Casserole, pot roasts and roasts workshop

I am excited to be running a series of slow cook workshops.

A beautiful and tender slow cooked meal is a staple in all traditional wholefood kitchens the world over, and very much remains an integral part of all regional cuisines.  People of yesteryear would cook their meals long and slow to impart tremendous flavour and tenderness. This traditional way of cooking meals gave way to the fast food culture of the modern day, bringing with it deleterious health consequences. One of my missions in life is to honour the wisdom of our ancestors by bringing slow cooked meals back to the modern table and teaching people how to make them effortlessly and joyously in their home. This is your opportunity to learn how! 

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IN THIS WORKSHOP I WILL …

…teach you my craft of how to make a deliciously hearty, and nutritious slow cooked meal in my renowned super-simple and fuss-free approach. I will reveal all my slow cook recipes with you using a basic fail-safe “formula” that I have developed and fine-tuned for over a decade. 

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COST IS $140 PER PERSON AND INCLUDES: 
 

• Detailed theory discussion on the nutritional benefits and advantages of slow cooked meals, the difference between a casserole, pot roast and roast, and where to source pastured meats from.
• Detailed workshop booklet including theory and recipes based on my go-to sow cook “formulas”
• Practical demonstrations
• Hands-on experience
• Food tasting 
• Opportunity to ask questions

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THIS WORKSHOP IS IDEAL FOR: 
 

• Those who are grain-free and dairy-free
• Those who are interested in making or perfecting their own home-made slow cooked meals
• Those who suffer, or have family members who suffer, from low immunity (eg frequent colds, infections) or gut/digestive issues (eg leaky gut, auto-immunity including skin conditions) and wish to make more hearty and nutritious meals for their family 
• Those who are time poor and wish to prepare meals quickly and easily in under 10 minutes without ever compromising flavour and nutrient-density
• Those who are wanting to give their family more variety in their meals 
• Those who routinely make and consume slow cooked meals but wish to hear more about the nutritional benefits of them or wish to gain some culinary tips and tricks
• Those who want to try new things and broaden their culinary repertoire

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WHEN AND WHERE

Choose from one of the following classes:

Monday 16th October (SOLD OUT)
Monday 23rd October (SOLD OUT)
Monday 30th October (SOLD OUT)
Wednesday 8th November
Monday 13th November
Monday 20th November

Each class runs from 6:30PM – 9pm ish. Please arrive by 6:20pm at the very latest so that we can promptly kick off by 6:30pm. If these classes book out I will run additional  classes. 

Where: BROTH BAR & LARDER, 49 BELGRAVE STREET, BRONTE (FREE STREET PARKING)

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TO SECURE A SPOT

CLICK HERE AND FOLLOW THE STEPS TO CHECKOUT & PURCHASE YOUR SPOT!

I will then email further details a few days closer to the date. I look forward to seeing you at one of my slow cook workshops soon!

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cancellation policy - once payment has been made, it is non-refundable and your place can not be moved to a different date. If you can not make it due to last minute unforseen circumstances, feel free to gift your place to a friend and let me know.
Thank you for your understanding.

Why you need to be concerned with epigenetics

I recently read this this quote in an article written by Louisa Williams called "The Five Obstacles to Cure: How to Address the Most Common Health Challenges to Optimal Health" featured in a Weston A Price Foundation journal. And it got me thinking a lot about the interplay between genetics and epigenetics and why our focus really needs to be on the latter on a day to day basis. 

