Here's the slides
Showing posts with label professional development. Show all posts
Showing posts with label professional development. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 17, 2014
Men In ECE
Here's the slides
Wednesday, November 30, 2011
Visitors
With the government first cutting professional development funding for a year and then restricting funding to literacy and numeracy and finally slashing millions of dollars worth of funding from kindergartens, including funding for provisionally registered teachers it's just lucky we still have our own networks of learning.
Teaching children literacy and numeracy material when they haven't worked through the necessary developmental milestones to make a strong foundation for it tends to be have poor results, and negative long term consequences like a leaky home or the results of other ill informed and poorly thought through policies.
Even when children have had the time taken to build a solid foundation big shifts underneath their learning can cause it to fall over just like an earthquake, the shakier the foundation the more likely this is to happen.
Known as transition drop, shifting to a new environment can be a big knock to a child's confidence and abilities, so we work hard to cushion the shift through transition visits, building links and relationships with the 18 local schools we feed too, keeping links with past children, and making links with new ones.
Recently Jo was invited to present on transition to a class of teachers and trainees at Massey on the work we've been doing here and the learning we did with Monica Cameron when transition development was still funded.
Appleton heard about this and asked to visit us, braving the skyrocketing petrol prices that have been hitting many rural families hard to spend an afternoon sharing ideas on transition and the many other areas currently off the funded list but necessary for quality education. We even shared some literacy and numeracy ideas as they are important pieces when included in the whole puzzle.
It was really lovely to see Hilary, Shona, Viv, Annette and Megan and as well as sharing our ideas and learning we picked their brains as thoroughly as we could in an afternoon as well.
A big thankyou to them for taking the time and expense to come all the way over from Dannevirke to see us.
Thursday, December 2, 2010
I thought I'd share this video I watched recently
It has powerful implications for things like national standards and how we teach.
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Professional Development Inspiration day -The Arts
Here are some of my thoughts as a result of attending this course, they do not represent those of the presenters who would probably disagree on some points they inspired me to reflect on.
My thoughts on art education following inspiration day 8.5.10 Napier
With Wendy Lee and Julie Killick
Art is an expression of our perception, thoughts and emotions. It is often creative, combining ideas and feelings and showing not just what is seen but what is perceived behind and beyond the limits of a moment’s mere sight alone. When you view art it can communicate to you a message over and above the subject pictured. Art can tell a story of love, beauty, hate, ugliness, innocence, worldliness and more, opening your mind to new ways to see, different perceptions and understandings through the lenses its’ maker has placed consciously or subconsciously on its’ form.
Artistic ability like any skill develops with practice, as we train the muscles in the mind and body to see, create and express what is inspired. Coaching in art can sharpen technical fitness, direct growth and challenge an artist to achieve more than they could on their own. But it should come from their inner artist not another persons, much as a technique that suits one athlete may hinder another with a differing physique. In encouraging the artist we have a number of roles and a number of cautions.
We must encourage them to realise what they see, and not impose or own vision. We are not training them to become a conduit for our own expression but listening to and drawing out their own sight. If we tell them “no you are wrong”,” yours is not as good”, “that is wonderful”, or” this is how you do”, they will believe us and be content they now know what is so, but they will be uninspired and will cease to create. Oh they may photocopy various beautiful reproductions but watch them, they will not grow until the opportunity to express themselves is reopened.
When looking at a child’s art do you demand “show me that” as if you own it, or ask “may I place this on our wall” as if you judge what is fit for your wall. Instead do you offer and empower “here is a space on our wall, you choose what goes here.” They might not even choose their own work, how many writers have vast libraries of other author’s books they value. You have the power, can you give it away, if you do like love it will return to in kind.
And love and passion are fine to share, if they are inspired by the expression of your vision to find new vision of their own, all the better.
So encourage them to examine and describe what they see, but more to tell how they feel about it and listen to the stories it evokes from them. Obviously not just any subject will do, you must use your knowledge and intuitions of them to provide provocations then look out for the subjects that inspire them, refining your understanding in the process.
Do not limit yourself too merely that you appreciate. If you cannot see the merit in hulk smash, or a movie of a dramatised fight, maybe they cannot see the merit in plant gonads entombed in a painted coffin. Console yourself with the thought that one of you probably lacks experience in the genre, and like find wine a palette will develop in time.
Even if you don’t understand all the nuances in what they are saying listen and seek clarification on what you see. Remember whether it is a child drawing a picture for their mother or an artist for a gallery, it is not just a picture, it is a gift, a sharing and as with any communication, and it is a seeking for and expectation of, attention in return, even if the artist is only talking to themselves. Whakarongo mai, turn your senses in my direction.
Do not expect perfection, perfection is in the eye of the beholder of the vision, not yours, it is our imperfections that give a work its’ timbre and tone, the rich story beneath the note. A violin does not just play a note, it remembers and it and passes it along, alongside all the voices of all its’ previous fiddlers. Perfection is something the artist strives for in the moment but their goal changes with each moment past. To reach perfection is to die.
Beware to understand that the background provides the context and can be as if not more important than the object fore-grounded. Don’t just focus on the object of your study but its environment the meaning, around it, when modeling.
“But I can’t draw.” Observation is a part of your brain that must be exercised, we found our vision blurred after we worked hard without much recent practice, the hand learns to follow the eye and we must overcome our hesitancies and perceived inabilities because they will be the lens our hand draws from if that’s what our brain sees, as adults we often have to train our brain to see what else is there, when we look at a picture do we see dolphins or lovers of something else, two faces or a vase, an old lady or a young lady, dogs or leaves. Our brain as adults must be taught to shift a gear and we must remember to be patient as young mental muscles take time to develop.
When Picasso said he spent a life time learning to draw like a child I draw two meaning from his words. First it takes 15,000 hours to train the mind and body in the techniques, mindsets and skills to approach mastery, but don’t despair you will catch plenty of moments of brilliant revelation along the way. But I believe he also meant to learn to draw symbolically. A child draws representationally, a few powerful lines and symbols that state the meaning of what they see and leaves the mind to fill in the blanks. What happens then is our written language shapes us to break down the image into lines and pieces. In the end I believe Picasso failed, he drew symbols but his symbols were still the shattered pieces our language imposes on our thinking not the whole itself as some languages express ¥. Children illiterate as they are, don’t draw pieces they draw wholes, their egocentric selves, their self and their whole dependent family unit part of its’ self concept. They know their ability to use suggestion is better than their ability to use pure pictorial accuracy. Suggestion lets the mind fill in the picture. Before the symbolic stage there is the stage of scribble, movement, colour, sensation, feel as the toddler literally paints themselves. So when I say he failed, I mean the answer he came up with for his question, his passion doesn’t match the one I think he should have found if he wanted to draw like a child. However children’s photography often captures their passion, it is friends, faces and strangely enough parts of faces and bodies, shoes and feet, a person’s necklace, the inside of their mouth, so maybe I am wrong, but then again a camera is as much a tool for seeing as it is for capturing images.
Should we be wary of symbols, the stick man, the m shaped bird? Wendy shared the story of the child whose stick man birds changed to m shaped birds after their mother told them this is how you draw birds and would not change back to what their teacher thought was better. M is a powerful symbol m, m is for mum, two birds with you between them, or to the image reversing mind of a child who hasn’t yet learnt to flip the optic message, two breasts and a bottom with a womb in between. I believe it is the message we must be careful of not the symbol. If your chief patron tells you to use one simple symbol in preference to a group of symbols to represent a bird, of course you will, while it could be seen as a step back it could also be a step forward, but it could also be a different avenue of exploration, a way of representing a distant large winged bird in flight not a close up small winged bird on the ground which to the child’s mind may be two different things. We may feel passionate about their original birds but we must ask does the child have a new passion for us to support and explore with them.
If you say “I can’t draw” it probably means you have never found anything you feel passionate enough about drawing to persist with to gain the experience. As a young man learning about art nothing sparked my interest until I found I had a passion for drawing and painting the beauty of women. Typically enough my school art programme hadn’t catered to such esoteric interests but was convinced I would be much more fascinated by drawing houses, flowers, rocks or my hand. Perhaps they thought teenage boys weren’t interested in such things? Even the creatures of fantasy from my passion for reading Tolkien and his ilk were out , we had to draw what was real. Yet when in my twenties I drew the woman modelling in front of me I didn’t draw the reality of the recovering accident scarred body of our model I drew what I was passionate about the beauty and potential I saw behind her scars and wasted body. When we changed to a male model I soon lost interest and stopped going, it was not my passion. A passion is both a question we are trying to answer and an appeal.
What of colouring books and templates? Are they demon or saint? Many are the stories of young artists overcome by their lines, are people telling us what we want to hear so we reinforce our own prejudices? If we asked for stories of how colouring books and paint by numbers, study of other artists works have inspired, would we receive them? Colourist is an actual profession, many comic book artists employ trained colourists to colour their drawings, is colouring just another form of artistic expression?
As with all things I think the answer is in how we use colouring pictures and templates. The journeys you engage in to make a card of love for your mother, to make a mother’s day card for your mother, to buy a card for your mother on mother’s day, to sign a card chosen for you for your mother , and to be given a card with your name written in to give to your mother are all different. They will give you different experiences depending on your level of engagement in the task, it is not the colouring template itself but the voices around it that will shape your learning.
Do you hear “use this because you can’t”, “you needn’t bother because,” “this is what is (unlike yours) good?” Or perhaps you hear “see how this artist used a heart, a lot of people use a shape drawn like this to symbolise love, they call it a heart but see it doesn’t even look like a heart,” (this is where having a supply of internal organs to hand comes in useful,) “ I wonder who first came up with the idea? Why do so many people like it? Why are they nearly always pink and red? What else does it look like?” Perhaps you will hear a shared vision (after a slow count to twenty), “I can see two people kissing, for pursed lips, like a lipstick kiss, or two people holding hands as they go to play in the park (as your guide remembers to put it in contexts you as a child are familiar with.) Perhaps they will finish with “tell me about you and your mum’s love, I wonder how you could symbolise it?”
Being given a line drawing of a horse to colour won’t turn you off your own drawing style, after all I’m sure you can find blank space in it if not on the back, it may even inspire you to draw some of your horses with new insights you recognise in another artist’s work, but that said the words, expectations and instructions that accompany the colouring picyure and appear on its’ completion might do so.
Another example would be my son, he showed me a rocket, “but I didn’t make it right.” He was giving himself an accurate self criticism based on the sample picture of a block rocket I found he was trying to reproduce, he wasn’t interested in creating, he wanted to reproduce, it’s something I’ve done in my own art, copying a picture I like. I agreed with his criticism, discussed it, he then went on to achieve his goal, then I challenged him, “what’s on the other side of the rocket in the part of the picture we can’t see?” Perhaps it was more mathematical than artistic, and exercise in sequence and prediction rather than creation, but he responded to both the attention and the challenge.
What about painting your own pictures, what if a child asks you “can you make me a” or worse still “can I use your paints?”(because ours is crap and yours work really well.) Well how many of us ask the children for a painting, because it works both ways. Do you not feel some desire to have, some ownership of, a painting you see created by another (be they child or other art talent.) How many of us have brought as a gift a picture we thought one we love would value? I say it’s okay to make it for them, but take ownership of it, sign your name, or even “to x’s mum with love your teacher Y”. You might also say “no, sorry I want this one for,” or “I can’t this morning but I can try this afternoon.” How about “what would you like it for,” or “do you like my painting, what do you like about it?” Give them the language to deal with other people’s requests for and about their work. Maybe you need to recognise they may not have a passion for creating art, but might still have an appreciation and passion for sharing it, they may be a budding art collector.
In summary encourage children to notice and share different perspectives, encourage sensitivity to feelings in expression and observation, give time for absorption, seek what is already well absorbed, provide space, time and media for children to store, display and create their art. Be a model and express your own passions. Model and discuss study, studies, experiments, successes, failures, techniques and use of media and symbols. Model and discuss what you feel, what you see, model differing views with your colleagues.
Actions to undertake as a result of attending the course
Challenge colleagues and be challenged when weappear to be imposing their own vision and limits on children.
Look at how circles, triangles and shapes can be worked into playground redesign.
Look how squares in environment don’t have to be so.
Consider visits to art galleries
Consider putting more furniture in art galleries so paintings are in a live context.
Put out some ducks by art area or art area by ducks for duck shooting season.
Pictures of space ships, castles, farms and houses in block area.
Relook at routines use of space and how we have lunch, mat, inside kindergarten
Stand up (not sit) to your art.
Challenges like can you combine two artists work, in creation or after.
Consider a suspension bridge of sellotape, not a waste of tape.
Look for inspiration in this in the children, but don’t expect inspiration without provocation.
Look at how we store unfinished art and how we display it. Velcro frames, named child spaces on enrolment.
Be prepared to model and discuss the process, sensitivity and appreciation of art.
To consider art supply purchases as if I was purchasing for my own use.
Understand an artist’s mind if often not tidy and a tidy art space can be more intimidating than an untidy one full of memories of inspiration.
Pastels on canvas.
Pva glue printing.
Share some ideas at transition meeting
To be prepared to consider children covering themselves head to toe in paint as not just a mess, but an expression.
To maybe one day strip off and dive onto a tarpaulin covered in finger paint, possibly as part of a group activity, prepared to be hosed off a the end, as Wendy described children as doing regularly at kindy once upon a time.
Interesting references links
Carol Dweck “mindsets”
Hundertwasser kindergarten
Ukraninian sand artist Kseniya Simonova on youtube.
My thoughts on art education following inspiration day 8.5.10 Napier
With Wendy Lee and Julie Killick
Art is an expression of our perception, thoughts and emotions. It is often creative, combining ideas and feelings and showing not just what is seen but what is perceived behind and beyond the limits of a moment’s mere sight alone. When you view art it can communicate to you a message over and above the subject pictured. Art can tell a story of love, beauty, hate, ugliness, innocence, worldliness and more, opening your mind to new ways to see, different perceptions and understandings through the lenses its’ maker has placed consciously or subconsciously on its’ form.
Artistic ability like any skill develops with practice, as we train the muscles in the mind and body to see, create and express what is inspired. Coaching in art can sharpen technical fitness, direct growth and challenge an artist to achieve more than they could on their own. But it should come from their inner artist not another persons, much as a technique that suits one athlete may hinder another with a differing physique. In encouraging the artist we have a number of roles and a number of cautions.
We must encourage them to realise what they see, and not impose or own vision. We are not training them to become a conduit for our own expression but listening to and drawing out their own sight. If we tell them “no you are wrong”,” yours is not as good”, “that is wonderful”, or” this is how you do”, they will believe us and be content they now know what is so, but they will be uninspired and will cease to create. Oh they may photocopy various beautiful reproductions but watch them, they will not grow until the opportunity to express themselves is reopened.
