Tag Archives: coconut oil

Five Practical Uses for Essential Oils

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While most people have at least a few essential oils they love, a lot of people just don’t know how to use them in everyday life.  And these days there are really wonderful quality essential oils which are both therapeutic and food grade, so you can do more with them and safely use them in your home, on your body and you can eat some of them too!

I’m a pretty crunchy mama and I like to keep my house and body as free of toxic chemicals as possible.  I also very much admire the zero waste lifestyle and I try to apply these principles where I can by making my own home cleaning and personal hygiene products.  But they can be…well, a bit bland….and by adding some high quality essential oils they become so much more pleasant.  Remember – they’re not just smells, essential oils are chemicals in their own rights and have various properties to make your homemade products so much more effective.  In many cases, more effective than their toxic commercial counterparts.

So I thought I’d share my top 5 practical uses for essential oils in everyday living.

1. Toothpaste

I know, I know, who makes their own toothpaste?  I’ve spent a lot of money on a lot of cruddy toothpastes with ‘green’ credentials.  First of all, they’re expensive.  They don’t have that great mouth feel of foam that we get from Colgate and Crest, they don’t taste of candy canes and they don’t make your teeth any whiter or cleaner feeling.  And quite frankly this one shares two of those qualities.  It doesn’t taste of candy because there’s no sugar (or fake sugar) in it and it doesn’t foam up.  But what it does do is make my teeth feel and look the cleanest they have ever felt and its pretty inexpensive to make.  So, I’m sharing the YouTube video that I followed for my recipe.  (You can add in activated charcoal for even more whitening properties!)  When making this toothpaste I recommend only using a food grade peppermint essential oil, such as Young Living or DoTerra.  Please don’t just go out to your local health food store and buy what’s on their shelf.  Its really not the same thing.

2. Face Moisturiser

I believe in growing old gracefully…but not for a few more years, please.  In the meanwhile I use the anti-aging power combo of Frankincense essential oil and rosehip oil.  Frankincense promotes healthy cell regeneration and keeps existing cells and tissues healthy and rosehip oil is full of anti-oxidants (lycopene, beta-carotene and vitamin C) which prevent free radical damage as well as essential fatty acids omegas 3,6 and 9 which repair and regenerate damaged skin tissue.  I dispense my rosehip oil into a dropper bottle and place 4-5 drops on my hand each morning.  Into that I drop 1-2 drops of Frankincense essential oil.  I rub my hands together and spread it over my face and neck.  It makes me smell gorgeous too!

Why not coconut oil, you say?  I thought coconut oil was the answer to everything?  Well this is one time when I don’t think coconut oil is the answer.  Coconut oil scores a 3 on the comedogenic scale, whereas rosehip oil only scores a 1.  That means coconut oil is going to clog your pores a lot more.  Which doesn’t really help with the whole anti-aging thing.

3. Floor Cleaner 

There are fantastic natural all purpose household cleaners which already contain the essential oils in them, such as Thieves cleaner and probably Melaleuca make one too.  However, I live in the UK where Thieves cleaner can often run out of stock (literally there’s none available at the moment) and its also a bit pricy.  So I make my own floor cleaner using heavily watered down organic Alma Household Cleaning concentrate (I’m not sponsored by them or anything…I just really like this cleaner!) combined with 5-8 drops of Thieves essential oil to it and store it in a heavy duty spray bottle.  I have a three storey house filled with all antique wooden floor boards, and I spray ahead of me as I follow behind with the microfibre mop and my floor boards shine and smell like Christmas from the Thieves oil.  (You can recreate this oil by blending clove, lemon, cinnamon, eucalyptus and rosemary essential oils…but its easier to buy it already made up!)

*Update:  Since writing this article I have now got my hands on a bottle of the Thieves Household Cleaner.  It is amazing!

4. Fabric Softener

This is a really easy one!  Pour 6 Tbs white vinegar into a measuring jug, add 3-4 drops of essential oil and 1 Tbs of baking soda.  Let the fizz settle down then pour into the fabric softener tray of your washing machine.  I change the essential oil I use depending on the season and I use lavender for the baby’s clothing and bedding.  (Remember to add the essential oil to the vinegar before the baking soda.  After you add the baking soda, the oil won’t sit on top of the vinegar anymore and you won’t get oil spots on your stuff!)

