Organico is delighted to host the West Cork Literary Festival Letter Café this year.

When? Mon 9 July 2012 16:00

Cost Free

Organico Café – 3 Glengarriff Rd. Bantry

In an age of facebook twitter and email sometimes the joy of letter writing (and receiving!) is overlooked. This year the West Cork Literary Festival is making it easy for you to write that letter you keep meaning to write – in the atmospheric surroundings of Organico Café, you’ll find all the necessary: complimentary Basildon Bond writing paper and envelopes, pens, stamps and we’ll even post it for you! Help us revive this exquisite, but dying, art form: the letter, and get in touch with those you love.

We are honoured to welcome Dava Sobel to launch the Letter Café.
Her book, Galileo’s Daughter, based on surviving letters to Galileo from his eldest child, won the 1999 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for science and technology, a 2000 Christopher Award, and was a finalist for the 2000 Pulitzer Prize in biography, as well as being a New York Times non-fiction bestseller.

We are delighted to announce we have Emma from Solgar instore on Friday the 27th of April to offer free consultations on Sports Nutrition. Emma is a Technical Adviser at Solgar UK and specialises in Sports Nutrition. All questions welcome! Call 027 51391 to book your consultation.

We had some very appreciative American guests in today and they were looking for this recipe. Here is it folks! Enjoy.
…
Serves 4-6
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(You can make the same recipe with yellow or green split peas; they take a little longer to cook)
1 medium-sized onion, diced
2 tablespoons rapeseed or olive oil (or a thick slice of butter)
1 large carrot, scrubbed and diced
2 cloves of garlic, minced or grated
a few sprigs fresh rosemary, 2 bay leaves
250g red lentils, rinsed under running water, in a sieve
1.25 litres vegetable stock (we use Organic Marigold bouillon or the sea stock NAME)
1.5 kg pumpkin or butternut (weight before de-seeding and peeling) into bite sized chunks
bunch roughly chopped parsley
salt and pepper

Start by sauteing the onion and carrot in the oil for 5 to 10 minutes, until the onions start going translucent, then add the garlic and chunks of pumpkin. Allow to cook on a medium to low heat for another 5 minutes. Add the red lentils, rosemary and stock, stir well, and continue to cook on the same heat for 25 to 35 minutes, depending on the freshness of the lentils they will take more or less time to cook. When the lentils and pumpkin are soft, take a few cups out and blend together before adding back into the pot – this gives a smooth consistency but the chunks keep it interesting. Add the chopped parsley and taste, making any final adjustments to the seasoning. Serve with fresh brown bread. This soup will last well, and the flavour will improve over a few days, (obviously you keep it in the fridge; it also freezes really well). If you want a smooth soup, simply blend the whole pot.
Enjoy!!

How do you like to eat fennel? Do you make a gratin? Or add if to the potatoes before you cook them to make mashed potatoes? Or do you juice it? Here are a few suggestions…

Fennel is lovely eaten raw if you slice it super fine and dress with lemon juice, olive oil and salt and pepper. Chill for 10 minutes before serving to give it extra crunch. Delicious with fish, chicken, or baked potatoes. See recipe below. Fennel is a great vegetable for roasting – you don’t need to cook it for very long, so for example if you are cooking fish in the oven you can sit it on a bed of slice fennel tossed in olive oil and salt and pepper and it will cook in the same time as the fish (try under hake – delicious!).
You can add fennel to any green salad for extra crunch – it has a mild crisp sweet flavour and makes a winter salad more substantial and filling. Enjoy!
Fennel and lemon
This is one of the simplest salads I know, the only important thing is that you slice the fennel really thin, this really makes all the difference. For a change you can add slices of orange to the salad, everything else stays the same.

Fennel bulb
Lemon juice
Olive oil
Parsley
Salt and freshly ground black pepper

Cut off the base of the fennel, and well at the green stems, if it is looking a little worse for ware take the outside layer off as well. Cut it in half and then thinly slice, if you have a mandolin this is the time to use it, otherwise sharpen your best knife and be careful! Add to a bowl with the parsley, some crushed black pepper, sea salt, lemon juice and a glug of olive oil. This works well if it’s allowed to sit for 30 minutes in the fridge to chill.

