new favourite food blog

i'm so excited! the link to this blog was just passed on to me by my friend steph - and i just HAD to share it. i love love love love LOVE this blog!
how amazing is the photography?
it also boasts some fabulous recipes (including raw brownies, healthy mousse, wicked salads) and ideas using very very healthy ingredients - and not a drop of sugar! even if i'm not courageous enough to try any of the mouthwatering recipes (the author is a chef!) i'm sure to learn a thing or two just by reading along.

have i always been so healthy?

most certainly not.

since flying the nest of the parental home some five years ago, food eating in my life and in our household has been a bit of journey you could say. when first burdened with the responsibility of cooking for myself it was mostly about taste and not really about nutrition. sure, i ate salad and fruit and all the good stuff, but also a tonne of bad stuff and didn't really think much more about it all. the trend continued into married life at which point the portion size increased (eek! perhaps to match the enormous appetite of my husband) and the extreme busy-ness of life took over the need to eat that heathily. convenient and yummy food ruled!

then a baby came along and my intake was governed entirely by the coming and going of morning sickness during pregnancy and all the associated do's and don'ts. this was followed by my breastfeeding 'diet' which involved eating everything and anything in sight (i was constantly famished!). luckily for me, none of this resulted in any major weight gain or loss and for that i'm very thankful for.

since little eamon has been eating food like a big boy (and since we, as parents, have tried to give him the best possible start in life by providing him with healthy nutritious food as often as possible) our food eating habits have changed once again. we started eating 'baby-friendly' foods as eamon began eating family foods so that we could all sit down and eat the same thing rather than doing separate dinners. this means less salt, less sugar, less gluten (just trying to be healthy!), less processed food and less preservatives. probably the healthiest we had ever been at that point.

and THEN. last weekend i went to a seminar where naturopath Leicester and Pauline Jones spoke on the benefits of healthy lifestyle with a christian foundation. it was nothing short of amazing and i learnt so much. it made me want to change so much about the food we buy and eat, and inspired us to get stuck into the veggie garden again in a really big way. it is a huge challenge because so much of the food that is healthy is pretty foreign to me... like, i'd never heard of chia seeds before, but apparently they are extremely good for you. and coconut oil, i never knew you could just eat it by the spoonful, to me its a moisturiser for your skin! its a bit of a learning curve, trying to figure out how to prepare and cook with these wonderful new foods - so we have decided just to take it one step at a time. it was so much to take in on one day and i still have so many questions about this and that. but also so excited to try some new things.

so i'm very looking forward to reading more of what this blog has to offer. yum!

pictures from MyNewRoots blog