5. Vacuum Scent

This is another easy one!  Just take a cotton ball and drop 4-5 drops of your favourite essential oil on it.  I like fresh citrus smells like orange and grapefruit.  Just vacuum the cotton ball straight into your vacuum cylinder and as it goes ’round and ’round and heats up, it fills your home with scent while you’re vacuuming!

By now you’ve probably realised that there’s very little that baking soda, vinegar and coconut oil can’t do!  I hope you enjoy de-toxifying your life a little bit by trying even just one of these ideas!

Disclaimer: The contents found on OurLittleOrganicLife.com not intended to diagnose, treat or cure. If you have concerns, please contact a doctor before altering your health care routine.

Paleo Diet Review

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At first glance, my friend Sarah and I couldn’t have more different diets to each other.  So when we found out that the the other had decided to try the high protein, high fat Paleo diet earlier this year for the month of January, we were equally surprised.  Sarah was surprised because she secretly wondered how the heck was I – a vegetarian – going to eat Paleo…and just what would I be eating?  And I was surprised because after 18 years of friendship, I’ve never seen Sarah go a day without eating sugar and dairy.  So, with some delay (I like to think as a period of reflection) we would like to share our stories and thoughts on the experience.

Sarah’s Story

At the beginning of January I sat down with my computer and a hand-drawn calendar and mapped out Paleo meals. And then my family of 5 followed the Paleo diet for one month. It was ambitious. I was hard. It was sometimes complicated. But was it worth it in the end?

Maybe?

As a stay-at-home mother of three boys (with ages ranging from “will eat anything that’s put in front of him” to “won’t eat it if it’s not peanut butter”), I struggle every day to ensure my kids are eating healthy food.  Mostly my approach is pretty basic.  I buy organic, local produce (when I can).  I use whole grains.  And I cook, every day.  But kids are kids.  And although some people have those children who will eat anything, I don’t.  So the idea to cut out whole food groups that my children will eat (pasta, bread, cheese) was something that I didn’t take on lightly.  Would my children starve?

They didn’t of course.  And neither did I.  Because by week three, I was cheating.  Well, I wasn’t cheating.  But the kids were.  Because you can’t tell a five year old that spaghetti squash is pasta (because it’s not).  And the baby, it turns out, really missed yoghurt.

It turns out that there are a lot of good things about the Paleo diet.  We ate a lot of vegetables.  We avoided refined sugars.  I tried baking with alternative flours, and have added some really good new recipes to my files.  We eat locally, sustainably raised meat anyway, so that wasn’t different.  But our meals did become more…protein focused.

But we did miss the foods that we love.  And that was sometimes hard (hence my caving and cooking the boys pasta because they really wanted it).  Like any diet that is quite restrictive, there were times when the diet wasn’t any fun. And at the end of the day, I’m not sure, for example, that legumes or dairy are really all that bad for you.

The intriguing thing about the Paleo Diet is that it seems logical. As humans, we evolved a certain way, to eat certain foods. So it makes sense that these are the foods we should be eating to be healthy.

But healthy eating, for me at least, isn’t about restriction.  It’s about ensuring that I and my family are eating the largest variety of foods possible – including carbs and glutens and legumes when appropriate.  The Paleo diet turned out not to be for me, but the discipline of really being conscious of my food choices was useful in “resetting” my meal planning, and getting me out of the post-holiday sugar-pasta-junk food rut.  Will I try it again?

Maybe?

But with so many food trends out there, maybe next January I’ll try “Vegan before Six.”

Kelly’s Story

Student Nutritionists go through something similar to first year med students – the med students tend to get a bit hypochondriac and nutrition students love to try out all the hype diets.  As a responsible nutritionist, I will someday know that everybody and their body is different and will suit a different diet.  Some people do better with high fat, high protein diets, others favour raw vegan lifestyles.  Others, like macrobiotics, and followers of Weston A Price favour a pretty balanced whole foods diet.  (No one flourishes on a standard diet of processed foods, though.  No one.)  However, until that responsible future nutritionist (me!) is qualified, I’m enjoying trying out all kinds of different diets and ways of eating; partly so I can see what suits me and partly so I can understand the challenges that my future clients might face when moving onto specialist diets for one reason or another.

