Blueberry and Coconut Muffins

On By Pod talesIn Food StoriesLeave a comment

muffin final

I came up with this muffin recipe when I was raiding my pantry and couldn’t find enough plain flour and then minutes later,  found I’d run out of butter as well.  Meanwhile, I had just been to the supermarket!  This is a continual issue for me, I really need to write proper shopping lists, although that isn’t foolproof either.  I often leave them on the kitchen bench, I digress!  Anyway, all was not lost as these muffins are what eventuated and they are super delicious and  quick.  The addition of the coconut oil makes them especially morish.  Great things can happen when your pantry is empty and you have the memory of a sieve!

Ingredients: Makes 12 

170 g plain flour

30 g unsweetened shredded coconut

1/2 teaspoon bicarb soda

2 teaspoons baking powder

80 g sugar

80 g extra virgin coconut oil

100 ml plain unsweetened yoghurt

100ml lite milk

1 large egg

1 teaspoon vanilla paste or extract

200g blueberries ( I used frozen)

 

Method:

Preheat oven to 200 C and line a 12 hole muffin pan with paper cases.

Grab two medium mixing bowls.  Sift your plain flour, bicarb soda and baking powder into one of the bowls.  Add in the shredded coconut and stir through.

In your second bowl, add the sugar, egg, vanilla, softened coconut oil, yoghurt, milk and whisk with a fork until combined.  You might have to mash up the coconut oil a little to combine it thoroughly.

Pour the wet ingredients into the dry and stir to combine. Try not to over stir as it can make the muffins more rubbery.  If it is a little dry you can add a few more drops of milk.  Fold in the blueberries and then spoon your mixture into the muffin cases.  Pop into your preheated oven and bake for 20min.

Enjoy still warm from the oven with a hot cup of tea or coffee x

 

 

 

 

 

Bramboračka with a twist

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IMG_8504This comforting bowl of goodness is a remake of one of my favourite Czech soup recipes, Bramboračka or Potato Soup.  If you ever go to Prague you’ll see it on most pub menus, alongside roast pork knuckle and goulash.

The traditional recipe is not pureed  (you guessed it, that’s the twist!) ) but certain fussy eaters in our pod won’t eat mushrooms so I puree it and it gets eaten like magic.

There are lots of versions, some with celery and parsnip and others use dry mushrooms, you could even try it with porcini if you felt like something really spesh.  I keep the mushroom to a minimum as I want it to be a sleuth ingredient (for the fussies) but if I was making it just for myself, I’d put a lot more in, I’d probably crank up the garlic too.

On the topic of garlic, Czech’s often like to eat this with topinky, which is fried rye bread rubbed with a raw garlic clove.  Perhaps not so great for a date night but very delicious!

 

Ingredients:   serves four

1 tablespoon olive oil and a small knob of butter

1 small onion diced

2 cloves of garlic chopped

2 carrots

5 medium mushrooms peeled

4 medium potatoes

3 cups chicken stock/bone broth or vegetable stock

1 tablespoon thick cream

2 sprigs parsley

salt and pepper

Tweeks: you could add a stalk of celery and parsnip.  Traditionally this soup is seasoned with marjoram which adds a lovely depth of flavour.

Method: 

Put a medium sized saucepan on medium heat and fry the onion and garlic in the oil and butter.  Roughly chop all the vegetables.  When the onion is translucent, add the garlic and all the vegetables.  Turn the heat down to low, put the lid on your pot and allow the vegetables to sweat for about 10 minutes, this helps develop the flavour and gives you a rich tasting soup.  If you don’t have time, you can skip this part and go straight in with the stock.

After you have let your veggies sweat it out,  add your stock and parsley sprigs.  Bring it up to the boil and then turn it down to a low simmer.  Let it simmer for about 40 mins, or until the carrots are really soft.   Take your pot off the heat, fish out the parsley and discard.   Take out half a cup of the liquid and keep aside.  Add the cream and then blitz with a hand blender.  Taste and check the seasoning, add some of the liquid you’ve taken out if you want to thin out the consistency a little.  Serve with bread or topinky, Enjoy!

 

 

 

 

 

A reflection on the reality of travelling with young kids

On By Pod talesIn Podtales1 Comment

milly beach

A casual google of ‘travelling with kids’ brings up a gazillion articles detailing the tips and tricks on how to do holidays with young kids ‘well’.  I’ll be honest from the get go, this is not one of those articles. 

I’ve tried many a tip from expert family jet setters and the results are always a very mixed bag.  Pack lightly, pack everything you’ll need, pack wisely, take it slow, but not too slow, involve the kids in packing (surely they aren’t talking about toddlers?!) pack new toys that the kids haven’t seen before  (there goes your holiday budget), pack a slim line car seat, a carrier, a light portacot, presents for your fellow passengers in case your baby has a vom or a pee in their direction or decides to scream the whole way to the destination.  The prep alone could be enough to have you rethinking the whole getaway.

