Natural birth does happen

Posting here to remember this story forever and also to fill up the World Wide Web with more stories of positive, natural birth with the purpose of helping to remove fear from childbirth.

Two years ago I was 38 weeks pregnant with who I thought was “Eleanor” and then a little flower landed on my tummy (in the pic), then as my Dad was talking to me about the baby later that day the song came on the radio “That’s not my name”, then everywhere I looked I saw fields of beautiful Daisy’s. I said to my husband Scott, “I don’t think her name is Eleanor”, and he said he had been thinking the same thing that day. At 39 weeks she was born in a full hippie, sunset-over-the-Auckland-harbour hypnobirth, laughter in the room and smiling faces, no drugs, water birth, two hour labour with 7 min of pushing. Peaceful and calm, dare I say easy (in what I call a healing birth, as my first birth wasn’t straightforward however it was still a natural birth). This baby didn’t cry, instead she simply looked up at Scott and I. That natural birth experience sealed it for me, this 2kg dot was a little Daisy.

I believe babies pick their own names and our crazy little wildflower with a love of crystals, Buddha statues and kefir water most certainly picked hers out for herself!

When Daisy was newborn, I was told by a Mum at a toddler music class, “oh but she is so pretty and a daisy is a weed”. I told this a Mum that the only reason a weed is called a weed is because of its inability to grow in a straight line and there is something I quite like about that. ❤️🐣🌸🌼🍃🌈

“Leave medicines in the chemist ’s pot if you can cure your patient s with food”. – Hippocrates

Poor diet, inadequate physical activity and poor quality of nutrition are detrimental to our health and well being.

Yet diet related diseases are on the rise.

Choose to eat well, be well.

 

Reference –

Public Health Intelligence (2012).

Nutrition and the Burden of Disease: New Zealand

1997 – 2011.

Retrieved from

http://www.moh.govt.nz/notebook/nbbooks.nsf/0/a8d85bc5bad17610cc256d970072a0aa/$FILE/nutritionandtheburdenofdisease.pdf

Blissball Cheesecake Pie – Dairy, egg, nut, gluten and wheat free!

Looking for a simple cheesecake pie recipe which is suitable for all occasions? I bust this bad boy out for entertaining at brunch (goes with coffee as it does dessert wine), for Christmas day, for birthdays… all the time! It is always a winner.

Fairly certain it is a no fail cake too, my 3 year old can make it (supervised). So feel confident that you will be able to bake one too!!

My children have multiple food allergies and this cake was made so they could eat a cheesecake safely. There is no dairy, no eggs, no nuts, no wheat, no gluten and no soy in the recipe. There is refined sugar from the chocolate itself, no sugar is added.
Need this to be vegan or vegetarian? Sub gelatine for agar agar!

This chocolate berry blissball cheesecake pie (whatever it is) is the easiest cheesecake to make, with the added bonus of having superfood benefits from pumpkin seeds, chia seeds, sunflower seeds, berries and gelatine! Now you can have your cake and eat it too.

The base is a standard blissball recipe with a little trick in the cooking method to get it to set properly.

It can be made in a muffin tray for cute wee individual desserts, this is a little more fiddly though so just grease it up so they don’t get stuck.

Hot tip – Pop strawberries on top of the base and pour the filling over them for a great visual effect!

BASE

• 1 cup dates (medjool dates work better here), soaked in boiling water, then discard water after 10min
• Two dessert spoons cocoa or cacao
• Half a cup or more of dessicated or shredded coconut
• Quarter cup sunflower seeds
• Quarter cup of pumpkin seeds
• Two dessert spoons of chia seeds
  NOTE – The quantities of seeds can be mixed, as long as the ratio ends up being half a cup. Alternatively, just use dessicated coconut.

FILLING

• One 250g block of dairy free dark chocolate. I use whittakers 50% cocoa.
• 500g full fat coconut cream. I use ayam however kara coconut cream works well too.
• 4 teaspoons of gelatine.
• One teaspoon vanilla essance

TOPPING

• One punnet of strawberries, diced into wee triangles and squares
• One punnet of blueberries
  NOTE – The topping can be whatever you have on hand, we defrost frozen blueberries in winter. Edible flowers would be lovely on this too!

METHOD

1. Preheat oven to 180C/350F
2. Grease a cake pan
3. Using a food processor, whizz together the base ingredients
4. Knuckle into the cake pan, being careful to avoid cracks.
   Top tip: As above, I didn’t have enough base ingredients to completely cover the sides. That is OK, the base only needs to cover the bottom and anymore up the sides is just a bonus. I think it gives a cool effect when some patches are left on the sides.
5. Fridge for 15 minutes, bake for 15 minutes then fridge again for 15 minutes to set the base.
6. In a saucepan, melt the chocolate
7. Add coconut cream and vanilla to the chocolate
8. Add in 4 teaspoons of gelatine (or quantity as advised on the packet)
9. Pour the filling into the cake dish, over the base.
   Top tip: If there is more filling than base the is fine, let it drizzle over.
   If there is more base than filling, add another layer using an even darker chocolate or with berry jam/coconut cream/gelatine for a multilayer cake with WOW factor.
10. Fridge overnight
11. Serve with berries on top and great company.

Easy as pie!!

Enjoy.

Aleshia Dearlove xxoo