Why do I crave fresh juice? Geocaching here we come!

My poor Sage juicer has been sat unused for a few months, today though, I craved fresh fruit/veg juice for my breakfast.I decided to follow my craving and grabbed the following organic veg and fruit that came in my Riverford order before Christmas:-

Ingredients

2 small apples
1 small pear
1-inch fresh root ginger
2 sticks celery
1/2 cucumber
2 small carrots

I've got a great centrifugal juicer, so it extracts most of the juice and leaves very little waste. It produced a pint of juice, slightly sweet but very hydrating, full of vitamins and minerals to give me a boost and prevent any bugs.

I've also treated myself to the Liver Rescue hardback book by the Medical Medium. I've been following him on Instagram and started reading the free introduction on my Kindle app, it was advertised as "Medical Medium Liver Rescue: Answers to Eczema, Psoriasis, Diabetes, Strep, Acne, Gout, Bloating, Gallstones, Adrenal Stress, Fatigue, Fatty Liver, Weight Issues, SIBO & Autoimmune Disease". This makes so much sense that our Liver's are the hidden organ that we don't care for, but impacts on every other organ in our body, so I'm going to start seeing if it makes a difference.

When you want to get outdoors and see the countryside, it's important to have the right footware, so I bought some Karrimor hiking boots. We have decided to start getting out in the fresh air and going geocaching again. A great way and excuse to have fun in the outdoors, see great scenery and find hidden treasure. If you are looking at ways to get the family outdoors, it's worth investigating and you don't need a proper GPS, but a phone with the app will work well (just remember to take a charger to run in the car to keep the battery topped up). Another trick, mark the location where you leave the car before you start off on a trek, you may need to navigate back later.

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Happy New Year

Happy New Year to everyone.

Medium box contents this week
Curly Kale
Potatoes
Onions
Carrots
Leeks
Green pepper
Red pepper
Cauliflower
Swede
Savoy cabbage

I roasted a lovely shoulder of lamb last night, studded it with garlic slivers and sat it on a bed of rosemary to permeate as it roasted, also seasoned with freshly ground black pepper and some maldon salt. It was scrummy.
Popped some of the potatoes in to bake, I scrub them, dry them, then rub them with olive oil. I tried Nigella's trick and put them onto a metal skewer to help the centres cook more quickly. They were really crispy and fluffy middles.
Steamed some carrots and savoy cabbage and braised some leeks with butter and water.

Simple food, but scrummy.


A few ramblings about food.

Another year when food is going to be even more important, I do worry about the things that are in our food that shouldn't be. I heard part of a broadcast on BBC radio 4 this week about flavourings and how they are used to provide tasty food for the poorer people, grrrrrr, no nutrients, all those chemicals, no regulation.

I believe there is a correlation between the foods our children eat and the special needs that appear. I currently teach a variety of students, but interestingly those that haven't achieved very well yet, majority have dyslexia or dyspraxia or ADHD, how come so many have these conditions. Look at low sugar diets, where sweeteners are used like aspartame (yuk look it up on google) I can identify if aspartame is in a product, it leaves a terrible taste in my mouth, many a time my DH has bought me a snack or drink whilst we are out, I take a sip or mouthful, get that horrid taste and go straight for the ingredients, sure enough out pops the name aspartame. I'm about to start the topic of healthy eating with 16-17 year old boys, that's going to be fun, trying to get them to try different things, seeing if they like it.

Apparently carrots are like sponges and absorb all the chemicals and pesticides that they are dosed with, we then happily chop them up and feed our children.

I am determined to get my parents veg plot productive this year. We have just bought 20 bags of mushroom compost, which will go on the garden to improve the very sandy soil. It needs some organic matter to hold onto the water and nutrients. The whole point of organic is to put the nutrients in the soil for the plants and they can take what they need. I'm going to use the seaweed nutrient too to help with germination and then improve the plants growth, tried it last year on a small scale and it was brilliant, really helped to grow strong plants.

We've got a few packets of seeds (Dad seems to think his pile of packets dated 2002 will still germinate, oh dear, he does waste his time and effort). We're concentrating on those that need to go in now on the windowsill, once germinated we can move them to Dad's greenhouse.

I'm cooking more from scratch and am much more fussy about what we are putting into our bodies.

What a shame that there is a whole generation who didn't get taught the basics of cooking, let's see a return to simple food, home cooked, it doesn't need to take an evening to make one meal, my slow cooker is my godsend.

Not only good food in, but good family exercise too. We've just discovered geocaching
it's fabulous fun, treasure hunting with a handheld GPS. We've reached 26 finds so far and love every minute of it. It really fits in well with the whole fit person idea.

I'm off to get a coffee.

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