Sure, planning is very important, especially when you do anything outside your own four walls with kids, especially the little kind.  It is prudent to do everything you can to provide damage control when on a family holiday and you really don’t want to be carting an eleven kilo portacot up the cobble stone pathways of Europe when your accomodation can provide you with one (if only we had rung ahead).   However, take heart if you didn’t spend days packing tiny new toys into tiny bags and making mini tubs of play dough for the journey because, the thing is, the holiday gods really don’t care about your planning anyway.  They care about keeping you on your toes and sometimes as far away from that comfy pool chair and aperol spritz as possible.  Maybe you get stuck with a case of day care gastro that descends as soon as you arrive at your destination or perhaps there are constant tropical downpours and you are left to entertain all your tribe in a small cabin with nothing but the hotel notepads and pens because the TV reception and internet are on the blink and the kids are over their two toys and two books (you insisted on light packing).  Or maybe you simply flip open your toddler’s water bottle and the pressurised plane cabin turns the water into a jet stream so powerful it showers the couple in the seat in front of you.  You assure them quickly it is just water and realise packing presents for fellow passengers might not have been such a crazy idea. 

For those of us lucky enough to travel with our family it does have its universal challenges. The safety net of your normal home routine has gone, there are no more school rules, the flood gates open and suddenly your eight year old boy is making fart sounds with his hands all the way to your destination.  The siblings, five and one not to be outdone, are joining in with their own percussive ostinatos.  Also, let’s face it, as parents we want a break from making and enforcing rules.  Surely we can all just relax, right?  Not quite, often a child’s idea of relaxing on a destination holiday is trying to eat their weight in gelato, going to the pool, then beach, then pool, climbing beach rocks, throwing rocks, basically moving at full speed, all day, until they crash at bedtime. 

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In research professor Brené Brown’s new Netflix special The Call to Courage, ( a great tag line for a holiday with young children, I feel).  Brené and her husband speak about making rules for her kids to follow on the family getaway or they would be ‘feral’ by the end of the two weeks.  I’m not sure how the holiday rules go as she ends up having a fight with her husband on a swimming expedition and we are left hanging.  There is nothing like the chaos of a family holiday and the close quarters to bring out the full range of human emotion.  On the other hand, sometimes emotions are not running high, instead they are dulled from the sheer exhaustion of keeping up with the joyous energy of the children.  Some trips, it’s not until you get home and have a quiet moment to look through all the snap shots that you can fully appreciate how very special the time together was.  It seems to me that one of the most important things about travelling with your tribe is mindset and the willingness to dive into the chaos.  To prepare but prepare for the unexpected.

Travelling after all is about new experiences, some will be some of your best and some a little more uncomfortable, like the late onset air sickness that is exploding from your three year old and all over the customs counter ( I hadn’t planned for that one).  You are together making memories and that is what really matters.  Often it’s the smallest things that the children remember and love most, like the paddle pop to break up the long car journey or just the very fact that you are all together as a family.  Even if all your carefully planned tips and tricks fail to provide holiday zen, hold onto the joyful moments.  Finally, at the end of the day, it’s the mishaps that make for some of the best family stories in years to come.

Summer reading and why The Barefoot Investor feels the jobs we have as teens, are important

On By Pod talesIn Podtales3 Comments

As a new year begins I always have a sudden urge to improve what I am reading.  The reading of ACTUAL books becomes my mission.  No more flicking through articles on my phone at break neck speed, trying to take in some new findings on gut health or how the Dutch have the happiest kids in the world.  It is inevitable that, mid article, one of my three children will steal my reading time in favour of some kind of hunger/toileting/first aid need, and I have to carry on raising them none the wiser as to why the Dutch’s offspring are so chipper.

summer readin

Every summer holidays I saunter into a book store with a new found confidence that I can suddenly devour a stack of novels, without any problem, even though my track record for such a thing is completely dismal.  It’s a similar scenario to your night self, you know the one, that cheeky counterpart to day self.  The one that stays up late to binge watch Netflix and devour a copious amount of snacks, leaving poor day self to scull Mylanta shots and coffee to get through their day.  Every year, my summer holiday self, wants ALL the books.  This year, on my annual book shopping sojourn, I stumbled upon the bestsellers stand and was surprised to see a book about investing sitting at number one.