Its pretty easy for me to try these things out, as my lifestyle is pretty flexible and I don’t have children.  However, I do have a husband.  But he’s easy, you know.  He’ll pretty much eat whatever I’m eating…

…but with a steak thrown on top.

So, back to Paleo.  I already knew that I had an intolerance to modern hybridised wheat (while seeming to do just fine on heritage wheats like emmer, kamut and spelt), so I wondered if taking all grains out of the equation might make me feel even better.  (I’m slightly extremist at times.)

I was pretty dubious about taking my beloved pulses out of my diet, but in the interests of the experiment, I did.  I was okay about eliminating sugar and terrified about eliminating most dairy.  As I don’t eat meat, but do eat fish, I substituted organic or wild fish for the pasture-fed organic meats.  Otherwise, it was pretty much the same.  I actually emailed the founder of the Paleo movement, Dr Loren Cordain, to ask about this and received a pretty frank reply that a life without meat was an unhealthy one.  Uh huh….so that was a nice start.

But I was assured by all the fancy-looking blogs I had read and high energy Bulletproof Diet TED talks I’d seen, that once on a high fat, high protein, low carb diet, I would immediately drop a ton of weight and become the happiest, healthiest and most energetic I had ever been.

As it happened, I had low energy all the time because my brain wasn’t getting the glucose it needed for me to get on with my very busy life, my mouth eternally tasted of grease from all the coconut oil, fish oils, avocados and grassfed butter I was eating and no to put too fine a point on it, I may as well have piped polyfilla into my digestive tract.

Oh, and I gained about 8 pounds.

So Paleo wasn’t for me.   (I mean, have you TRIED Bulletproof coffee???)

But it wasn’t all bad.  It gave me an opportunity to try out lots of recipes using different wholefood ingredients which was fun and educational.  A few (Paleo pancakes) have even continued on as firm household favourites.  It made me reconsider a lot of the health food store processed foods I still somewhat relied on and it weaned me away from dairy, to which I was completely addicted.  It was really nice in mid-winter to come home from the shops with nearly nothing packaged in a box or bottle – just fresh fruits and vegetables, nuts, seeds, eggs (oh God, so many eggs) and organic fish and meats.  And that’s what I’ve kept from the experience.

So a few months down the line, my food intake is a much more satisfying and balanced high complex carb, low fat, low-med protein diet and it suits me so much better.  I can eat all the fruits and veg I want, along with some legumes (I really missed those in January) and a bit of brown rice or wholegrain pasta.

Oh and yeah, I kept the coconut oil.  Just, um, its not in my coffee this time…

Pescatarian Paleo

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Okay, like soooooo many others, I’ve jumped on the Paleo bandwagon this January.

But here in the UK the Paleo diet is not quite so much a ‘thing’ yet. In fact, if I had a nickel for every blank look I’ve received when I’ve said I’m doing Paleo, well, I’d have a few nickels at least. (But hey, I live in the UK, so what good are nickels to me?)

So, what IS the Paleo diet? Well, its based on the premise that our guts haven’t really evolved much in the last 15,000 years so we’re really better off eating what our Paleolithic ancestors ate, including fish, grass-fed pasture-raised meats, eggs, vegetables & fruit, fungi, roots and nuts. Things you can’t eat are grains, legumes, dairy, (white) potatoes, refined salts and sugars and processed oils. (Processed oils? Yeah, I know, all oils are processed. I use common sense here: pasture-fed butter, organic raw coconut oil and olive oil are the only cooking fats I keep in the house. If I ate red meat, lard would be on that list as well.) This way of eating isn’t just about weight loss. Done properly, its helped a lot of people with autoimmune issues (Crohn’s, Coeliac, etc) and leaky gut, as well as people with inflammation issues caused by food intolerances they may not even have been aware of before.

The thing is, I’m pescatarian. I don’t eat red meat or poultry, but I do eat fish, so I can’t strictly be called a vegetarian or an omnivore. So I contacted Dr Loren Cordain, an expert on the Paleo diet about whether I could adapt this diet as a pescatarian. I received a fairly prompt, blunt and unhelpful response setting out that in no uncertain terms would they advocate not eating meat. It threw me a little bit, but only for about 2 minutes until I thought about it logically. Whats not to love about this way of eating and why did I need commercial validation to do it anyway? My diet is now filled with brightly coloured vegetables and greenery, fresh organic fish, organic free-range eggs and healthy fats & nuts – lots of unprocessed foods. All I have eliminated from my diet is a vast amount of sugar – by this I mean sugar in the form of bread, pasta and grains, not just refined sugar. So, I say boooo to Dr Cordain and I’m just enjoying doing Paleo the way that works for me.

