Milly's Birthday Cup Cakes

Today it's five years since Milly came into the world in a fast and furious home birth that took all of ninety minutes.  I was shaking with shock as I held her in the birthing pool on that boiling hot Friday morning in Perth.  Milly cried a very loud cry that Grandma and Grandad who were walking down the driveway, could hear, and that pretty much gave us an insight into the formative years with Milly.  A wonderful teacher and massage therapist Fiona once told me that I would have a daughter who would 'challenge me' and help me grow as a person.  What a nice way of putting it, and boy was she right. 

With hindsight I think that my gut was impaired before having children as I had gastro intestinal problems such as constipation and heartburn, I was pretty stressed out in my target driven Recruitment job and I also had trouble sleeping.  Kids pretty much finished me off!  Haha.  That plus finding a new career and re training so I could be a stay at home Mum (this involved babysitting other kids, teaching yoga and massaging after a full day with the kids, plus other disastrous moves), moving to the country, building a house, Mike losing his job and starting his own business, contracting giardia and being constantly on the go didn't help either!

But as you know, everything happens for a reason and I sit here typing to you today feeling very proud of my little girl.  Milly is very loving, passionate and has a love for dressing up and role playing.  She loves dancing, singing and playing babies. And proud of me too, having given birth to two children at home and breast feeding and being with them in the pre school years - which is what I wanted to do. 

Now that they are both in full time school it is like a new chapter has begun.  I can do my own thing, follow my dreams and desires, do things uninterrupted and still be at Mum when they get back from school.  I am finding that the days are much less stressful as I am able to please myself, and I know this is good news for my gut healing and adrenal replenishing plans!

So it's birthday cupcake for the kids at school day.  This is the first kid's birthday we have had since going primal and as much as I just couldn't make one of those sugar laden cakes out of the Woman's Weekly book, I also wanted to make something 'normal' so Milly didn't feel like a weird kid. Know what I mean?  Anyway I came up with a combo of Quirky's Mr I's Far Too Easy Chocolate Cake which is a take on the Thermomix Every Day Cookbook Too Easy Chocolate Cake.  I topped it off with Rosie's Chocado Ganache and I added a few natural colourings sprinkles that I had lurking in the pantry from the old days, but fresh strawberries would work well too.  One of the things I love about this baking is that the bowl is so easy to clean without all of that glutenous flour in it.

I used a commercial GF flour for this which was cringe worthy and if I did it again I'd make my own GF flour from wholefoods. I normally make this cake with Almond Meal but our school has a no nut policy. So here is the recipe...

Cup Cake Ingredients, made 24 cupcakes

240g macadamia oil or olive oil or other light flavoured oil (refined coconut would work)
4 eggs
200g organic milk (or coconut milk if want to make dairy free)
2 tsp vanilla extract
200g coconut or rapadura sugar
260g plain gluten free flour, or almond meal
4 tsps. gluten free baking powder
50g cacao or 60g cocoa

Method

• Pre heat oven to 180 degrees
• Line 24 cupcake tin with pretty cupcake cases (patty pan)
• Weigh ingredients into the Thermomix bowl and mix on speed 5 for 30 seconds until well combined.
• Put tablespoons of mixture into cupcake cases
• Bake for 10-15 minutes until done

Rosie's Chocado Ganache

Ingredients
2 ripe avocados
1 cup of cacoa
1/2 cup rice malt syrup or other sweetener like honey
1/2 cup organic milk or coconut milk

Method

• Chuck all the above ingredients into bowl and blend until combined.

This ganache made a big yield and you could probably get away with halving it, I have a pot of it left in my fridge for a snack later. You don't need a thermomix to make this at all, just chuck it in a bowl and mix.  I would suggest making the ganache on the actual day as it can go bad.  I made the cake the day before.  So hassle free.

The cake was a hit!  I personally loved it but sometimes wonder if I have adapted weird taste buds now.  Three teachers had a cake and all said they loved it.  All kids ate the cakes a couple said the ganache was too bitter and scraped it off but overall it was well received, Milly loved it. So, hoorah success.

This is definitely not a health food and I wouldn't recommend cooking them and having them all the time but when there is call for celebration or a special occasion it is nice to have a good recipe to fall back on that won't wreck all of your hard primal work.

Now where is that pot of leftover ganache...

