40/365 Organic

I have missed juicing. 

That's one thing that is tricky to do on your road (unless you happen to stay somewhere with a proper juicer and we were never THAT lucky!). We did travel with a stick blender - #love - which added an extra kilo in weight (controversial packing decision :) but meant that we could make our own smoothies, dips, soups. And froth hot milk for coffee. Most of the important things :) just not juice.

So, I'm relishing the opportunity now.

The Importance of Keeping Mama Well | Juice-Healing

If you follow me on FB or instagram you will probably know that I'm doing a 5-day liquid cleanse at the moment.



On the back of taking care of my poorly boys (even T came home from a work trip to Melbourne with a cold) I started to feel a bit average.

Nooooooo! 
Mama isn't allowed to get sick!! (says me and I'm guessing all mamas worldwide).

I ended up in bed one afternoon at 3pm. Slept 11 hours. And woke up the next morning knowing that some serious juice-healing was in order.



I'd already been dabbling. But, with our big trip looming closer by the day, I felt like I needed to shift things fast. A facebook friend had been raving about a cleanse she was doing with Gemma at Naked Treaties in Byron Bay & even though my intention was healing not detox per say I just felt it was right & immediately committed to their 5-day Cleanse.



So, how do I feel now?

Well, tonight I'm 4 days down, rather pleased with myself to be honest, and feeling brilliant! I have been drinking 2 green juices, 2 über-pumped dairy-free smoothies and a raw soup each day. Day 1 I was still feeling a bit blerk and didn't notice the lack of food too much. Day 2 I was pretty hungry and looked forward to each drink with gusto! About the same for day 3 and today I didn't actually have all 5 serves (but have been drinking lots of water) because I was busy and - amazingly! - not very hungry.

The last time I did a detox (about 6 months ago) I experienced bad side-effects. A killer migraine and really painful sciatica. And I REALLY noticed the caffeine & sugar withdrawals. Yuck.

But it's been a much smoother ride this time and I can only assume that the mega-nutrient-hit of good juice; vegetable-dense to balance out the fruit and organic with a bunch of additional nutrients thrown in (to the smoothies) like raw cacao and macca, has been the secret.

Everyone else is finally getting better too. T joined me on juices over the weekend and the boys slurped at will. Lovely seems pretty well now (hooray!). Hug is the last one to recover and is still not a hundred percent unfortunately but my fingers are crossed he feels more like himself when he wakes up.

And I'm back on board with the energy I need to get us ready to go! 3 weeks and counting!!
What are your favourite mama-healing remedies? x

Giving

It can be tricky to find somewhere to eat a proper, healthy meal when you're away from home as a gluten-free (and partially dairy-free) family.

So I thought I might give a shout out to one of the rare places that we can all eat at and all like. Grill'd.

Something else particularly cool about Grill'd (menu options aside) is their charitable spirit. When you buy a meal you get given a token which you deposit into one of 3 glass jars. Each jar represents a charity. At the end of each month the charity with the most 'votes' receives a $300 donation with the other two charities getting $100 each.

When we ate at their Brisbane restaurant last week our vote went to the Cherish Women's Cancer Foundation.

My heart sang to watch my boys give our token but it was a particularly bittersweet song and unfortunately two days later we received the sad news that a member of our extended family had lost her battle with a form of gynecological cancer. I know our donated token is only a drop in the deep blue ocean but I still think it's important and I applaud Grill'd for making giving an important part of their business model.

And for making kick-ass burgers.

T is obsessed with the Field of Dreams mega mushroom burger.

I was Mustard and Pickled!

The kids got cute activity books which bought us an extra few minutes silence. Phew ;)

 How are your kids learning about giving? I'd love to hear. x

A mostly-gluten-and-dairy-free Easter!

Hola! 

Our lovely Lovely has been gluten-free and dairy-free since the start of last year.

Hence, we just survived* our second mostly-gluten-and-dairy-free Easter!

And this year - we are all gluten-free.

* I say survived because I L-O-V-E chocolate (and, full admission: I am the one who didn't do too well with the dairy-free part ;)

I was thrilled that Coles supermarkets were stocking gluten-free / dairy-free HOT CROSS BUNS this year !! It's often a challenge to find things that are both. We actually took some to the hotel we stayed at for Easter and toasted them in their toaster :) 

Lovely was very happy. #understatement

He has actually started doing dairy challenges (reintroducing small amounts of dairy) and has had success with butter (ie. no apparent reaction). So, he got to have butter on his hotties. Look at that smile.

The Easter bunny needs to get a bit creative for dairy-free kids. 

Last year our boys got toffee apples. 

This year, these beautiful ceramic mugs.  

Luckily, the Easter B. also found D/F + G/F Sweet William Easter Bunnies and the *super yummy* D/F + G/F Rocky Road from Rowie's Cakes. 

Mostly dairy-free. Yes, you can you see my wrappers. Whoops. Thanks breakfast buffet.

 What dietary modifications do you make in your household?