So, have I lost any weight with the diet? Well, its only been 3 weeks and as I don’t have a functional set of scales, I honestly couldn’t tell you. What I can say is that my stomach is much flatter, I feel overall much more toned and my energy levels are much higher than they were.

Have I cheated? Well, yes. I have. Several times. And I’m okay with that. There have been a couple of mornings when I have really missed my oatmeal, cooked with coconut cream and sweetened with apple and raisins – so I made it. I didn’t feel the worse for having it. I’ve also continued to have a bit of organic milk in my tea and the odd bit of sheep or goat milk cheese. For me its not a competition about being ‘right’ – its a process of finding out what works best for my lifestyle and what makes me feel the healthiest. I lived a low-fat lifestyle for years, but now my diet is full of plenty of healthy fats – yes, including some saturated fats – and as a result, I’m staying full throughout the day and my usual mid-afternoon hypoglycaemic episodes appear to have disappeared.

What do I eat? You know, its much MUCH easier than I thought it would be. For lunch I might pack a tupperware box filled with organic baby spinach, a small baked sweet potato with a tad of feta crumbled on top, a grated carrot salad with raisins, a small bag of nuts as a snack and a couple of pieces of fruit. Or a half an avocado on a bed of quinoa with some greens on the side or cooked kale with a lemon wedge to squeeze over it all. Because I work in an office, I tend to save eating fishy things for dinner at home or restaurants – at the moment I’m really into Alaskan wild salmon, though also am trying to eat more local sustainable fish and also sardines. I’ve also found a fantastic recipe for cauliflower pizza that I have adapted by putting sheep feta in the crust and grating some St Helen’s hard goat cheese (a version of cheddar) on top.

Because I have a sweet tooth, I also sometimes make an um…healthy(ish) sundae for dessert. To do this, I whiz up 1.5 frozen bananas in the food processor with a tablespoon of maple syrup. If it needs more liquid to get creamy, add a tablespoon of coconut water or coconut milk. That makes the ice ‘cream’, which is like the texture of soft serve. To make the chocolate sauce, you’ll need to open a can of full fat coconut milk which has been in the fridge for at least 24 hours (I always keep a few in the fridge now – the coconut cream rises to the top of the can and hardens and delicious coconut water remains at the bottom of the can, so you can use both) and scoop a heaped tablespoon of the coconut cream into a small saucepan. On a low-med heat, melt the coconut cream and whisk in a couple of teaspoons of a dark cacao powder along with enough maple syrup or coconut sugar to sweeten. It will make a thick, fudgey hot chocolate sauce to pour over your ice ‘cream’. Delicious!

There are some wonderful bloggers out there who inspire me with a regular dose of Paleo friendly recipes for meals, packed lunches, cakes, cookies & muffins. Here are my favourites! (And please don’t knock the Mommy Bloggers – these women channel their energies into creating delicious food for their amazing websites and have a better grasp on social media than most FTSE500 companies!)

Against All Grain

Primal Palate

Coconut Mama

Elana’s Pantry

Nom Nom Paleo

The Paleo Mama

The Paleo Mom

Paleo Newbie

In general, I guess while there is a lot I’m enjoying about this way of eating, I’m a little cautious about cutting significant food groups from the diet and probably lean a bit more toward the Weston A Price dietary guidelines than strict Paleo, but we’ll see how it goes. By my next post I may have eased off the Paleo thing a bit. Its not everyone’s cup of tea, and I’m not convinced that its necessary to eliminate properly prepared grains from the diet but rest assured there are some tasty recipes in the wings and more adventures of dining in London to come.

10 Achievable New Year Resolutions

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Every year I ask my mother what her new year resolution is.  She says she’s giving up chocolate.  It lasts about 3 days.  Sound familiar?  Sure, I’ve made major life decisions which I have adhered to over the years, but I’m pretty sure that none of them were ever the result of a new year resolution.  In fact I struggle to think of a single new year resolution which wasn’t a complete failure.  So I’ve come up with 10 achievable changes to incorporate into my life for 2014.

