I’m one of those people who procrastinates, never follows through and whose mind works at 1000 miles an hour.

This means…

I am like my mother.

That posting on a blog is hard (I’ve drank too much green tea so my brain is jittery and can’t come up with a better adjective than hard).

Here are some reasons why I decided to blog;

• To actually get some of my ideas that whiz past my brain actually down on (electronic) paper.

• To foster my creativity.

• To give and collect beneficial ideas.

• To belong to a community that understands and shares my ethics and beliefs*.

* I call my views on holistic well being beliefs not a “hobby” “interest” or “lifestyle”

Reasons for not blogging and why I posted two entries then disappeared for a while;

• I thought no body was reading it (which shouldn’t matter because half the reason I want to do it is for personal growth).

• I felt pretentious.

THEN

I discovered a few people are  in fact reading my blog. So my pretentious ego did a happy dance and here we are.

So if your reading this I have a…

Question: What do you love reading about in blogs?

I love food porn, new ideas on natural health, nutrition facts, creative cooking and uncooking and general rants on issues of the world we live in.

WHAT ABOUT YOU?

So now that you are bored to tears by my personal rantings lets move on…

In my previous blog I started talking about hormones. After lots of thinking and researching I decided I really dont know enough on the subject to relay information in a coherent way. So Ive put together some basics and then next post will give you a book/website list.

First lets talk about why hormones are such a big problem these days.

In a womens menstrual cycle (eek I hate scientific names for lovely lady things) there is a balance of progesterone and estrogen among other hormones. These are regulated my the hypothalamus (part of your brain) and the pituitary gland (located at your third eye), the hypothalamus tell the pituitary when to secrete what.

A normal healthy cycle goes for 28 days and at the 14th day which is when ovulation occurs the hypothalamus, who I picture is a watchman up in a tower over seeing everything, realizes there’s not enough progesterone floating around and radios the pituitary and says;

“Come in pituitary, this is hypothalamus, can you please secrete some progesterone? Do you copy?”

And progesterone replys

“Copy that. Releasing now mate.”

And that is what happens in a healthy body. Do you think your hormones are healthy?

Have you ever taking the contraceptive pill?

If so then you may be having issues with progesterone release. Why?

Because dear old hypothalamus gets lazy when you take the pill. What happens is there is always enough FAKE progesterone floating around from the pill and so the hypothalamus never has reason to call upon the pituitary to release any REAL progesterone.

So he just sits up there in his watch tower and figuratively eats doughnuts and milk (maybe this why we gain weight on the pill lol) getting lazy and fat and falling asleep because he no longer needs to watch over progesterone levels.

“Wait” you say! “Im not on the pill anymore, so Im healthy as can be.”

BUT what Im saying is that your hypothalamus has already established a habit, there has always been enough fake progesterone so it has become dormant from underuse.

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!

This is why many women have the following issues after taking the pill;

Irregular cycles

Painful cycles including cramps and breast tenderness

Trouble conceiving

Reduced libido

Mood swings

Insomnia

Depression and so on.*

Did you know that more and more women are actually going through menopause at younger and younger ages. For example its not unheard of for 20 year olds to experience menopause.

Ok so what is going on to cause all of this? It cant JUST be the pill can it?

No, no its not. I will post later on how this gets even more complicated by xenoestrogens and phytoestrogens.

xoxo

*PLEASE NOTE I AM NOT A MD. IM MERLY A WOMEN LOOKING FOR ANSWERS AND BASING MY POSTS ON MY OWN EXPERIENCES.

Womenhood.

Community.

After I study for iridology (LOVE) I will wrap my head around these things and post.

In the mean time these blogs are also tuned into these musing.

http://gaiascout.blogspot.com/

http://supergojigirl.com/wordpress/?page_id=32

Love and tea cosys.

xx.

The lovely coconut oil was purchased from a reputable organic store where my friend works. I trusted completely that this was the best quality coconut oil. WITHOUT looking at, no, scrutinising to within an inch of its life, the label.

