I Quit Sugar Once

Food Fads – I’ve Tried A few 

From my early teens I dabbled in many. A regimented life at a single sex boarding school soon made me realize what I put in my gob was the only real control I had. I have painfully boring diaries recording every morsel I consumed. I sampled every commercial kitchen delight and the contents of my tuck-box in the 3^rd form, politely starved myself to 7 and a half stone in the 4th form, then let rip in the 5^th  and 6th. 

If my girlfriends and I weren’t nipping out to the bike sheds for a post meal ciggy, with Anais Anais and tubes of Colgate wedged under the brown folds of our witches britches, we were making fudge on upturned irons and copious rounds of toast. We nicked bananas and dried the leaves amongst our shifts in the drying room, hoping to get a buzz when we scraped them and rolled them into banana-spliffs later on. I learnt a lot of things at boarding school and how to binge eat was one of them.

Lucky for me, I liked food too much to become one of the girls who continued to starve themselves well after their post 40 Hour Famine highs. The girls who’d turn up to the sanitorium for weighing, with rocks in their pockets and envelopes of hair.

Suffice to say, from 13 to 27 my body was a yoyo of the stretch mark inducing kind. 

During the school holidays my sister and I would tackle the diet-du-jour from the glossy pages of, bibles-of-promise Cosmopolitan and Cleo. We tried the Israeli Army Diet – two days of cheddar cheese, two days of apples and two days of grilled chicken.  I secretly supplemented my niggling hunger with chunks of fudge. The Grapefruit Diet was less regimented; you just had to eat one tooth enamel corroding orb of citrus before each meal. 

While we were losing a couple of pounds apiece and slowing our metabolisms down to that of a sluggish snail, we anointed ourselves in a Cosmo concoction of – cooking oil, malt vinegar and lemon juice, donned our homemade string bikinis and baked our better bodies brown. 

It didn’t stop there, I gave up bacon, even potatoes – they were starch and made you fat. A third of my dinner plate remained empty, as I tucked into mutton chops thick with crunchy yellow fat and boiled silverbeet, all washed with a glass and a half of full cream milk.

Post school, weekends of late night swooning at Graham Brazier and his leather clad pelvis at the Gluepot, was followed by group munchies. We stuffed ourselves to overflowing with packets of Cheezels, toffee pops and milky bar washed down with lime thick shakes. To make amends, I’d spend the next five days eating All Bran, Slimmers Yoghurt and the first ever trim milk.

Food is your friend I always tell my teenage daughters. But it wasn’t mine until I got to about 27 and stopped dieting for good. 

Nowadays quitting sugar is de rigueur. “I Quit sugar for Life: 148 Recipes & Meal Plans for Families and Solos”, by Sarah Wilson, is number 2 on the SST top ten food and drink books. Wilson has a point, white sugar is 50: glucose, and 50: fructose the purported health threatening baddy. 

I have a VERY sweet tooth so I haven’t been convinced that anything without good old refined white would taste of anything. Thanks to a little education over a steaming bowl of porridge made with oats, raisins a hint of cinnamon and almond milk, with my artist friend Marika I stand corrected.

If I can have my chocolate and eat it too I’m willing to try.  ****

Off home I trotted with Dr Libby’s Raw Chocolate Crackle recipe. 

Two days later I found cacao powder and cacao nibs staring at me like eager puppies as I perused the supermarket aisles. Ceres Organic - $13 a pop. 

The crunch in Raw Chocolate Crackle comes from dehydrated bulghur wheat groats (just spread out on a tray, bake on low for 75 mins and they'll be dry and crispy). For sweetness some nutritionists claim maple syrup is the best sugar substitute. I had none on hand so I used honey. To make RCC you'll need:

1 cup dehydrated bulghur wheat 
3/4 cup cacao powder
1 cup dessicated coconut
1 1/2 cup currants
3/4 cup coconut oil
3 Tsp Manuka honey (any honey will do)

Mix together all the dry ingredients. Gently melt coconut oil and honey over low heat, pour over buckwheat etc and mix in. Press into a 31cm/12inch lined baking tin and freeze to set.

Try not to pick - but you will, just like its rice bubble, cremelta and cocoa forebear the healthy crackle was sweet and chocolatety and gone in 24 hours, even without the fudge topping!

