Let it be

Unfair and therefor you have the right to scream and complain to not understand and to be in pain, sometimes at least, I think, as a parent a child, your youngster , your teen, gets out of her mind, so, let it be, as the Beatles wrote in one of their songs, let it be, once. Get out with the feelings and let go. It's just getting so frustrated and messed up. When can you ever eat without never having a reaction. Often enough!!!! You know, while eating and following the right rules, our golden set of rules: food wise, life wise, fit wise, but not always, then there is the fight between the elements.
Like tonight. Outdoor sports, long days of school, music lessons and no time for a shower. All in a rush. No time, just hurry. A race, kind of, but with a lot of satisfaction and then suddenly the body reacts very negative. It's the sign that means: stop, take care of me and enough is enough.
Back off and take time for me, your ever be with you: your body.
Even a dish that's one of your favorites is harmful at this moment of the day and makes your lip is thick and you feel not well and you're in need of medication.
I feel your pain, I think how can I help you, to be there for you and without disturbing a family dinner, the constellation is sometimes just blowing up in the air, so normal, so hysterical hilarious. Family and seasons may be are showing different faces. It's the climate that makes that we feel and are better in shape and there where allergies come along with pollens, now with fields of blooming mimosa in Rabat.
Feel better.

Low vitamin D linked to allergies in children

Low vitamin D linked to allergies in children

Thanks to my friend Sigolène. How friendships can along with life.Once we lived both as expatriates in Lausanne, Switzerland and now some years later we are only separated by the Atlantic Ocean , from Morocco to America. Where interests in subjects remain and the love about education and children, family constellation and a greener way of eating and some melancholic shared thoughts about small French local markets.

Dates revisited

A beautiful Moroccan salad for 4

What I use:

1/2 cup dried pitted dates
1 lemon grated peel and the juice
1/4 cup of olive oil (I'll use the flavors from pressed olives from Marrakesh)
2 oranges peeled and cut in slices
4 cups of mixed salads, go after your personal senses, you can easily find different salads on the local market and you can vary with green herbs too. Don't hesitate to invent a new combination.
pomegranate seeds, these glass like transparent seeds with their pink hearts are exquisite and look like precious stones. 


Prepare 4 plates with the mixed salad, add and decorate with orange slices and dates. Mix olive oil and lemon juice and poor over salad. last and final touch the pomegranate seeds. Et voilà:  a wonderful seasonal salad, every one who knows Morocco will discover again the flavors of this mystic country.
Serve with corn bread.

Family Health Articles - Food Fright - Food & Nutrition

Family Health Articles - Food Fright - Food & Nutrition

Very green and KIWI look this magazine. Names and numbers, tests and recipes, food and education, allergies and specialists. To live with and to overcome or not but then to make the best out of it and focus on the possibilities and the 'what can I have' side of life.

View on life and allergies

Planning, dreaming, focusing.

It's what it is, making plans for now and later, seeing some paths for one self starting now, already earlier in the last years. America seems one of those targets for my allergy daughter. Going there after graduation in three years. And there are some favorite places to go, to study, to start academic bachelor life and further on... I admire the spirit and feel like a bird on a branch, I look up and listen, hear the conversations , the thought lines and the processing. The input after visits from friends, after reading books, having talks with faculty being involved in friendships with elder people, sharing their experiences.

This guy in the underline link is a Harvard Dr.

It's the curiosity and the search for a life that she lives now and goes on. This man is a specialist in the things my allergy daughter suffers from. he established a network through several Universities and widens the view on allergies and sees that education and information through rich programs will be fruitful to parents, teachers, patients. He wrote a book in which he points out the range of issues that matters when one is allergic and opens a dictionary filled with answers and opinions.

http://pbskids.org/arthur/parentsteachers/lesson/health/pdf/Binky_Peanut_Allergy_QA.pdf

Voyager!

Voyager

Voyager!
découvrir la terre
et sa beauté
voyager!
jusqu'à la fin de l'univers
ou au début de l'Angleterre
voyager!
partir à la recherche du bonheur
ou de malheur
voyager!
aller caresser le monde
avec une main douce
et voir la paix qui pousse
Voyager!

Par Belle Marianne, ma fille.
Février 2011, Rabat, Maroc

Energy in all its appearances!

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/read-your-face-know-your-health-condition.html


Global input, friends who mind, thanks Mary for this link.

Some notes

To overcome most, keep young people busy. let them exercise. Give them food and sports like in the old times. I'll do. I like to exercise my self but really see the advantage through sport we keep the young spirits going on and keep them on track. And when they are tired from being active they will be hungry and then there is the food to come over the exhausting.
Vitamins and iron, B6 and B9 ..................
I try to keep on with the daily recommended fruit portions.
They refuse some times.
I'll like the colors: strawberries and berries.
Fashionably.
May be.
Healthy at last and colorful without pretensions.
Go with the flow, when they're ready to take it, the fruits, serve it, I admit, I have my secret policies and make the table as nice as possible and add the fruits and the plates and it looks pretty much like a fancy decorated object that serves as a average Wednesday evening dinner table.
Pressure, not in time then at least from peers or from TV or movies and publicity or just lack of time and then we should try still to feed those young people in a proper was, because it is because of us, our schedules that time flies and no moment is left to sit and have decent dinner, but then when it is there the momentum together or extended with friends that seems so far more great to have food and share the moment.