When looking at a child’s art do you demand “show me that” as if you own it, or ask “may I place this on our wall” as if you judge what is fit for your wall. Instead do you offer and empower “here is a space on our wall, you choose what goes here.” They might not even choose their own work, how many writers have vast libraries of other author’s books they value. You have the power, can you give it away, if you do like love it will return to in kind.
And love and passion are fine to share, if they are inspired by the expression of your vision to find new vision of their own, all the better.
So encourage them to examine and describe what they see, but more to tell how they feel about it and listen to the stories it evokes from them. Obviously not just any subject will do, you must use your knowledge and intuitions of them to provide provocations then look out for the subjects that inspire them, refining your understanding in the process.
Do not limit yourself too merely that you appreciate. If you cannot see the merit in hulk smash, or a movie of a dramatised fight, maybe they cannot see the merit in plant gonads entombed in a painted coffin. Console yourself with the thought that one of you probably lacks experience in the genre, and like find wine a palette will develop in time.
Even if you don’t understand all the nuances in what they are saying listen and seek clarification on what you see. Remember whether it is a child drawing a picture for their mother or an artist for a gallery, it is not just a picture, it is a gift, a sharing and as with any communication, and it is a seeking for and expectation of, attention in return, even if the artist is only talking to themselves. Whakarongo mai, turn your senses in my direction.
Do not expect perfection, perfection is in the eye of the beholder of the vision, not yours, it is our imperfections that give a work its’ timbre and tone, the rich story beneath the note. A violin does not just play a note, it remembers and it and passes it along, alongside all the voices of all its’ previous fiddlers. Perfection is something the artist strives for in the moment but their goal changes with each moment past. To reach perfection is to die.
Beware to understand that the background provides the context and can be as if not more important than the object fore-grounded. Don’t just focus on the object of your study but its environment the meaning, around it, when modeling.
“But I can’t draw.” Observation is a part of your brain that must be exercised, we found our vision blurred after we worked hard without much recent practice, the hand learns to follow the eye and we must overcome our hesitancies and perceived inabilities because they will be the lens our hand draws from if that’s what our brain sees, as adults we often have to train our brain to see what else is there, when we look at a picture do we see dolphins or lovers of something else, two faces or a vase, an old lady or a young lady, dogs or leaves. Our brain as adults must be taught to shift a gear and we must remember to be patient as young mental muscles take time to develop.
When Picasso said he spent a life time learning to draw like a child I draw two meaning from his words. First it takes 15,000 hours to train the mind and body in the techniques, mindsets and skills to approach mastery, but don’t despair you will catch plenty of moments of brilliant revelation along the way. But I believe he also meant to learn to draw symbolically. A child draws representationally, a few powerful lines and symbols that state the meaning of what they see and leaves the mind to fill in the blanks. What happens then is our written language shapes us to break down the image into lines and pieces. In the end I believe Picasso failed, he drew symbols but his symbols were still the shattered pieces our language imposes on our thinking not the whole itself as some languages express ¥. Children illiterate as they are, don’t draw pieces they draw wholes, their egocentric selves, their self and their whole dependent family unit part of its’ self concept. They know their ability to use suggestion is better than their ability to use pure pictorial accuracy. Suggestion lets the mind fill in the picture. Before the symbolic stage there is the stage of scribble, movement, colour, sensation, feel as the toddler literally paints themselves. So when I say he failed, I mean the answer he came up with for his question, his passion doesn’t match the one I think he should have found if he wanted to draw like a child. However children’s photography often captures their passion, it is friends, faces and strangely enough parts of faces and bodies, shoes and feet, a person’s necklace, the inside of their mouth, so maybe I am wrong, but then again a camera is as much a tool for seeing as it is for capturing images.
Should we be wary of symbols, the stick man, the m shaped bird? Wendy shared the story of the child whose stick man birds changed to m shaped birds after their mother told them this is how you draw birds and would not change back to what their teacher thought was better. M is a powerful symbol m, m is for mum, two birds with you between them, or to the image reversing mind of a child who hasn’t yet learnt to flip the optic message, two breasts and a bottom with a womb in between. I believe it is the message we must be careful of not the symbol. If your chief patron tells you to use one simple symbol in preference to a group of symbols to represent a bird, of course you will, while it could be seen as a step back it could also be a step forward, but it could also be a different avenue of exploration, a way of representing a distant large winged bird in flight not a close up small winged bird on the ground which to the child’s mind may be two different things. We may feel passionate about their original birds but we must ask does the child have a new passion for us to support and explore with them.
If you say “I can’t draw” it probably means you have never found anything you feel passionate enough about drawing to persist with to gain the experience. As a young man learning about art nothing sparked my interest until I found I had a passion for drawing and painting the beauty of women. Typically enough my school art programme hadn’t catered to such esoteric interests but was convinced I would be much more fascinated by drawing houses, flowers, rocks or my hand. Perhaps they thought teenage boys weren’t interested in such things? Even the creatures of fantasy from my passion for reading Tolkien and his ilk were out , we had to draw what was real. Yet when in my twenties I drew the woman modelling in front of me I didn’t draw the reality of the recovering accident scarred body of our model I drew what I was passionate about the beauty and potential I saw behind her scars and wasted body. When we changed to a male model I soon lost interest and stopped going, it was not my passion. A passion is both a question we are trying to answer and an appeal.
What of colouring books and templates? Are they demon or saint? Many are the stories of young artists overcome by their lines, are people telling us what we want to hear so we reinforce our own prejudices? If we asked for stories of how colouring books and paint by numbers, study of other artists works have inspired, would we receive them? Colourist is an actual profession, many comic book artists employ trained colourists to colour their drawings, is colouring just another form of artistic expression?
As with all things I think the answer is in how we use colouring pictures and templates. The journeys you engage in to make a card of love for your mother, to make a mother’s day card for your mother, to buy a card for your mother on mother’s day, to sign a card chosen for you for your mother , and to be given a card with your name written in to give to your mother are all different. They will give you different experiences depending on your level of engagement in the task, it is not the colouring template itself but the voices around it that will shape your learning.
Do you hear “use this because you can’t”, “you needn’t bother because,” “this is what is (unlike yours) good?” Or perhaps you hear “see how this artist used a heart, a lot of people use a shape drawn like this to symbolise love, they call it a heart but see it doesn’t even look like a heart,” (this is where having a supply of internal organs to hand comes in useful,) “ I wonder who first came up with the idea? Why do so many people like it? Why are they nearly always pink and red? What else does it look like?” Perhaps you will hear a shared vision (after a slow count to twenty), “I can see two people kissing, for pursed lips, like a lipstick kiss, or two people holding hands as they go to play in the park (as your guide remembers to put it in contexts you as a child are familiar with.) Perhaps they will finish with “tell me about you and your mum’s love, I wonder how you could symbolise it?”
Being given a line drawing of a horse to colour won’t turn you off your own drawing style, after all I’m sure you can find blank space in it if not on the back, it may even inspire you to draw some of your horses with new insights you recognise in another artist’s work, but that said the words, expectations and instructions that accompany the colouring picyure and appear on its’ completion might do so.
Another example would be my son, he showed me a rocket, “but I didn’t make it right.” He was giving himself an accurate self criticism based on the sample picture of a block rocket I found he was trying to reproduce, he wasn’t interested in creating, he wanted to reproduce, it’s something I’ve done in my own art, copying a picture I like. I agreed with his criticism, discussed it, he then went on to achieve his goal, then I challenged him, “what’s on the other side of the rocket in the part of the picture we can’t see?” Perhaps it was more mathematical than artistic, and exercise in sequence and prediction rather than creation, but he responded to both the attention and the challenge.
What about painting your own pictures, what if a child asks you “can you make me a” or worse still “can I use your paints?”(because ours is crap and yours work really well.) Well how many of us ask the children for a painting, because it works both ways. Do you not feel some desire to have, some ownership of, a painting you see created by another (be they child or other art talent.) How many of us have brought as a gift a picture we thought one we love would value? I say it’s okay to make it for them, but take ownership of it, sign your name, or even “to x’s mum with love your teacher Y”. You might also say “no, sorry I want this one for,” or “I can’t this morning but I can try this afternoon.” How about “what would you like it for,” or “do you like my painting, what do you like about it?” Give them the language to deal with other people’s requests for and about their work. Maybe you need to recognise they may not have a passion for creating art, but might still have an appreciation and passion for sharing it, they may be a budding art collector.
In summary encourage children to notice and share different perspectives, encourage sensitivity to feelings in expression and observation, give time for absorption, seek what is already well absorbed, provide space, time and media for children to store, display and create their art. Be a model and express your own passions. Model and discuss study, studies, experiments, successes, failures, techniques and use of media and symbols. Model and discuss what you feel, what you see, model differing views with your colleagues.
Actions to undertake as a result of attending the course
Challenge colleagues and be challenged when weappear to be imposing their own vision and limits on children.
Look at how circles, triangles and shapes can be worked into playground redesign.
Look how squares in environment don’t have to be so.
Consider visits to art galleries
Consider putting more furniture in art galleries so paintings are in a live context.
Put out some ducks by art area or art area by ducks for duck shooting season.
Pictures of space ships, castles, farms and houses in block area.
Relook at routines use of space and how we have lunch, mat, inside kindergarten
Stand up (not sit) to your art.
Challenges like can you combine two artists work, in creation or after.
Consider a suspension bridge of sellotape, not a waste of tape.
Look for inspiration in this in the children, but don’t expect inspiration without provocation.
Look at how we store unfinished art and how we display it. Velcro frames, named child spaces on enrolment.
Be prepared to model and discuss the process, sensitivity and appreciation of art.
To consider art supply purchases as if I was purchasing for my own use.
Understand an artist’s mind if often not tidy and a tidy art space can be more intimidating than an untidy one full of memories of inspiration.
Pastels on canvas.
Pva glue printing.
Share some ideas at transition meeting
To be prepared to consider children covering themselves head to toe in paint as not just a mess, but an expression.
To maybe one day strip off and dive onto a tarpaulin covered in finger paint, possibly as part of a group activity, prepared to be hosed off a the end, as Wendy described children as doing regularly at kindy once upon a time.
Interesting references links
Carol Dweck “mindsets”
Hundertwasser kindergarten
Ukraninian sand artist Kseniya Simonova on youtube.
Friday, April 30, 2010
Kids are great to learn from.
art sourced from clip art
A teacher teaches
an educator inspires
a kaiako learns and is inspired, while teaching and inspiring.
David Mudford shared this Great video he found with us.It inspired my clip art creation so I thought I'd pass on the inspiration.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Skyping into PD
We tried to skype into a professional development workshop in Dannevirke today. (One we were already up on so it didn't matter if it didn't work.) The idea was to see if skype could be used to save travel when attending meetings and workshops.
A big thankyou to the Dannevirke kindergartens and the ICT cluster for letting us look in.
We managed to get the link up, with one phone call to add a new contact as our established ones were busy with the workshop and an email with the info hadn't made it through yet (it came in about 45 minutes later.)
The contact unfortunately didn't show as active but we were able to be called by them and later call them. Instant messaging also worked. We tried to get video running from the Dannevirke end but it told us bluetooth video(wireless) wasn't working. Then it just kept dropping out.
So it didn't work, despite several tries. Too many people at the Dannevirke end on line for the workshop?
There was also the question about how much of Dannevirke's bandwidth the call would use.
Conclusion in the short term it's probably not worth it, you spend as much time setting up and organising it as you would have travelling, and there's no guarantee it will work.
We might try and do some PD with the facilitator skyping in (possibly from the next room :lol:)and see how that works next.
We'd be interested in comments on how others who have tried this have gone, and of course feedback from the team at the other end.
A big thankyou to the Dannevirke kindergartens and the ICT cluster for letting us look in.
We managed to get the link up, with one phone call to add a new contact as our established ones were busy with the workshop and an email with the info hadn't made it through yet (it came in about 45 minutes later.)
The contact unfortunately didn't show as active but we were able to be called by them and later call them. Instant messaging also worked. We tried to get video running from the Dannevirke end but it told us bluetooth video(wireless) wasn't working. Then it just kept dropping out.
So it didn't work, despite several tries. Too many people at the Dannevirke end on line for the workshop?
There was also the question about how much of Dannevirke's bandwidth the call would use.
Conclusion in the short term it's probably not worth it, you spend as much time setting up and organising it as you would have travelling, and there's no guarantee it will work.
We might try and do some PD with the facilitator skyping in (possibly from the next room :lol:)and see how that works next.
We'd be interested in comments on how others who have tried this have gone, and of course feedback from the team at the other end.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
It's a Monica one.
Welcome back to Term 4.
I was so glad to hear everyone was safe after the holiday's events, though it sounds like many of the farms will still be suffering the effects for a while yet. Our thoughts are with you.
The butterflies are back again this term, but they were also here last term (see video). For some reason the kids still call them Monica butterflies.
With the butterflies back and our frogs waking up, we need lots of flies, moths, cockroaches and bugs, so please do take the opportunity to get out in the long evenings and catch some for Kindergarten.
I had a great holiday exploring Napier with my family and working on the yard and garden, as well and spending plenty of time at work getting the E-Profiles up and running and the paper profiles uploaded. I also popped over to Havelock North to spend a day story telling at Arataki Honey Ltd at their very popular family day, and thanks to their generous donation we should have some new toys for the kindergarten very soon. (I went through a catalogue with several of the children last term in anticipation.)
I also managed to catch up with some of our kids and plenty of new faces when I was invited to talk about bugs with Scallywags childcare's kindergarten group. We had a lot of fun as I released two male locusts to leap around the mat time. (They were meant to be passed around but the locusts had other ideas.)
A lot of people have been asking me about how the Ben Warren course has been going so here's a summary.
Ben Warren Course
Well it's week four now, my children are having a bit of trouble adjusting to the changes in our diet, the cost is mounting, nearly $500 on supplement packs so far, nearly $500 on a water filter system, nearly $500 for the 12 week course, plus nearly $500 for the weekend course for the two of us.
However that said I'm getting a lot out of it, and it makes sense.
basically it's:
Drink enough water for your body size eg. 2l 60kg, 3 l 90kg. (Not out of plastic bottles which when heated or left in the light leech damaging psuedo hormones you really don't want to drink. Also not containing fluoride which interfers with thyroid function, or chlorine which interfers with gut bacteria.)
Cut out anything your body regards as toxic (toxins get wrapped in fat to keep the body safe)such as
-damaged fats like oils that have been heated [instead cook in lard, butter, or coconut oil and no deep frying],
-processed food with numbers added to preserve it etc,
-processed white sugar, (A British study released in the holidays just found children who ate sweets daily 25 years ago are more likely to have committed violent offences by age 34 than children who didn't eat sweets.- note Small sample size however and no causation implied)( Molasses is all the good bits, minerals vitamins etc that have been extracted from sugar. We like sweet tastes, because in natural unprocessed food, a sweet taste is associated with nutrition.)(Sugar is carbs without the nutrition, the body uses spare carbs to build fats and stores them away, because there's no nutrition you end up still feeling hungry.)