To make the topping you'll need:

8 Fresh Medjool dates
1/2 cup almond meal
1/4 cup coconut oil
6 tablespoons cacao powder

Chop dates and almond meal in a food processor, move to bowl. Melt coconut oil, then cool. Add cacao powder to date mixture, then coconut oil. Roll up your sleeves and wash your hands then combine with your fingers. Finally, press evenly over crackle return to freezer. Chop into tasty morsels when set. Eat a little at a time if you can. It's better for you. (Dr Libby says, 'Buckwheat consumption has been linked to lowered levels of chlolesterol...is rich in magnesium and antioxidants').

Next we made, Better For you Afghans (Afghans are a chocolate biscuit in NZ, not very pc I know but we still bake em). This recipe used - raw sugar, brown rice flour and cacao nibs (warning do not eat nibs alone in a sneaky handful they taste like freeze dried dirt), as well as the customary cornflakes. The icing/frosting was made with 62% dark choc and coconut oil. The results – very moreish, the more icing the better.

With all the CACAO baking happily consumed in the name of research my sweet tooth tingled. What’s a girl to do but add her own recipe to the mix. 

Sunday Night Pud, SNP – one bowl of vanilla ice cream, drizzle over equal parts cacao nibs and cacao powder. Par excellence. For two nights in a row.

Suffice to say I’m BAD. I’m applaud those who really can give away white sugar and feel better for it. Moreover, I have been transformed and now that my scullery runneth over with expensive raw chocolate ingredients - I will bake better. 

I WILL eat less sugar and use coconut oil instead of butter. And like Goldilocks I will eat porridge every morning for breakfast and I don’t need to explain why that’s good for me. 

**** If you can't think what to bake next, hop on over to #tastytuesdays and try this  Greek Almond Cake In Spiced Syrup  @ honestmum.com
Warning: it contains sugar!

The Power of Bieb

For me, it was a pop concert. For my daughter 13 and her bestie, it was the pinnacle of a three year idolization crusade. A three day build-up of hotel stake outs and minute by minute checks of social medias. A three hour wait at the doors of the venue. Until the best three hours of their lives. 

It was bad boy pop star tagger from Ontario, Canada himself. Justin Bieber. In the flesh.

The minute he mooched onto the stage, I was fascinated. His 8,000 girl-women fans, plain star struck. There he was, cool as a rare white tiger in his swaggy bleached leathers, gold shadzes and quiffed hair. 

He strolled the length of the narrow stage, all of eight stay-in-your-seats-at-all-time seats away. King Justin was in da house. Giving us the STARE. Slowly. Deliberately. From side to side. His hands clutched together over his crotch in an old man’s pose.

His was a slow strip tease.

I tried not to giggle at this swaggering man child. He ain’t quite Elvis. Yet. He’s 19. His real fans just cried into each other’s Impulsed armpits and tried not to faint. 

‘Justin Bieber,’ he drooled. Dropping the ‘I’m’ like Gaga’s Lady. ‘Just-in Bie-ber.’

When he finally broke into song his fandom fell in love all over again. Swooning. Screaming. Weeping. Holding up their I-phones. Mapping memories of losing their concertinity with Justin. Bieber.

‘He’s so HOT,’ my daughter yelled to newly befriended Beliebers. 

‘YEAH,’ they cried back. 

Our girls had climbed a row ahead, leaving us mums to our middle-aged merlot-ed view of things. I shuffled conservatively trying not to look like I was enjoying myself too much. Because I was. 

I took photos off Juzzer. For my daughter. A record of the night, to make up for the $500 VIP pass - guaranteed one-on-one photo opportunity with The Bieb, that her father and I had decided she didn’t need. 

Between songs, he spoke to the audience like old friends in his soft Canadian drawl. He sounded coldy. I hoped his vocals would hold out. Being at the end of a year long World Tour and all. 

First off - his gold shadze. The girl-crowd went girlier. His was a protracted undressing.

 

I was fixed on his mouth at the end of the second song. His lips were sealed, yet vocals came out. A pre-recorded mix? Lip synching? 

‘I’m going to play an acoustic number now,’ he said. ‘But I just need to warm up my vocals.’ He wasn’t wrong. So he did. Tra la la sort of. He picked up his guitar and started over. I was convinced. From then on. 

‘Let me get a little more comfortable here,’ he teased, in well-rehearsed come on before song number three.

Off went his jacket. He flexed his lean tattooed biceps. I-phones pinged. And so it went.

An overexcited group behind sang every word to every song in a distorted falsetto. Who was I to spoil their fun and tell them to shut it.

Two teenage down syndrome girls dressed in lilac sun dresses - Justin’s colour. Tossed their long blond manes to the beat. Happiness filled. Earlier, a Limosine delivered 10 Cure Kids children (one of Justin’s Charities), for the night of their lives.

