The Coffs Coast Hinterland

I love getting out of Coffs and travelling up over Red Hill to the Orara Valley.  It is one of the most beautiful places in the world. I envy the people who live up there.  It is only a very short hop skip and a jump to Coffs Harbour city with its beaches, shops, restaurants and attractions, yet when you are on the other side of Red Hill you feel like you are truly out in the country.  It has a beautiful quiet rural feel and more often than not, thanks to it's high coastal rain fall, it is lush and green.  I never tire of going out there and feel a real sense of peace and contentment when ever I venture that way.  Maybe one day we will live up there.

Because it is so close to Coffs, I have a few friends up there, so have a good excuse to go and visit.  The boys play soccer against Orara Valley teams, so we find ourselves attending soccer matches a few times a year.  I have started going to the play group up there too at the recreation oval.  Mainly because my friend goes and it's a good way to catch up with her, but I do find myself enjoying the setting (almost) as much as her company.

When Evan, my sixteen year old learner driver son, suggested a driving lesson up to Coramba to visit his mate Mitch I jumped at the chance.  I have often travelled the Orara Valley Way, usually with end destination in mind and so have not always had the opportunity to stop off at some attractions along the way.  When I travel to Grafton for example I like to do at least one direction of the trip (either there or back) along the Orara Valley Way.  I often have to head out to Glenreagh for various scouting activities and I also have  friends who I occasionally visit in Nana Glen and on Dairyville road.  There is also the pick your own blueberries farm on Bucca Road which I frequent at least once a year.  So while my sojourns up the Orara Valley way are reasonably frequent, the opportunity to stop and enjoy its offerings are rare.

With Evan wanting to spend a few hours with his mate, I figured I would have time to kill, so I invited Steve to join me on a date out exploring the Orara Valley.  As it turned out we also had our 15 month old and our 12 year old with us, but it was still all good.

We started the trip with Evan bustling us out of the door, a short time after 10.30am, complaining that we were running late and that we should already be on our way. We bundled into the four wheel drive and then realised that fuel was low, and as we were in such a hurry and could not possibly stop to refuel, we had better all squeeze into the little Mazda instead.  Ellie, Harry and I squashed into the backseat, while Steve took on the supervisory responsibilities of panicking about Evan's driving prowess.

We left Coffs and followed Coramba road up over Red Hill to the Orara Valley.  I'm not sure at which point Coramba Road turns into Orara Valley Way, but we followed the road all the way to Coramba and stopped at Mitch's house.  The first step in this grand plan started to unravel.  Mitch was not home.  On contacting him Evan discovered that Mitch was actually back in Coffs at his girl friend's house.  Reluctant to just turn around and head back home I suggested we continue on up to Nana Glen for morning tea and give Mitch a chance to organise himself and get home.

I had a secret reason for going to morning tea in Nana Glen.  There is a gorgeous cafe there called Kafe Kookaburra and I had a memory of going there some years ago with my sister.  We ordered lemon meringue pie and the slice of heaven that was delivered out to us was nothing short of spectacular.  Now I am not normally a fan of photographing the food you get in restaurants.  But this creation was something to behold and I do remember it being photo worthy.  The meringue sitting on top  of this enormous wedge was inches thick.  It was a memory that had lived in my mind for years and although incredibly decadent, one I intended to revisit this weekend.

The secret couldn't last for long.  I had to admit to the rest of my fellow travellers why we were going to Kafe Kookaburra.  I personally didn't care what the others ordered, but I was definitely having the lemon meringue pie.  We arrived at the Cafe and found that there were already quite a few people there. We got ourselves a table in the sun and perused the menu.........No lemon meringue pie.  Bugger.

Determined to make the best of it I decided a cappuccino and a slice of (another sort of) cake would be good too. The setting is so lovely that it is hard not to have a good time out there.  In the course of our stay at the Cafe many people arrived to enjoy it's pleasures too.  It is a very popular place.
As I was deciding upon another option to eat with my coffee the blackboard menu got changed to include (yes, it's unbelievably true) lemon meringue pie!  They must have picked up my vibes.  So now, after all, I was going to be able to show off this legendary pie to the rest of the family.  Naturally, I ordered the pie. Steve ordered orange and almond cake, Harry ordered a trio of dips with Turkish bread, and Evan ordered wedges.  Ellie would just eat bits off our plates, including the cream from Steve's cake. I sat back happily to await the arrival of my order.