And when like tonight the vegetables, the salad and even the salmon aren't received with great enthusiasm I will not give in but won't become stubborn neither but cook again and set up the table and share the dish with us.

  

Those dates

Dates, beautiful dates.
The delicious and ancient fruit from Tunesia and Morocco.
Plenty of each. In all varieties, smaller and dried, larger and richer.
Strolling around the Medina, we can't stand the temptation and buy some of those.
The bargain.
We taste some, we bring home the rest wrapped in a brown paper back, I like these small details, these kind of antique paper backs.
At home we fill the dates with goat cheese.
You can fill them also with old Amsterdam or with a rich Brie. It all depends on your personal taste, the state of your mind, your mood...........
I have been eating dates my hole life, my grand mother was addicted to all kind of dried fruit like figs and dates. My parents used to serve dates as an aperitif..... so let the tradition go on. My youngest daughter eats them plain a dozen at the time!

Une touche à la Marocaine

Une belle recette de ce beau pays ou on habite aujourd'hui depuis 2,5 années. Un pays qui bouge comme on dit. Avec les détournements qu'on observe dans le Maghreb un peu partout. Laissons nous espérer que les transformations peuvent se passer en respectant les droits de l'homme.

Je m'ai trouvé une belle recette, une belle histoire. Dit donc à l'aube d'un temps peu être transitoire et historique. En passant les vacances de Noel entre amis en Suisse on m'avait offert ce beau livre: Julie cuisine le monde chez vous. C'est là dedans que je viens de découvrir les odeurs et les épices de cet terre ou j'habite maintenant. En ajoutant un peu plus de l'ail et des mandarines ça vient une nouvelle expérience.
Au tour du monde, c'est un peu au tour de la table.


Salade de Carottes

600 g de carottes (moyen)
2 gousses d'ail
2 c à soupe d'huile d'olive
1 c à café de cumin
0,5 c à café de 4 épices
sel (pas pour moi)
1 c à soupe citron pressé
1 c à soupe clémentine pressée
poivre fraîche
1 branche de menthe fraîche

Nettoyez les carottes et les couper en rondelles.
Pelez l'ail & pressez
Puis dans le casserole: l'huile et ajoutez les rondelles de carottes, l'ail & épices. En suite salez et sur feu moyen pendant 5 minutes remuer. Ajoutez 150ml d'eau et laissez cuire pendant 15 à 20 minutes toujours sur feu doux et en remuant de temps en temps.
Dès que l'eau est évaporée prenez la casserole du feu. Ajoutez les jus de fruits puis la menthe!

Servez tiède avec du pain Marocain, un thé a la menthe ou un rosé pour les adultes.


Le livre : Julie cuisine le monde, chez vous, Alain Ducasse

Hypoallergenic food

http://www.kennislink.nl/system/files/000/027/351/original/promotie_m_van_putten_hypoallergenic_foods.pdf?1254382949


Doctorate with a focus on: Hypoallergenic food.
The author accomplished her research at Wageningen University, Wageningen, The Netherlands.

As always I like to read more detailed and a variety of sources about allergies.
This happens to be a profound study done as such during the first decade of this century. 

Dating Dos and Don'ts - FAAN

Dating Dos and Don'ts - FAAN

Most Americans Recognize Allergies Are Serious But Don't Know Who Should Treat Condition

Most Americans Recognize Allergies Are Serious But Don't Know Who Should Treat Condition

Probably this gives an indication for how people deal with their allergies. There is a long way to go for better understanding and coping with allergies.

Peanut free !!

Text message from my allergy daughter. Posting Brussels. Visiting a friend. having a day at her friends International school. ''Hi, just ate a chocolate cookie....)) The International School of Brussels is a peanut free campus''.
Great. Valentine Day together with very best friends and enjoying your favorite cookies! That's the best she can have! I imagine how she feels, walking around a campus with hundreds of students and a safe place for her. An amazing policy. A reason to pick up our suitcases and to travel North... It would be just a relieve for every day life at the campus!!
The message from such a learning institution is courageous, meaningful, respectful and shows empathy.
Policy about peanuts as such is indeed possible and is implementable.
These school communities transmit a strong message, reach out and built a community for all students.

February

The shortest month of the year. Unpredictable. When we lived in Cassis during our first two years, I thought spring started already in the second month of the year. I remember very well mentioning this to a friend, and she  nodded her head and kindly explained to me that the white blossoming of the Almond trees didn't meant that winter was behind us. Every year in February I got overwhelmed by the fresh and even the cold days. While we lived at a 4 kilometers distance from the village and the beach, in a neighbored called Les Janots. The temperature in our cosmos could easily differ some degrees with the market place in Cassis.

February disturbs, me any way. I see the blog pieces don't come along as in other months, and I feel eager to go outside in the garden and exercise and do my first lanes of this year. It's between two seasons , it's too short in days and merely a month of destiny and honor of all Valentines.

