from eating grains I will need to round them out with legumes instead.

Legumes are also loaded with toxins in their natural state so make sure you cook the crap out of them. But when doing this, remember that not all of the toxins are able to be cooked off, so, for the love of god, do not eat them!

So I suppose that just leaves me with some vegetables and a nut or seed occasionally.

But don’t forget this excludes peanuts, because peanuts are actually a legume.

I guess I can jazz this thing up and have some sweet vegetable juices?

No. No you can’t, you idiot, because juicing vegetables strips all of the fibre. What the hell are you thinking?! 

Well, glad we’ve sorted this out. See you again at breakfast.


And you know what? After all of that, I have a real aversion to cold food, especially in Winter – so choking down raw vegetables really isn’t my idea of sensible nourishment. So what do I do? I skip the meal (most often this occurs at lunch time) or I just eat something that completely goes against what all of my knowledge tells me is right and then I feel as though I have failed. How the hell do you fail at lunch, pray tell? This attitude is ridiculous and unhealthy and I’m not playing this game anymore.
So I started to ask myself, if Evie came to me and said “Mummy, what should I eat to stay healthy?”, what would I tell her? Would I want her to be afraid of food? Would I want her to have feelings of failure if she was unable to meet a million ridiculous criteria? Of course not. And as I nurture my daughter – I should be nurturing myself. Because when the self-nurturing stops, everything stops. I am no use to anyone muttering in a crumpled, anorexic heap in the kitchen floor.
So, how to be sensible, sane and stay healthy? Well here’s a summarised, pointed version of what Id like to think I would tell Evie one day if she came to me in distress about what she should or should not eat:
1. A lot of personal trainers will tell you that “Food is just fuel. It’s not supposed to be comforting, fun or delicious.”  But to that I say: bullshit. If that were indeed true, then there would only be one, perfect, tasteless food source on the planet that gave us all of our nutritional needs. But that’s not the case. We have flavour and herbs and tastebuds! So there’s got to be something in that, right? And maybe foods have certain amounts of toxins so that we know when to stop, when to move on from the place of that food source and continue along your journey. I mean, if you only ate one thing (ANY thing) for the rest of your days, they would surely be numbered. We’re not supposed to eat too much of anything, and we’re supposed to keep moving – that is obvious.

2. Secondly, I think that there is no debating the harm of ingesting additives/chemicals/synthetics because they are not food. Try not to eat things that are not food, whether that be wood, rocks, dirt or preservatives. Its not food. That makes sense and seems reasonable to me: Only eat food.

3. So if we’re only eating food, we need to remember how and why food works in our bodies. That is, food, in its natural state, comes with everything that our bodies need to digest/absorb/eat it. All of the enzymes and nutrients needed to breakdown that food are BYO. That’s why it’s not advisable to eat too much (if any) food that has been altered. White rice, for example (originally brown rice), has all of the goodness sucked out of it so that it is easier to store, transport, cook & eat. So white rice is no longer packing its own nutrients. But our bodies still need nutrients to break it down. So where do those nutrients come from when we eat white rice? Our bodies own stores. Our emergency back up for when we’ve had a bad day (or week). And the more we eat, the weaker, sicker and more depleted we become.
“But can’t I just eat vegetables with my rice to add nutrients?”
No Evie, baby. Because broccoli’s nutrients are for the digestion of broccoli, they don’t pack extras or spares.

4. So; real food is important. And wholefood is important. But please, don’t beat yourself up for being imperfect with your diet. Imperfection is human. You are going to have a frozen coke at the movies every now and then. You are going to go out to dinner and eat white rice with your Thai food. And, sometimes, when you just can’t face the kitchen – you’re going to order pizza with all of its white flour, additives and god-knows-which-animal-this-really-came-from meats on top. And that’s ok. There is no point in being physically healthy if you are mentally miserable and making yourself sick trying to eat perfectly 100% of the time.

5. And last, but definitely not least – supplement! Because, even the healthiest of diets cant make up for the fact that our soil is depleted of nutrients. To build up your stores for a rainy day – get your self a GOOD QUALITY multi vitamin. And if there are certain foods that you hate, but that have the monopoly on a particular nutrient (red meat & iron, for example) take those, too. And don’t forget that sometimes our body just doesn’t process things as it should/could (for a myriad of reasons, both psychological and physical) so we may need to boost a particular supplement for this reason, also (mood instability & omegas, for example). This also means that you can treat yourself every now and then, have fun, live life and you don’t have to worry about getting sick in the aftermath.

So, that’s what I know- and some of what I don’t. I suppose the answer is that there is no answer. Not just one, anyways. All we can do is try out best to eat real, whole food and enjoy it along the way. If that’s not good enough for the nutritional messiahs out there, then I guess I’m just going to have to build a church of my own. Amen.