-gluten, (Wheat has been breed to double gluten content in the last hundred years.)
-pasteurised and homogenised milk (raw milk is fine, pasteurisation destroys lactase needed to break down lactose, many lactose intolerant find they can drink raw milk. [It's nice drinking milk with cream again like I did as a kid.])
Learn to monitor your bodies responses to foods to see what it reacts to, so you can avoid them.
Take moderate exercise but not if you're stressed.
Restock various minerals we need via food (boosted by supplements while getting everything back up to par.)
Eat a big breakfast and lunch to give energy during the day, balancing protein, fats and carbo's according to bodies needs and type.
Eat a small tea. (People who get hungry quick after eating carbo meals need to add more protein to slow down the carbo uptake, plus lower GI foods, maybe up to 70% of the meal protein.)
Eat good fats (fats are essential for maintaining the bodies hormone systems, free range pig lard is great, lots of vitamin D. Saturated fats are less likely to be damaged by heating than poly unsaturated ones, which should never be heated.)
Eat fresh, eat spray free and hormone free (much nutrition is lost in the first 4 days after picking, residues are often toxic)
Take time to chew your food well to help you digest it, relax and don't be stressed while eating, so no t.v. breath from the stomach. (Chewing helps your body know it's full also.)
So I've been skimming the cream off my milk to make homemade butter and icecream, making yoghurt, fermenting a variety of grains in yoghurt, buttermilk and whey before cooking them, eating lots of meat, fruit and green leafy vegetables, drinking lots of water, exercising and feeling great.
Friday, September 18, 2009
E-Profiles
With all approvals granted E- profiles are getting under way. Already we've had five replies to our email and we've managed to get all 5 set up today with a bit of over time.
These e-profiles will be closed to public viewing so only the teaching team and people parents choose to invite will be able to see them.
David
These e-profiles will be closed to public viewing so only the teaching team and people parents choose to invite will be able to see them.
David
With final approvals granted we are now at the last step of introducing
E-Profiles.
What is an e-profile?
An E-profile is an online
version of the profile books we have at kindergarten.
In addition
we’ll also be able to place video clips on them from time to time.
The format will be just like that of the kindergarten blog.
Unlike the kindergarten blog (which is open to the world) only the
teaching team and people using email accounts you nominate will be able to
access it.
With e-profiles you’ll be able to easily upload your own
pictures and stories as well. We encourage you to do this.
E-profiles will allow you to become a follower of your child’s
blog/e-profile, which will alert you when it’s updated.
Later you
may even wish to invite your child’s school teacher, so it can continue on when
they start school.
If you do opt for an e-profile we will stop
printing a black an white copy of learning stories for you, as now you’ll be
able to access full colour digital copies from home or work. We would still like
your contribution about the learning that is happening for your child.
We will however still keep a colour hard copy in your child’s
profile book at Kindergarten.
How do I get one?
If you
would like your child to have an e-profile, please send us a reply email with a
list of those emails you would like to have access to your child’s profile.
You will need to sign up for a google account for each of those
emails. (This is easy and quick, and we can help if you have difficulties.)
Timeline
As we get your replies we will start to create and
set up the e-profiles over the next two months and link them to our blogsite for
easy access.
We will also have blogging workshops to help you
blog.
Friday, August 14, 2009
Spirituality in ECE
A reading by Anna Whitehead in Early Education 45 got us discussing what is spirituality?
She pointed out our curriculum,Te Whāriki says 'learning and development will be integrated through recognition of the spiritual dimension of childrens' lives. In culturally, socially, and individually appropriate ways.' (Ministry of Education, 1996, p.41).(My separation of the last sentence.)
It was a hard question to answer, but after discussion with the team my current thinking is that spirituality is about the connections we feel to people, places, things, our bodies and everything. It is our sense of oneness, of belonging to a greater whole.
This ties it right into our curriculum. As we explore our awareness of connections grows, communication feeds the connections we feel, we feel we belong when we feel connected, how connected we feel affects our well being, and we connect to others when we contribute.
The principles that drive how we implement our curriculum, holistic development, relationships, family and community are also all about connections, and empowered is how we feel when we connect in a positive way with others.
One of the easiest ways to measure our spirits is to look at our feelings, because our feelings are tied into our sense of connection. When we feel positively connected, in high spirits, we feel happy. When our spirits are low, when we are dispirited we feel disconnected, sad and lonely. When our sense of connection is disrupted, blocked, or jarred, it can make us feel angry. Our nose (ie our ability to sense a connection) is out of joint.
We don't just feel connected to one thing, we feel connected to many things, people and places at once. The strength of those connections and how they interact will affect how we feel. Say a child feels strongly attached to a toy, leaves it comes back and finds someone else has it, will they feel angry someone has their toy, or happy to see a friend sharing an interest? Is the strongest connection to the thing or the person?
This is universal knowledge, Anna mentions for instance in Māori traditions
the terms whanaungatanga as 'relational acts of love and caring', and manaakitanga 'bestowing respect or kindness.'
Wairua, is a word made up of the word wai, indicating water or a flow, and rua meaning two. One understanding of it's meaning is the connection that flows between two entities.
Nurturing spirituality in ECE, is being aware of how a child's spirits feel, about helping them develop positive connections to the world, about helping them learn how to deal with a low or disrupted spirit.
Part of this is about helping them be aware of how they feel, but it is more than just emotions, because being aware of and managing our connections, trusting them, and having faith in them are skills that must be learned / experienced to have emotional well being. It's about how we relate to and with others.
At mat time today I talked with the children about what made them feel happy and connected. They had some great answers, mum, dad, friends, singing, dancing, food, clothes, pets, getting to help others. Then we talked about the things people do for us and we do for them that can all make us feel happy and connected. It's about raising our awareness so we notice all the things that help make us happy, and even just thinking about these connections left heaps of smiles on everyone's faces.
Later at lunch I asked the children, who wanted to be recorded, some of their thoughts.
Those are my thoughts and some of the childrens'. I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts are on what is spirituality in ECE. On how we can recognise and integrate the spiritual dimension in childrens' lives in our curriculum. So please have a think and post your comments.
To sum it up spirituality is about how we relate and how we feel.
She pointed out our curriculum,Te Whāriki says 'learning and development will be integrated through recognition of the spiritual dimension of childrens' lives. In culturally, socially, and individually appropriate ways.' (Ministry of Education, 1996, p.41).(My separation of the last sentence.)
It was a hard question to answer, but after discussion with the team my current thinking is that spirituality is about the connections we feel to people, places, things, our bodies and everything. It is our sense of oneness, of belonging to a greater whole.
This ties it right into our curriculum. As we explore our awareness of connections grows, communication feeds the connections we feel, we feel we belong when we feel connected, how connected we feel affects our well being, and we connect to others when we contribute.
The principles that drive how we implement our curriculum, holistic development, relationships, family and community are also all about connections, and empowered is how we feel when we connect in a positive way with others.
One of the easiest ways to measure our spirits is to look at our feelings, because our feelings are tied into our sense of connection. When we feel positively connected, in high spirits, we feel happy. When our spirits are low, when we are dispirited we feel disconnected, sad and lonely. When our sense of connection is disrupted, blocked, or jarred, it can make us feel angry. Our nose (ie our ability to sense a connection) is out of joint.
We don't just feel connected to one thing, we feel connected to many things, people and places at once. The strength of those connections and how they interact will affect how we feel. Say a child feels strongly attached to a toy, leaves it comes back and finds someone else has it, will they feel angry someone has their toy, or happy to see a friend sharing an interest? Is the strongest connection to the thing or the person?
This is universal knowledge, Anna mentions for instance in Māori traditions
the terms whanaungatanga as 'relational acts of love and caring', and manaakitanga 'bestowing respect or kindness.'
Wairua, is a word made up of the word wai, indicating water or a flow, and rua meaning two. One understanding of it's meaning is the connection that flows between two entities.
Nurturing spirituality in ECE, is being aware of how a child's spirits feel, about helping them develop positive connections to the world, about helping them learn how to deal with a low or disrupted spirit.
Part of this is about helping them be aware of how they feel, but it is more than just emotions, because being aware of and managing our connections, trusting them, and having faith in them are skills that must be learned / experienced to have emotional well being. It's about how we relate to and with others.
At mat time today I talked with the children about what made them feel happy and connected. They had some great answers, mum, dad, friends, singing, dancing, food, clothes, pets, getting to help others. Then we talked about the things people do for us and we do for them that can all make us feel happy and connected. It's about raising our awareness so we notice all the things that help make us happy, and even just thinking about these connections left heaps of smiles on everyone's faces.
Later at lunch I asked the children, who wanted to be recorded, some of their thoughts.
Those are my thoughts and some of the childrens'. I'd love to hear everyone else's thoughts are on what is spirituality in ECE. On how we can recognise and integrate the spiritual dimension in childrens' lives in our curriculum. So please have a think and post your comments.
To sum it up spirituality is about how we relate and how we feel.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Review of Te Mana Kōrero
Just been reading and watching the "Te Mana Kōrero, Relationships for learning" book and DVD's.
Designed for schools and high schools, but a useful teaching reference for all, it talks about the importance of teaching and learning taking place in a social context.
Instead of teaching to a group of children, teach them as individuals, or better yet individuals who are members of groups. And don't just teach them, but have them teach each other, teach you, give them control of what and how they learn, control of how it is evaluated. Draw on what the students and their families are interested in, and know about, to put learning in to context.
Also don't try and teach on your own but draw on all the members of your community, other teachers, parents, relatives, friends, people from around town.
Before you try and teach anything, form a relationship with your student and their family, get to know them and keep building and growing that relationship every day. Have high and positive expectations of children and realise that how you convey those expectations may not be in ways the student notices so you might need to adapt. Care about your students as people, not grades.
Powerful stuff, supported by what our families shared in the survey we've been reviewing, empahsising the importance of placing learning in a social context, and the principles of Te whāriki our curriculum.
Designed for schools and high schools, but a useful teaching reference for all, it talks about the importance of teaching and learning taking place in a social context.
Instead of teaching to a group of children, teach them as individuals, or better yet individuals who are members of groups. And don't just teach them, but have them teach each other, teach you, give them control of what and how they learn, control of how it is evaluated. Draw on what the students and their families are interested in, and know about, to put learning in to context.
Also don't try and teach on your own but draw on all the members of your community, other teachers, parents, relatives, friends, people from around town.
Before you try and teach anything, form a relationship with your student and their family, get to know them and keep building and growing that relationship every day. Have high and positive expectations of children and realise that how you convey those expectations may not be in ways the student notices so you might need to adapt. Care about your students as people, not grades.
Powerful stuff, supported by what our families shared in the survey we've been reviewing, empahsising the importance of placing learning in a social context, and the principles of Te whāriki our curriculum.
Friday, July 17, 2009
Ben Warren, how to eat healthy.
One of the most inspiring workshops at our conference was Ben Warren looking at how to stay healthy. Kindly Ben agreed we could share his health tips with you.
As a quick primer food has two basic components Energy and Nutrition, sadly a lot of processed food includes lots of energy, but little nutrition, so although we can eat plenty our body still craves more.
Energy can come from three sources Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats. It's no surprise that as individuals with different genetic backgrounds, our ability to process these three energy sources varies. Also within these groups particular carbohydrates, proteins and fats will be easier for some people to digest than others.
GI, or glycemic index, indicates how quickly the energy in the food will be released, again this will vary from person to person. Their are surprises, puffed rice has a higher GI than sugar!
The lower the GI the better usually.
High GI foods release energy quickly, you feel full of energy then you crash. Low GI foods release their energy slowly, below 50 is good, you continue to have energy for a long time after eating it. Here's a list of foods and their GI.
Even though it's the same food, it may not be the same. The taste difference between a, just picked sun ripened tomato, and some thing pale and chilled you find on the supermarket shelves for instance. Taste is often a good indicator of nutrition. Washing fruit and vegetables in chlorine increases shelf life, but reduces biotic content and can mean the fruit you get looks fresh but isn't, with much of the good nutrition having had time to break down.
Processed foods often have a lot of the nutrition extracted and preservatives, our bodies can't deal with, added ( to prevent it being food for biotics). Then they have sugars and fats added as well because our bodies are evolved to associated these with nutrition, and so they fool our senses into thinking it's good for us when the opposite is true.
Anyway here's Ben's 10 tips, at the end are his suggestions for healthy lunches. It's a lot to read, so come back to it as you need.
David
=========================================
“10 Secrets to Permanent Weight Loss and Incredible Health”
By Ben Warren
=========================================
If you think dieting doesn’t work… you’re absolutely right! If losing weight was as easy as restricting the amount of calories or exercising more, the gym would be full of slim people and everyone would have the body they want!
Unfortunately the low fat, more exercise mentality of the 80’s is still strong in many minds, I want to reassure you that permanent weight loss and incredible health is possible, but you need all the pieces of the puzzle – this is what my course gives you. However, an understanding of these secrets will help move you towards being able to make the right decisions that lead to permanent weight loss and incredible health.
==============================
Secret #1
Toxins are stored in Fat
==============================
Anything your body cannot process and get rid off will be stored in your body, most toxins are stored in fat with heavy metals being the main exception (heavy metals are stored in the organs/brain generally)
Toxins can come from a one of three ways:
#1 Endo toxins – These are actually produced in the body from poor digestion, parasites, constipation and yeast overgrowth.
#2 Ingested toxins – Toxins that we actually eat, these include food additives, preservatives, pesticides, agricultural contaminants and water contaminants.
#3 Toxins recycled through the body, these toxins are labelled for disposal but because of a lack of nutrition the body cannot process them and they are released back into the system (and stored in fat)
The problem is most people are loading up there systems from all three sources, poor digestion and constipation (not moving 12 inches of faeces a day) are loading up your fat cells with endo toxins.
Then there’s the ingested toxins…research has shown that the average person’s diet in the industrialised world consume over 20lbs of food additives, preservatives, colourings and flavour enhancers a year. Just imagine 20lbs of toxins that your liver has to deal with. If it can’t keep up they will be stored in fat!
Due to the first two your liver is probably working flat out and running out of the raw materials (vitamins and minerals) it needs to process all these toxins. So your body has to store these toxins until a time the raw materials become available.
When was the last time you went on a calorie restricted diet and increased the nutrition you were bringing into your body? I prefer people to alter their eating habits to increase nutrition and therefore liver function.
Toxins and health – ‘Too many toxins’ is one of two ways to damage cell function (lack of nutrition is the other and we’ll talk about that in secret #7), therefore if you want incredible health and unstoppable energy then you need to minimise the number of toxins you bring into your body.
Solution:
• Improve digestive function of small intestine (See Secret #2 for more details)
• Improve transit time of large intestine
• Eat unprocessed ‘natural’ foods as much as possible
• Supply the nutrients your liver needs for detoxification
==================================
Secret #2
Food intolerances will make you store fat and decrease your immunity
==================================
The small intestine is the engine room of your body, it breaks down your food into the raw materials that keep your cells functioning. The key to breaking the food down, after chewing and hydrochloric acid, are enzymes. These enzymes are either already in the food (commonly called live food, like fruit) or released by your pancreas.