Red. 

Dramatic

Energy

cherries

Strengths

Love

Roses

Harmony

Anger

Power

Need

Overwhelming

Embracing

Deep

Warm

Physical

Blood

Sunset

Girls bake sandy cookies

Things became excited yesterday. After the first collection of cookies by the oldest two sisters there was a second bake adventure by my allergy girl and her youngest sister. While their screams can clear the air between them, making a choice for a certain biscuit, designs an air of '4 hands on one belly'. They create their ambiance in the kitchen. I'll simply give them access to the working space. They spend time on discussing what they like to eat, make and bake. There's a slight sense of impulsive behavior:
I have a need for sweet, so let's start immediately.

Aprons.
Sharing  roles. Books and tools. Ingredients.
The atelier goes.
Flour all over the place.
Light golden sandy cookies.

For 6 persons they need:

250 gr plain flour
150 gr softened butter
100 gr caster sugar
2 eggs
1 table spoon of cocoa powder
all natural food coloring

Bake in 10 minutes in oven 175 %

Girls bake

Opening the side door of my house, home.
Kick my boots off and pull the bags with groceries up to the kitchen. That's where I want to go  immediately, it's the smell of sweet biscuits, an English favorite, a spice cookie? Girls have been busy.

Tradition creates follow up and it works in my home. The girls take the baking job with pleasure, find their way through the cookbooks and search for satisfaction, wondering, exploring, with a nice result today and possibly tomorrow with a disappointment.

Today's recipe: sweet cookies made with only 3 ingredients: butter, flour and sugar.
When baked and still warm on the plate a piece of dark 75 % chocolate is nicely posed in the center of each cookie.  The chocolate melts while the cookie cools down.

What I need in my cupboard for teenagers and their food drive:
For 2 dozens of cookies.
150 gr plain flour
 50 gr caster sugar
100 gr butter

All ingredients together, work and make a ball.
Form small balls and squash them.
bake them at 170° C or Gas mark 3 during 15 - 20 minutes.

Make your own cookie parade! use your imagination. You can decorate or enjoy them all natural!

So chocolate

Chocolate the perfect company.
To celebrate February.
Chocolate, so chocolate:  it's delicious and very healthy ( I like to believe this) to enjoy a piece of dark chocolate every day! I red it's good for your heart, your brains, your mood...
The smell of melted chocolate, the pleasure of decorating the cake with a thick layer of dark gold...
My girls inherited their taste for chocolate probably from my mother. We know her chocolate addiction so wonderfully well. I lived my childhood in the southern part of The Netherlands, close to the Belgium border, a country famous for her chocolate. My mother had a dear friend from that food beloved neighbored country. This woman brought from her to us golden flavors. At that time not available in our small country. For me her country was the incarnation of Roald Dahl's books and a magnificent replica of the chocolate factory.

I learned through my daughter's allergy specialists and doctors to stay with your brand of chocolate when the child digest it well, without allergy reactions. We took off with Lindt chocolate and stayed loyal to the brand. Furthermore it's so true to us that the cake, the cookies, the home made heart chocolates taste more exquisite when you go for the good quality chocolate. It just makes the difference.

Today I ran out of time and beside the dinner I didn't make the cake...
Instead I melted again by reviewing my picture and promise I'll make the girls the treat later this week.

Oliebollen

This treat is traditionally served in The Netherlands on New Years Day. Known as 'Oliebollen'. The dictionary translation is donuts. Which doesn't cover the feeling I have with this sweet sensation. But this may say more about me than about the dictionary. 

Delicious traditions, a taste that brings back memories. While living in different countries it make sense to keep up with some traditions. And although the weather should be cold for this recipe so not really suitable for Rabat's standards we enjoy the fun and the smell. As much as my greasy hair after some time above the pan...
As we celebrated this New Year abroad, we missed our traditional bakings. So when we came back home to Rabat, after the Holidays, I promised the girls to make the Dutch favorite sweet and rich fried treat to celebrate one more time: 2011. The preparation is a little bit tricky, it's much about patience, the dough need to double and even more and the result is simply the best by using fresh yeast.  I love the smell of fresh yeast and it's brings back images from me in the kitchen looking up to my Grandfather.  

What I use, likewise the tradition of my Grandfather.

500 gr         flour (baking powder incorporated)
4 - 5           dl milk
50 gr           fresh yeast
1.5 tsp        salt
100 gr        dried raisins
100 gr        currants
50 gr          candied peel
50 gr          dried fruit

Sunflower Oil to fry
Powder sugar to decorate

1. make the yeast dough.
2. While you put raisins and currants in half warm water, wash them and dry them (I use a kitchen towel)
3. When the dough has been raising enough (I put it in a warm area in the house and cover the bowl with a semi wet towel).... all by respecting ma Grandfather's instructions.
4. Add all fruit!
5. Heat the oil. Use two spoons and make skip portions into the heat oil. Ready to take out when golden brown. Put them on all baking paper to dry.

Serve with powder sugar and hot chocolate, tea or a sparkling wine.