Not one for finding thrills in budgeting I was bemused how a book on the topic nabbed the top spot.  Clearly this chap had found some kind of magical wizardry to get people salivating over spreadsheets.  I grabbed the book and after a flick could quickly see the appeal.  The section on teens and part time jobs transported me back to the days when trying to improve my reading quota didn’t feature and the crucial thing was a summer job to pay for the Dr Martin boots I was desperate for.  The Barefoot Investor, Scott Pape, says that teenagers can get external validation for their talents and can therefore gain confidence.  There are also the invaluable life lessons about tax, bank accounts and superannuation he adds.  Equally, part time jobs can bring out the best in them.  As a high school teacher,  I often catch glimpses of my students in their part time jobs over the weekend and it can be astonishing.  The manners, the maturity and the pristine work uniform.  The latter can be especially jarring, when at school, they may be permanently scruffy and the shirt always untucked.  Or in the ‘tuck, untuck’ form, where the shirt is tucked in at several points and then untucked in another five, a skill in its own right.  The sighting of a student, who normally likes to spend lessons disassembling biros and turning them into pea shooting devices, ripping the cinema ticket of an elderly person and going the extra mile to help them to their seat, is particularly heart warming.   As I see students pouring perfect latte art at the local cafe, enjoying great relationships with fellow colleagues and beaming with self confidence, I see how much pride they have in these part time jobs and the fulfilment as well as the enjoyment that comes from them. 

Of course there are surprising lessons one learns from these part time jobs too.  When surveying friends about their experiences, they mentioned things like their newly acquired knowledge on the length and breadth of the fruit and vegetable family learnt as a supermarket cashier, or the quickest way to get through a bail of jumbled bras.  No doubt Obama can scoop the perfect ball of ice cream after famously declaring he worked at Baskin-Robbins during his teenage years.  A job which he says taught him responsibility and working hard on a minimum wage. 

The most out of the box learning I ever had, was at a work lunch in an arts job that I was lucky enough to land as a young adult.  As another long awkward silence presented itself while we ate, I thought it was polite to offer up some banter.  I filled the conversational void with a compliment about the Creative Director’s beautiful brooch that she was sporting on the lapel of her jacket.  “That’s a gorgeous brooch you have, did it come with the jacket?” I asked brightly.   She stared for a moment, rather stunned and then replied “Ah, no, nooooooo, that is my medal of the Order of Australia”. Cue mortification. Excellent lesson learnt. Be mindful, not all jewellery is created equal.

These jobs teach us about the value of money, about learning to work in harmony with people of different backgrounds and ages, about finding and using our own moral compass, the difference between kohlrabi and celeriac, and in my case, what a medal of the Order of Australia looks like.  Something I might have known, had my reading quota been a little higher in my young adult years.

Easy Carrot, Pineapple and Sultana Muffins (dairy free)

On By Pod talesIn Food StoriesLeave a comment

IMG_4586A few years ago we had a pod with a number of food allergies and intolerances.  We had members with FPIES and Anaphylaxis and a few other pesky intolerances as well.  As anyone who has dealt with allergies would know, finding alternate foods can be difficult and sometimes stressful.  Whipping up things yourself means you can be certain that nothing on the black list has been thrown in.   When searching for baked goods that were egg or dairy free ( the same goes for gluten free) the texture of them would often be quite tough, slightly reminiscent of cardboard, with a hint of foam cup.  I set about searching for tasty recipes and stumbled upon an old muffin cookbook my mum had copied from a neighbour in the 80’s.  This recipe was in it and after some adapting to suit the allergies we were dealing with, it became an absolute winner.  The greatest thing about the recipe is that it can be tweaked a number of different ways, to suit your particular allergy or tastes and will still remain moist and delicious, due to the addition of the carrot and the pineapple.  No styrofoam mouth feel here.  They are super easy to prepare, just some quick mixing and folding and have been a hit with our little and big people for years

Head to the list of tweaks at the end, to adapt the recipe to your own needs.  Sultanas are not everyone’s bag but were added as our little people are obsessed with them.  

Ingredients: 

1/2 cup white sugar

2/3 cup light olive oil

2 large eggs

1 and 1/2 cup plain flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon cinnamon

pinch of salt

1 teaspoon vanilla ( I use the vanilla bean paste but you could easily use vanilla extract)

1 tablespoon plain coconut yoghurt 

1 cup finely crated carrot

1 cup crushed unsweetened pineapple well drained

1/2 cup sultanas

Method:

1.  Preheat your oven to 190 Celsius or 375 Fahrenheit

2.  Line a 12 hole muffin tray with muffin cases

3. In a mixing bowl combine sugar, yoghurt, oil, vanilla and eggs.  Beat this together lightly with a fork.

4. Grab another mixing bowl and a medium size sieve.  Sift the flour, baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon and salt into the mixing bowl.

5. Add the dry ingredients to the mixing bowl with the sugar and oil mixture.  Stir a few times to moisten, then fold in the grated carrot, drained pineapple and sultanas.