Caffeine is one of the most widely used stimulants, and it is highly addictive, partly because of how it makes us feel and partly because it is so widely available and so much a part of our social lives. Sharing a cup of tea of coffee is something many of us do on a daily basis with friends and family, and while it seems that for most people it is perfectly fine to have one or perhaps two cups of coffee in a day, many people drink far more than that, and there seems to be a lot of ignorance about what caffeine actually does in our bodies (and our minds).

I remember a man coming into Organico a few years ago and asking us if we had anything to help him to fall asleep. We talked about a few different herbal remedies and then right at the end of the conversation I reminded him that is best to avoid coffee or tea after 3 or 4pm, as they can both disrupt sleep patterns. He was very surprised. It was at this point he told us he drank up to 18 cups of strong coffee every day, and (we could hardly believe it) he seemed never to have made the connection between his coffee consumption and his inability to fall asleep.

But this is just one of the effects of caffeine. And the effects are also very personal – if I had 18 cups of coffee I would very probably end up in hospital; but some people are far more tolerant of stimulants than I am. I enjoy the odd cup of coffee as a treat, and the odd cup of tea as a comfort. But even 1 cup after 4pm would have me awake half the night!

Most people love caffeine because it makes them feel more alert. But ironically research done by Dr Peter Rogers in Bristol University shows that regular coffee drinkers did not feel any better after their sacred cup than non-coffee drinkers – they just feel better than they did when they woke up, because coffee is addictive, and in order to counteract the withdrawal symptoms (tiredness, confusion) you need to drink more!

Patrick Holford describes a study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry that looked at the link between coffee intake and mental performance, which found that moderate to high consumers of coffee (high consumers drank 5 + cups per day) had higher levels of anxiety and depression than the abstainers, and the greatest level of stress-related medical problems as well as lower academic performance.

The main problem with caffeine is that it over stimulates our adrenal glands, which are responsible for energy production among many other things, and over time they get exhausted and this causes huge problems. See my article in the West Cork People for more info.
Kicking the caffeine habit isn’t actually all that hard. You may get withdrawal symptoms for 2 to 3 days (headaches, tiredness, irritability). These reflect, Patrick Holford says, how addicted you have become. After this period you will start to feel much better and you will realise how much better off you are without tea or coffee.

Popular coffee substitutes include Bambu, Barleycup (make it stronger than they say!) and No Caff. Try to limit decaffeinated coffee as it still contains all the other stimulant coffee contains and can lead you straight back there again (spoken from experience!)
If you are trying to give up stimulants, make sure you have really good breakfasts every morning (before you drink coffee or tea!) so your blood sugar stays nice and level. This will help to prevent excessive cravings mid morning. Try hot water with lemon first thing in the morning. If you are tired all the time no matter what you drink, consult a nutritionist who can assess your whole diet and help you to make good choices to support your health.

For more information call into Organico! We are open Monday to Saturday 9.30 to 6pm.

I’m really enjoying the stretch in the evenings and the promise of summer in the air! This time of year should be about awaking from the gloom of winter and enjoying the energy that spring brings.

Unfortunately this is not a reality for many as the pressure of our lifestyles leaves us depleted. We see lots of people in Organico looking for help for a number of seemingly unremarkable symptoms. They are more tired than they feel they ought to be, they spend a long time recovering from simple illnesses and they are irritable and feel ‘down’ and unable to cope with daily stress. They are often suffering with poor sleep patterns and feel exhausted during the day even when they manage to get a full 8 hours sleep. They rely on stimulants to get through the day and often get sick when they take a holiday. They suffer PMS, mood swings, and crave certain foods (often not healthy foods unfortunately!!). They feel depressed and are often cold. Taken singly these symptoms may be unremarkable but all together they can be very debilitating.

If you feel like this describes you, it might be worth reading up on what your adrenal glands do and how to better support them. Adrenal Imbalance is very common and is primarily caused by our lifestyle, and it can be reversed, given the right conditions.
The adrenal glands sit over the kidneys, where they play a significant role in the body, secreting more than 50 hormones which are responsible for many of the bodily functions that keep us alive. Some hormones specifically help us to respond to stress, including epinephrine (adrenaline), cortisol, and DHEA which help us to respond to danger, increasing oxygen levels, generating mental and physical energy, and generally preparing us to fight or run for our lives. In a genuinely life-threatening situation these reactions are all extremely necessary but the problem is that our modern lifestyles trigger these reactions on a daily if not hourly basis which over time runs down our supplies of hormones and exhausts our adrenal glands.