1)  More Family Time

A while ago I made the decision that my job should make me as happy as the rest of my life does and I started training to become a Nutritional Therapist.  This has involved me keeping my day job while attending class on most weekends.  My work-school-life balance has been less than ideal for a while now and so this week I made the decision to reduce my hours at work and switch to a weekday class schedule, which will once again free up my weekends to once again spend Saturday mornings at Borough Market with my husband again or exploring Telegraph Hill with the dog…or even just spending a lazy morning on the sofa with a mug of tea and a copy of the Sunday Times.

2.  Grow Where You’re Planted

Maybe this one only applies to me.  I’ve spent my whole life thinking “life will be perfect when we move to….” and  “when we get a bigger house then  we can……”.  But maybe I just need to learn to love the space I’m in and cherish what I’ve got.   I have a warm and beautiful home with enough space to welcome our friends and a garden where I can enjoy the sun in the summer.  We live in a great neighbourhood with access to plenty of parks.  There’s always going to be something bigger and better and somewhere else that seems more exciting.  And who knows what the future might hold?  But right now, maybe I just need to nurture the little plot where I’m planted right now.

3.  Eat More Coconut Oil

Hey this is an easy one.  Coconut oil is great.  I’m a little biased because I love the stuff.  Its great for healthy skin (applied topically or when eaten regularly), for shiny hair (again, either applied topically or eaten regularly….or both!), for brain function (appearing to play a role in the reduction of dementia and Alzheimer’s), and it contains high levels of lauric acid which can kill  fungi, harmful bacteria and viruses.  Yes, its a saturated fat, but its structurally different to other saturated fats and is metabolised differently.  It fills you up, reducing your overall intake of calories, and even promoting a reduction in abdominal fat.  You know…your spare tire.  But make sure that you buy the raw, virgin, cold-pressed organic stuff.

4.  Take Your Vitamins.  (Not Just Buy Them)

I’ve got better with this over the last year, but there’s still plenty of room for improvement.  I spend a lot of money on good quality  supplements and when I take them, I feel great.  I try to keep it down to a minimum, so I’m not rattling as I walk down the street, but there are a few vitamins I take as well as a couple of herbal tinctures and a fantastic breakfast shake which balances my blood sugar from morning to early afternoon because I really REALLY don’t wan to get diabetes!  That being said, I don’t particularly want my life to revolve around my vitamin schedule, but I do think it would improve my overall wellbeing if I just take the vitamins I’ve got when I’m supposed to take them.  (Even the yucky ones with kelp and spirulina that stink like low tide on a hot day and make me want to barf every time I take them.)  Its called structure.  I have very little of that in my life.

5.  Walk More – 10,000 Steps

“You know what, I really need to start walking less” said no one, ever.  Okay, that sounded like one of those glib Facebook shares and perhaps somewhere it is.  But really, walking is so good for you, and if you are at all able to engage in this exercise (i.e. not in a wheelchair or completely bedridden) then get out and walk some more.  I’m not really a pedometer kind of a person, but depending on your height and gait, 10,000 steps a day is between 5 and 8 kilometres.  There is a plethora of evidence that 10,000 steps a day will burn excess calories,  improve heart health and also can improve mental health. Any times in the past when I’ve gone through a difficult period, I know that walking has been my drug of choice.  I walk, walk and walk some more.  And when I think I can’t walk anymore, I just keep going.  This year I definitely plan to reignite my love of this simple activity – and best of all, its free!!!

6.  Think About Where Your Money Goes – Shop Local & Shop Strategically

Your pound, dollar, peso, whatever, is the best communication tool in the world.  Its better than Twitter, Facebook. customer feedback groups or the Amazon star rating system.  Because in the end, like it or not, the world is about money.  Every purchase you make tells companies (both big and small) what to keep making and tells stores what to keep stocking on their shelves.  For instance, today the average person in Britain consumes 36.4 kilos of sugar each year.  In 1997  that figure was 29.5 kilos.  This trend tells companies to produce more consumables (can you really call it food?) with sugar and to continue to make sweet foods sweeter.  By thinking about which companies, products and values we are supporting before spending our money, and taking into account the impact that even one person’s spending habits can have (remember that 36.4 kilos of sugar per year we’re all eating?  That’s over 230 million kilos of sugar in Britain alone), we are shopping strategically and helping to set the marketplace of the future.