6. Mix until just combined.  Don’t go overboard with the old mixing here or you’ll end up with muffins that taste like hockey pucks. 

7. Spoon the mixture into your 12 muffin cases.  This mixture rises quite a bit so it’s safest not to fill your cases right to the top.

8. Pop your muffin tray into your preheated oven for 20 mins. 

9. Once done leave the muffins to cool for about 15 min, this makes uncasing them easier. 

Tweaks: 

  • You can omit the sultanas and add 1/2 cup of chopped dry roasted, unsalted almonds or unsalted macadamia nuts instead.  Unsweetened coconut flakes are also a delicious substitute but you might like to omit the cinnamon if you go this route.
  • This recipe works well as an egg free muffin, simply substitute the eggs for egg replacer
  • If you are fine with dairy you can use full fat plain yoghurt

 

How does a child navigate the sickness and death of another child close to them

On By Pod talesIn Your StoriesLeave a comment

Gascoignes-100

This story was published with permission by Mamamia here: https://www.mamamia.com.au/helping-kids-cope-with-grief

The wonderful people I interview for the your stories series on pod tales are generous enough to share personal and pivotal stories of challenge and hardship.  With this in mind, I thought it only fair, that I share one too.

I was nine when the phone rang, one week day evening, to deliver the news that my seven year old cousin had incurable brain cancer.  As my parents broke the shocking news that my cousin was going to die, an ordinary day suddenly became extraordinary.  I, however, was completely perplexed.  How could this news be delivered with such certainty?  Surely they were wrong?  Just moments before, I had been joking around with my brothers and eating dinner, this kind of news doesn’t come after dinner.  There was no way my beautifully spirited and very much alive cousin could possibly die.  I was rather upset and annoyed by the whole scenario that had suddenly been thrust upon me.  I decided that adults were often overly dramatic about sickness, I comforted myself with this thought and packed the idea of death neatly away. 

As my cousin, an only child, started treatment for her brain cancer my parents made every effort for us to be with her as much as possible.   I would travel to the children’s hospital after school with my Dad and spend the afternoons chatting and playing with her.  It is these memories, of my last year with her, that I hold close.  I unpack them year after year as I grow older and as I go through life’s milestones, my lens changing to accomodate my ever changing life and circumstance.  Deeper understanding of what went on coming as the years drift by. 

At the time of her illness I navigated most of that year with a sense of optimism and innocence.  I had never known anyone who had been sick enough to be in hospital, so the visits there were a complete eye opener.  There was the beautiful doctor who gave us icy poles when we came to visit, her friendly nature and great kindness making a lasting impression on me and her own death from cancer, years later, reinforcing the lottery of the disease.  My cousin’s everlasting array of brand new toys that she received as generous gifts were very exciting as was the all you can eat Mc Donalds we were given whilst my cousin stayed at Ronald Mc Donald house.  Although, the fact that we were suddenly permitted to gorge ourselves on Mc Donald’s, when it was usually banned, did set alarm bells ringing.  As I watched my brothers run to order another round of hamburgers, it dawned on me that things might be more serious than I’d initially thought.   

All in all though, my memories until the last few weeks of her life were pretty positive.  Even when the adults around us broke down and could no longer fight back their tears I wasn’t too phased, I put it down to adults being serious.  I remember the day of a big party for my cousin, she was wearing the most beautiful dress I had ever seen.  I thought it was such a wonderful celebration and I couldn’t understand why one of my aunts was quietly weeping as my cousin sat on her lap, resplendent in her gorgeous party dress.  As tears streamed down her face, I wondered what had happened to her.   Why is she crying in the middle of a party? I thought.  The day was supposed to be fun.  Now years later, I identify so much with the poignant scene.  There was my young aunt, holding her beautiful niece on this special milestone day, grieving the fact that it would be her last. 

It was in the final two weeks of her life that my cousin looked sicker than I ever thought possible.  It  suddenly dawned on me that if she did die, it could be really painful. I really didn’t want that for her, after all she’d been through.  It was then that I began to wish for her to no longer be in pain, rather than for anything else.  It was not long after, that she died peacefully in her sleep.  We visited her in her bed at the palliative care hospital and as the adults buzzed around, some taking photos of us, I had no idea what to do.  I was desperately sad but didn’t want to break down in front of everyone.  As someone asked us to pose for a picture I smiled and was quickly told I didn’t need to.  I thought how stupid I’d been to smile but in all honesty had no idea what the appropriate etiquette for this type of thing was. 

