Have yourself a merry Paleo Christmas! Where our Paleo path started and how we munched our way through our favourite Christmas lunch EVER!

No fibs or spin, promise!

My reasons for embarking on a Paleo diet were not primarily concerned with weight loss and I hadn’t necessarily digested the masses of either scientific or anecdotal debate that’s out there. Still haven’t, other than a couple of cookbooks and articles. Instead, as a newlywed, whilst nearing the end of our honeymoon last August, my husband, living and managing Crohns Disease floated this as an idea that could signal the end for his need to take medication every day. He’s in his 20’s so this seemed an incredible  opportunity-of course I’ll support you, what do I have do…?

Step forward the Paleo diet. His suggestion that we follow this regime, as close to a cavemen’s dietary habits as we could manage filled me with horror to begin with. It’s incredibly rigid with banned foods outnumbering permitted at an alarming ratio that’s so heavily stacked against the possibility of an exciting meal, that I thought we’d be through with this by September. 

You knew there was a ‘however’ on the way! A stone lighter, no bloated feeling after dinner, an end to calorie counting and a week after a gastronomically wonderful Christmas, it’s Paleo that will see us into the new year and beyond.

Here’s a rundown of what we scoffed on Christmas Day…after bacon and eggs for breakfast that is! 

Paleo Christmas Lunch:

• The ubiquitous turkey-roasted with garlic, butter and herbs
• Sweet potato mash
• Cumin and honey roasted carrots
• Savoy cabbage with garlic, bacon and whipping cream
• Gluten free pigs in blankets
• Chestnut, gluten free sausage, apricot, onion and sage stuffing
• Roasted onions 

Delicious. Buttery, indulgent, tasty, incredibly moreish and Paleo-ready! 

But what about pudding?

• Apple crumble and whipping cream followed by dark chocolate and coffee?

Absolutely-again, the Paleo way. Mmmmm-I’m back there, I’ll be honest! 

We didn’t gain any seasonal flab, something we’re pretty accustomed to if experience teaches us anything, and have avoided the dreaded sluggish, post-Christmas calorie-induced lethargy that in previous years has pretty much dominated the interim between Christmas and New Year. Fantastic for us. Is this a sickeningly pious attempt to showboat our diet as right? A recommendation of how you ought to be eating? A guide to nutrition by a gastronomical guru? No way, none of the above. I’m not perfect, I sometimes cheat (DO NOT tell my husband-he possesses the most steely resolve and willpower I’ve ever witnessed) and I absolutely do NOT want to be a pariah around the dining table, picking and choosing and fussily food combining. I’ve  tried every diet in the book, and been chewed up and spat out of the other side by pretty much all. For that reason, the fact that this lifestyle seems to suit me/us and that Christmas, at least within our own bellies, was a success, I thought it was worth a share! 

Thanks for reading,

Peace, love and heartsandwaggs.x

Make a list to make you happy…do it. Now!

Followed all of the tricky directions first time on the drive home today? Tick! Replied to all of messages and made those calls? Tick! Purchased groceries for this evening’s meal? Tick! Collected parcel? Tick! Am semi-smug, in control and about to steal the time back by watching a bit of nonsense on the telly? Tick!

What a difference a week makes. The above is not groundbreaking, revolutionary, accomplished or remotely exciting. Millions of folk, driving millions of cars, texting on millions of phones whilst shopping in millions of supermarkets, may well have spent their Sunday in a similar fashion-and that’s just fine. But for me, the happy thought gurgling within this quagmire of banality? With just a week away from the grind, I’ve abandoned THE LIST. 

So, arrived home from my holiday just this evening.  Mr. Heartsandwaggs skilfully and speedily unloading the luggage and binning the junk mail when I happened to catch sight of the list that I’d created before we set off. A list of epic proportions it would now seem, a list destined for failure, the list to end all lists, a list that served only to admonish and chastise. 

The offending list, in situ. I went ahead and ticked it all off anyway. Why? Because those jobs that I didn’t get around to doing, simply did not matter. No one died, life went on, all is well. Oh, and I can’t stand to see a half completed list. My bad.

Wash clothes, wrap presents, email cottage people, dig out tickets…just four of the jobs on the offending list…bleugh. As if I needed reminding, that before the clothes go into the suitcase, they need to go into the washing machine. Likewise, I’m pretty sure wrapping the presents was a cert; in my 25 years of gift giving, I’ve never forgotten to wrap them before dishing them out. If I hadn’t bothered with the email or the tickets, a chunk of my holiday would have been noticeably missing. So why bother with the list? Why am I that person who seemingly needs to jot down the particulars of her life, into neat rows on a piece of paper, spending 10 precious minutes documenting line after line of ‘to-do’, valuable minutes that could have been better utilised completing my expenses (see item 3), surely? What is it about the list that keeps me coming back for more?