And how utterly disappointing my pie turned out to be.  In my minds eye was an enormous wedge of luscious lemon curd topped with a mountain of meringue.  I felt slightly decadent also ordering the cream and icecream to go with it. But what came out, at first glance it looked like they had stuffed up my order.  Because what was sitting on the plate was two small blobs of meringue topped tartlet that looked like profiteroles.  They were smaller than mini cupcakes and second glance confirmed that they were actually lemon meringue ......... tartlets, rather than pie.  What a massive letdown!  It was still delicious and the setting truly is marvellous.  Given the popularity of the place they are definitely doing something right.  Maybe they had to cease the generous portion sizes as the place was just getting too popular.  I know I wont be rushing back there for the lemon meringue pie.

We finished our pleasant (not spectacular) morning tea and still hadn't heard whether Mitch was back home yet.  Do we head back to Coffs and abandon our trip or carry on?  I voted to carry on.  There were two wineries here in Nana Glen that I had always wanted to visit.  The one I was most interested in was Kiaora, an organic winery that produces preservative free red wine only available (allegedly) at the winery.  We chose to go to Kiaora first, so travelled through Nana Glen towards Glenreagh and found the turn off to the winery.  We followed the signs along the bumpy dirt roads to the winery and reception area.  The reception area looked like a house with no real indication of where to go or how to approach it.  We opted to head straight up to the front door and ring the bell.
The door opened a crack and a head peered out at us.
We asked if the winery was open.  The lady enquired whether we wanted to taste or buy.  We answered that ideally we'd like to taste and then maybe buy depending on how it tastes.
She scurried off, after shutting the door in our faces, muttering something about checking to see if her partner had any left.
The lady returned, opening the door long enough to say sorry she couldn't help us, shut it again and left us standing on the verandah wondering what that was all about.  Upon looking at the state of the vines in the vineyard, it was in desperate need of a mow, I was left wondering if it was indeed still a working vineyard at all.  Steve was left wondering if it was just some sort a tax dodge.  Either way, we were left to make our way back to the highway with hopes that winery number two was a more promising proposition.

The second winery was back towards Kafe Kookaburra, but on the opposite side of the road.  It is called Two Tails winery named after the two tailed lizards found on the property.  Nana apparently is the aboriginal word for the lizard that sometimes features two tails and can be found in the area.  Along the way to the second winery Steve regaled us with a description of our experience at Kiaora that reminds me of why he really should be doing a whole lot more blogging.  He has a quirky way of looking at the world, a fabulous sense of humour and the articulation to make reading his blogs a pleasure.  He liken our failed visit to the door of the winery to Dorothy's experience when she presented at the gates of the Emerald city in the Wizard of Oz.  The woman (the gate keeper) had to go off and check with the great and powerful Oz.

 At which she returned to tell us that the Great and powerful Oz was not able to help us after all.  The only difference was, we were less insistent than Dorothy.  I wonder if I was Dorothy?  Would that make Steve the lion, the scarecrow or the tin man? Who were Evan and Harry?  Something to ponder another time, I think.

Two tails winery was the real deal.  It had a dedicated tasting area and the owner was truly delighted to see us and knew her wine very well.  We tasted about three white and three reds, some fortified wines and flavoured wines.  As it turned out Steve and I had quite different tastes.  I was under the impression that we essentially liked the same kinds of wines.  But at the end of the tasting we both picked totally different bottles as our favourites.  I chose a rose called Blush and the Ginger wine, which was like a strong alcoholic cordial.  I could imagine it tasting delicious served with soda water.  I am looking forward to trying it that way.  Steve chose a red and a white.

As we exited the winery Evan was on the phone to Mitch.  He was headed home and we arranged to meet him in ten minutes.  We jumped back into the car and headed back to Coramba.  We dropped Evan off at Mitch's, informing him that instead of four hours he now only had two hours to hang out with his mate.  Harry, Ellie, Steve and I headed to the Coramba Pub for lunch.  I had heard the menu was impressive for a pub and the beer garden views spectacular.  The reviews were right on both accounts.