Growing up I used to think that the state of our health was determined by our hard coded genes. You were either born lucky with good genes if you had good health,  or if you succumbed at any point to illness or disease we blamed it on our inherited genes. That fatalistic approach to life is not only a cop-out, it's also old science. Modern science tells us that the genes we inherent from our parents only account for a very small fraction of our health and our health is largely influenced and determined by a number of different lifestyle or environmental factors. Certainly we are all born with a health "bank account" of varying degrees (some of us - like super models- more ahead of the 8 ball than others). But whether that health bank account increases or decreases over our lifetime is directly proportional to our investment or expenditure of it via various lifestyle factors such as nutrition, hydration, sleep, movement, breath, stress management, time spent in nature and connecting with others (what I call the 8 foundations of health). These epigenetic factors switch our genes on or off, for better or for worse. They determine how tall, robust from illness, intelligent, and beautiful we become. Welcome to the world of epigenetics. Think of your genes as representing your or your child's potential. Your child might be born with the potential to be 6 foot tall, have an IQ of 200, have a wide dental arch with high cheekbones, and strong bone density. Whether or not those things actually eventuate to become a reality depends on consistent exposure to these 8 lifestyle factors. Are they consistently getting enough nutrients in their food, pure water, lots of sleep and movement, feeling loved and connected, breathing fresh air through their noses etc. If so, they will reach their true potential of their genetic make up. If not, they might only make it to 5 foot 5 inches, have a narrow dental arch (necessitating braces), break bones when falling off the monkey bars, succumb from frequent infections and not be as smart and beautiful as they otherwise would be had they had the full spectrum of nutrients, probiotics and other lifestyle factors in the right doses at critical points of their development. As a parent, isn't this such an awesome responsibility?!?! To give another example, your child might be born with the genes for celiac disease, obesity and /or diabetes. Whether or not those genes will actually express themselves (and hence whether your child will actually develop those conditions) depends entirely on environmental factors: were they eating lots of gluten or refined starches which trigger these conditions? If not, then those conditions will never come to fruition! A terrific analogy is one used by functional medicine guru Chris Kresser who says that genes load the gun but epigenetics pull the trigger. A brilliant book that elaborates on epigenetics (and in particular fascial formation) so beautifully is Deep Nutrition: Why our Genes Need Traditional Foods by Dr Catherine Shanahan (a must-read for all parents). 

When we consistently invest in these epigenetic/ lifestyle factors that I call the 8 foundations of health, our health bank account soars like a profitable investment. When we make poor investment decisions on a daily basis, the bank account dwindles. I went into the red in my 20s hitting rock bottom with a spectacular crash. I trashed my body with a conventional diet, tap water, alcohol, irregular sleep, a sleuth of environmental toxins in both personal care products and cleaning products, long slow steady state exercise which stresses the body, a stressful job, an unhappy relationship and total nature divorcement. The disconnect between my biology and my lifestyle was so profound, I quickly used up ever steric of my inherited health bank account and unravelled into a mess landing in hospital and needing to rebuild myself from the ground up. 

The point is, we are in the drivers seat. We have, to a large degree, control over these environmental factors and hence control over our overall health (which we then pass onto our offspring through their hard coded genes). It's always a choice we make. We can maximise nutrient-density, we can minimise dietary and environmental toxins, we can decide to a large degree how much sleep, movement and exposure to sunshine we get, and we can learn techniques to manage our stress. That, to me, is a truly empowering notion. Which is why it is so rewarding in my health coaching sessions to educate, help and support my clients in minimising the mismatch between our biology and environmental  (epigenetics) factors so we can fire on all 6 cylinders to (finally) function properly and perform our best, to reach our true potential. Vibrant health is within your reach. I'm here to help if you're willing to take the first step. 

Why illness might be the best thing that ever happens to you

My recent bout of influenza was, on many levels, a life-changing experience for me. As I lay naked on the shower floor, having passed out flat, wallowing in self pity and sobbing to myself “I can’t afford to be sick….I’m a single mum running a business”, my attention quickly turned from WHAT can I do/take to quickly get better (which I detailed in a blog post here), to the far more interesting question of WHY did I get sick in the first place. 

