Why did nobody tell me that midlife would be a constant battle to get enough sleep?! I took sleep for granted until I had children, but since then it’s been a scarce commodity. The broken nights of early parenthood have given way to the broken nights of middle age, menopause and beyond. A steady stream…
NOT ALL EXERCISE IS EQUAL: ZA’TAR NUTS AND THE LONDON BOAT RACE
We know exercise is good and that any exercise is better than none. But are we being misled by Government guidelines with their constant references to moderation? In Britain the National Health Service advises us to do “150 minutes of moderate aerobic activity such as cycling or brisk walking every week.” But Swedish research published…
CHRISTMAS STRESS – AND HOW TO BEAT IT
Right now I’m sitting at my laptop thinking I can’t possibly find time to write a blog post: I need to order the turkey, work out what to give my impossible-to-buy-for brother-in-law, get the dishwasher fixed, wrap presents, find the tree decorations, actually buy a tree….you get the picture. It’s Christmas stress time and we’ve…
GRANOLA BAKED APPLES
This is a great dish for making use of all those lovely Autumnal apples. Annabel has apple trees in her garden and keeps leaving bags of them on my doorstep! So I keep making this dish. It’s high in fibre and low in processed anything. Great for heart health, and fighting inflammation. I know baked…
CAN A KIWI FRUIT HELP YOU SLEEP? PEACH AND MOZARELLA SALAD WITH SMOKED ALMOND PESTO
Teenagers everywhere are pushing through, red-eyed and exhausted, to the end of exam period (in the UK, at any rate). My eighteen-year old daughter is no different. With a head full of hay fever, she spends her days revising before collapsing into a night of inadequate sleep and waking at dawn as the light streams…
WHY DO WE KNOW SO LITTLE ABOUT THE MENOPAUSE?
It’s a question I’ve heard a lot recently – from Kirsty Wark in her excellent documentary The Menopause and Me, and from my school friends when we shared our experiences of hitting 50. Every woman goes through it, yet we talk so little about it. Kirsty Wark bravely tackles it head on – her film is…
THE REAL TRUTH ABOUT DEMENTIA, HEALTHY EATING AND KALE & SALMON FRITTATA
Have you watched the recent BBC programmes on dementia? Both the unbearable moving Living With Dementia: Chris’s Story and Angela Rippon’s programme The Truth About Dementia are still on BBC iPlayer if you missed them. It’s brilliant to see dementia discussed on primetime network television. Angela did a wonderful, heart-warming job revealing the human stories…
AGEING WELL: 12 LESSONS FROM 2015 – AND VEGETABLE TARTLETS FOR CHRISTMAS DINNER
The end of the year means it’s time to review all the reports on healthy ageing we poured over in the last 12 months. As ever, some of the research seemed (to us) a little ho hum, but every now and then along came a study that made us sit up and take note. I…
HEART-HEALTHY NUTS AND CHRISTMAS GRANOLA
We’ve made no secret of our passion for nuts – many of our recipes include a sprinkle of toasted nuts or a slug of almond butter. We’re not alone: our almond butter dipping sauce is one of our most shared and pinned recipes on social media. When it comes to ageing well, nuts are one…
CHOCOLATE CAN HELP PREVENT DEMENTIA? AND CHOCO-MATCHA COOKIES
We called our blog ‘Kale & Cocoa’ for a reason – while we love the health benefits of kale, we love a bit of chocolate too. So yet more evidence that chocolate is good for us is a bonus! Early in the summer it was widely reported that around 100g of chocolate a…