Neither Steve or Harry were all that hungry.  I, however was feeling pretty peckish.  Must have been the huge pie I had worked myself up to eating, that now left a big hole.  While Harry played with Ellie on the

kids playground, Steve ordered our lunch.  Harry had a burger and chips, Steve had a Thai red curry and I had nachos.  Steve and I shared a mixed Thai entree plate.  The Thai entree was excellent as was Steve's red curry.  The chef is Thai, so he knows his stuff.  Well his Thai stuff.  Harry thought his burger was excellent, and although I enjoyed my nachos, why oh why add sweet chilli sauce to nachos?  It's just wrong.
It is not the first time that I have experienced this, there seems to be some subversive movement to put sweet chilli sauce on nachos.  Nachos is MEXICAN, sweet chilli sauce is THAI, the two cuisines should NOT be mixed.  The sweetness just does not work with nachos.  The tomato sauce on nachos is meant to be hot and spicy not sweet.  It has things like tomatoes, onions, chillis, capsicum, oregano, cumin and coriander.  Not copious amounts of sugar.  What is wrong with people?  Nachos is a tried and true dish, adding sweet chilli sauce does not improve it in any way, it wrecks it.
Apart from the sweet chilli sauce the meat, cheese, sour cream, guacamole and cornchips were quite nice.  The setting was beautiful and the musician, who was just getting started for the afternoon session, added to the relaxed Sunday afternoon atmosphere.  But twelve year olds don't appreciate these things.  So after exhausting all his attempts at prising money out of us so that he could use the sega racing game and the chocolate machine, we decided to head down to the river for a walk.

The Orara River at Coramba  is beautiful and rather than try to describe it, hopefully these photos I took with my phone might help show how lovely it is. After exploring the river we headed to the park for a play in the play ground while we waited for Evan to finish at his friend's place.

 We picked him up and then he drove us back to Coffs via Hill Top Organics, where we loaded the car with organic compost for the garden.

All in all it was a fun trip and great to be able to take the time to enjoy some of the wonders of the Coffs Coast Hinterland.

Getting the thoughts out frees up head space

I have really enjoyed blogging since I started less than six months ago.  I now run three blogs, and my original plan was to blog once a day, that goal has now stretched out to a more modest at least once a week.  I have three different blogs in which to air my thoughts.  That means that this one, my original blog that started everything in the beginning is becoming a little neglected.  My rambling thoughts are building up and I find they are starting to clutter my brain.

You see this has been one of the great things about blogging, it allows me to download my thoughts and essentially get them out of my head.  We all have times when endless thoughts clatter around in our brains and take up space.  They can keep us awake at night and dominate daytime thoughts.  The shower becomes the place of reflection and construction of many a letter of complaint or diatribe about life's injustices.  However if I can manage to transfer the thoughts and opinions from shower (or bed) into my blog I can free my mind and go onto think about and appreciate other things.

This downloading of ideas and thoughts reminds me of the scene from Harry Potter when Dumbledore uses a pensieve to extract his memories and store them for later.  I imagine myself doing the exact same thing when I start blogging.  Putting all these thoughts and memories down so that I can come back later and peruse them at my leisure.

Now all I need is to find the time and the mental space to organise my thoughts and get them written down.  Right now I have had constant interruptions from my 15 month old and I have a niggling sense of guilt that what I really should be doing is the housework or my Tax homework.  Oh how much easier would it be if I could formulate my thoughts in the shower and then physically extract them to the blog via a magic wand like Dumbledore is doing in the picture above.

In defence of Teenagers

Sometimes I feel so proud of my children I could just burst.  Obviously I am just madly in love with my one year old, Ellie.  I have already blogged about how special it is to fall head over heals in love again. But does the euphoria fade as they get older and pass through more challenging stages, and of course approach (shock, horror) the dreaded teenage years?

The answer to that is a resounding no. Everyday I love my children even more and that love is bolstered by something even more special- I am so proud of the individuals they are growing into.  And far from the teenage years being seething bed of horror and dysfunction, I think (so far) they have been their best years.

