New Blog URL

Dear my whole two people who visit my site ever.

I'm gonna give your 'a' key a bit of a break whenever you want to type my URL in.

I'm gonna make the URL much shorter so you can read the funny little bit that comes after the
asnanasrakjakankankanlanalanlaahbaajuabiabjkabajhbvakbakhabvuaftayfrayuhbaanaaa.blogspot.com/
and therefore know what the page is about, because I know someone out there does that other than just me.

I'm also going to make the site name actually relevant, seeing as now I'm more into natural movement instead of yoga, sweet potato instead of banana low carb veg, and goaty raw got milk. And fermented everything. And alignment (ok, so my knowledge about alignment comes from about one source at KatySays.com and I may or may not have spent the whole of yesterday reading practically every post in her 25 pages of posts). And natural real products and five different types of salt and not staring at a screen for 12 hours in a day learning about alignment and another type of salt in your bathroom that's got magnesium instead of sodium and real. life.

My new blog name is Out of Den and, you guessed it, it's at outofden.blogspot.com. I wanted it to be Out of the Cave to prove my non-conformist approach to Paleo and how I'm leaving negative (in ways I will explain one day) and somewhat boring approaches to 'health'. But then it sounds like I'm becoming public about my sexual preferences which was NOT what I was going for. And, I should add, there is no Freddie Mercury business going on here.

Quick Update

I have a teeny bit of time to write today but I have nothing to say! At all! Ok, so maybe that's a lie, because I'm saying something now, right? I thought I should just update you all because I haven't posted in a while.

I think I've come to the realisation that I don't want to involve my ENTIRE existence around food. I've been... not thinking deeply, but just coming to lots of little realisations... that I don't want to devote my life to food and health in terms of finance. I love cooking and learning what's healthiest for the body, but the reason I love it is because it doesn't currently take up 24 hours of my day. I love singing while spilling the meal I'm making over the stove and seasoning it far too heavily to keep my tastebuds sane. I don't love stressing over the food I eat, perfecting techniques and making caramels (however, I made a marshmallow recipe the other day and it turned out terrific! Kinda.) like a French patisserie ultra precise chef.

I tell everyone I'm going to have a gap life when I leave school, and that does not involve cooking a bajillion meals to pay for it. I'm starting to seriously consider in the drama branch of work. Maybe like a reviewer or something. Or a costume designer/maker could work. Maybe a catalogue or catwalk model or an actress if I get my act together. I'd love to be a getaway-style-show presenter. I don't know. I'll do what comes I guess. And be fabulous at it.

Paleo Sausages, and The Recess Problem

Argh! School starts tomorrow and I'm up so late (for my standards anyway). I'm starting year 11 so there will be a humongous workload continuously being put on me for the next, say... 28 months? I think it's easy to say that the whole blog-daily thing won't be happening as well as I'd want it to. But before I go, I just thought I'd pop in for my daily blog post.

Today I discovered a sausage shop that sells sausages that are grain free (mostly), use intestines instead of plastic and have good ingredients. I bought a packet of their sausages for tonight and they were insanely good. I really want to try their pork, fennel and chilli ones, and the honey lamb with mint and rosemary. I got the plain beef ones, because my brother wouldn't eat one with funny flavours in it, and like I said, they were superb. If you wanna check them out, have a look at them here.

Wow it's late. I'll wrap it up quick smart.
With school coming up, we're going to have breaks for recess and lunch, which sounds all good and familiar and normal, but during the holidays I've gone from a snacky grazer to a predatory cavewoman who could easily thrive on two meals a day. I only found this page today but it really epitomises my outlook on not just what to eat and what not to eat as a primal person, but also how to live. Anyway, so with this random 'recess' thing where the general convention is to put something in your mouth, I've decided to make this time a bit more rewarding without food. So I'll have a drink instead. A good one that is, and not just water. Tomorrow I'm having fresh ginger and lemongrass tea in a cute glass bottle, and I'm thinking that my little nourishing drinks will consist of ice teas and juices in the summer, and broths and hot teas in the winter. I can't wait for that!

I might come on. I might not. I'll just see how everything goes, and if all goes well and the homework gets done and the assessments are checked a hundred times and the exams are all studied for, I'll give you guys a post.