When the end came, it was pretty devastating.  Everyone navigates grief differently and children journey through it in their own way.  I remember her often and even in small ways, like when my daughter picks up my cousin’s old toy that we have kept and asks where we got it from or when my son had his seventh birthday, I pondered that her seventh was her last.  Recently our family was touched by another beautiful little girl, a friend, who lost her life to brain cancer.  One night as I tucked my eldest child into bed, he asked me about a shadow he thought he could see in his room.  As he sometimes thinks about ghosts,  I comforted him, saying it was nothing to worry about.  Quick as a flash he replied, “I know mummy, I’m not worried, it’s just our friend passing through on the way to visit her mummy and daddy”.  His words reminded me of the innocence and optimism I had, now over twenty five years ago, when my cousin was ill.  It struck me how powerful the ability of a child is, to preserve the memory of these very special companions.

Baby brain, what’s the weirdest thing you’ve done?

On By Pod talesIn Podtales2 Comments

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I’ve always been prone to a Bridget Jones style moment.  I’m partial to day dreaming and my brain is constantly workshopping too many things, all at once, meaning that a task at hand may not always be getting sufficient attention.  Luckily, important things get my direct focus, however, less significant things can often turn into a clumsy moment. 

When I fell pregnant for the first time, my tendency for the ridiculous grew. I would grab my garage door remote and confidently point it towards the boom gate at the entrance to a shopping centre and look on perplexed as the boom gate sat unresponsive.  I would completely forget pin numbers to bank accounts I used daily (for years, mind) and be stuck on the bank hotline for an age trying to remember security questions I had chosen, to recover the pin that I had forgotten.  The lovely lady on the bank hotline would assure me that I had once chosen these security questions myself (in a former life, with a former brain, I hasten to add).   “What was your middle brother’s first girlfriend?”, “What was your favourite song in school?” she recites.  I explain to lovely hotline lady, there must be some kind of misunderstanding, these must be someone else’s questions.  We end up having to go through my credit card transactions to prove I am, in fact, me.  Luckily, after five transactions, I recognise one of them and I can retrieve my pin.  I am still, however, locked out of my hotmail account, they deemed my knowledge of myself to be too poor to reinstate my access. 

I had vaguely heard about ‘baby brain’ but I had also heard people, mainly men in my workplace staffroom, poo-pooing the phenomenon.   To my great relief, I read this year that researchers at Deakin university have since declared that baby brain is in fact a real condition, their studies showed that “General cognitive functioning, memory, and executive functioning were significantly reduced during the third trimester of pregnancy” (Pregnancy really does make women more forgetful: Study, SMH, January 15, 2018).

As I reached my due date for my first baby, I thought it was crucial to get my hair done, as from what I’d heard, leaving the house after having a baby was going to be impossible.  I booked in with my local Toni and Guy, as my regular hairdresser was booked out and I had convinced myself the baby was going to come early (I wish!) and the hair situation was dire.  The lovely English hairdresser was chatty and helpful and as he finished my foils and went to prep for my blow dry, I took the free moment to grab my phone and check on my messages.  As I reached into my bag my fingers suddenly felt icy cold, and my hand brushed a wet plastic bag as I fumbled around to locate my phone.  How on earth did ice get in my bag I thought?! I hoisted the sack of a handbag onto my lap, I may have grunted, such was the size of my girth at this point and opened the bag wide open to get a good look at what on earth was going on.  There, tangled between my headphones, sunglasses and tissues was a plastic bag housing a very large, frozen, fillet of salmon.  Bemused by the fish in my bag, I tried hard to think about how it could have gotten there. My brain felt like marshmallow,  it seemed impossible to spark the neural pathways into gear to get to the bottom of this caper.  As I stared at my sodden hair in the mirror I willed my brain to get into gear but I was getting bupkis.  I decided to utilise the ‘retrace your steps’ method that had become common place in the last nine months and went through every action since leaving the house that morning.  Shower, check, breakfast, check, getting dinner out of the freezer and putting it on the bench. Bingo! I remember putting the salmon out to defrost. Thank Christ. I had absolutely no recollection of putting the frozen fillet in my hand bag but after taking stock of my recent brain fog it was entirely believable.  The relief of finally solving the fish in bag scenario was quickly replaced with sheer terror as I realised I had been sitting in the hairdressers with a piece of defrosting fish at my feet.  What if the hairdresser had smelt something fishy and thought it was me!?  He’d have to assume it was, as what kind of lunatic walks around with fish in their handbag!?  Maybe he would be compassionate because I was with child. One could only hope.  I was grateful that I only had to sit through a blow dry and then I could flee, post haste.  What good luck it was that it wasn’t my regular hairdresser.  I could potentially be safe in the knowledge I would never see this dude again.  I placated myself with these thoughts as I sat through the final moments of my blow-dry.  Nevertheless, I slowly and discreetly used my foot to push my handbag as far from my seat as I could manage, just in case any pungent fish fumes happened to catch his nostrils. 