Why does society paint adolescence as a horror story?  Are we normalising abnormal behaviour because some children (for a variety of reasons) go off the rails a bit during this time?  Steve and I went to the seminars about managing your teen.  We were told about how they will naturally want to take risks and sometimes do stupid things due to the lack of development in their brains.  They used this theory to explain why teenagers drink, take drugs and drive cars really fast, among other anti social and dangerous activities.  This then was painted as the norm.  As the sort of thing you should 'expect' and perhaps except from teenagers.

I say this analysis is wrong.  Those behaviours are abnormal and result of something else going on in the teenager's life.  They then manifest more easily because of the stage of brain development that they are at.  But what about the majority?  And it is the majority who sail through adolescence with minimal ripples.  What does the risk taking part of the brain have them doing?

Well I tell you, and the things are amazing and it is why teenage years truly are the best years of your life.  With additional confidence, a tendency toward risk and perhaps a lack of the bigger picture pressures that bog down adults, teenagers are creative, innovative, and game to take on challenges that later in life they maybe less inclined to tackle.  They learn amazing stuff, like jumping off cliffs (abseiling) or rock climbing.  They think nothing of going on challenging overnight hikes.  They stick their hands up to speak in public, or play instruments for large audiences or play sport.  They speak their mind and are not afraid to have a go and get involved.  They have a can do attitude.  And they are funny, because they say and do the sort of crazy things that society slowly beats out of us as we age.

This is a far cry from the morose lazy teenager stereotype that we are fed. Of course there are moments of that, sometimes too many. It is true they have lots of sedentary time, spend way too much time skulking in a messy room playing on their computer.  But during this time they are also learning and studying for school or secretly practising their creative writing skills.  They are socialising on social media and building relationships for life.

I look at teenagers today and I see that they are more confident, better educated and more socially aware than we ever were. They have access to greater opportunities to succeed and excel. With a nurturing environment at both home and school teenagers have the capacity to do great things and utilise this unique time in their brain development to lay down an amazing foundation for adulthood. So let's stop looking at the negatives and embrace the positives, and I guarantee you will find so much to be proud of in your teenagers.

Teenagers have a way of filling the house with their presence. While you are lamenting the lack of personal space, remember that, so far in this journey, these are their best years. It wont be too long before they are gone and then the house will feel so empty. So embrace the opportunity now to really enjoy your teenagers by getting to know them. You will definitely find yourself feeling great pride in the fantastic people that they are developing into.

Stevia

I am growing Stevia in my garden.  It's doing it's own thing and growing okay.  It's a straggly plant, but is still alive after a full growing season.  It did flower a few months ago and I expected that it would die.  But it has finished flowering and has continued on and added some new growth.

That has got me thinking that this may actually be a useful plant.  If it's going to keep on growing without needing too much input from me, it has some very real potential to be a convenient sweetener in the kitchen.

Stevia tastes many times sweeter than table sugar.  Just chewing on one small piece of a leaf is a bit too sweet for me.  It tastes sweet, but in an artificial way like artificial sweeteners do rather than sugar does. Even so, I was hoping that I could start to incorporate it into some of my baking.  Particularly now that I am tossing sugar out of the family diet.

The two main methods of using fresh stevia leaves (ah la an internet search) are:
Dry and crush the leaves and use as a powder
Boil leaves in water and create a syrup that you store in the fridge.

Each of these methods seem like a step too far for a lazy cook like me. One other method suggested was to throw a few leaves in your cup of tea and steep them with hot water.  Now this sounded more like me, straight to the point and no mucking around.

So I thought maybe if I could come up with some recipes where the stevia leaves are steeped first in a hot liquid and then the strained liquid is added to the other ingredients.  Then I would just need to experiment to workout approximately how many fresh leaves it takes to produce the desired amount of sweetness. At the moment I have no idea.

This afternoon I made some chocolate.  I wanted it to be barely sweet.  Just sweet enough to take the worst of the bitterness off the cocoa.

This is what I did:

I melted cocao butter and coconut oil in a saucepan and put in a small number (10) of stevia leaves.  I left them to steep in the liquid for around 5 minutes.  The liquid was not too hot.
In another bowl I put my cocoa powder, then I strained the liquid mixture into the dry.  I squeezed and pressed the stevia leaves to get as much 'juice' out as I could.
This worked and did sweeten the mixture, though I would probably need to use more.  I am trying to cure myself of a sweet tooth, so I was deliberately keeping it as low in sweetness as possible.