7.  Try Something Different

Everyone gets caught up with crazy, restrictive or just plain unhealthy new year diets.  We suddenly realise we have to lose a whole whack of kilos which we just spent the last 6 months gaining and expect to lose it in two weeks.  Well, it don’t work like that, honey.  So instead of putting pressure on yourself, just remember how to enjoy real food and exercise again.  I find diet books exhausting.  They provide such rigid protocols I feel bored before I’ve even finished the second chapter.  But you know what?  Some different ways of eating are both really healthy and really fun.  For instance, in the spring, summer and early autumn months, I love eating a lot of raw vegan food.  There are some great bloggers out there with recipes that are so much fun to try:  Fully Raw Kristina, Fragrant Vanilla Cake and Live.Love.Raw.  Try it for a day.  A week.  A month.  Or even just one meal.  I’ve always been a little intimated to try eating Paleo, so on 1 January Mr Harris and I agreed to do it together.  There was no pressure – no commitment to adhere to it for any set length of time. Just to see how we got on with it.   And you know what – it couldn’t be easier having a grain-free lifestyle.  It makes the weekly shopping trip quick and easy (just fish, meat, eggs, fruit, vegetables and nuts!) and if I feel I just can’t get on without a bit of dairy, well, then I have a bit of cheese made from organic sheep or goats’ milk, which are much easier to digest.  Its not about discomfort and deprivation.  We might keep eating this way for another week.  We might keep eating this way forever.  But I’m just pleased that we tried it.  (And don’t forget to combine it with resolution number 5 above:  Walk More!)

8.  Meditate

(Uh oh…where’s she going with this?)  Meditation doesn’t have to mean a prayer rug and incense.  It can mean whatever it needs to mean to you to calm the near constant hyperarousal of the sympathetic nervous system which so many of us experience in our everyday lives.  We react to the so called ’emergencies’ in our work environments in the same way our bodies evolved to react to say, an attacking tiger.  While intellectually we can tell the difference, unfortunately our nervous system can’t, and adrenal fatigue is just all too common from overstimulation of the fight or flight instinct.  So what helps?  Meditation is one thing that can help.  You can sit on a prayer rug and silently empty your mind.  You can tune into Oprah & Deepak on their regular 21 day meditation sessions.  You can find a group of like minded people who enjoy chanting and ohm your hearts out.  I find it difficult to clear my mind unless I’m focusing on some type of gentle, preferably repetitive movement like walking or rock climbing, or being guided through yoga or tai chi.  I’ve even achieved a clear mind when swimming, looking at the bottom of the ocean floor or the tiles of the pool, and just focusing on gliding through the water while causing as little rippling as possible.  Or I don’t know, go fly fishing.  Just something quiet to take you away from the stimuli and scheduling of the rest of your life:  away from mobile phones, television, computers, wifi, traffic, screaming children and loved ones asking when dinner is ready and where the toilet paper is kept.   And by ‘you’, I mean ‘me’.

9.  Eat a Carrot a Day

Yes, I am going to eat a carrot a day.  I told you these were achievable resolutions.  I could bang on for days about the health benefits of carrots , but here’s a new one for me.  Raw carrots contain a type of undigestible fibre that binds excess oestrogen (and other toxins) and prevents them from being reabsorbed in the intestine.  Instead, your body can then focus its resources on progesterone and thyroid (yay!), rather than cortisol and oestrogen (boooooo).   And apparently all within just a few days of regular use.  (Ditto for bamboo shoots, by the way, in case for some reason you prefer those to carrots.)  Unfortunately, oatmeal – though also a good source of fibre – won’t do the trick.  This is because oatmeal provides good food for bacteria.  Not necessarily a bad thing, but the resulting bacterial endotoxins can put a chronic strain on the liver (liver processes toxins remember?), and divert its focus from storing enough sugar to process thyroid and other hormones….which could be the reason for the hormone imbalance in the first place.

And why do we care about too much oestrogen?  Less oestrogen means less strain on the liver, less inflammation overall and improved thyroid health.  Oh yeah, and boys, it also means less likelihood of you getting a nice set of moobs.

10.  Bake a Cake

Not just one cake.  Cakes on a regular basis.  And tea too.  Because what’s a home without a cup of tea and a slice of cake (in my case delicious almond, honey & orange Paleo cake) on a  Sunday afternoon?