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About Laura Livesey

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So far Laura Livesey has created 116 blog entries.

Skin beautiful prawn oatmeal curry with turmeric

Skin beautiful prawn oatmeal curry with turmeric It’s Day 6 of Oat Week at The Curious Giraffe! When you think of oats, savoury dishes don't immediately come to mind. Most people think of pairing them with sweet things like apples and cinnamon however they are much more versatile. If you think of replacing rice with oats in certain recipes, it opens up a whole new ballgame! I don't eat a lot of rice, however I love many of the seasonings that come in rice dishes. So I use oats with italian flavourings in risotto-like dishes, or with Thai and Indian spices. It's [...]

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Gorgeous vanilla apple crumble (wheat free, sugar free, and gluten free)

Gorgeous vanilla apple crumble (wheat free, sugar free, and gluten free) It’s Day 5 of Oat Week at The Curious Giraffe! One of my favourite ways to use oats is in an apple crumble. The trouble with most crumble recipes is the addition of wheat flour, sugar, and margarine. This recipe cunningly sidesteps these harmful ingredients, while offering a satisfying mouth feel and rich apple vanilla-spice flavouring. I've cut out the normal first step in crumbles which is to cook your apples first in a pot before baking the oat crust in the oven. In this case, we are going to simplify [...]

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Oatcakes with garlic avocado and egg rocket toppings (gluten free)

Oatcakes with garlic avocado and egg rocket toppings (gluten free) It's Day 4 of Oat Week at The Curious Giraffe! Today is less about cooking, and more about snacking. Oatcakes with garlic avocado and egg rocket toppings (gluten free) Oatcakes could just be your new BFFs, but wait! Just be clear. Oatcakes taste AWFUL on their own. Do not under any circumstances eat these on their own (unless you have been kidnapped and all you see within reach are a pack of oatcakes). They are not Cheese-its, or Doritos, or anything that you scoff down by the 100's. These are [...]

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Zesty apple cranberry oatmeal bars with almonds

Zesty apple cranberry oatmeal bars with almonds It's Day 3 of Oat Week at The Curious Giraffe! These chewy wheat free bars are full of apples which are nutrient-dense without being energy-dense, so you can get your sweet tooth on, while still maintaining a healthy weight! I often throw one or two in my bag in the AM. They're great to have handy for coffee breaks or between meal snacks. The almond chunks get nicely toasted and the flavours of apple, lime and cranberry give the bars a nice tasty zing. These babies are dense bundles of lovely nutrition! MAIN [...]

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Blender pancakes with oatmeal and banana (gluten free, heart-healthy)

Blender pancakes with oatmeal and banana (gluten free, heart-healthy) It’s Day 2 of Oat Week at The Curious Giraffe! I am a sucker for pancakes. I think it's because they drop me right into "weekend mode". But the regular wheat-y kind give me a sugar low about 20 minutes after eating them, and all I want to do is take a nap on the couch! So much for Saturday afternoon! Blender pancakes with oatmeal and banana (gluten free, heart-healthy) These oatmeal pancakes taste better to me than the original (egads, is it possible?) They are full of heart friendly goodness as well as [...]

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Banana oat muffins with almonds and blueberries (wheat free recipe for cholesterol reduction)

Banana oat muffins with almonds and blueberries (wheat free recipe for cholesterol reduction) It's Day 1 of Oat Week at The Curious Giraffe! Today we are making muffins with oat flour and absolutely NO wheat. Before Oat Week gets underway, I wanted to clarify something. Why all this fuss about going 'wheat-free' or 'flourless' and using oats instead of wheat? Cardiologist William Davis, MD, author of Wheat Belly sums up wheat nicely (all forms including supposedly healthy forms like whole wheat, sprouted, etc.)  as "incredibly destructive genetic monsters".  His fascinating account of the genetic modification of wheat over the last [...]

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Going beyond oatmeal: A week of recipes featuring oats (to reduce cholesterol)

Going beyond oatmeal: A week of recipes featuring oats (to reduce cholesterol) When you are serious about staying healthy and trying to figure out how to reduce your cholesterol (as so many of us are these days), you realise quickly that sugar and flour are very dangerous to your health in general, and heart-health in particular. So you stop eating them. But then after a few months of dreams featuring dancing pastries and devilish thoughts about baked goods, you have to get creative. Wait a minute... It's oat week at The Curious Giraffe! href="https://theconfidencekitchen.com/2012/12/16/eat-this-daily-glorious-fat-olive-coconut-and-avocado-oils-to-reduce-cholesterol/">oils are good for heart health and [...]

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Turmeric onion eggs with garlic avocado tomato and olive oil salsa (heart friendly)

Turmeric onion eggs with garlic avocado tomato and olive oil salsa (heart friendly) Eggs can be part of a healthy eating program to help lower your cholesterol naturally. Yes, I know it goes against much of what you've probably heard, but as I find through my food research on almost a daily basis, the food recommendation literature out there is mostly commercially biased, or just plain wrong when it comes to helping us become heart healthy. As part of a cholesterol reducing heart friendly diet, a few eggs, or some studies even suggest up to between 7 to 14  lightly [...]

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Grains are a tricky food when eating for heart health

Grains are a tricky food when eating for heart health When you’re eating a heart healthy diet, you want to be choosing your grains with extreme care. I like this quote from Jonny Bowden Ph.d, who put it this way: “If you ate a great balance of foods from the 150 healthiest foods on the planet, and you never touched another grain for the rest of your life, you wouldn’t be missing anything nutritionally. The same cannot be said of the fruits, vegetables, eggs, oils, spices, meats, fish, and poultry." So when I eat a grain, I think very carefully [...]

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Sitting at work is killing you! My journey to standing at work

Sitting at work is killing you! My journey to standing at work I almost spit out my morning green smoothie when I read this sentence a few week's ago: "Your job is killing you. If you sit at a desk for more than four hours a day, you increase your risk of death from any cause by nearly 50 percent and boost your risk of heart problems by 125 percent." - Wired: Get a Standing Desk What? Doesn't that shock you? It did me. Fresh from the Christmas break, and thanks to the gruesome links in a post from Box of [...]

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Healthy feels good

The Confidence Kitchen is about cooking up life change for health and happiness. Daily habits are the key. By focussing on adding specific nourishing foods, thoughts, behaviours and supportive communities, we can leapfrog past our old behaviour and become changemakers not only for our own health, but that of our planet.

© 2011 - Laura Livesey and The Confidence Kitchen. All Rights Reserved.
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