A food intolerance occurs when your body struggles to break down the food due to insufficient enzymes for that specific food. This also includes occasions when your enzymes are over whelmed as is often the case with processed white flour.
When these enzymes are overwhelmed your small intestine will shut down, this is most often noticed as a feeling of being bloated (Although most people are bloated constantly and therefore unaware of when this is happening!)
This will instantly lead to decreased energy and low blood sugar, but the longer term effects are far more damaging.
The half digested food is often able to get through the membrane and into your blood stream this is often referred to as ‘leaky gut syndrome’. The food particles, because they have not been broken down fully, are treated as an invader and stimulate an anti body response (immune reaction).
Over 70% of your immune system is in and around your digestive tract, to protect us from the things we eat. So, when we eat this food that overwhelms the enzymes we also overload our immune system. Our immune system gets tied up with dealing with our food that someone sneezes in the next room and we have a cold! Or dust/pollen that we should not have a problem with sets off our allergies because our immune system is overloaded by food!
Your body will then establish a learned response to these foods and will shut down the small intestine as soon as you eat the culprit in an attempt to protect yourself from them.
The frightening thing about all this is the more often this happens the more damage gets inflicted on the small intestine. This damage then makes you more intolerant to other foods that are traditionally harder to digest such as milk and other dairy products.
Solution
• Find your food intolerances and avoid eating these foods
• Improve your body’s ability to process foods by: chewing adequately, improving stomach function, being relaxed when eating)
• Take specific supplements to rebuild your small intestine
• Eat foods that are easier to digest (live and fermented foods)
====================================
Secret #3
Calories are NOT the key to weight loss
====================================
Many people will have you believe that to lose weight you simply need to reduce the number of calories you eat. As you well know this does not work! Here’s why…
Cutting calories reduces your metabolism – so you burn less calories per day and have less energy. This also lowers your Basal metabolic Rate which is one of the most important indicators of health. As you probably have experienced, as soon as you start consuming more calories again your body will store more energy in fat, often putting the weight back on you had lost. Due to your lipo-genic fat cells it also will make it harder to burn fat in the future.
Cutting down on fat – The reason fat has a reputation for making you fat is because it has more than double the calories per gram than carbohydrate. What you need to understand though is fat is not primarily used as an energy source in the body, carbohydrate is! Fat (providing it is a ‘good’ fat) is used to make hormones, rebuild your cells and replenish your nerves. If your body needs to use fat as an energy source then it has to be converted to blood sugar (glycogen) first. This actually burns calories and is given off as heat within the body (this is a huge reason why most women are always cold – from not enough fat!). The net effect of eating fat is only 1 calorie more than carbohydrate after conversion. YET FAT WILL MAKE YOU FEEL FULL FOR LONGER so you don’t need to bring as many calories on board.
After many years of studying the body, nutrition and working clinically with clients I have found that trying to lose weight by reducing what you eat DOES NOT WORK! I have also found that when the large intestine is working properly (moving 12 inches of faeces a day and a transit time of 12 to 24 hours), food you do not need simply passes straight through you.
Solution:
• Eat more fat (good fat only)
• Eat your optimal amount of calories by eating right for your metabolic type (Secret #6)
• Improve the function of your large intestine so any excess food is able to leave your body
=======================================
Secret #4 – How dehydration will make you fat and healthy faster than donuts!
=======================================
Who would have thought that dehydration would make you fat, well it does and let me tell you why…
Firstly, your body can’t tell the difference between hunger and thirst, and so when we get dehydrated our body will mistake thirst for hunger and we eat something, when really all we needed to do was have a drink. This obviously ends up with us bringing on board more calories than we need, and if we can’t burn this fuel or get it out of our body then it WILL BE STORED IN FAT.
Water, as you already know (from my evening seminar) is one of the most important elements your body needs, apart from the billion or so cellular reactions that are reliant on water we need water for the four main pathways of getting toxins out of out body. That’s right, your bowel, kidneys, skin and breathe all require water to expel toxins from our body, and remember if you can’t get them out of your body they will be stored on your body in fat.
Finally, your digestion relies on water to function optimally, if you are dehydrated you won’t be able to make enough hydrochloric acid to break down your food, plus your enzymes won’t be as mobile in your small intestine. Essentially this means you won’t be able to digest your food as easily, which as you know by now means your going to be storing the half digested food as fat.
Solution:
• Drink.033 litres of water for every KG of body weight eg, 60kg=2 litres, 90 kg=3 litres
• Only high quality filtered water (unless you live in Napier!) counts as water, tea, coffee even herbal drinks don’t count!
P.S – If you are having to pee a lot you might need more minerals to help actually retain the water.
===================================
Secret #5 – How stress can be making you store fat and not absorb nutrients
===================================
Stress stimulates the sympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system, this is your fight or flight response and a cascade of stress hormones including cortisol and adrenaline are released. During this time the parasympathetic nervous system is suppressed. The problem comes when you eat during times of stress because the parasympathetic nervous system controls your body’s ability to digest food. Therefore if you eat while you are stressed or rushing then you will not be able to digest the food. As you already know the half digested food will be stored in fat.
Plus… the half digested food particles can over load your immune system and make you hyper sensitive to external stimuli like pollen and dust – therefore increasing your allergies.
Stress will essentially actually increase your chances of food intolerances. This can lead to damage of the small intestine and reduce your body’s ability to absorb the nutrients you are eating.
I like to look at people’s total physiological load, this is because all the different types of stress add together to give a physiological load of stress. You might not realise that financial stress, emotional stress, relationship stress, past stress, work stress, home stress, exercise stress, nutritional stress and postural stress all add up. Most people’s overall stress levels are way too high, so much so, that your body actually physically changes your dominant breathing pattern to cope with the load.
This level of constant stress makes it very difficult to digest your food properly.
Solution:
• Sit and relax before and during all meals
• Use mental strategies like EFT for dealing with past and present stress and the major stressors in your life
• Use goal setting to reduce future stress
• Develop a healthy belief system to deal with grief
• Raise awareness of your dominant breathing pattern
• Eat right for your metabolic type to reduce nutritional stress
• Exercise to balance your autonomic nervous system NOT to thrash it!
===============================
Secret #6 - Eat the right levels of fat/protein and carbohydrate for you
================================
As you are now aware, everyone has an optimal fuel mix of protein/fat and carbohydrate. I have found that most people eat too many carbohydrates for their metabolic type, plus they are eating the wrong kind of carbohydrate, what I call bad carbohydrates.
I call protein/fat/carbohydrate your macronutrients and eating the correct level of macronutrients has profound health and weight loss benefits. Firstly, you are full for longer and therefore don’t need to bring on board as many calories. You stabilize your blood sugar levels and therefore have more sustained energy. You balance your mineral profile within your body and finally you also provide the correct ratios of the raw materials your body needs.
Establishing your correct ratios of protein/fat and carbohydrate can be a little tricky this is why much of the food we eat on the intensive weekend is specially selected to begin this process. It then usually takes another couple of weeks of experimentation to find what fuel mix you run the best on. This generally establishes your genetic fuel mix and from here you can fine tune it to find your environmental fuel mix based on your day to day needs.
However, here’s the basic recipe for metabolically typing yourself:
When you eat a meal if you get hungry within 2-3 hours you did not eat enough protein/fat (relative to carbohydrate).
When you eat a meal if you get tired straight after the meal you ate too much protein and fat (relative to carbohydrate).
Start experimenting with your breakfasts to see what ratio’s of protein/fat and carbohydrate you run the best on ie: have good energy and remain full for longer.
• Drink.033 litres of water for every KG of body weight eg, 60kg=2 litres, 90 kg=3 litres
• Only high quality filtered water (unless you live in Napier!) counts as water, tea, coffee even herbal drinks don’t count!
P.S – If you are having to pee a lot you might need more minerals to help actually retain the water.
===================================
Secret #5 – How stress can be making you store fat and not absorb nutrients
===================================
Stress stimulates the sympathetic side of the autonomic nervous system, this is your fight or flight response and a cascade of stress hormones including cortisol and adrenaline are released. During this time the parasympathetic nervous system is suppressed. The problem comes when you eat during times of stress because the parasympathetic nervous system controls your body’s ability to digest food. Therefore if you eat while you are stressed or rushing then you will not be able to digest the food. As you already know the half digested food will be stored in fat.
Plus… the half digested food particles can over load your immune system and make you hyper sensitive to external stimuli like pollen and dust – therefore increasing your allergies.
Stress will essentially actually increase your chances of food intolerances. This can lead to damage of the small intestine and reduce your body’s ability to absorb the nutrients you are eating.
I like to look at people’s total physiological load, this is because all the different types of stress add together to give a physiological load of stress. You might not realise that financial stress, emotional stress, relationship stress, past stress, work stress, home stress, exercise stress, nutritional stress and postural stress all add up. Most people’s overall stress levels are way too high, so much so, that your body actually physically changes your dominant breathing pattern to cope with the load.
This level of constant stress makes it very difficult to digest your food properly.
Solution:
• Sit and relax before and during all meals
• Use mental strategies like EFT for dealing with past and present stress and the major stressors in your life
• Use goal setting to reduce future stress
• Develop a healthy belief system to deal with grief
• Raise awareness of your dominant breathing pattern
• Eat right for your metabolic type to reduce nutritional stress
• Exercise to balance your autonomic nervous system NOT to thrash it!
===============================
Secret #6 - Eat the right levels of fat/protein and carbohydrate for you
================================
As you are now aware, everyone has an optimal fuel mix of protein/fat and carbohydrate. I have found that most people eat too many carbohydrates for their metabolic type, plus they are eating the wrong kind of carbohydrate, what I call bad carbohydrates.
I call protein/fat/carbohydrate your macronutrients and eating the correct level of macronutrients has profound health and weight loss benefits. Firstly, you are full for longer and therefore don’t need to bring on board as many calories. You stabilize your blood sugar levels and therefore have more sustained energy. You balance your mineral profile within your body and finally you also provide the correct ratios of the raw materials your body needs.
Establishing your correct ratios of protein/fat and carbohydrate can be a little tricky this is why much of the food we eat on the intensive weekend is specially selected to begin this process. It then usually takes another couple of weeks of experimentation to find what fuel mix you run the best on. This generally establishes your genetic fuel mix and from here you can fine tune it to find your environmental fuel mix based on your day to day needs.
However, here’s the basic recipe for metabolically typing yourself:
When you eat a meal if you get hungry within 2-3 hours you did not eat enough protein/fat (relative to carbohydrate).
When you eat a meal if you get tired straight after the meal you ate too much protein and fat (relative to carbohydrate).
Start experimenting with your breakfasts to see what ratio’s of protein/fat and carbohydrate you run the best on ie: have good energy and remain full for longer.
Solution:
• Establish your metabolic type (correct food ratios for you) and always eat at these ratios, even snacks,
• Establish your metabolic type (correct food ratios for you) and always eat at these ratios, even snacks,
Note: The more you can stick to eating right for your metabolic type the better you will feel, the more weight you will lose and the better energy you will have.
Also you will only experience weight loss if the fat you eat with the protein is a ‘good’ fat.
==============================
Secret #7 – Your cravings for sugar are really your body’s cry for nutrition
==============================
To understand this you need to know a little about soil agronomy and nature. In plants sugar content and nutrition are highly correlated, this simply means that the sweeter the apple the more nutrition is present in the apple. Our body’s are designed/evolved to hunt and destroy sugar because where sugar is in nature, so is nutrition.
The problem comes when we extract sugar from the nutrition, [molasses the bye product of processing raw sugar is actually highly nutritious) so we end up eating sugar but not getting the nutrition that nature had intended.
As our body’s become deficient in nutrients we instinctively go on the hunt to seek and destroy sugar in an attempt to increase nutrition. Therefore, if you want to rid yourself of your sugar cravings you must increase the amount of nutrition you bring in with your diet.
Solution:
• Eat the freshest food you can
• Eat nutrient dense foods
• Eat the sweetest fruits and vegetables you can find
• Avoid supplying sugar without nutrition
==============================
Secret #8 – You will not lose fat or be healthy no matter what you do while your body is deficient in Zinc or Iodine
==============================
Zinc is arguably the most important mineral in your body; over 300 enzymes are dependant on zinc, it is the most important nutrient for wound healing and is key in the production of hydrochloric acid. If you are deficient in zinc your body will not be able to work optimally plus your ability to digest foods is going to be compromised.
Zinc also acts as an antioxidant and is heavily used in times of stress, it is due to stress that I believe so many people are deficient in zinc, about 30% of the New Zealanders I have tested have tested deficient in Zinc. This comes as surprising news since high zinc foods are common place in most people’s diet. High zinc foods include; beef, egg yolk, lamb maple syrup, milk pork, wheat and sesame seeds.
Zinc is so important that your body needs zinc to uptake zinc, so if you are deficient you really need high doses to get your zinc status back in line.
Iodine is the most important mineral for thyroid function; without adequate iodine your thyroid cannot produce the hormones that allow your body to use fat as an energy source, as well as compromising a host of other functions in your body. (On the Pure Health Revolution program we do functional thyroid tests to rule this problem out or fix it)
New Zealand’s soils are deficient in iodine, this is why the government iodises salt, however this strategy is not working and the government is now looking to add iodine to bread to increase the iodine status of New Zealander’s.
I have found nearly 50% of New Zealanders are deficient in Iodine, and this is one of the big keys to getting your thyroid working, increasing energy and burning fat. Like everything you also don’t want too much iodine and therefore I recommend having a functional test for your iodine status to see if you need extra iodine.
Solution:
• Take a zinc test and use a high quality high dosage zinc supplement
• Once your zinc status is acceptable eat zinc dense foods to your metabolic type
• Take regular testing of your functional iodine status,
• Supplement iodine to raise your iodine status
• Eat foods high in iodine, kelp salt, korengo seafood
• Reduce stress, to reduce your body’s requirements for both minerals
=====================================
Secret #9 – Poor posture results in organ dysfunction and can make you store fat, increase the load on your immune system and stress-out your body
=====================================
All of the joints in our body’s are designed/evolved to have a place where they should sit to work the best. This is particularly true of the joints in the spine, where the vertebra meet. This is because the nerves that supply our organs and muscles come from the spine.
When the joints in the spine move out of position the nerves that supply both the organs and muscles can get pinched, liken this to standing on a hose. This then means the message is weakened to your organs and muscles. A result of this can be decreased organ and muscle function.
As your posture deteriates (usually as we get older) the internal spaces where our organs are located are changed, this can alter breathing mechanics and cause intestinal problems such as chronic constipation as the transverse colon gets collapsed.