Now to experiment and try the same method in some other things.  For something like  a cake, I imagine that I would need quite a few stevia leaves.  The other thing I would try and remember to do is to bruise the leaves before adding to the hot liquid to steep.  I have also read that boiling the leaves in too high of a temperature will render them more bitter.  So perhaps pouring boiling water, or milk, or whatever over them and leaving them to steep for a while could be the go.  I also imagine that 5 minutes was probably on the short side for length of time to steep them.  Next time I would try it for much longer, for example, at the beginning of baking the first thing I would do is prepare my stevia, crush it and steep it, then get on with the other components in the recipe.

I'm pretty happy that I can grow my own sweetener.  Now to find a convenient way to use it and incorporate it into my cooking. :)

Time to get the chop

I was sitting in the Park in Bellingen under a massive Bunya Tree with Ellie when the call came through on Steve's mobile phone.

I knew that I had accidently left my phone at home even though I assured Steve that I had it with me as we left the house earlier that day.  As it turned out I had picked up Sarah's phone instead, which looks identical to mine. When Steve's phone rang I figured that there was a reasonable chance that it was for me.  I answered.

"Hello, Steve's phone"
The person on the other end greeted me by name and then informed me that she was "Jenny, from day surgery and that Steve was ready to receive visitors.  He's dozy but doing okay."

My first thought was that I didn't want to see him when he was all out of it and groggy from the anesthetic.  I liked my husband vital and full of life, that was the way that I wanted to see him.  I felt myself starting to drag my heels.  I had to coax Ellie back into her pram and then hike back up the steep hill to the hospital.

As I commenced my walk I felt a wave of depression descend upon me.  Steve had been 'fixed up'.  This wasn't some corrective piece of surgery, this was a mutilation, a severing of a key part of him.  And not only did it effect him, it was of direct consequence to me. This operation signalled the end of our child bearing days, and even writing about it now, some hours later, that fact still makes me sad.

We are old enough and have four beautiful children to be able to legitimately call it a day.  But it still makes me sad to finally say unequivocally that this is it.  No more chances of feeling that wonder of a new little life forming in my belly.  It is one of the most amazing and incredible things that can happen to your body, and now that will never happen again.  I feel I need to mourn.  As I walked back to the hospital that is what I did, I felt tears welling up in my eyes, and they weren't from climbing that bloody steep hill either. (Why did they put the hospital at the top of such a big hill?)

I/We knew that the day was coming.  After the birth of Ellie, we felt we had to make a decision, that really we can't keep doing this and having babies.  Particularly after the hoo ha with me clotting up this time.  To have another pregnancy would really be a risk.  Logically, the decision is easy.  No more babies, lets get 'the chop' and be done with it.  Move on, know that there wont be anymore surprises in life.  We can plan our future, blah, blah, blah. But, emotionally it is a whole other story.

I left the decision and the logistics to Steve.  I really didn't want to have anything to do with it.  I knew that the outcome was going to make me sad, so I preferred to sit with denial instead.  Then just as it started to look like they had forgotten Steve and his name was never going to come up on the waiting list, we got a call three days ago.  Three days ago.

Three days, is not long to finally and emotionally face that this is really going to happen.  Three days is way not enough time to get a decent amount of mileage out of teasing and stirring Steve about, manscaping performed by burly Mr Sisters, and what if the surgeon slips? And myriad of other jokes that I and others could make at his expense.

That's what Sarah and I did last night, making jokes about Bellingen and what type of drug fuelled hospital stay he was likely to encounter.  Our hilarity brought Evan out to the living room, wondering what we were talking about.  When we told him that dad was having a vasectomy tomorrow he was quite taken aback on two fronts.  I think he was keen for another baby brother or sister, and he made the comment, that did that then imply they were all mistakes?  I get where he is coming from, because I had the same thought myself.  By surgically rectifying this having babies thing, it sort of sends a message that our children are a medical problem that needs fixing.  Of which they definitely are not.

So now it's done.  Unless one escapes before the pipes are clear, no more babies in this family, until the kids decide to start the next generation.