According to Dr James Wilson who wrote Adrenal Fatigue: The 21st Century Stress Syndrome you may be suffering from adrenal fatigue or imbalance if:
1. You feel tired for no reason
2. You have trouble getting up in the morning, even when you have had a good nights rest
3. You feel run down or overwhelmed
4. You have difficulty bouncing back from stress or illness
5. You crave salty or sweet snacks
6. You feel more alert, energetic and awake after 6pm than you do all day.

What aspects of our modern lifestyles are most responsible for causing adrenal imbalance? Patrick Holford blames poor diet and too much stress – taking on too many tasks, not getting enough sleep, and living off stimulants such as coffee and sugar, cigarettes and alcohol. Not giving our bodies the optimum food and relaxation. Taking certain medications can also make the situation worse – for example corticosteroids.

The problem is that when we feel tired, depressed, or that things are out of control, we often reach for exactly the wrong thing to remedy the situation – caffeine, sugar, cigarettes or alcohol. In their own way these crutches all give us a burst of energy or a feeling of being in control, quickly followed by a slump, which then means we reach for more. Unfortunately these stimulants just deplete our bodies further. We slowly slip into a situation where we need coffee to wake up (even after 8 hours sleep), we need high carb snacks, caffeine and sugar to get through the day, we suffer energy slumps during the day but then find it hard to unwind and get to sleep at night.

Treatment of adrenal fatigue
The good news is that adrenal fatigue can be tackled by making the necessary lifestyle and dietary changes. However, like weight loss some of us will need some support and I would strongly recommend buying either Dr Wilson’s book (details below) or else consulting one of Patrick Holford’s many books that deal with Optimum Nutrition and health. In the meantime, here are a few tips:

• Lying down during your work breaks (preferably at 10 a.m. and again anytime from 3 to 5 p.m.)
• Sleeping until 9 a.m. as often as possible – and going to be before midnight
• Laughing
• Exercising
• Minimizing stress
• Taking negative people out of your life
• Eating regular meals (and do eat breakfast even if you don’t feel like it)
• Chewing well
• Doing something fun each day
• Combining unrefined carbohydrates with protein and oils
• Avoiding junk food
• Eating five to six servings of vegetables each day
• Adding sea salt to your diet (unless you also have high blood pressure)
• Cutting out stimulants such as Coffee, tea, alcohol, cigarettes and sugar
Supplements that may help:
• Calcium and magnesium supplements
• Rhodiola tablet if your mood is low
• vitamin C
• B-complex supplements that are high in B6 and pantothenic acid
• Licorice root extract
• Omega Oils

We have 2 adrenal supplements in Organico that might be of interest – one is called AD206 and contains a mixture of vitamins and minerals and herbals including pantothenic acid, liquorice root, vitamin C, ginseng root and other B vitamins. The second is called Balance Rhodiola by Solgar, and is of particular interest if you have the kind of exhaustion described above as well as low mood and poor resistance to illness. Balance Rhodiola contains many of the same ingredients as AD206 with the extra benefits of the herb Rhodiola.
Depending on how severely you feel you are suffering I would strongly recommend you seek professional help. Your GP can advise you if there are any tests you might need to have and a nutritionist or naturopath can help you change your diet. A stress management therapist could also be very valuable. If you don’t know of anyone near you we can make some suggestions – just call into Organico!

It’s the only time of the year I find myself buying crappy sweets and boxes of cheap chocolates to give away – feeling under pressure to play the game. But our kids don’t need more sugar – so I’m going to try amd make a workable list of alternatives…