For starters, if I don’t make a list, I forget things and catastrophe follows. I have no hard evidence of this, but I can certainly guess at the perils that lie ahead for my week sans the list. I shudder at the thought. Not just that but, well, I am the very same person who complains of having simply no time beyond work so therefore, I have to write lists to make sure I get everything done. Right?  That alongside the fact that working through lists gives you that unbeatable feeling of satisfaction, completion, achievement and triumph. Right…really? This truly is the best I can come up with. And so, on this week of reflection, regrouping and come Wednesday night and New Years revelling, a whole load of resolution, my relationship with the list is set to change. No longer will it take the dominant lead, chiding and lambasting me into action. Never again will so few words on such a non-descript piece of paper have the power to plunge me head first into feelings of guilt and inadequacy. From now on, the list shall be scrawled, scratch that, calligraphed with desires, opportunities, dreams and ambitions. Unequivocally and incontestably upbeat is my list; negativity, drudge and tedium need not apply. A chipper list of ways my days will be spent working on the things I love. Let’s try it for size…

Tomorrow:

1. Bake 
2. Read a chapter of my book
3. Ring my dad
4. Catch up on EastEnders 
5. Learn 5 new words in Italian for holiday I dream of going on next summer 

It’s completely indulgent, in total it’ll take probably 2 hours from the 24 I’ve got to play with, and more than anything, each of these in my incredibly unimportant opinion, is worthy of going on a list. The washing, the ironing, clearing the snow from the path, descaling the kettle, taking out the bin…all of this will get done. But without the newly improved list, would the rest? Knowing myself as well as I do, chances are minimal to none.

And if that doesn’t go to plan, I’ll write one that looks like this:

1. Do something that makes you happy.

So, following the long drive home, it’s the end of my holiday. But you know what, with a list like that, I can’t wait for tomorrow! Long live the (new) list! 

Peace, love and heartsandwaggs.x

Share and Compare Christmasses: in search of the perfect Christmas…let Facebook show you the way…

Definitely not the scene beneath my own tree…who receives this much stuff at Christmas…#weareanationthatarespoiled? 

As my newsfeed floods with the annual deluge of extravagance, greed and festive one-up-man-ship, it’s only Boxing Day night and already I’m desperate to close the door on others’ Christmas exploits. I need to hide away from the minute by minute rundown of exactly how mountainous the piles of toys are now that “he’s been” and be free to erase from my memory every cringe that is summoned by the steady stream of uninspired marriage proposals that happen on Christmas Day each year. And more imploringly, I urge my friends to do the same. My message is simple: keep your Christmas to yourself, and love what you have. Let me elaborate…

I’ve dwelt on this for a few years now and whilst I am certain cries of, “Bah, humbug!” along with a healthy dose of criticism will be flung my way, my simple concern that our Christmas time is now defined by what we see, read and imagine to be the right way of celebrating, is now a gnawing worry that’s forced me to reconsider all I understood as tradition.

It would, quite frankly, be hypocrisy to claim that it’s a social media-born issue, that FB reigns as the root of all evil and that users are preposterous for doing what they do best, sharing the minutiae of their lives. Let’s get something straight, at times, I adore the beauty of what we behold at our fingertips and some of the social media shaped nuggets that swirl around cyber-space truly can inspire, educate, humour, heal, motivate…the list goes on. But it’s when I see the wall-to-wall snapshots of sitting rooms crammed to the ceiling with piles and piles of gifts, whole living spaces rearranged to accommodate ’round 1′ of the prize-giving (round 2 are stored at Granny’s), and parcels stacked perilously high showcasing exactly how much you must love your kids/boyfriend/wife/dog, that my mind gets to thinking, who is this really for? And when did we succumb to this cyber-sparring with our virtual community-basically a big fat round of, “my Christmas is bigger and better than your Christmas.”? 

And this is just the beginning. I’ve seen no less than 84 variations on the festive table laying, every shade of the colour wheel experimented with on someone’s dining table, somewhere. Mulled wine and a mince pie? Yep, you and a hundred or so other statuses told me that that was your sugar hit of choice. Throw a few thousand pictures of, quite frankly, unremarkable looking turkey dinners into the mix and you’re starting to get the picture here. It’s a frustrating and upsetting glimpse at Christmasses through a screen, a camera lens, a hashtag, a status. Lacking in originality, personality and sincerity, the magic is waning as our memories merge, posted as pictures and ill-planned musings, into the homogenous stew of what we think we should be doing to have the best Christmas and what seems to be the most urgent, to ensure we compare favourably with those on the next laptop.

To everyone out there who enjoyed a stack of gifts, gained a fiancé and troughed your way through a gut-busting Christmas lunch, of course, I wish you the seasons finest. This is anything but a self-righteous, sanctimonious or priggish guide to how you should be spending your Christmas. My only wish for next year, is that more of us concentrate on what’s going on within our own four walls, live it as it happens, not as it’s captured on screen, and trust that happiness is born out of those precious hours spent with the precious few in whose company you choose to spend Christmas-the uniqueness and privacy of which is the greatest and most perfect gift of all.

Peace, love, heartsandwaggs.x