Solution:
• Raise your own awareness of correct posture
• Take part in specific corrective exercise to correct your postural needs
• Perform yoga or pilates to improve your posture
• Make sure your organs and muscles are getting clear signals from the spine by seeing a reputable chiropractor, (I recommend Fiona Haughie and if Fiona can’t fit you in she will be able to make a recommendation for you)
=====================================
Secret #10 – Over exercising will make you store fat
=====================================
We’ve all seen or know people who go to the gym, in an effort to lose weight, they exercise hard out 5 days a week and yet their body shape never changes. It’s not about how much exercise you do, it’s about doing the right exercise for you! Let me explain…
As you learned from my evening seminar stress will shut down your digestive system. Your digestive system is a lot more important to your health and weight loss than how much exercise you do. Therefore if you are exercising at the wrong level for you, you could be going backwards in regard your health and weight loss.
There’s also another problem with heavy exercise…Heavy amounts of exercise causes your body to become more acidic, if your body cannot breath of this acidity during the exercise it will be stored in fat (fatty acids).
Exercise is very important to permanent weight loss and incredible health, however an excess of exercise (particularly cardiovascular exercise) can be detrimental to your weight loss and health goals.
Solution:
• Exercise to relieve stress not create stress
• Choose lower levels of exercise like yoga, tai chi and chi gong
• Decrease cardiovascular exercise and increase muscle building exercise
Well there are your 10 secrets! I hope you have enjoyed them. I also hope they have given you something to think about and work on to help move you towards permanent weight loss and incredible health!
These secrets represent just a small fraction of the information you need to have permanent weight loss and incredible health, that’s why I need 16 hours and then 12 weeks to give you all the pieces of the puzzle so you can truly experience permanent weight loss and incredible health.
In health and happiness
Ben Warren
P.S Please call 0800 USE PURE (0800 873 787) TO JOIN THE REVOLUTION!
0800 USE PURE
(0800 873 787)
USE PURE
Presents:
Simple Lunch Ideas to take to work or school to optimise health
and nutrition for all metabolic types.
The key to enjoying yummy nutritious lunches is to plan in advance. Take 5 minutes before you do
your grocery shopping and plan what you are going to have for lunch in the coming week.
You don’t have to have something different each day; you could alternate just two or three recipes if
you like them enough.
If it is something that keeps easily in the fridge (such as coleslaw should last for at least 4 days if you
cover it well)or even frozen then make enough for 2 or 3 days at once and put into separate
containers for each day.
One of my favourite lunches is dinner leftovers – when making dinner, consider if you would enjoy it
for lunch the following day/s and make extra.
Try to be more creative than slapping something between 2 slices of bread – not many people can
tolerate a large amount of bread and even organic whole grain bread doesn’t have a high level of
nutrients and still has a high GI
The following table is a variety of lunch ideas for different macronutrient levels:
High Protein
Antipasto selection
Cold meats, roast beef, corned
beef, chicken etc
Pan fried fish
Fish Pie/tuna & cottage cheese bake
Sausages
Chicken drumsticks
Lamb Chops
Cold steak sandwich/Philly cheese steak sandwich
Spare ribs
Bacon and egg pie (with wholemeal pastry)
Pork nuggets
Salad
Fried chicken livers
Hamburger patties
Lentil Salad
Steak
Chilli con carne
Lasagne
Medium Protein/Medium
carbohydrate
Quiche
Wraps stuffed with any salad mix and meat
Brown rice salad
Quiona salad
Cold homemade pizza
Cheese on toast with ham
Bean Burritos
Pita bread stuffed with any salad mix and meat
Gratin/ Frittata
Baked beans (keep in thermos)
BLAT
Hummus/falafel – organic or homemade
Paella
Salad
Spinach and lentil patties
Corn/whitebait fritters
Tabbouleh
Soup
Baked Beans (homemade)
High Carbohydrate
Soup - thermos
Couscous salad
Sushi
Salad
Dips and crudités
Sandwiches/muffins
Corn on the cob
Salads
Salads can be quick and easy to throw together in the morning, get an ice cream container or similar
container and throw in any of the following that you like, sprinkle with just oil and vinegar or other
dressing (If using shop bought dressing look for one that has few or no preservatives, and no trans
fatty acids or hydrogenated fats or added sugar. (The ‘Paul Newman range is one of the better
commercial dressings)
Remember while lettuce takes up a lot of room it doesn’t count as a great deal of carbohydrate, so
protein types can have a generous helping of lettuce or other leafy greens with a good serving of
meat or other protein source such as cheese or beans.
To make your salad mix as much or little of the following together that you like:
Greens
Lettuce
Rocket
Spinach
Endive
Mesclun
Beetroot leaves
Chopped parsley
Chopped basil/mint etc
Bean sprouts
Watercress
Protein sources
Cooked chicken
Cooked beef/lamb/pork roast, stir fried, corned beef,
egg Boiled sliced/chopped
Cheese diced/grated
Feta
Blue cheese
Anchovies
Tuna/salmon etc
Sliced cooked sausage
Bacon cooked chopped
Cooked lentils or chickpeas
Cooked/tinned beans such as Kidney beans, etc
Other vege or fruit
Spring onions
Red onions – sliced
White onions – finely chopped
Beetroot boiled and cubed or raw and grated
Tomato
Cucumber
Peas – raw or cooked
Celery – chopped
Capsicum –chopped/sliced
Grated raw carrots
Sliced apple/pear
Radish grated/sliced/diced
Avocado –sliced/chopped
Green beans raw or blanched
Cooked/tinned chickpeas/kidney beans/cannellini beans etc
Mandarin segments/chopped orange
Grapes
Roast kumara –chopped
Other bits to add flavour
Croutons
Seeds – pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, (protein)
Nuts – walnuts, cashews, pine nuts, peanuts, etc (protein)
Raisins
Dried apricots – diced
Dressings
These are optional; if you wanted you could only have oil on your salad – or nothing
Take one vinegar, one oil and which ever herbs and flavours you like to sprinkle over your salad.
Vinegars
Balsamic
Red wine
White wine
Cider
Lemon juice
Lime juice
Oils
Flax seed
Olive
sesame
Herbs
Parsley
Basil
Chives
Oregano
Garlic
Other flavours
Salt and pepper
Mustard
Anchovy fillets
Honey (not for protein types)
Curry powder
Other types of salad
You can also base you salad around a grain rather than greens and have it with or without greens.
Cook the grains according to instructions, cool, then add anything from the above list and again
sprinkle over oil and vinegar.
The good thing about these salads is you can make a large portion and eat over two or three days.
Grains that are suitable for salads:
- Brown rice – try brown basmati which takes less time than other brown rice to cook and has a
higher protein content
- Wild rice, red rice – have alone or as a mix with brown rice – these types of rice have a higher
protein content and far greater nutritional value than white rice. (White rice is a carbohydrate
with few minerals or other nutrients)
- Quinoa – this grain while expensive is very high in protein
- Bulgur wheat/cracked wheat
- Couscous – this is a wheat product, steer clear if you are gluten intolerant
- Small wholemeal pasta such as macaroni etc – not too good for protein types unless mixed
with a good deal of protein
Basic Grain Salad
1C cooked grain (rice, quinoa, couscous etc)
1 grated carrot
1-2 stalks celery – chopped
1 spring onions – sliced
1 small onion (red or white) finely chopped
1 red or green pepper – chopped
½ C currants/raisins
½ C mixed nuts
Mix all together leaving the nuts out until just before eating stir through the dressing
Dressing:
In a small container or mug mix the following
1 tsp ground ginger
1 level tsp curry powder
1 small tsp brown sugar
2 Tbs white vinegar
2 Tbs oil (flaxseed or olive or other favourite)
Coleslaw:
This is quick and easy – especially if you have a food processor and will keep for a few days. The
following amounts will do 2 people for 2 lunches
1. Use slicing blade in processor or thinly slice with a knife 1/8 white or red cabbage
2. Grate 2 medium carrots
3. Grate 200g cheddar cheese
4. finely chop (grate in food processor) ½ red or white onion, or slice a spring onion
5. Add as many or few of the following as you like:
Pumpkin, sunflower seeds, raisins/sultanas, 1 stick celery sliced, ½ capsicum diced, 3
radishes grated or diced, bean sprouts, chopped parsley or coriander leaves,
This doesn’t need mayonnaise if it has enough cheese. Serve by itself or beside tuna or cold meats.
Tabbouleh:
1C bulgur or kibbled wheat
2-3 C water
¼ C chopped spring /white/red onion
¼ C lemon juice
¼ C olive oil
½ - 1 C chopped parsley
½ C chopped mint
1-2 C cubed tomato
Salt and pepper to taste
Bring bulgur wheat and water to the boil and simmer 2-3 min. Remove from heat and leave to stand
for 1 hour. Drain water out by putting in a sieve and pressing water out with a spoon. Mix with the
remaining ingredients. Put tomatoes in close to eating time as possible.
This salad can be made with any grain instead of wheat. Proportions can be change to suit your
tastes and other veges such as chopped capsicum, olives, celery, cucumber, radish, garlic etc can be
added
Yummy simple summer salad:
Slice the following and arrange in layers
Tomato, cucumber, cheese, red onion
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar and torn basil and/or rocket
To make croutons
Cut slices of wholemeal/ whole grain bread into cubes
Melt a generous amount of butter in a frying pan add some crushed garlic and chopped herbs (if you
like them) then add bread and coat thoroughly in the butter mix.
Put in a cake tin or similar and bake in 180oC oven until dry and crispy, turning frequently.
Soups
Soups are a lovely, warm and nutritious lunch. If you heat it up in the morning and put into a thermos
you can carry it anywhere.
Buy a simple canned soup or the organic soups in a sachet which are easy enough to heat and eat.
Do not use the dehydrated soups which are high in salt, hydrogenated fats and preservatives.
If you are keen make your own soup in large quantities and freeze it in serving sized plastic
containers. Soup can be very simple to make and full of nutrients. There are plenty of recipes out
there so I’ll just give you one of our favourites which has a fairly high protein content because of the
lentils and bacon.
1tbs oil
1-2 onions chopped
1-2 cloves garlic chopped
½ a pumpkin peeled and chopped (or roast first and then peel this gives it more flavour)
1 bacon hock
2 tsp curry powder
2 litres Chicken stock/water/water and white wine
¾ C lentils/pearl barley/split peas/soup mix (either/or or any mix of them)
Salt and pepper to taste
In a large stock pot gently fry the onion until soft. Add garlic and spices and cook for 1 minute. Add
the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15-20 min or until pumpkin is tender and
meat falls off bacon hock. Cool slightly, take out bacon hock, pull the meat off the bone and put back
into soup.
Spoon into appropriately sized containers to freeze or refrigerate for a few days.
This recipe can be varied in size and any ingredients can be omitted while any favourite vegetables
can be added such as potatoes and other root vegetables, celery, capsicum, tomatoes etc
‘Hearty’ Meals
Often you might want something that is really hearty and filling. If you don’t have access to heating
facilities it is useful to have a wide mouth thermos flask to take a ready made meal in.
Homemade Baked Beans
1 tin white beans such as cannellini, lima, navy beans or 1 cup small white beans uncooked
1 onion
1 Tbs butter
2 Tbs olive oil
½ C tomato paste
1½ Tbs soy sauce
1½ Tbs vinegar
3 Tbs maple syrup or 2 Tbs brown sugar
3 Tbs molasses
1-2 cloves garlic
½ tsp salt
Pinch chilli powder or flakes
If using uncooked beans, cover and soak for 12 – 24 hours.
Sauté onion in butter and oil. Drain beans, rinse place in a flame proof casserole dish add onion and
enough water to cover. Bring to a boil. Add remaining ingredients. Cover and bake in a 180oC oven
for 2-3 hours.
Bolognaise sauce – this is easily made by browning some mince, adding a chopped onion and some
garlic and a tin of tomatoes. Or simply brown your meat and add a jar of pasta sauce, heat through
and pour into your thermos for lunch. Eat by itself, with cooked pasta, on toast, over couscous or
quinoa etc etc
For a vegetarian version simply simmer some red (or whatever colour you prefer) lentils in stock or
wine until cooked then do as you would for the meat sauce.
Pizzas
Homemade pizza can be quick, easy and healthy.
Buy wholemeal pita bread to use as your base, or use the following dough recipe if you have the
extra time.
On top spread any 1 of the following:
Tomato paste, pesto, Chutney (low sugar), tapenade, baked beans
Then sprinkle on as many of your favourites such as:
Chopped onion Anchovy
Chopped capsicum Tuna
Bacon/ham Salmon
Salami/sausage (cooked and sliced) Capers
Sundried tomatoes Garlic, sliced, crushed or chopped
Roasted capsicum Feta
Olives Blue cheese
Mushrooms – sliced Mozzarella cheese
Spinach Parmesan cheese
Pine nuts
Chopped fresh herbs or dried herbs such as oregano or basil
Pineapple pieces (if you get tinned make sure they are in juice not syrup)
Then sprinkle over with grated cheddar cheese or mozzarella
Bake at 200oC for 15 – 20 min or until cheese has melted and staring to brown
Easy Pizza dough (Alison Holst)
1 ¼ C warm water
1 ½ Tbsp sugar
1Tbsp dried yeast granules
1Tbsp olive oil
1tsp salt
3 C wholemeal flour
½ tsp baking powder
Dissolve sugar in warm (blood temp) water, sprinkle in yeast granules. Add oil and stir gently to mix.
Leave to stand for at least 5min to allow yeast to begin acting.
Once yeast has begun to bubble and looks foamy, add the remaining ingredients. Stir everything
together until dough begins to form a large ball.
Roll and flatten the dough onto a well oiled baking sheet, make reasonably thin (5mm) (if you have
time leave to rise for 10-30 min). Use this time to assemble topping ingredients.
Bake at 190oC for approximately 30min
Quiche/Gratin/Frittata
You can easily buy quiche at a supermarket or bakery, or make your own. Try not to get one with a
heavy pastry to cut down on white flour, better still make your own with stone-ground wholemeal flour
or make a gratin which is basically a quiche without pastry.
These are all egg based meals with veges and meat added and therefore are quite high in protein.
They are great hot or cold and can be made in advance and will keep for several days in the fridge
until needed.
Pastry for Quiche
For a quiche you need to make a pastry crust – either buy premade crusts or pastry and roll out to fill
a tin approximately 20cm in diameter.
If you want to make your own pastry:
Use about 100g butter (not marg) to about 2C wholemeal flour. Blend together in a food processor or
rub between fingers until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs. Add 1 egg yolk and keep adding
drops of cold water and mix until it starts to hold together. Then form into a ball, cover and leave to
rest in fridge for 20-30 min.
Roll out on a floured surface and press into a 20cm round/square cake or flan tin. This should do
enough to line 2 tins.