:)

Creative Thinking - personalish

Today was the first day in my six day course in the city yay! It's a course about modelling and acting which, I know, seems suuuper unrelated to yoga and health and wellness stuff like that but it's just so much fun. I could also be Tara Stiles-y and model and act out my yoga and cooking skillz via commercials and stuff like that. Which would be pretty cool, I reckon. Because modelling is so much fun!

It's been two weeks already?

Did anyone miss me? Christmas-and-New-Years time somehow just flew past my head and I haven't had a chance to stop and write about the fabulous meals I've made, meals I've enjoyed, and most importantly, meals I've spent with family. Or about how drastically my daily life has changed in the last 13 days. So I'll just do a round up of all the stuff that's been going on.

I think it was on the 17th where I decided that enough was enough and my body just needed a break from the unnecessary stress I was putting on it. More, but still not enough food to cater for every bit of my body was just wearing it down, so I decided that from then til the Sunday (the 23rd), I'd not stress about what I ate (of course, I'd still be super paleo and stuff, but if I wanted a bite of bacon when I'd already had breakfast, I'd have it, for instance) and I'd do an entire week of yoga instead of super-crazy-hardcore pilates which was getting to my back and neck. The idea of it was to completely chill my body out and see if stress was the reason why my body was in the weird formation it was in. By the end of my very calm week, I'd definitely seen some change in how I thought and how my body looked and felt, but the only bad thing I got from it was that I didn't want to push myself through another pilates workout again! Stretching and moving slowly is so much more fun than double leg lifts. I've definitely dropped down on how often I do pilates now. Since that week, I've had a ton more energy and I'm so much more relaxed, it's crazy. Having that big week of calm really did change my outlook on bodily stress and I think I'll carry my little experience with me for quite some time.

Life - tea, potatoes and nut butter

So much for my big blogging spree I thought I was going to have last week. I'd planned yummy cheesecakes and roasted spatchcocks and... they just never happened. No one (read: neither mum nor I) has been that hungry so nothing has really been cooked. Ok, so I lied about the cheesecakes. I made a second batch of cupcake cheesecakes with crushed up, pink-icing-and-100s-and-1000s-covered-sugar-soaked cookies for the base so I thought it might not be a good idea to post that recipe up. But I had a few other things to mention about stuff I found yesterday.

I really don't know how I found it - I must've been looking up herbal teas - and I found this website called Steepster. Basically, it's a social networking site for people who love to drink tea, and you rate the tea you drink and talk to other tea drinkers across the globe. Sounds ridiculous? Honestly, I think it is a bit. But I love the simple idea of it. I think the fact that I am signed up to it will make me want to drink more tea (herbal tea, that is) and hopefully get a better understanding of it. And find some tea-drinking friends too! Another good site kinda like that that I found is Punchfork, which is a Foodgawker-style site but you can put a preference in for paleo stuff. That's right, there's a foodie blog place you can choose to get you completely paleo meals! Aaand they have an app, so I'll certainly be using that a lot.

Meditating

I have been so stuck for blog post topics so you might have noticed that I completely missed Sunday’s post. And I’m not even sorry.

The whole year our religion class has been going to meditation fortnightly and today was the last time we ever got to go. I don’t think we get to do it in senior years unfortunately. But the 80-something sister sang a Christmas song to us and it was really really cute :) Anyway, meditation.

Meditation, scientifically, is something like bringing your brainwave rate thing down to a stage of half-asleep or something, but most people recognise meditation as something to fix your mind up somehow, whether that be calming you down or focusing your attention. There’s a thousand reasons why people meditate, but here’s the main reasons why I meditate:

- to improve my focus. I want to strengthen the part of my brain that yells CONCENTRATE at me when I’m doing some sort of hard-to-focus-on work, and I’m sure studies have backed up meditating for focus somewhere.

- it calms me. Just give me five minutes when I’m agitated or angry and after a little sit-down, I’m a little less agitated and angry.

- it's part of my sleep. Kinda like the calmness thing, I meditate last thing before bed because it really relaxes me. It gets me from a pace of working to a pace of slowness and usually sleepiness. Doing meditation before bed helps me settle down and it's like someone in my brain goes around and switches off every last switch during those five minutes.