That’s what I’ve always enjoyed about these teenage concerts. For one night, all these tender youth have no care. Plump, plain, pretty, bright or challenged – no matter. For one night there were 8,000 Less Lonely Girls in that arena. All getting it on with Justin Beiber. And his music.

Pant pant. Swoon swoon went the crowd. Theirs was a hormonal heaven. 

He played guitar. Drums. Danced crazy energetic hip hop with his huge ensemble. Changed his hi-tops. Leathers. And singlets.

Then pam off came another one.

Oooh cheered the crowd. Deafening. But not bawdy. It was Walt Disney coming of age. And as far as getting it off in public goes, this pop-star-pole dance was way more watchable than Miley Cyrus twerking her bits on the telly.

I adjusted my lens. Stuck a finger in one ear. And captured the Calvin show. He’d definitely give Marky Mark a run for his money. Soon his pants dropped to a truly ridiculous right on Jerry sort of low riding level. Occasionally he hitched them with a mini ineffectual groin grab. Where was his mother?

Perhaps he was channeling his feminine side. Going-out with generations of women rubbing their pantyhose together in just above the knee pencil skirts. It didn’t look comfy. Waddling along. 

He reached out for a hand touch and damn near lost those trou.

But honestly the guy could have worn a bee keepers outfit (minus the headgear) and they would have still Beliebed.

‘Have you been with me from the start?’ Justin asked the crowd during his two song encore. His first hint of vulnerability.

The crowd answered in cheers. Naturally.

My daughter definitely has. Since the sweet age of ten. Her room became a progressive four walled postered shrine to him. She begged for his every publication, cd, dvd and pongy perfume. They’re close. He tweets to her. Along with 47,339,413 other followers…

And then he played his final song. Sweaty girls softly cried. And hugged.

He exited the show in slow motion. Echo-ing his name. Hitching his pants. ‘Just-in Bie- ber. Jus-tin Bie-ber,’ as the stage floor gobbled him up.

Just in case we’d forgotten. Only three long lonely years and he’ll be back…

On Being Famous

Not long after I moved to Queenstown I reinvented my corporate self into a sunflower grower. I didn’t want to work for an adventure tourism business; the pay just didn’t rate after my marketing manager salary + bonus and company car. I diversified. I tried something I would never have done while living in the big smoke. I became a flower grower. At the time sunflowers had morphed into a cuddly kitten equivalent. They were everywhere: on cards, knickers, T-shirts, posters. What the world needed was freshly picked sunflowers to adorn their kitchens; to give to their loved ones on Valentine’s Day. And I was going to be the quality purveyor.

I found some other ‘growers’. They were cagey to say the least. But a researcher near Massey gave me a few tips. I sourced my seed and ploughed the land. Put in a rabbit proof fence in a small arid patch in the Gibbston valley and off I sowed. 

Talk about beginners luck. 12 weeks later (after tapping into a dam over the boundary for irrigation purposes) I was selling my blooms to Turners and Growers for $5.00 a head. I made mistakes and I learnt quickly. I inadvertently became a florist because the trendy cafes who bought my blooms struggled to arrange their heavy heads. As the craze caught on, I kept abreast of new hybrids thanks to my US based sister.

I also became news. My lovely friend Meaghan was a reporter at the Southland Times. I made the front cover one season. ‘World famous in Southland,’ I joked. But I enjoyed it all the while. I worked hard. My back often ached and my fingernails were always black. I thanked my lucky seedlings I hadn’t been born the daughter of a market gardener. Don’t use your back like a crane I reminded myself each time I hoisted heavy rubbish bin sized buckets of heady yellow blooms into my Landrover. My biceps bulged.

Queenstown had a population of 8,000, twenty years ago when I arrived as a virtual newlywed. I ran my deliveries round town in my jean shorts, black singlet and work boots. Dust and sweat no doubt on my tanned shoulders.

Soon after my husband and I dabbled in real estate in the seaside town of Riverton. Dubbed the Riviera of the South by hardy Invercargillites, who didn’t know better. We bought a crib with a mate and put in on our credit card. Then lashed out for an old hotel for not much more than a Jap import. I’m mentioning this, not because I can offer you any advice as a property developer, but because we hit the news again. 

Crikey I even turned up in close-up black and white when I won the best dressed woman at the Riverton Easter Races. After a blue gin with the club secretary post win, I excused myself to return to my friends (who we could now accommodate in our pub turned guesthouse), via the ladies. I soon found myself cowering in a cubicle barely breathing. Two fellow contestants were talking about me. 

‘Did you see that woman who won? 