• Why not give out other little gifts? Pens, pencils, balloons, fake tattoos, stickers – or even tooth brushes!!!
• For home (maybe not so suitable for Trick or Treaters) you can make little ‘Vampire bites’ by slicing apples into thin long slices and spreading nut butter in the middle, with some bleaches almonds as teeth! Any nut butter in the middle makes a tasty healthy snack…
• Mix nuts and chocolate nuts, this will reduce the sugar and the protein in the nuts will balance their blood sugars a little bit more than pure chocolate…
• I’m not a fan of Baby Bells but it is a cheese that is suitable for Trick or Treat…and again, the protein is a good way of balancing the effects of the sugar. So when they all get home with their bags of goodies, it’s no bad thing to have cheese cubes ready to go…
• Fruit is an obvious option, not always well received, but still good to try.
• Small toys…if you can buy a pack of little somethings that can be given out in singles…
• Do you have any old Christmas Crackers lurking anywhere? Or anything else that goes bang!
• Apples dipped in chocolate is better than apples dipped in toffee, as the latter can really damage teeth.
• Even packets of crisps might be a better option than more sweet things! Still junk food but slightly less damaging.
• Better still would be salty nuts, preferably not peanuts but almonds or cashews, and in an ideal world freshly salted/roasted and salted by you so you know the salt is a healthy sea salt and is lightly used without any added MSG. In tiny bags…
• Little juice cartons – again, not a huge amount of difference perhaps between fruit juice and sugar but at least you can limit the other nasty additives in many sweets. If you buy them in packs and only give one out it’s not too expensive.

All other ideas welcome! Happy Halloween everybody – it only comes once a year so lets enjoy it and make the most of the family time together. Don’t be scared to have some fun!!!

Getting a high cholesterol reading from your GP can be a bit of a shock but if you have been advised to reduce your cholesterol there are lots of natural things you can to help. This month i have researched a few natural tips which you can apply either alongside prescription medication or before you are recommended to take it.

Although it can be upsetting to find your Cholesterol levels are higher than desirable, in some ways it can serve as a very useful motivator to improve your diet and your exercise routine! We all know that avoiding unhealthy fats is important for everyone, so most people who want to have a healthy diet aim to cut out or reduce fried foods, fatty meats, too many rich and sweet foods and too many processed foods.

Alongside these changes it is important to increase amount of soluble and insoluble fibre in your diet (fibre binds to fat and carries it out of your body). So plenty of vegetables – raw, lightly cooked or juiced. And plenty of fruit (fruit is best in its whole form – too many smoothies and juice are actually very sugary and can be worse for you because of the high sugar levels). And of course plenty of wholegrain foods – bread, rice, even pasta can be made healthy by choosing the wholegrain varieties.

Apart from fruit and vegetables, another good way of improving your fibre levels is to eat porridge or muesli (not over-processed cereals like cornflakes) and add a selection of super-healthy ingredients like ground seeds (flax has the best track-record of lowering cholesterol – try Irish Health Oils ground Flax Seed) and lecithin. Some probiotic yoghurt is also excellent – preferably not a sugary yoghurt but a natural one. Add berries, grated apple or pear and you have a super-healthy breakfast!

It’s important to remember that not all fat is bad (confusing I know). For example, cooking on medium to low heats with olive oil, Rape Seed Oil or an organic Sunflower Oil is fine, and so is eating home-made salad dressings with good natural oils (for example try Flax, Udo’s Hemp, Olive, Pumpkin, Avocado). Trying to cut out all fats can actually be harmful – our bodies need fat for many purposes including keeping our heart healthy! It might seem contradictory but taking nutritional oils – as long as they are healthy oils and we use them correctly – is healthy, so for example you might decide to take Eskimo Oil ( a fish oil) or Udo’s Oil (a plant-based omega oil) to keep your ‘good’ HDL cholesterol levels up and your not-so-good LDL levels down. Call into Organico for more information.

If you are advised to try to reduce your levels in a few months and feel you need extra help, you might find it useful to try taking Plant Sterol Esthers. We have all heard the adverts for Plant Sterols, they have been shown to reduce LDL levels by at least 10% in 6 weeks, which when combined with the reduction you will gain by changing your diet and lifestyle is very significant. Plant Sterols are now being added to margarine and sweet drinks – but to me anyway it seems strange that you need to take a lot of either fatty or very sweet foods in order to get the active dose! Like many things that are healthy it is vey hard to get the required dose through diet alone. We now have an alternative called Zerochol, a tablet of pure Plant Sterol Esthers which you take once a day with your main meal. And the interesting news is that the manufacturers say it is safe to take even if you are on medication, and can increase the effectiveness of some anti-cholesterol medication to the extent that your GP might reduce the dose.