Partially cook in oven (200oC for 10 – 15 min)
Then fill
Filling for Quiche/Gratin
Mix together the following:
2 eggs
6 Tbs milk or yoghurt or 4 Tbs cottage cheese/quark + 2tbs milk
Salt and pepper
¼ C grated cheese (put in more if you like cheese)
Add approximately 1 -3 of any of the following
Sweet corn, cooked pulses or grains, cooked veges (lightly stir fry things such as onions, asparagus,
courgette, mushrooms, capsicums, spinach, broccoli, aubergine etc) bacon, ham, salami, corned
beef,
For a Quiche pour the mix into the pastry base, for a gratin pour into a greased heatproof dish (20cm
round or square) sprinkle on a little more cheese along with ¼ tsp dried oregano or basil
Bake 190oC for 30 -35 min or until egg mix is solid.
Frittata
Use the same ingredients as the gratin but ½ the quantity
Melt some butter in a small frying pan.
Gently cook veges then pour over milk/egg mix keeping heat very low.
When almost set sprinkle with cheese and place under a hot grill for about 30seconds.
Spinach and Cheese Pie
This is a great pie to make in advance and take a slice or two with you for lunch and keep the rest in
the fridge for a few days.
12 C spinach - chopped
1 med onion - chopped
2Tbs coconut oil
2 Tbs fresh oregano/ 1tsp dried oregano
4 eggs
2C cottage cheese/quark
6 Tbs parmesan
4 Tbs butter
12 sheets filo pastry
Salt and Pepper
Heat oven to 190oC
Cook onion in oil 5min until onion is translucent. Add spinach and oregano and continue cooking till
spinach is just wilted (1 min). Remove from heat.
In another bowl beat eggs lightly, stir in cottage cheese, parmesan, salt and pepper to taste and lastly
spinach mix.
Melt butter and brush 33x23cm baking dish with the butter. Arrange ½ filo sheets in bottom to cover
evenly and extend up the sides. Brush with melted butter then pour over egg and spinach mix. Cover
with the remaining filo and tuck in edges. Brush top with butter and bake for approximately 30
minutes
Fritters and Patties
These can be vegetarian or meaty. Hamburger patties are good cold and provide a delicious and
nutritious lunch, make them into a healthy hamburger with wholemeal rolls or tucked inside a
wholemeal pita bread or just eat them with some chutney or relish and no bread.
Lentil and Spinach Fritters
The lentils and egg in these give them a reasonable protein content. Add some sesame seeds and
eat some nuts on the side to make a complete protein.
1C green puy lentils (or ay other type of lentil – cook to packet instructions)
1 ½ C water
300g raw spinach
1Tbsp curry powder
2eggs or 2-3Tbs Tahini
5Tbsp flour
Pinch cayenne pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
Rinse lentils in cold water. Place in saucepan with the water. Cover and bring to boil. Simmer on low
heat for 10-15 minutes, check after 10 minutes to see if any more water is required. Wash the
spinach. Remove the coarse stems. Shake dry. Finely chop. Mix all ingredients except the oil
together in a bowl.
Hat oil in a frying pan. Place large spoonfuls of the mixture in the oil. Fry patties for 2-3 minutes on
each side until crisp ad golden.
Makes 10-12 patties
Variations:
Swap some of the spinach for grated carrot
Add some grated cheese
Use brown rice or other grain as well as or instead of lentils
Eat with chutney, savoury sauces such as chilli or hp sauce etc
Meat Patties
Mix minced beef or lamb with ½ chopped onion, 2Tbsp chopped parsley, 1 egg or 2tbsp tahini, salt
and pepper. Either mix by hand or place all in a food processor and whiz until mixed together
thoroughly.
Shape in to patties and cook in frying pan or on BBQ
Meat Balls
500g minced meat
100g raw bacon
2 slices stale bread
4 Tbs lemon juice
½ tsp salt
Pinch cayenne pepper
125 – 150ml coconut oil for frying
You can heat a pasta sauce or make a simple tomato sauce to go with the meat balls by sautéing an
onion in a small amount of butter till soft. Then add 4 chopped fresh tomatoes or a tin of tomatoes
and 3-4 Tbs sherry or red wine. Simmer till soft and much of the liquid has evaporated (about 15-
20min)
Make the meat balls the night before, heat the sauce in the morning and take it in a thermos, pour
over meatballs when you want to eat.
If you have a wide mouth thermos you can put the meat balls and maybe some cooked spaghetti in
there as well and have your meal ready to eat straight out of the thermos.
Lentil Rissoles
This is another recipe that can be altered to fit your likes/dislikes. Add things like grated carrot,
cheese, refried beans, other chopped nuts, grains such as bulgur, quinoa, couscous. If it is not
holding together add more egg or tahini (tahini is a great replacement for egg if you are using it as a
binder)
} Combine all ingredients together in food
processor. Roll into small balls and gently fry.
200g lentils
2 small potatoes boiled
1 large onion finely chopped
¼ C sesame seeds
½ C chopped almonds or almond meal
1 C soft wholemeal breadcrumbs (or use gluten-free)
1 egg or 1 tbs tahini
Salt and pepper
Cook lentils until tender, then mix everything together in a bowl.
Form into 12 rissoles (short fat sausage like forms), then either fry in coconut oil or bake in oven
180oC for 25-30 minutes
Wraps
Buy tortillas or other types of flat bread. You need to be careful to check they don’t contain many
preservatives. You can even use a lightly steamed cabbage leaf, nori seaweed, steamed vine leaves
and banana leaves to wrap your favourite fillings in.
Wraps are simple and delicious. They can be made a day in advance and are good with hot or cold
fillings.
Select from the following, using small amounts so as not to overfill them, place fillings in the middle of
the tortilla leaving a couple of cm at the bottom:
Lettuce chopped tomato chopped
Onion chopped (red/white/spring) Onion fried
avocado chopped/mashed/sliced Raw or fried capsicum sliced or diced
Refried beans kidney beans
Cooked meats (beef,(mince) chicken tuna etc) Salsa
Sour cream grated cheese
Close by folding over the bottom first then rolling to enclose the fillings. Wrap in glad wrap to hold
together or carefully place in a container.
Basic Chicken Fajitas
(Enough for about 6-8 wraps)
Slice 2 chicken breasts
Place in a frying pan with a small amount of oil (preferably coconut oil) and brown.
Add the following
¼ tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp chilli powder
5 Tbsp tomato puree
2Tbsp chilli sauce
Cook for two min
In another pan cook 1 sliced onion and 1 sliced capsicum till soft and brown
On a flour tortilla place a few slices of the chicken, some of the onion and carrot mix, a sprinkle of
lettuce, fresh tomatoes and grated cheese. A spoonful of salsa, sour cream and mashed avocado.
Fold and eat.
‘Sandwiches’
Instead of making a classic bread sandwich with two slices of bread try using tortillas, pita bread,
pancakes (crepe style have a reasonably high level of protein in themselves), crackers, oat cakes, or
even sheets of nori seaweed.
Another idea is to use slices of fruit or vegetables instead of bread, for example slice up an apple and
spread one slice with peanut butter and top with another slice of apple
Open ‘vege’ sandwiches
Make a thick slice of your favourite vege such as:
tomato, cucumber, capsicum, cooked potato, cooked eggplant, celery, carrot, raw
zucchini, mushroom
Top with:
Cheese, avocado, sprouts, sliced meat, basil leaves, lettuce, bacon, etc
Eat as is or with a side of chutney or relish. Pop them under the grill to gently heat if you want to.
Bake a couple of potatoes, cut in half and fill with anything you like.
Similar to a vege sandwich are stuffed veges – there are plenty of recipes out there using capsicums,
mushrooms, tomatoes etc with meaty or vegetarian fillings.
Quick complete protein vegetarian vegetable stuffing
Fry an onion in plenty of butter until transparent. Add a clove or two of chopped garlic.
In food processor place ¼ C nuts (hazelnuts or cashews are favourites), 1/8 C sesame seeds,
pumpkin or sunflower seeds, ½ tin of beans (kidney, black, pinto etc) salt and pepper and onion mix.
Process until crumbly.
Stuff your favourite vegetable with the mix. Sprinkle with cheese and paprika if desired. Bake,
barbeque or lightly grill.
Antipasto/ploughmans Selection
Put a selection of the following in a container with a knife and maybe a small fork, if you are including
seafood and are out and about you could put it all in a small chilly bin.
Smoked sliced Salmon, oysters,eel Cooked meats such as sausages, roasts, smoked,
Cured meats such as salami, pastrami, proscuiutto etc
Cheese – cheddar, blue, feta etc Pickled onions, gherkins, other pickled vege
Marinated sundried tomatoes Artichoke hearts
Roasted capsicum Olives
Avocado Pate
Marinated mussels Tuna
Hard boiled eggs Radishes, cherry tomatoes, carrot or celery sticks
Sliced apple or pear Steamed Asparagus spears
Avocado Raw Green beans
You can then put a selection of the following in small containers or try buying a segmented ‘pill’ box
and put a dollop of each in each segment:
Sour cream pesto
Tapanade chutney (low sugar)
Pate hummus
Quark cottage cheese
Mayonnaise Guacamole
Salsa Dips from deli section of supermarket
On the side have a few wholewheat crackers, wholemeal pita bread, rye bread, oat cakes or
wholemeal sourdough bread
Other Protein Options
To make a complete ‘vegetarian’ protein a basic rule of thumb is that you want to incorporate a
bean/lentil, nut and a seed in the meal. I.e. lentils with sesame seeds and cashew nuts, or kidney
beans with sunflower seeds and almonds etc this can make a quick and easy snack or meal by just
combining those three. Some of the recipes already featured such as the lentil rissoles and salads
can easily be made so that they include a bean, a nut and a seed.
A useful trick I have found, is to buy a whole chicken or beef or lamb roast. Cook it say on a Sunday
night and use it as sliced cold meat throughout the week.
Fish is a quick and easy protein source, take a tin of tuna (be careful buying the flavoured tuna as
they often have sugar and hydrolysed vegetable protein in them) and a fork for lunch or pan fry a fillet
of your favourite fish in the morning and take that for lunch with some salad on the side.
Chicken Drumsticks
Dark meat is always a better option for protein types than breast meat because it has a higher protein
content.
These are an easy meal to cook in advance and use for two or three days
15 chicken drumsticks (or any other part of the chicken you like)
1 Tbs oil
4 Tbs tomato sauce
2 Tbs wine or balsamic vinegar
1 Tbs mustard
1 Tbs Worcester sauce or soy sauce
Mix together all ingredients making sure drumsticks are well coated, you can leave to marinate for up
to an hour if you have the time.
Bake 200oC for 30 – 40 minutes, turn frequently and baste with the marinade.
Eat hot or cold
You can use this same marinade with pork, slice up some pork meat into ‘nuggets’ or even use
spare ribs, and bake as with the chicken.
Tuna and Cottage Cheese bake
1 small tin of tuna
200g cottage cheese or quark
Juice of ½ a small lemon
2 eggs
Spring onions or leeks finely chopped
Salt and pepper
Mix all together and spoon into an ovenproof baking dish
Bake 200oC for 20 minutes
The small green puy lentils are a nice option for those who don’t usually like lentils. Simmer in stock,
water or white wine with a couple of clove of garlic sliced into it. Simmer covered adding more liquid if
needed – will take 20-30min.
Serve with mashed potato, noodles, meat, salad etc
Snacks
Other tricky ‘meal’ is snacks – how to not eat those cakes, biscuits, pastries, pies etc.
Here are some ideas that hopefully satisfy that snack craving without being unhealthy.
Popcorn – get some organic kernels, it is so easy to pop yourself then you know there is no GM corn
in it. Heat some coconut oil in a large heavy bottomed saucepan with a lid. When it is hot pour in ¼ -
½ C popcorn kernels put the lid on immediately. Gently shake the saucepan over the heat as you
hear the popping until pops are several second apart. Remove from heat.
Melt some organic butter and pour over the popcorn and sprinkle with grey sea salt.
Nuts and seeds – these are best for you raw and better still if they have been soaked for a few hours
or overnight. But try not to overdo it with nuts, they contain enzyme inhibitors that can disrupt
digestion.
Mix together your favourites from:
Almonds, hazelnuts, brazil nuts(try to only have a few of these a day), cashews, macadamia,
walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, peanuts
Add some dried fruit such as un-sulphured apricots, raisins, blueberries, cranberries, figs etc (do not overdo the dried fruit it is extremely high in sugar)
If you find the nuts unpalatable raw then try soaking in warm salted water overnight or through the day, drain, then bake in a low oven (less than 100oC) overnight again until completely dry and crisp.
Add soy sauce, herbs and spices that you like before you bake them.
Fruit and Vegetables – this seems obvious but often a sliced apple or carrot sticks are more
appealing than a whole apple or carrot.
Prepare fruits – apple, pear(dip in lemon juice to prevent browning), kiwifruit, oranges, grapefruit,
melon, pineapple, mango, peaches etc into bite sized pieces that you can eat with a toothpick to save mess.
Prepare veges – carrots, cucumber, celery, zucchini, green beans(yummy raw),olives, capsicum,
cauliflower, spring onions, etc into sticks that can be dipped into a dip such as :
Hummus, pumpkin and cumin dip, chutney, relish, cream cheese, cottage
cheese, quark, refried beans, nut butter, store bought dips
There are many organic and healthy dips for sale now, but they are easy to make at home –
refrigerate or freeze any excess.
Pumpkin and cumin dip
Cut a small butternut squash into slices and roast until golden. Meanwhile in a saucepan melt 1 tsp
honey with 2 clove garlic crushed, 2 Tbs lemon juice, 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp turmeric, 1 tsp sea salt and
1/3C pumpkin seeds. Cook gently for 3-4 minutes.
When pumpkin is tender, mix all together to make a smooth puree with pumpkin seeds adding
texture.
Sundried tomato and feta dip
Soak ½ C sundried tomatoes in boiling water for 20 min. Peel and chop 1 clove of garlic, gently sauté
in oil, add 1 Tbs lemon juice, chopped soaked sundried tomatoes, 1tsp dried basil, sauté a further 2-3
mintures
Leave to cool.
Chop ½ C feta and mix with ½ C cream cheese or quark. Stir in tomato mix.
Sprouted grain/essene rolls – you can buy these ready prepared or make them yourself. They are an acquired taste but extremely good for you.
Soak 1 – 2 C whole wheat grains in water for 24 hours, pour out water and rinse, then place
back in bowl and cover. Rinse every day until grains begin to sprout. Pour off excess water and place
in a food processor. Process to make an uneven paste. (Optional: Add 2tsp cinnamon or mixed spice
and ½ C raisins) Roll into handful sized balls and place on baking paper on a baking sheet flatten
slightly (warning they will be very sticky) cover with another sheet of paper. Bake 120oC for 3-4 hours turning half way through and remove top paper.