I know that nothing occurs randomly in nature. It is not simply “bad luck” that some people get sick while others, who are exposed to exactly the same illness, do not. A compromised immune system doesn't stem from the fact that you are simply “unlucky”.  I firmly believe that illness, in whatever guise it takes, is a potent sign that the body is, in short, out of balance. Whilst the greatest yearning of the human heart is connection, the greatest yearning of the human body is balance. The ancient yin and yang principle beautifully illustrates that without balance, chaos and disorder results. Our internal and external ecosystems dance in a harmonious tango that predicate balance. When there is balance, there is flow, energy and vitality. 

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“Whilst the greatest yearning of the human heart is connection, the greatest yearning of the human body is balance”

click here to tweet

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Illness is mother nature's wake up call that you could be looking after your health a little better and have let things get out of balance. It's the canary in the coal mine. It's the timely messenger saying "Ahem, sorry to be the party pooper but you can't keep doing what you're doing. Something has gotta change. And I'll just keep sending you louder and louder messages until you really stop and listen".

To keep our internal ecosystem in homeostasis (balance) we need to attend to a number of lifestyle /environmental factors which are so pivotal I call them the 8 foundations of health:

1. nutrition
2. hydration
3. movement
4. rest/sleep
5. stress management (mindfulness)
6. breath (how and what we breathe)
7. connection with ourselves and others
8. spending time in sunshine and nature generally

These foundations are so fundamental to keeping the body humming in homeostasis with a robust immune system that a consistent neglect of one or more of them results in imbalance leading to illness or dis-ease. I go into song and verse about each of these foundations in my health coaching sessions. 

For me this bed ridden illness was Mother Nature sitting me down, looking me square in the eye and saying "Ok great, now that I finally have your attention, what can you be doing better to improve your health and well-being on a day to day basis? Care to have a little think about what you were neglecting?" There is nothing like a debilitating illness to force us to look within and really ask what is going on. And sheepishly I glanced down and found on the floor 3 balls laying forgotten in the corner gathering dust with the words "stress management", "movement" and "sunshine" on them. 

I gathered them up, blew off the dust and had no choice but to reflect on the strategies I will have to put in place to create space in my week to give them the love and attention they deserve. I can no longer view these 3 foundations as luxuries (“who has the time to exercise, I mean really?!?”, “Lying on the beach in the middle of the day when I have a business to run, are you kidding me?!”, “Spending 20 minutes in meditation- what a life?!”) but as absolute necessities to counterbalance my raging yang with calming yin.  

We need to bask in the sunshine and to move our bodies as they designed to move and to meditate or just chill out doing nothing each day to calm our nervous system from the constant bombardment of stimulants of modern life. We NEED to do so, so that when life does throw us a curve ball in the name of an illness, we have the resilience to dodge it.  A nutrient-dense wholefoods diet can't make up for the consistent neglect of the other foundations of health – they are ALL equally fundamental. It's often a bitter pill to swallow for über-driven A-type personalities like myself who are hell-bent on being on the go to furiously tick off to-do lists, and won't rest, exercise or have fun in the sun until it's "all done". The reality is that it's rarely going to get "all done" anyway especially if you're working on grandiose projects that are very much a work in progress. If you don't create balance, Mother Nature will sooner or later take care of that for you with "forced rest". Wiser to chip away on a daily basis with rituals of foundational self-care than have to experience the misery and inconvenience of forced rest. 

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“Illness forces us to look within and really ask what is going on...”

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As I look back on my life, every bitterly painful situation I have experienced, turned out in hindsight to be a blessing in disguise. It was an opportunity to learn and grow and steer us into a different, more fulfilling, direction. Every illness, breakup, redundancy, and accident were divine interventions redirecting me to a brighter path.  I have written before that sometimes it takes something cataclysmic for us to change paths.  We often need to have the breakdowns in order to have the breakthroughs. Nothing is more true of debilitating illness. The mere realisation that some aspect of your health and well-being has been neglected means you're half way there. But actually doing something about it on a consistent long term basis is what will get you to vibrant health. 

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As Hippocrates once said "Healing is a matter of time. But it is sometimes also a matter of opportunity"