How cutting out wheat cured my plantar fasciitis

Plantar what? Plantar fasciitis (pronounced PLAN ter fash ee EYE tus) is one of the most common causes of heel pain. The plantar fascia is a flat band of tissue that connects your heel to the bones of your toe and it supports the arch in your foot.  Plantar fasciitis is, in theory, caused by straining the ligament that supports your arch, this leads to pain and swelling.  They say its caused by too much time on your feet (hmm), common in middle aged people (why?), if you're overweight, or if you have tight muscles in your legs.  If you've got it, you know about it.  Even undiagnosed people are aware if they have sore feet or not.  As a massage therapist I do a lot of reflexology work on the feet and when I squeeze the heel on my clients I find that 99% of people have sore heels.  That's a lot right.  Are your feet sore?

I developed agonising plantar fasciitis when I was pregnant with my two children.  At the time I was told it was because I was heavy from carrying child and that the relaxin in my pregnant body had made my arches relax too much.  I was on my feet a lot running after a then two year old whilst heavily pregnant with my second child, this I was told only exacabated the problem.  To add insult to injury we moved into a 'shouse' with a concrete floor!  I was in so much pain that I could not step more than two steps without shoes on.  The ONLY shoes I could wear comfortably were Birkenstocks. 

My cousin in the UK also suffers from this painful affliction, it causes him so much pain that he had a cortisol injection for it.  My Auntie also suffers from it so I assumed oh well its a family thing, just better live with it.  It was so sore that it would make my shoulders and neck tight just from the wincing I did as I walked around.  I had some orthotics made up which helped but didn't cure.

Ditching the gluten was the first step on my primal diet journey and it was only a matter of weeks, maybe two or three, before I noticed, 'hey, my feet aren't sore'.  I have always loved walking on the beach but until then it was a pretty uncomfortable exercise.  Now I was taking beach walks as therapy and no pain!

How is this so, well I have a couple of theories.  The first is that I have gluten sensitivity.  You don't need to have full blown celiac disease to have adverse reactions to gluten.  Gluten sensitivity, or gluten intolerance basically means having an adverse reaction to consuming gluten which can cause the body to attack it's own tissues.  Other signs of gluten sensitivity include bloating, stomach pain, fatigue, diarrhea and constipation as well as pain in the bones and joints.  Gluten sensitivity is much more common than you would think.  The easiest and cheapest way to see if you have it is to eliminate gluten for 30 days and see if you have relief in any of your nagging health problems.

Theory two gluten causes a leaky gut.  Studies show that gluten can cause inflammation in the intestine and a degeneration in the gut linining allowing unwanted substances to leak through into the blood stream and wreak havoc wherever the invading substances go. Which again comes down to inflamation.

So if you've got similar foot pain and are sick of putting up with it how about trying a gluten elimination plan for 30 days and see if you have any improvement? A reduction in pain may be the first of an avalanche of improvements you experience if you ask me! Did I mention the nigling shoulder pain also miraculously vanished too? 

What are your thoughts? I seem to be having some issues with the comments function below but you can contact me by email primalsoapbox@gmail.com or follow me on Facebook and Instagram.

Pantry clean out!

For me going primal and especially gluten free has been a gradual process. I eliminated all of the ususal suspects such as bread and pasta but it's taken me a while to really clean the whole pantry up. This weekend I chucked out a few lingering remnants of our less than ideal lifestyle! Among those chucked out were some peanut oil (causes free radical damage and leads to inflammation) orange essence (contains carcinogenic chemicals and anyway I won't be making that sugar rich choc orange mud cake with jaffas anymore, sorry babe). Some gluten free plain flour (this is what I call gf junk food and I prefer to make my own gf flours from wholefoods) various Asian sauces (laiden with MSG and sugar) and various other condiments and sugary sauces. The last to be binned was the soy sauce. I'm avoiding all soy so this is a no Brainer but did you know it contains wheat? As an alternative you can use Tamari but I am going to try Coconut Aminos. I'm using them in a Quirky dish tonight, I'll let you know how it turns out!

Read your labels v carefully and if it doesn't say GLUTEN FREE assume it isn't. Foods that contain gluten make us crave them more so obviously manufacturers want to sneak it in there.

I was a bit excited to see the PALEO label on the coconut Aminos, that's a first!!