Things you need to avoid:
- Anything with a lot of sugar in it – this includes things like bought tomato sauce, smoothies,
and excessive amounts of fruit juice and of course most cakes and biscuits. Foods listed in the
ingredients that end in ‘ose’ are a sugar (fructose, dextrose, glucose etc) often they are listed
separately so it doesn’t appear to have much sugar. Check the sugars in the nutrition box
- Anything with preservatives in it. These are usually numbers in the ingredients list be
especially aware of these in products such as bacon and sausages
- Anything made primarily with white flour- i.e. with a lot of pastry, bread, ‘white’ crackers such
as Huntley and palmers etc. Try to 1. go without a ‘floury’ meal, 2. have something that is
wholemeal flour and 3. Eat organic wholemeal – preferably stone-ground.
- Anything with hydrogenated fats and trans fatty acids – look for them on the ingredients lists
These secrets represent just a small fraction of the information you need to have permanent weight loss and incredible health, that’s why I need 16 hours and then 12 weeks to give you all the pieces of the puzzle so you can truly experience permanent weight loss and incredible health.
In health and happiness
Ben Warren
P.S Please call 0800 USE PURE (0800 873 787) TO JOIN THE REVOLUTION!
0800 USE PURE
(0800 873 787)
USE PURE
Presents:
Simple Lunch Ideas to take to work or school to optimise health
and nutrition for all metabolic types.
The key to enjoying yummy nutritious lunches is to plan in advance. Take 5 minutes before you do
your grocery shopping and plan what you are going to have for lunch in the coming week.
You don’t have to have something different each day; you could alternate just two or three recipes if
you like them enough.
If it is something that keeps easily in the fridge (such as coleslaw should last for at least 4 days if you
cover it well)or even frozen then make enough for 2 or 3 days at once and put into separate
containers for each day.
One of my favourite lunches is dinner leftovers – when making dinner, consider if you would enjoy it
for lunch the following day/s and make extra.
Try to be more creative than slapping something between 2 slices of bread – not many people can
tolerate a large amount of bread and even organic whole grain bread doesn’t have a high level of
nutrients and still has a high GI
The following table is a variety of lunch ideas for different macronutrient levels:
High Protein
Antipasto selection
Cold meats, roast beef, corned
beef, chicken etc
Pan fried fish
Fish Pie/tuna & cottage cheese bake
Sausages
Chicken drumsticks
Lamb Chops
Cold steak sandwich/Philly cheese steak sandwich
Spare ribs
Bacon and egg pie (with wholemeal pastry)
Pork nuggets
Salad
Fried chicken livers
Hamburger patties
Lentil Salad
Steak
Chilli con carne
Lasagne
Medium Protein/Medium
carbohydrate
Quiche
Wraps stuffed with any salad mix and meat
Brown rice salad
Quiona salad
Cold homemade pizza
Cheese on toast with ham
Bean Burritos
Pita bread stuffed with any salad mix and meat
Gratin/ Frittata
Baked beans (keep in thermos)
BLAT
Hummus/falafel – organic or homemade
Paella
Salad
Spinach and lentil patties
Corn/whitebait fritters
Tabbouleh
Soup
Baked Beans (homemade)
High Carbohydrate
Soup - thermos
Couscous salad
Sushi
Salad
Dips and crudités
Sandwiches/muffins
Corn on the cob
Salads
Salads can be quick and easy to throw together in the morning, get an ice cream container or similar
container and throw in any of the following that you like, sprinkle with just oil and vinegar or other
dressing (If using shop bought dressing look for one that has few or no preservatives, and no trans
fatty acids or hydrogenated fats or added sugar. (The ‘Paul Newman range is one of the better
commercial dressings)
Remember while lettuce takes up a lot of room it doesn’t count as a great deal of carbohydrate, so
protein types can have a generous helping of lettuce or other leafy greens with a good serving of
meat or other protein source such as cheese or beans.
To make your salad mix as much or little of the following together that you like:
Greens
Lettuce
Rocket
Spinach
Endive
Mesclun
Beetroot leaves
Chopped parsley
Chopped basil/mint etc
Bean sprouts
Watercress
Protein sources
Cooked chicken
Cooked beef/lamb/pork roast, stir fried, corned beef,
egg Boiled sliced/chopped
Cheese diced/grated
Feta
Blue cheese
Anchovies
Tuna/salmon etc
Sliced cooked sausage
Bacon cooked chopped
Cooked lentils or chickpeas
Cooked/tinned beans such as Kidney beans, etc
Other vege or fruit
Spring onions
Red onions – sliced
White onions – finely chopped
Beetroot boiled and cubed or raw and grated
Tomato
Cucumber
Peas – raw or cooked
Celery – chopped
Capsicum –chopped/sliced
Grated raw carrots
Sliced apple/pear
Radish grated/sliced/diced
Avocado –sliced/chopped
Green beans raw or blanched
Cooked/tinned chickpeas/kidney beans/cannellini beans etc
Mandarin segments/chopped orange
Grapes
Roast kumara –chopped
Other bits to add flavour
Croutons
Seeds – pumpkin, sunflower, sesame, (protein)
Nuts – walnuts, cashews, pine nuts, peanuts, etc (protein)
Raisins
Dried apricots – diced
Dressings
These are optional; if you wanted you could only have oil on your salad – or nothing
Take one vinegar, one oil and which ever herbs and flavours you like to sprinkle over your salad.
Vinegars
Balsamic
Red wine
White wine
Cider
Lemon juice
Lime juice
Oils
Flax seed
Olive
sesame
Herbs
Parsley
Basil
Chives
Oregano
Garlic
Other flavours
Salt and pepper
Mustard
Anchovy fillets
Honey (not for protein types)
Curry powder
Other types of salad
You can also base you salad around a grain rather than greens and have it with or without greens.
Cook the grains according to instructions, cool, then add anything from the above list and again
sprinkle over oil and vinegar.
The good thing about these salads is you can make a large portion and eat over two or three days.
Grains that are suitable for salads:
- Brown rice – try brown basmati which takes less time than other brown rice to cook and has a
higher protein content
- Wild rice, red rice – have alone or as a mix with brown rice – these types of rice have a higher
protein content and far greater nutritional value than white rice. (White rice is a carbohydrate
with few minerals or other nutrients)
- Quinoa – this grain while expensive is very high in protein
- Bulgur wheat/cracked wheat
- Couscous – this is a wheat product, steer clear if you are gluten intolerant
- Small wholemeal pasta such as macaroni etc – not too good for protein types unless mixed
with a good deal of protein
Basic Grain Salad
1C cooked grain (rice, quinoa, couscous etc)
1 grated carrot
1-2 stalks celery – chopped
1 spring onions – sliced
1 small onion (red or white) finely chopped
1 red or green pepper – chopped
½ C currants/raisins
½ C mixed nuts
Mix all together leaving the nuts out until just before eating stir through the dressing
Dressing:
In a small container or mug mix the following
1 tsp ground ginger
1 level tsp curry powder
1 small tsp brown sugar
2 Tbs white vinegar
2 Tbs oil (flaxseed or olive or other favourite)
Coleslaw:
This is quick and easy – especially if you have a food processor and will keep for a few days. The
following amounts will do 2 people for 2 lunches
1. Use slicing blade in processor or thinly slice with a knife 1/8 white or red cabbage
2. Grate 2 medium carrots
3. Grate 200g cheddar cheese
4. finely chop (grate in food processor) ½ red or white onion, or slice a spring onion
5. Add as many or few of the following as you like:
Pumpkin, sunflower seeds, raisins/sultanas, 1 stick celery sliced, ½ capsicum diced, 3
radishes grated or diced, bean sprouts, chopped parsley or coriander leaves,
This doesn’t need mayonnaise if it has enough cheese. Serve by itself or beside tuna or cold meats.
Tabbouleh:
1C bulgur or kibbled wheat
2-3 C water
¼ C chopped spring /white/red onion
¼ C lemon juice
¼ C olive oil
½ - 1 C chopped parsley
½ C chopped mint
1-2 C cubed tomato
Salt and pepper to taste
Bring bulgur wheat and water to the boil and simmer 2-3 min. Remove from heat and leave to stand
for 1 hour. Drain water out by putting in a sieve and pressing water out with a spoon. Mix with the
remaining ingredients. Put tomatoes in close to eating time as possible.
This salad can be made with any grain instead of wheat. Proportions can be change to suit your
tastes and other veges such as chopped capsicum, olives, celery, cucumber, radish, garlic etc can be
added
Yummy simple summer salad:
Slice the following and arrange in layers
Tomato, cucumber, cheese, red onion
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, olive oil and vinegar and torn basil and/or rocket
To make croutons
Cut slices of wholemeal/ whole grain bread into cubes
Melt a generous amount of butter in a frying pan add some crushed garlic and chopped herbs (if you
like them) then add bread and coat thoroughly in the butter mix.
Put in a cake tin or similar and bake in 180oC oven until dry and crispy, turning frequently.
Soups
Soups are a lovely, warm and nutritious lunch. If you heat it up in the morning and put into a thermos
you can carry it anywhere.
Buy a simple canned soup or the organic soups in a sachet which are easy enough to heat and eat.
Do not use the dehydrated soups which are high in salt, hydrogenated fats and preservatives.
If you are keen make your own soup in large quantities and freeze it in serving sized plastic
containers. Soup can be very simple to make and full of nutrients. There are plenty of recipes out
there so I’ll just give you one of our favourites which has a fairly high protein content because of the
lentils and bacon.
1tbs oil
1-2 onions chopped
1-2 cloves garlic chopped
½ a pumpkin peeled and chopped (or roast first and then peel this gives it more flavour)
1 bacon hock
2 tsp curry powder
2 litres Chicken stock/water/water and white wine
¾ C lentils/pearl barley/split peas/soup mix (either/or or any mix of them)
Salt and pepper to taste
In a large stock pot gently fry the onion until soft. Add garlic and spices and cook for 1 minute. Add
the remaining ingredients. Bring to the boil and simmer for 15-20 min or until pumpkin is tender and
meat falls off bacon hock. Cool slightly, take out bacon hock, pull the meat off the bone and put back
into soup.
Spoon into appropriately sized containers to freeze or refrigerate for a few days.
This recipe can be varied in size and any ingredients can be omitted while any favourite vegetables
can be added such as potatoes and other root vegetables, celery, capsicum, tomatoes etc
‘Hearty’ Meals
Often you might want something that is really hearty and filling. If you don’t have access to heating
facilities it is useful to have a wide mouth thermos flask to take a ready made meal in.
Homemade Baked Beans
1 tin white beans such as cannellini, lima, navy beans or 1 cup small white beans uncooked
1 onion
1 Tbs butter
2 Tbs olive oil
½ C tomato paste
1½ Tbs soy sauce
1½ Tbs vinegar
3 Tbs maple syrup or 2 Tbs brown sugar
3 Tbs molasses
1-2 cloves garlic
½ tsp salt
Pinch chilli powder or flakes
If using uncooked beans, cover and soak for 12 – 24 hours.
Sauté onion in butter and oil. Drain beans, rinse place in a flame proof casserole dish add onion and
enough water to cover. Bring to a boil. Add remaining ingredients. Cover and bake in a 180oC oven
for 2-3 hours.
Bolognaise sauce – this is easily made by browning some mince, adding a chopped onion and some
garlic and a tin of tomatoes. Or simply brown your meat and add a jar of pasta sauce, heat through
and pour into your thermos for lunch. Eat by itself, with cooked pasta, on toast, over couscous or
quinoa etc etc
For a vegetarian version simply simmer some red (or whatever colour you prefer) lentils in stock or
wine until cooked then do as you would for the meat sauce.
Pizzas
Homemade pizza can be quick, easy and healthy.
Buy wholemeal pita bread to use as your base, or use the following dough recipe if you have the
extra time.
On top spread any 1 of the following:
Tomato paste, pesto, Chutney (low sugar), tapenade, baked beans
Then sprinkle on as many of your favourites such as:
Chopped onion Anchovy
Chopped capsicum Tuna
Bacon/ham Salmon
Salami/sausage (cooked and sliced) Capers
Sundried tomatoes Garlic, sliced, crushed or chopped
Roasted capsicum Feta
Olives Blue cheese
Mushrooms – sliced Mozzarella cheese
Spinach Parmesan cheese
Pine nuts
Chopped fresh herbs or dried herbs such as oregano or basil
Pineapple pieces (if you get tinned make sure they are in juice not syrup)
Then sprinkle over with grated cheddar cheese or mozzarella
Bake at 200oC for 15 – 20 min or until cheese has melted and staring to brown
Easy Pizza dough (Alison Holst)
1 ¼ C warm water
1 ½ Tbsp sugar
1Tbsp dried yeast granules
1Tbsp olive oil
1tsp salt
3 C wholemeal flour
½ tsp baking powder
Dissolve sugar in warm (blood temp) water, sprinkle in yeast granules. Add oil and stir gently to mix.
Leave to stand for at least 5min to allow yeast to begin acting.
Once yeast has begun to bubble and looks foamy, add the remaining ingredients. Stir everything
together until dough begins to form a large ball.
Roll and flatten the dough onto a well oiled baking sheet, make reasonably thin (5mm) (if you have
time leave to rise for 10-30 min). Use this time to assemble topping ingredients.
Bake at 190oC for approximately 30min
Quiche/Gratin/Frittata
You can easily buy quiche at a supermarket or bakery, or make your own. Try not to get one with a
heavy pastry to cut down on white flour, better still make your own with stone-ground wholemeal flour
or make a gratin which is basically a quiche without pastry.
These are all egg based meals with veges and meat added and therefore are quite high in protein.
They are great hot or cold and can be made in advance and will keep for several days in the fridge
until needed.
Pastry for Quiche
For a quiche you need to make a pastry crust – either buy premade crusts or pastry and roll out to fill
a tin approximately 20cm in diameter.
If you want to make your own pastry:
Use about 100g butter (not marg) to about 2C wholemeal flour. Blend together in a food processor or
rub between fingers until it has the consistency of breadcrumbs. Add 1 egg yolk and keep adding
drops of cold water and mix until it starts to hold together. Then form into a ball, cover and leave to
rest in fridge for 20-30 min.
Roll out on a floured surface and press into a 20cm round/square cake or flan tin. This should do
enough to line 2 tins.
Partially cook in oven (200oC for 10 – 15 min)
Then fill
Filling for Quiche/Gratin
Mix together the following:
2 eggs
6 Tbs milk or yoghurt or 4 Tbs cottage cheese/quark + 2tbs milk
Salt and pepper
¼ C grated cheese (put in more if you like cheese)
Add approximately 1 -3 of any of the following
Sweet corn, cooked pulses or grains, cooked veges (lightly stir fry things such as onions, asparagus,
courgette, mushrooms, capsicums, spinach, broccoli, aubergine etc) bacon, ham, salami, corned
beef,
For a Quiche pour the mix into the pastry base, for a gratin pour into a greased heatproof dish (20cm
round or square) sprinkle on a little more cheese along with ¼ tsp dried oregano or basil
Bake 190oC for 30 -35 min or until egg mix is solid.
Frittata
Use the same ingredients as the gratin but ½ the quantity
Melt some butter in a small frying pan.
Gently cook veges then pour over milk/egg mix keeping heat very low.