Happy First Birthday Ellie

 Today, just one year ago our darling Ellie was born.  As with each of the kids, their first birthday has always marked a very special and emotional time for me.  It has always been natural for me to remember the amazing thing that was unfolding exactly one year ago. The fact that my body was in labour, our baby had decided that the time was right, and into the world popped another beautiful, much loved baby.

When babies are only one year old they aren't really old enough to understand what's happening.  Why do these crazy people hand me parcels and then open them for me? But the things inside the parcels are pretty cool.  Why are these crazy people singing at me and actually letting me have cake? And why does that mummy person keep getting all misty-eyed and gooey over me? - well more than normal.

For me the first birthday is a celebration for everyone else, me in particular.  As bub is hardly aware of what a birthday is, that first birthday is a very poignant moment.  This newborn life that in the space of just one calendar year has changed and developed so much into an active lively toddler.  One that can walk, communicate, have opinions, feed herself, laugh, cry, play and pretend.

What an amazing year it has been, and what an amazing addition to our family she has become. So very much loved and adored. Now we look forward to her next year of life, where I guarantee that by her second birthday she will have a pretty good idea of what's going on when the celebrations roll around again.

Happy First Birthday, my beautiful baby girl.  I love you so much.

Mum xxxxx

Food for Thought

When I was a child growing up in the 1970's I envisaged a future of food where we all would be eating a single pill that would provide our complete nutrition and thus do away with the need to eat food.

How different the actual future is.  With more variety of food than ever before and cooking shows amongst the most popular shows on TV, eating is still well and truly alive.  Kitchens are getting bigger and fancier, there are more places to go out and eat, and the access to foods from various cultures and the proliferation of super foods has shown that in no way are we ready to give up eating for a nutrition packed pill.

Imagine life, though, if this future had come to pass.

Firstly, all that time spent shopping for, preparing, eating and cleaning up after food would vanish.  That would amount to enormous hours of the day that we could reclaim to do other things.
Secondly, imagine the extra storage space in our houses. Plates, bowls, pots, pans, casserole dishes, cutlery, the "good" crockery, could all go, freeing up mountains of cupboard space.  Also the pantry would be a thing of the past, and who would need a massive fridge anymore?  The oven, the cook top, the microwave, the dishwasher, could all go.  There would be just so much stuff we could get rid of and then have so much less clutter to deal with and so much more cupboard space.  Now that's something I definitely need.
Thirdly, it would eliminate that whole issue of trying to eat a balanced diet and the weighing up of the pros and cons between various ways of eating.  But here is the crux of the matter.  How could any responsible scientific organisation possible come up with the perfect diet encapsulated into a nutrient rich pill when they can't even agree on what constitutes the optimal diet for humans?

For the past 30- 40 years we have been fed the mantra of low fat, high carbohydrate as being the way to live a healthy life.  I believe it, I've grown up my whole life being taught this.  It hasn't stopped me from having an 'apple shape' rather than a pear shape, which is now deemed unhealthy and a precursor to syndrome X and it's attendant diseases of modern living such as heart disease, cancer and diabetes. Nice.  But to a certain extent I feel a bit powerless as my father and his mother before him had the same 'apple shape'. Was it diet related or was it genetics? At least they didn't have to suffer the indignity of being told that they have a waist to hip ratio that is going to kill them.

It is tempting to basically ignore any government health warnings from this day forward.  It seems that no one really knows what they are doing in the field of nutrition. Hundreds of billions of dollars are thrown at all manner of studies trying to prove which is the optimal diet for us. All that seems to happen is that the studies are either inconclusive, are interpreted according to whoever is reading them's bias, or are instantly disproved by another study.

The bottom line is, there are just too many variables in the modern diet because it is such a cornucopia of variety.  To scientifically isolate one variable is well nigh impossible. People have slightly different genetic make up and respond differently to different diets too, which further complicates things.

I have come to the conclusion, after much reading about how the caveman diet is our optimum diet, that although that maybe true on an individual basis, on a population basis a high carbohydrate diet is better.

