Ward off that winter cold!

Here's an excellent way to fight off all those nasty germs flying around! Tahini sauce loaded with garlic and lemon juice doesn't only taste nice but also provides you with vitamin C and antioxidants that help in combating viruses. Enjoy with plenty of colourful raw vegetables and fruits like carrots, apples, cucumber and cauliflower for an extra vitamin boost. Tahini is also rich in calcium and protein so this is also a great snack before or after exercise (or a life saver on a day after a wild party!)

Tahini dip

3 heaped tablespoons of tahini
juice of 1 lemon
1/2-1 dl of water
3-4 cloves of garlic
about 2 tablespoons of olive oil
salt

Mix everything together until smooth. Keeps several days in the fridge.

Let them eat bruschetta!

Let's face it - we are poor. And now when I am on maternity leave even poorer. Well, as poor as any well-educated people with a fairly middle-class backround can be. As in not at all really, when you look at things on a global scale. But thinking that our poorness is just relative doesn't help a great deal when there are loads of bills to pay and the bank account is on the minus side! This New Year I made a resolution to try live with as little money as possible - and to make it a fun challenge instead of just being  mean.

I made these bruschetta bread slices from a loaf I got for free from local whole food store. It's also an excellent way to use up any old pieces of bread that are drying up in your bread cupboard.

All you need is:

bread
olive oil
garlic
salt
herbs (rosemary, basilica, whatever available really)

Chop the garlic and mix in with the oil. Add salt and herbs. Slice the bread and spread oil generously on the slices. Bake in oven in 225 degrees for about 5-10 minutes until crisp and brown. Enjoy while feeling virtuous!

Best for your breasts

The last few weeks there's been a scandal around silicone breasts: the poisonous and extremely fragile PIP implants have risked the health of thousands of women around the world. With all due respect to these women who were unaware just how dangerous chemical cocktail their implants were how can it be news to anyone that silicone breasts can be dangerous? How can any adult person in their right mind think that putting silicone into your body would be a good idea? Then again, in Latin America for example where lot of the PIP implants were imported, silicone breasts are apparently getting more and more common among girls even as young as sixteen. And the former pop star, current sad joke Britney Spears got silicone breasts when she was 17 - to aid her career. Nice little investment from her parents!

I want to think carefully what I even put on my breasts. At the moment they serve mostly as an important tool: I am nursing our son. As any women who has breastfed their baby knows, the breasts can leak milk even when not actually nursing. Especially during the first few months the milk just seems to stream constantly. If you don't want your top or sheets to be wet with milk, you have to wear nursing pads. When my first child was born I briefly tried disposable nursing pads but they felt horribly sweaty and irritated my nipples. The pads got also stuck on the breasts and some fibres even went into the baby's mouth.

And who knows what all is in them? Not me anyway, even if I tried to find out from the manufacturer's pages. A bit dodgy, isn't it? Most likely they are made of similar materials to disposable nappies and sanitary towels. I made my master's thesis on sanitary towels and believe you me, they are made of things that I certainly don't want anywhere near the most sensitive part of my anatomy! One ingredient at least is bleached cellulose pulp - and I don't think the bleaching process is very friendly to the environment or your skin. And then of course there's the totally unnecessary waste that these little pads are once used. 

For this second time I was a wiser woman and stocked up with nice washable nursing pads. The ones in the picture with owls and hedgehogs are cute, aren't they? They can be washed with the nappies in 60 degrees and they really keep the milk from the places it doesn't belong! And by buying them I supported local small scale handicraft industry. The only problem with them is that they look so much fun that big sister keeps pinching them!