The fish incident was my first foray into motherhood brain meltdown.  As the years passed in a blur and I had subsequent children, things like buying a sandwich and leaving it on my car bonnet and bolting off to rhyme time were common place.  Strange men would gesticulate from their car windows when we were stopped at an intersection, I’d in turn lock my doors in fear of some kind of car jacking, only to realise after, that they were trying to alert me to the coffee I had left on my roof.  Then there was the time a man sidled up to my table in a coffee shop, I had braced myself for the usual pleasantries of “oh your son looks so much like mine” or “you’ve got your hands full” but instead he started describing the exact make of my car and said I’d left the door to the passenger side wide open on the street. I certainly hadn’t remembered doing it but it definitely sounded like a bad case of baby brain. 

Do I feel better knowing that the smart folks at Deakin have proven it to be a real thing?

I guess, but I already knew it was real.  

image by Martine Payne 

pod tales- your story series

On By Pod talesIn Your Stories2 Comments

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“I was twenty nine and decided I wanted to go to England before the working visa was no longer available.  I went on my own, jumped on a plane eat, pray, love style and took off.  I went to embrace life, to be completely me and to spend time on my own.  This trip was an opportunity to evolve, I knew I had the capacity for more growth.

I went to England and did a block of teaching for ten weeks.  The teaching was tough, the students would throw chairs and things like that.  I had one student run at me with their fist in my face and that was at one of the better schools.  My experience as a teacher in Sydney helped me and I knew how to stand my ground.  The other schools were all different sorts of scenarios, police on the driveways as you entered, teachers on duty with walky-talkies, staff rooms with CCTV.  The kids didn’t have books, pens, pencils, nothing.  You had to take your own paper and pens for them everyday.  As a casual you’d have to supply it all yourself and you’d never get your pens back, because they would snap them.  Everyday you’d need to bring in thirty new pens, it was ridiculous.

When the school year ended, I met my sister in Munich for her thirtieth birthday and from there we went travelling for six weeks together.  We’d poured over our mother’s travel photos over the years and she really inspired us to travel the world.  We went all around France and then to Italy.  While we were in the Italian cliffside village of Positano I met a guy.  I’d always been told by a friend when you are in Italy, be seen, sit outside, dress nice and be seen. No joke, we got dressed up, we sat outside this perfect restaurant and a guy walked past.  It was like, me: “hi”, him: “ciao”, me: “ciao”, him: “ciao” and that was it.  We kept seeing him around over the course of the evening and later that night we met up at a night club and had a great time together.

My sister and I continued our travels throughout Europe, but it wasn’t long before I got a phone call from him (in very broken english) inviting me to a big medieval festival in Tuscany. It sounded pretty fantastic to an Australian chick so I travelled back to be with him and had an absolute ball.  I stayed with him for a few weeks and then went back to England as I had a teaching job lined up.  He kept ringing me constantly, asking me to come back and stay with him.  Something in me just said to take a big leap.  The point of the trip was to to be out of my comfort zone and London wasn’t providing that.  A little medieval village in Tuscany, however, was just the ticket.

I lived in Tuscany with him for a year.  By the end of that year I was in my prime, I’d mastered the art of living in a medieval city, felt amazing, was speaking Italian and my health and fitness had never been better.  I had a job teaching English to Italians, had money, a great partner and had been to so many European destinations that my collection of photos now rivalled my mother’s.  However, things were about to change drastically.  Summer arrived and I was invited to go and stay with a girlfriend at the Tuscan seaside and I jumped at the chance.

One morning, shortly after I’d arrived, my friend suggested I take her spare bike to ride to the beach.  I said I’d walk but they were keen for me to ride the bike, so I did.  I had a strong sense that I should not have got on the bike, I wish I’d listened to my intuitive self that day.  We were riding down to the beach and it was a perfect blue sky day, the glistening ocean views were breathtaking.  As I rode, I saw a young boy happily riding his bike in my direction.  He started to swing his bike from side to side as he rode and then began to stand up on his bike as he sped along.  He was looking out at the stunning view and was not conscious or aware of his surroundings at all.  I saw him and got a burning feeling in my gut that it wasn’t safe for me to keep riding, I pulled over to the side of the five metre board walk and waited for him to go past.  He started to ride really fervently and lost control of his bike.  He hit me hard and dragged me back a few metres.  At this point, I was still standing on my bike despite the crash, however, our bikes had become stuck together.  He was extremely panicked and proceeded to push down and pump the bikes hard.  I was pushed to the ground by the force and it was then that my whole foot joint exploded. I didn’t feel it though, I was still very concerned for him.  When he picked up his bike and I was finally free, I saw my foot facing the completely wrong way, my toes, halfway up my calf.