Think back, 10,000 years ago, we switched from predominately eating meat to growing and eating grains.  We may also have introduced a bunch of chronic degenerative diseases that became more apparent as we became clever enough to eliminate the other major killers of misadventure and infectious disease.  But these chronic diseases of modern living, still allow us to live long enough to reproduce, so they are not bad enough to impact on our survival as a species.  And this is the point.  Our population got to the point where it had to evolve to move further up the evolutionary scale.  As a population, we are incredibly healthy and successful. Perhaps as individuals not so much.

But, agriculture allowed us to guarantee a food supply that had never been guaranteed before.  It lessened our day to day reliance upon capturing or picking fresh foods because now we could store vast quantities for long periods of time.  It also meant that less people were needed to be involved in the actual procurement of food and that freed others to go and progress civilisation.  In the last 10,000 years not only has our population sky rocketed but our civilisation has moved ahead in enormous leaps and bounds that just wasn't possible while we were existing day to day on a tenuous food supply.

So in order for the human race as a whole to make the next development leap and form societies, government, religion, culture, science, technology, the list goes on and on, we had to free ourselves from the grip of the hunter gatherer lifestyle.  This is evidenced by the hunter gather cultures still in existence in the last few centuries, who were primarily living very primitive lives until they were introduced to Western civilisation.  Their rates of chronic disease were low, to the point of non existence, but their populations were relatively small and isolated which impacted their ability to develop technologically.

Reverting to a hunter gatherer diet is a luxury that affluent Westerners can embrace.  It may make their individual health outcomes more positive.  But for the entire world population to revert to such a diet is unsustainable.  We just don't have the capability to feed the whole world on a predominately meat diet.  That ultimately means that the third world and poorer populations will be fed with the cheaper high carbohydrate model and be prone to chronic disease, while the affluent will live long happy lives.  There is an inequality here.  Our success as a species has meant that we are destined to be less healthy individually.  It's a small sacrifice we all make to ensure the species remains strong.  Like herds who have their strength in numbers and can afford to sacrifice the weak few, so that the herd as a whole survives.

If this be the case, then governments trying to control what we eat and haranguing us about our health to do it is futile.  Basically we are damned if we do and damned if we don't.  Arguably Western nations have the wealth to manage expensive health budgets that deal with chronic disease.  It may be the pay off we have to make to avert the greater evil, that of starvation and malnutrition.

As I ready myself and the family for an experimental dietary change to explore the hunter gather diet epitomised by the Paleolithic diet I find myself reducing cupboard stock of carbohydrates and legumes.  I am starting to feel slightly unsettled by this, and we haven't even begun the diet yet. As the large fridge in the shed which houses the 'staples' of rice, pasta, bread mix, flour, dried beans and legumes becomes emptier and emptier I start to feel a small pearl of worry forming. It is ironic that the very carbohydrates that supposedly store themselves as excess fat on our bodies are the same carbohydrates that we store in stockpiles outside the body in order to protect ourselves in lean times.  With an empty 'store' of carbohydrate staples I feel vulnerable.  What if there is a truck strike, or we have an event that wipes out the electricity for a few weeks?  Focussing our diet on just meat and fruit and vegetables is a predominately fresh food diet.  It is extremely reliant on me being able to access the supermarket, butcher and greengrocer.  We grow a few of our own vegies, fruit and herbs and have our own eggs, but in reality, these will not go anywhere near providing adequate calories or nutrition for our family of 6 if the need should arise.  By having a fridge and pantry laden with carbohydrate foods, a short breakdown in the food chain supply, although inconvenient, would not be catastrophic.
As the one who is primarily responsible for the provision of food in the house and the mad one who is proposing we trial this diet, I feel a small sense of responsibility here.  Obviously the likelihood of some disaster occurring and interrupting the food supply is slight, but it is not entirely out of the question either.  Should I cover my bases and stockpile some emergency food in case of need?  After all the advent of agriculture cemented our survival as a species because it insured as against this very thing. But as the Paleolithic dieters advocate, all carbohydrate (particularly refined) needs to be gotten rid of in order to avoid temptation.  Refined carbohydrate is the evil one in all of this, the most likely culprit of chronic disease and obesity, but it is also the food that is least perishable and so the most useful in times of food shortage.

It is a dilemma. Oh wouldn't life be so much simpler if we just had a pill to take and all these decisions would not need to be made.