(insert standard game show “you lost” noise)

It is organic. And that’s about it. It is refined. It is not extra virgin. And while I can’t really tell if its deodorized I’m assuming refined includes deodorized.

I’ve scoured the internet hoping to understand what label claim means what. There is a lot of scattered information out there.

From what I can tell the best bet for coconut oil is…

extra virgin certified organic unrefined coconut oil. (try to say it 5 times fast)

Extra virgin insures it is processed straight away instead of sitting around going rancid.

Which means they don’t have to RBD. (Refine BLEACH and deodorized)

eeeeek!

So now I’ve learned my lesson. I found a great give away for coconut oil at one of my fav blogs.

http://bittsblog.blogspot.com

LOVE.

• miso soup and tofu

• wakame salad

http://glutenfreevegan.wordpress.com/?s=wakame

lunch

• quinoa flakes with shredded apple, walnuts, flax seeds and almond milk

dinner

• almond pulp hummus with carrot sticks
• kale and berry smoothie

snacks

• home made raw vegan chocolate
• pepitas

drinks

• finished of the last of the the 3 litre bottle of raspberry leaf tea
• 3 glasses water
• one glass almond milk

wellbeing

• listened to lovely french music while cooking and cleaning
• used a green clay mask (only green clay and water, natural and nice) followed by coconut oil moisturizer (just coconut oil)
• watched feel good movie

who needs a vitamix and nutmilk bag

It was so much more beautiful than I expected.  I don’t have a high speed blender (mine was $40 from the grocery store) or a nutmilk bag and I was dubious at first but so happy with the results.

Recipe for Almond Milk

you need…

1:3 ratio of almonds to water

a blender

a sieve (the closer knit the better)

this is the type of sieve i used.

The almonds should be soaked before you attempt this in an incompetent blender.

Soaking nuts and seeds is tops because:

Their easier to blend

AND

Mother nature is brilliant and has came up with a way to make sure nuts and seeds start growing only at the optimum time.

Plants insure their seeds will survive by utilizing enzyme inhibitors and phytic acid. Only when the nut or seed falls to the ground and gets a good watering does it decide to grow.

Interesting Fact

Some chemicals used by other plants for survival include caffeine and nicotine (and we consume them for pleasure? what?)

any who…

Soaking nuts in water more or less gets rid of these nastys and makes the seed think that its time to grow big and strong into a tree. Why is this good for us?

1. No inhibitors

2.  Easier digestion

allowing for…

3. MORE NUTRIENTS

woohoo!

I soaked mine for 24 hours.

Then I drained them and whipped them up in my blender with 3 times as much water as almonds. Then strained it. Then bottled the milk.

It actually looks like milk. It made me smile.

You can use any nuts or seeds to make milk. You can also sweeten it if you like by adding a couple of dates to the blender or adding the finished nut milk to the water of some coconuts. Mmmm coconutty milk.

So thats how you make almond milk.

And consequently get left with a bunch of almond pulp…

What to Do With the Pulpy Goodness

1. Put it on your face. Yes. Put it on your face as a mask or as an exfoliant.

2. Add it to a smoothie

3. Make hummus. Add tahini, lemon juice, olive oil, salt, garlic and whatever spices and herbs you desire and blend (I like cumin and ground coriander, fresh coriander and an avocado would have been lovely but I didn’t have any).

4. Make a nut burger out of it. Not sure how Im going to do this but I think it’s a brilliant idea.

5. Dehydrate it and use it as flour.

6. Be creative and do whatever the heck you want with it.

Im thinking it can be used as tofu substitute in certain recipes, or added to raw vegan desserts, and so on.

If all else fails it freezes very well.

LOVE.

]]> http://mixedspice.wordpress.com/2010/03/19/almond-milk/feed/ 0 mixedspice who needs a vitamix and nutmilk bag sieve http://mixedspice.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/hello-world/ http://mixedspice.wordpress.com/2010/03/12/hello-world/#comments Fri, 12 Mar 2010 11:34:27 +0000 mixedspice ]]> this is a journal. a journey.