An ambulance arrived quickly and people came running out of their homes to help, I must have been screaming.  I was driven to the local village primary school where they put me on a science lab table.  Luckily there was morphine and other drugs handy.  My boyfriend called his contacts and got me into a hospital in Florence.  My mum flew over to Italy, alone, with no word of Italian to look after me.   The hospital experience was very different to what I was used to back at home.  There was no air conditioning despite the forty degree summer heat, no TV and limited visiting. We spent a lot of the time crying and going to the hospital’s beautiful chapel which looked more like a Cathedral. 

It was months before I was fit to fly home to Australia.  It was a massive recovery, five surgeries overall and auto immune disease to boot.  I was determined to focus on the healing, my goal was that I wasn’t going to let the accident define me.  I started doing yoga and meditation again. I’d found yoga before but got much more into it, as I couldn’t walk properly, dance or run; all things I’d done before the accident.  I completed yoga teacher training and it was really transformative.  I got a new job and focused on wellbeing. I took my life lessons on well-being, self care and healing to my school and started to run programmes with the kids and it was wonderful.

While I was on the trip I was asking the universe to put me on my path.  I wonder now, many years later, if in fact the accident was doing just that, putting me on my true path.  The accident has given me greater empathy, I can now hold space for other people and truly listen.  I feel I’m meant to do healing work with kids, parents and everyone.  I’ve learnt that healing is not a quick fix it’s hard yakka, but it can be done.  I was so determined not to let the accident define me, that in the end in some ways it did.  However, it has been for the better and for that I am grateful.  It gives me great joy to now offer a space for others to work on their own well-being and healing”.  (Carolyn, Sydney, Australia)

For more from Carolyn head to her Take A Breath Studio page on Facebook or follow @takeabreathstudio on Instagram

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Four places you’ll ‘find yourself’ during the toddler years

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It is the eve of our third baby’s first birthday and I am surprised how quickly we are being catapulted out of the baby stage and into toddler town.  He is mere days away from officially being a toddler and is exhibiting the tell tale signs. He is suddenly very taken with a book about a little train. The train does things like go through a tunnel and puff puffs on tracks, there’s even a bit were it goes ‘toot, toot’, are you excited yet?  He routinely lurches out of my arms to grab it, flapping the beautiful and more imaginative story books out of my hands.  It feels like it was only yesterday that I was reading ‘diggers and dumpers’ and ‘emergency vehicles’ board books every. single. day. Both cracking reads as you can imagine. They were often teamed with real life excursions too, if there was a jack hammer pounding through cement nearby, or a garbage truck or a fire engine in sight, we’d be there front row and centre, toddler in nirvana and me wondering how my life had come to this. 

It’s been years since we’ve had a toddler in the house, my eldest two children are now in primary school and as we prepare to celebrate this milestone, the memories of the toddler years from baby number one (boy) and baby number two (girl) are flooding back.  If you are about to embark on the toddler stage too, allow me to shed a little light, on four places you will be spending some of your time:

The Park

Ah, the park, where shall I start?

The park is the place that evokes unadulterated joy in a toddler but slightly different feelings in you.  On some days it can be mind numbing, you might find yourself wishing for some tumble weeds to appear so as to at least have something to entertain yourself with.  You won’t want to look at that tumbleweed for too long though, as the park can sometimes come with a side serving of anxiety and sheer terror if you have a particularly adventurous toddler.  In saying that, I’ve seen the most tranquil of kids get completely taken out by a rogue swing.  Toddlers and swings, like bees to honey. 

At times,  you may be lucky enough to meet up with friends which definitely quells the isolation but as soon as you are getting into really scintillating conversation you could well be interrupted by the sight of your little person dangling off the climbing frame inches from a broken arm or heading for the hole in the park fence that leads onto train tracks.  You then have to drop the coffee and sprint for dear life.  In my experience, this scenario could happen up to five times in one park visit. 

The home play date

Next you try playdates with your friends and their beautiful toddlers.  You’ve been friends since your kids were babies, they are like family.  Surely this will be a bit relaxing, you can sit and drink tea while your cherubs play.  Now that they are no longer babies, their play style has suddenly morphed into something you don’t quite recognise.  They aren’t sharing and have started throwing trains at each other, one might have even bitten the other, but one of them has definitely bitten the button off the TV remote.  They didn’t get the memo that you are best friends and you want them to be too.  You haven’t had an uninterrupted conversation for most of the visit and the biscuit you ate is somehow stuck in your throat and won’t loosen, just like the planking toddler you are now trying to fold in half, so you can get them into their carseat and home in time for their nap.  You drive home praying they won’t fall asleep as even 10mins means there will be no day nap and you sing Old MacDonald at full pelt, all the way home, to stall any drooping eyes. 

