Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

ByAndrea Maguire 23 Dec 20117 Mar 2021

I’d like to wish everyone a very merry Christmas and a happy holiday season as it’s also Chanukah…

Amy helped me make Christmas Florentine biscuits on Wed and they’re much better than last year. That’s because when Mum was out here visiting in June, we made some together and worked out that we needed to roast the peanuts first, so now we’ve perfected the recipe. They’re not raw and they’re not healthy but they’re so yummy (and it’s Christmas)!

I’ll take this time to contemplate the past year and offer my thanks for such a wonderful start we’ve received for The Retreat – may it continue to grow next year…

So enjoy your holidays, whatever your persuasion and best wishes for the New Year – may it bring you happiness, health and success…

Healthy Eating

Basic Raw Chocolate Recipe

ByAndrea Maguire 24 Oct 201513 Apr 2023

Making your own tasty and nourishing raw chocolates is so easy. Just follow our step by step guide: (Gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, soy free) (Makes approx. 30 chocolates or 300ml) Ingredients: 200g raw cacao butter 50g raw cacao powder 30ml agave nectar (or to taste) Method: Before you get started, ensure all of your…

Healthy Eating | Other Topics

Death of a Seeds-man

ByAndrea Maguire 24 Oct 200918 Mar 2021

Quite bizarrely, my last blog (Just Blown Away) about soil erosion and declining soil quality due to modern conventional farming methods was published on exactly the same day that Norman Borlaug died. And who is Norman Borlaug? I hear you ask. He is considered to be the father of modern grain farming because he developed…

Healthy Eating

Feed the man meat…

ByAndrea Maguire 30 Sep 201022 Mar 2021

That was the marketing slogan for the Australian meat industry many years ago & we Aussies of a certain age still remember it… Well there was an article in the Sunday Times recently (Eat Meat and Save the Planet, 19 Sep 2010) in which a prominent eco-warrior, Simon Fairlie, proclaims that by eating meat we…

Healthy Eating

Just Blown Away!

ByAndrea Maguire 12 Sep 200918 Mar 2021

My original idea with this entry had been to expand from the FSA report comment from my last blog into the benefits of organic farming for developing countries and then explaining the philosophy of biodynamic farming. But I got sidetracked by my research, hence the delay in publishing this entry – my apologies for making…

Healthy Eating

Report Retort!

ByAndrea Maguire 9 Aug 200918 Mar 2021

The FSA (Food Standard Agency) released a report last week, the basis of which was to compare the nutritional benefits of organic food compared to conventional food. The conclusion of the report was that there was little difference in nutritional value between the two and hence no nutritional benefit in eating organic food. As you…

Healthy Eating | Other Topics

This and that…

ByAndrea Maguire 20 Jun 20092 Mar 2021

I’m now back in the UK for a few weeks. I was in the supermarket yesterday and decided to look at bread and ingredients. I was in shock – every loaf of white bread (about 12 different varieties) had soy flour in it! A couple of weeks ago I accompanied my father back to his…

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