When almost set sprinkle with cheese and place under a hot grill for about 30seconds.
Spinach and Cheese Pie
This is a great pie to make in advance and take a slice or two with you for lunch and keep the rest in
the fridge for a few days.
12 C spinach - chopped
1 med onion - chopped
2Tbs coconut oil
2 Tbs fresh oregano/ 1tsp dried oregano
4 eggs
2C cottage cheese/quark
6 Tbs parmesan
4 Tbs butter
12 sheets filo pastry
Salt and Pepper
Heat oven to 190oC
Cook onion in oil 5min until onion is translucent. Add spinach and oregano and continue cooking till
spinach is just wilted (1 min). Remove from heat.
In another bowl beat eggs lightly, stir in cottage cheese, parmesan, salt and pepper to taste and lastly
spinach mix.
Melt butter and brush 33x23cm baking dish with the butter. Arrange ½ filo sheets in bottom to cover
evenly and extend up the sides. Brush with melted butter then pour over egg and spinach mix. Cover
with the remaining filo and tuck in edges. Brush top with butter and bake for approximately 30
minutes
Fritters and Patties
These can be vegetarian or meaty. Hamburger patties are good cold and provide a delicious and
nutritious lunch, make them into a healthy hamburger with wholemeal rolls or tucked inside a
wholemeal pita bread or just eat them with some chutney or relish and no bread.
Lentil and Spinach Fritters
The lentils and egg in these give them a reasonable protein content. Add some sesame seeds and
eat some nuts on the side to make a complete protein.
1C green puy lentils (or ay other type of lentil – cook to packet instructions)
1 ½ C water
300g raw spinach
1Tbsp curry powder
2eggs or 2-3Tbs Tahini
5Tbsp flour
Pinch cayenne pepper
2 Tbsp olive oil
Rinse lentils in cold water. Place in saucepan with the water. Cover and bring to boil. Simmer on low
heat for 10-15 minutes, check after 10 minutes to see if any more water is required. Wash the
spinach. Remove the coarse stems. Shake dry. Finely chop. Mix all ingredients except the oil
together in a bowl.
Hat oil in a frying pan. Place large spoonfuls of the mixture in the oil. Fry patties for 2-3 minutes on
each side until crisp ad golden.
Makes 10-12 patties
Variations:
Swap some of the spinach for grated carrot
Add some grated cheese
Use brown rice or other grain as well as or instead of lentils
Eat with chutney, savoury sauces such as chilli or hp sauce etc
Meat Patties
Mix minced beef or lamb with ½ chopped onion, 2Tbsp chopped parsley, 1 egg or 2tbsp tahini, salt
and pepper. Either mix by hand or place all in a food processor and whiz until mixed together
thoroughly.
Shape in to patties and cook in frying pan or on BBQ
Meat Balls
500g minced meat
100g raw bacon
2 slices stale bread
4 Tbs lemon juice
½ tsp salt
Pinch cayenne pepper
125 – 150ml coconut oil for frying
You can heat a pasta sauce or make a simple tomato sauce to go with the meat balls by sautéing an
onion in a small amount of butter till soft. Then add 4 chopped fresh tomatoes or a tin of tomatoes
and 3-4 Tbs sherry or red wine. Simmer till soft and much of the liquid has evaporated (about 15-
20min)
Make the meat balls the night before, heat the sauce in the morning and take it in a thermos, pour
over meatballs when you want to eat.
If you have a wide mouth thermos you can put the meat balls and maybe some cooked spaghetti in
there as well and have your meal ready to eat straight out of the thermos.
Lentil Rissoles
This is another recipe that can be altered to fit your likes/dislikes. Add things like grated carrot,
cheese, refried beans, other chopped nuts, grains such as bulgur, quinoa, couscous. If it is not
holding together add more egg or tahini (tahini is a great replacement for egg if you are using it as a
binder)
} Combine all ingredients together in food
processor. Roll into small balls and gently fry.
200g lentils
2 small potatoes boiled
1 large onion finely chopped
¼ C sesame seeds
½ C chopped almonds or almond meal
1 C soft wholemeal breadcrumbs (or use gluten-free)
1 egg or 1 tbs tahini
Salt and pepper
Cook lentils until tender, then mix everything together in a bowl.
Form into 12 rissoles (short fat sausage like forms), then either fry in coconut oil or bake in oven
180oC for 25-30 minutes
Wraps
Buy tortillas or other types of flat bread. You need to be careful to check they don’t contain many
preservatives. You can even use a lightly steamed cabbage leaf, nori seaweed, steamed vine leaves
and banana leaves to wrap your favourite fillings in.
Wraps are simple and delicious. They can be made a day in advance and are good with hot or cold
fillings.
Select from the following, using small amounts so as not to overfill them, place fillings in the middle of
the tortilla leaving a couple of cm at the bottom:
Lettuce chopped tomato chopped
Onion chopped (red/white/spring) Onion fried
avocado chopped/mashed/sliced Raw or fried capsicum sliced or diced
Refried beans kidney beans
Cooked meats (beef,(mince) chicken tuna etc) Salsa
Sour cream grated cheese
Close by folding over the bottom first then rolling to enclose the fillings. Wrap in glad wrap to hold
together or carefully place in a container.
Basic Chicken Fajitas
(Enough for about 6-8 wraps)
Slice 2 chicken breasts
Place in a frying pan with a small amount of oil (preferably coconut oil) and brown.
Add the following
¼ tsp ground cumin
¼ tsp ground coriander
¼ tsp chilli powder
5 Tbsp tomato puree
2Tbsp chilli sauce
Cook for two min
In another pan cook 1 sliced onion and 1 sliced capsicum till soft and brown
On a flour tortilla place a few slices of the chicken, some of the onion and carrot mix, a sprinkle of
lettuce, fresh tomatoes and grated cheese. A spoonful of salsa, sour cream and mashed avocado.
Fold and eat.
‘Sandwiches’
Instead of making a classic bread sandwich with two slices of bread try using tortillas, pita bread,
pancakes (crepe style have a reasonably high level of protein in themselves), crackers, oat cakes, or
even sheets of nori seaweed.
Another idea is to use slices of fruit or vegetables instead of bread, for example slice up an apple and
spread one slice with peanut butter and top with another slice of apple
Open ‘vege’ sandwiches
Make a thick slice of your favourite vege such as:
tomato, cucumber, capsicum, cooked potato, cooked eggplant, celery, carrot, raw
zucchini, mushroom
Top with:
Cheese, avocado, sprouts, sliced meat, basil leaves, lettuce, bacon, etc
Eat as is or with a side of chutney or relish. Pop them under the grill to gently heat if you want to.
Bake a couple of potatoes, cut in half and fill with anything you like.
Similar to a vege sandwich are stuffed veges – there are plenty of recipes out there using capsicums,
mushrooms, tomatoes etc with meaty or vegetarian fillings.
Quick complete protein vegetarian vegetable stuffing
Fry an onion in plenty of butter until transparent. Add a clove or two of chopped garlic.
In food processor place ¼ C nuts (hazelnuts or cashews are favourites), 1/8 C sesame seeds,
pumpkin or sunflower seeds, ½ tin of beans (kidney, black, pinto etc) salt and pepper and onion mix.
Process until crumbly.
Stuff your favourite vegetable with the mix. Sprinkle with cheese and paprika if desired. Bake,
barbeque or lightly grill.
Antipasto/ploughmans Selection
Put a selection of the following in a container with a knife and maybe a small fork, if you are including
seafood and are out and about you could put it all in a small chilly bin.
Smoked sliced Salmon, oysters,eel Cooked meats such as sausages, roasts, smoked,
Cured meats such as salami, pastrami, proscuiutto etc
Cheese – cheddar, blue, feta etc Pickled onions, gherkins, other pickled vege
Marinated sundried tomatoes Artichoke hearts
Roasted capsicum Olives
Avocado Pate
Marinated mussels Tuna
Hard boiled eggs Radishes, cherry tomatoes, carrot or celery sticks
Sliced apple or pear Steamed Asparagus spears
Avocado Raw Green beans
You can then put a selection of the following in small containers or try buying a segmented ‘pill’ box
and put a dollop of each in each segment:
Sour cream pesto
Tapanade chutney (low sugar)
Pate hummus
Quark cottage cheese
Mayonnaise Guacamole
Salsa Dips from deli section of supermarket
On the side have a few wholewheat crackers, wholemeal pita bread, rye bread, oat cakes or
wholemeal sourdough bread
Other Protein Options
To make a complete ‘vegetarian’ protein a basic rule of thumb is that you want to incorporate a
bean/lentil, nut and a seed in the meal. I.e. lentils with sesame seeds and cashew nuts, or kidney
beans with sunflower seeds and almonds etc this can make a quick and easy snack or meal by just
combining those three. Some of the recipes already featured such as the lentil rissoles and salads
can easily be made so that they include a bean, a nut and a seed.
A useful trick I have found, is to buy a whole chicken or beef or lamb roast. Cook it say on a Sunday
night and use it as sliced cold meat throughout the week.
Fish is a quick and easy protein source, take a tin of tuna (be careful buying the flavoured tuna as
they often have sugar and hydrolysed vegetable protein in them) and a fork for lunch or pan fry a fillet
of your favourite fish in the morning and take that for lunch with some salad on the side.
Chicken Drumsticks
Dark meat is always a better option for protein types than breast meat because it has a higher protein
content.
These are an easy meal to cook in advance and use for two or three days
15 chicken drumsticks (or any other part of the chicken you like)
1 Tbs oil
4 Tbs tomato sauce
2 Tbs wine or balsamic vinegar
1 Tbs mustard
1 Tbs Worcester sauce or soy sauce
Mix together all ingredients making sure drumsticks are well coated, you can leave to marinate for up
to an hour if you have the time.
Bake 200oC for 30 – 40 minutes, turn frequently and baste with the marinade.
Eat hot or cold
You can use this same marinade with pork, slice up some pork meat into ‘nuggets’ or even use
spare ribs, and bake as with the chicken.
Tuna and Cottage Cheese bake
1 small tin of tuna
200g cottage cheese or quark
Juice of ½ a small lemon
2 eggs
Spring onions or leeks finely chopped
Salt and pepper
Mix all together and spoon into an ovenproof baking dish
Bake 200oC for 20 minutes
The small green puy lentils are a nice option for those who don’t usually like lentils. Simmer in stock,
water or white wine with a couple of clove of garlic sliced into it. Simmer covered adding more liquid if
needed – will take 20-30min.
Serve with mashed potato, noodles, meat, salad etc
Snacks
Other tricky ‘meal’ is snacks – how to not eat those cakes, biscuits, pastries, pies etc.
Here are some ideas that hopefully satisfy that snack craving without being unhealthy.
Popcorn – get some organic kernels, it is so easy to pop yourself then you know there is no GM corn
in it. Heat some coconut oil in a large heavy bottomed saucepan with a lid. When it is hot pour in ¼ -
½ C popcorn kernels put the lid on immediately. Gently shake the saucepan over the heat as you
hear the popping until pops are several second apart. Remove from heat.
Melt some organic butter and pour over the popcorn and sprinkle with grey sea salt.
Nuts and seeds – these are best for you raw and better still if they have been soaked for a few hours
or overnight. But try not to overdo it with nuts, they contain enzyme inhibitors that can disrupt
digestion.
Mix together your favourites from:
Almonds, hazelnuts, brazil nuts(try to only have a few of these a day), cashews, macadamia,
walnuts, pumpkin seeds, sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pine nuts, peanuts
Add some dried fruit such as un-sulphured apricots, raisins, blueberries, cranberries, figs etc (do not overdo the dried fruit it is extremely high in sugar)
If you find the nuts unpalatable raw then try soaking in warm salted water overnight or through the day, drain, then bake in a low oven (less than 100oC) overnight again until completely dry and crisp.
Add soy sauce, herbs and spices that you like before you bake them.
Fruit and Vegetables – this seems obvious but often a sliced apple or carrot sticks are more
appealing than a whole apple or carrot.
Prepare fruits – apple, pear(dip in lemon juice to prevent browning), kiwifruit, oranges, grapefruit,
melon, pineapple, mango, peaches etc into bite sized pieces that you can eat with a toothpick to save mess.
Prepare veges – carrots, cucumber, celery, zucchini, green beans(yummy raw),olives, capsicum,
cauliflower, spring onions, etc into sticks that can be dipped into a dip such as :
Hummus, pumpkin and cumin dip, chutney, relish, cream cheese, cottage
cheese, quark, refried beans, nut butter, store bought dips
There are many organic and healthy dips for sale now, but they are easy to make at home –
refrigerate or freeze any excess.
Pumpkin and cumin dip
Cut a small butternut squash into slices and roast until golden. Meanwhile in a saucepan melt 1 tsp
honey with 2 clove garlic crushed, 2 Tbs lemon juice, 2 tsp cumin, 2 tsp turmeric, 1 tsp sea salt and
1/3C pumpkin seeds. Cook gently for 3-4 minutes.
When pumpkin is tender, mix all together to make a smooth puree with pumpkin seeds adding
texture.
Sundried tomato and feta dip
Soak ½ C sundried tomatoes in boiling water for 20 min. Peel and chop 1 clove of garlic, gently sauté
in oil, add 1 Tbs lemon juice, chopped soaked sundried tomatoes, 1tsp dried basil, sauté a further 2-3
mintures
Leave to cool.
Chop ½ C feta and mix with ½ C cream cheese or quark. Stir in tomato mix.
Sprouted grain/essene rolls – you can buy these ready prepared or make them yourself. They are an acquired taste but extremely good for you.
Soak 1 – 2 C whole wheat grains in water for 24 hours, pour out water and rinse, then place
back in bowl and cover. Rinse every day until grains begin to sprout. Pour off excess water and place
in a food processor. Process to make an uneven paste. (Optional: Add 2tsp cinnamon or mixed spice
and ½ C raisins) Roll into handful sized balls and place on baking paper on a baking sheet flatten
slightly (warning they will be very sticky) cover with another sheet of paper. Bake 120oC for 3-4 hours turning half way through and remove top paper.
Things you need to avoid:
- Anything with a lot of sugar in it – this includes things like bought tomato sauce, smoothies,
and excessive amounts of fruit juice and of course most cakes and biscuits. Foods listed in the
ingredients that end in ‘ose’ are a sugar (fructose, dextrose, glucose etc) often they are listed
separately so it doesn’t appear to have much sugar. Check the sugars in the nutrition box
- Anything with preservatives in it. These are usually numbers in the ingredients list be
especially aware of these in products such as bacon and sausages
- Anything made primarily with white flour- i.e. with a lot of pastry, bread, ‘white’ crackers such
as Huntley and palmers etc. Try to 1. go without a ‘floury’ meal, 2. have something that is
wholemeal flour and 3. Eat organic wholemeal – preferably stone-ground.
- Anything with hydrogenated fats and trans fatty acids – look for them on the ingredients lists
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