The non-baby-proof visit:

A visit to a friend or relative’s house can often be a NIGHTMARE.  Fancy hotels can also be in this category, so many seem to love abstract art and there is nothing quiet like a statue made out of cast iron spikes to get your toddler excited and RUNNING at breakneck speed in its direction.   Then there is the visit to your great Aunty Flo’s.  She has a great passion for knick knacks, especially the expensive porcelain kind, nestled all over the house on small toddler height tables, perfection.  As soon as you enter the door your toddler lurches forward to swipe an entire table to the ground.  You laugh nervously and proceed to spend the rest of the visit shadowing your toddler, walking inches behind them the entire time telling everyone there that you’d rather drink your tea and biscuit standing, thanks very much.

The toddler bedroom floor:

Toddlers often see no point in wearing anything more than an Emma wiggles tutu or a Batman outfit. To get your toddler out the door on time and properly attired for any event means you will have to get creative.  I was often reduced to a barn animal. With one of our toddlers it was much speedier to get on all fours, twirk and cock my head to the side, ‘bow wow’, I’d pant. “Puppy wants to you to put your shoes on wuff wuff”. They in turn giggle and jump, “again, again!” they squeal.  Round and round it then goes until you can hardly breathe and are sweating like a pig BUT the shoes are on, win!

Before having children I could never imagine how zipping up a simple hoodie on a two year old could leave you perspiring and as red as a beetroot.  The comedian Michael Mcintyre’s side splitting bit ‘People with no kids don’t know’ showcases this scenario brilliantly.  While you are there, watch the whole thing, it’s the perfect therapy after a long day with a toddler, you might want to snuffle up a box of chocolates too.

There is no doubt the toddler years are challenging.  Even Robin Barker the bestselling author of Baby Love and The Mighty Toddler admits that she didn’t find the toddler years easy and preferred the teenage ones. Or maybe they will be a breeze for you and there will be other stages that pose more challenges.  The thing is, the toddler years bring with them a rich tapestry of emotions but one thing is for sure, there will be moments, knock the wind out of you ones, that will be so beautiful and heart throbbingly exquisite that you will hold them in your heart forever more.  I’ll gladly do all four things on this list again, just to get to see that chubby little toddler finger pointing out every single new thing with an emphatic ‘dair’ (there!), eyes shining with more wonder and excitement than you ever thought humanly possible.  I’ll remember this very sentiment the next time a tumbleweed passes me by.   

pod tales- your story series

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“We escaped communist occupied Czechoslovakia in 1948.  We had found a man that knew what part of the barbed wire fence on the military guarded border was loose and could be crawled though.  We fled in the dead of night, through heavy rain, to increase our chances of not being seen.   I told my parents I was going to flee with my fiancé, but he didn’t tell his parents.  My Mum and Dad were sad and cried but they understood that we would have better chances if we left.  My Grandma said it would be the last time I would ever see her.  That was very hard for me, she was my everything and I loved her so very much.  She had lived with my parents and myself, in our one bedroom apartment, for my whole life.  She died two years after we fled and I never saw her again.   

We originally wanted to go to America but the quota was full, we ended up on a flight to Australia in 1949 after some time in a German refugee camp.  We were placed in the migrant reception camp at Bonegilla and from there we went to Sydney.  We liked it so decided to stay.  My husband and I could have retrained and worked in the same fields that we had back at home but we were 29 and wanted a family and needed money, it made sense to have our own business and open our own cake shop.   My husband had done his bakers training alongside his university degree.  His father was a baker and insisted all his sons get their baking qualifications. 

I was pregnant not long after arriving in Australia and had my first daughter in 1953.  I didn’t know all the things I needed for a new baby but our next door neighbour, an Anglo Australian woman, who had two teenage daughters, said she would organise everything for me.  She knitted me lots of outfits and brought lots of baby things into the cake shop for me.  They were very lovely people.  I had my daughter at the Royal Hospital for Women in Paddington.   They took very good care of me, except at one stage, they were so full they put my bed out on the verandah.  It was a completely open verandah with no fly screens or protections from the elements and it was cold at night.  I had to tell them I needed a bed indoors, I had bad bronchitis, I couldn’t be out there all night in the middle of winter.

I didn’t drive so didn’t meet the mothers at my daughter’s school much.  I stayed and   worked in the shop.  I had one day out a week to the city, that was nice, I would do my shopping and go to David Jones. I enjoyed it.  We had Sundays off and we would see our other Czech friends we had met once we had settled in Sydney.  We had one dear friend from home that we met by complete chance in Sydney.  We knew he had escaped Czechoslovakia but heard he had gone to South Africa.  We were walking down George St in the city and suddenly saw him in a camera shop window. It was unbelievable. We were so happy to have found each other”. (Sydney, Australia) 

IMG_4139                                    Woodstock migrant reception centre, Sydney 1949