‘Yeah.’

‘Gorrr, thet’s not fasch-shun.’

Admittedly I had hung my number over a cigarette burn on my Streetlife swing coat, as I jigged like a bored pre-race filly with the other contestants. And hoped like hell the judges wouldn’t notice the twist ties I hurriedly put around my plaits in our sunny estuary facing kitchen earlier.  Despite having indicated that I like having my name in print I did not want to be standing around being judged by a man in a beige mac. I wanted to be back with my friends in the grandstand making $2 bets on horses called, Lady Jayne and Prince Scott A lot. With winning came protocol, cash and seed pearl jewellery. I suspect I was the first best dressed lady to canter around the birdcage on an imaginary horse while waving at my support crew.

However winning comes with a certain emptiness, when you haven’t worked for it. I had bought a nice hat for the races. But those ladies who’d laboured over their matching caramel toned suits and bonnets with chiffon bows deserved to win, not me.

I started thinking about this winning stage in my life, reading the Sunday paper yesterday. I wondered if I’ve got time left to do SOMETHING. Something that gets noticed? 

Ten months and 40 blog posts in, is possibly a bit premature to expect a mention as a blogger-of-note. Although I’m heartened every time I see a bio beneath a mag story that mentions the writer is a blogger.

 

I’m not talking about getting my photo in the paper again (Meaghan has long since moved on). And I’ve too much crag and sag for that. 

But I would like to write something good before dementia sets in. Not only for  myself; I’d liked to achieve something in writery form that gives my children the incentive to aim high. Especially if they choose a creative life. I want them to pick away at their dreams, hold them close and realize that making-it-without-faking-it is far more satisfying.

Anyway I best shut up and get on with it. And btw to all columnists, comment writing bloggers and thought provoking journalists - I think you’re marvellous, so never stop. You never know, one day a Will I Am of the blogosphere may appear and sponsor us all so we never die out. 

Or feel the need to be famous.

(photo by Meaghan Miller, 1995)

The Biebs & Me

In keeping with my teenage theme. I have an announcement to make. It’s big…

I am accompanying my newly thirteen year old daughter to a Justin Beiber concert. We’re in the 9^th row. Centre stage, pretty much. I am reborn.

I have in fact secretly been a fan of The Bieb probably for almost as long as my daughter. He’s a good musician. He’s cute. I blubbed watching his movie for heaven’s sake. And that song he did with Nicki Minaj sealed the deal. JUSTIN.

Plus the little guy’s human. His recent outbursts of bad behavior; punching paparazzi and missing concerts dates attests to that. Living in the limelight from a young age is not all that it’s cracked up to be. Ah Juzzer?

But loving JBiebz can be hard. Timely and expensive. Just ask my daughter. There is not an inch of wall in her bedroom not covered by this lad from Strafford, Ontario, Canada. The laddy who just got his Audi leopard dipped (see above).

I loved the Bay City Rollers at thirteen, had a picture of them in all their tartan knicker-bocker glory above my bed. But not that much. I don’t think I would have thought it a matter of life or BC Rollers had they travelled to the far shores of Aotearoa in 1977 offering to perform live for me.

Nevertheless JB, we’ll be there in our Belieber T-shirts, with our placards saying I love you, our cellphones waving and earplugs at the ready. Hopefully we’ll actually hear you sing Girlfriend as 12,000 girls swoon shrilling ‘pick me’ while fainting about us.

The heart warming part for me is that during this age and stage when us parents turn into these ugly aliens our loving children don’t want to be seen in public with, the daughter in question has re-friended me on facebook. Mummy sigh.

At first I thought it was a hoax, a trick, a slight of hand to lift me up then squash me flat. Much like the comments I receive daily. “Mum you can’t be seriously going to wear those shoes with those pants I’m sorry. NO. WRONG.”

I know Chuck Taylors creeping into the wardrobes of so many middle-aged women is wrong. And tragic. But they’re comfy. And reasonably priced if you fit into children’s sizes like I do.

Anyway, I stooped to question the genuineness of the lovely friendly friend request. And sweet daughter assured me it was REAL and necessary so we could experience pre-concert frenzy together. Sharing statuses, promos and Bieb merchandise offers etc.

Now all I need to do is book our flights and buy an emergency pack of Rescue Remedy. If you’ve read this music review you’ll now this is not my first teenage concert. I'm an old hand, so to speak.

Unfortunately the only hiccup in my continued re-birthing is that I’m now not allowed to attend, The One Direction concert in October. Okay, I understand when you're 15 you need to break out.

JUSTIN!