5 tips for indulging less at Christmas

Happy and safe Christmas!

In two weeks Christmas will be over and I am anticipating being in relax mode. During the days following Christmas my mind wanders to reminisce about the great time I've had until eventually the guilt comes in and has me thinking about the extra kilograms that seemed to have settled around my middle. At this point I feel as though I'm going to burst. Every year I say I won't eat and drink so much, but I am weak, and when I am having a great time with family and friends my hands seem to have a mind of their own gravitating to the food and somehow automatically they put food into my mouth without me being aware of it. You understand what I mean, right?

Here are five tips I've found useful to help me indulge less.

1. Drink only 1 alcoholic beverage per hour

I enjoy a glass of wine so I focus on the delightful smell of the grapes and sip it slowly holding it in my mouth for several seconds to identify the various flavours that make up the wine. When he was in his early teens my son used to smell a wine and he said he could get the flavour of it just by taking in the bouquet. Taking the time to enjoy all the senses of drinking makes it a much more enjoyable experience. Drinking slowly also allows the liver time to matabolise the alcohol and get it out of your system.

2. Know your limit

Not everyone tolerates alcohol the same. I am a smaller framed person so I can't drink as much as a larger framed person. If you are bigger in statue you are most probably able to drink more than a smaller framed person. Being aware of how many drinks it takes to get to that relaxed heady feeling is another good indicator to slow down. By slowing down I also save some money from those extra drinks I'm not buying, and I am able to drive home safely.

3.  Drink water

When I was eighteen and first learning to drink alcohol, my brother-in-law recommended I alternate each alcoholic drink with water. This has the effect of diluting the alcohol and also assists with dehydrating. I still practise this now and I find I have no after effects after a night out.

4.  Be the designated driver

Become the designated driver for the night. This maybe hard to do when everyone is drinking and having a great time. I've done this often and found the upside of being designated driver is that I enjoy a quality conversation with someone else who isn't drinking and I have often made a new friend.

5.  Activity

Instead of sitting and drinking, circulate and mingle with different people or become involved in any games that may be in progress. If I'm hosting a dinner party I ensure there are activities that enable people to move around and get to know each other at a deeper level. If it's a work function I've volunteered to be the coordinator. I've found the night goes quickly and I don't miss having a drink.

The Christmas and New Year festive season is a busy and tiring time. Enjoy it in moderation and sail into 2016 without having to worry about those extra pounds. I'd love to hear your strategies for keeping yourself safe during the festive season. I look forward to hearing from you.

Growing Macadamias

Kate's Choice  takes place in Germany, Townsville and on an experimental macadamia nut farm at Giru about an hour's drive south of Townsville. During my research this is what I found out about macadamia nuts.

Green and ripened macadamia nuts.

Macadamia nuts are an Australian native. They love to grow in a subtropical climate and flourish when temperatures are between 20 and 25 degrees celsius.

The trees present with shiny dark leaves and grow to a height of 12 to 15 metres. Flowering happens in early spring and nuts begin to form in early December maturing to a well-formed nut by early March. The nuts are encased in a green crust which splits open when the nuts are ready for harvesting. This splitting enables the kernel inside the brown woody shell to dry and separate from the hard shell. Hitting the  hard shell with a hammer to open it will reward you with that delicious smooth nut that has a buttery flavour.

Kate's father, Dominic, feeling the effects of drought felt he needed to diversify his farming, so he sold most of his cattle and planted macadamia nuts as an experiment. 

Giru's temperature is a little too warm and the rainfall can be unreliable for growing macadamias but he wanted to try with the help of trickle irrigation. He planted the small saplings and some of them perished in the heat while the stronger ones held on. With time the trees adapted and grew but not to the height of those that grow in south east Queensland. The leaves didn't have the same depth of green, but he got a crop. He persevered and over the years he planted up to 2,000 trees. Alex, Dusty's brother, is a research scientist. He worked with Dominic to help him through the highs and lows of the experiment to achieve his desired result. 

Whether to take up the challenge to diversify and what new crop to plant has to be one of the most difficult decisions to make in farming. Farmers are on a huge learning curve as they come to understand the life cycle of a new crop and its needs to thrive and whether it can become a viable business venture. The amount of time a new tree crop like Macadamia nuts takes to bear is also another factor. Dominic was willing to take the risk and with Alex's help was able to create a new source of income from his land.

Are you willing to take a risk on a new project and see it through to the end no matter the challenges?

I Love Macadamia Nuts

Macadamia orchard

I love macadamias. Their buttery flavour and soft crunchy texture are hard to resist. When I was a child we had a macadamia tree in the back yard near the chicken coop. I was always happy to see the sweet-smelling white blossoms form in early spring. I waited patiently as the bees came to collect the nectar and then in December I became excited as the first nutlets formed on the tree.

Every day I fed the chickens watching the nutlets grow bigger until they were round nuts quivering in the breeze until about March when they were too heavy to hold on and fell to the ground.

Sometimes the husk cracked while the nut was on the tree, most times though the husk cracked after they had fallen to the ground. Beneath that plump crust was the woody shell that protected the delicious kernel inside. Sometimes, when I had been feeling impatient, I peeled off the green husk then I cracked the nut with a hammer. Much to my disappointment, the flesh hadn't dried sufficiently so it was stuck to the shell and I would have to dig it out of the shell. It just wasn't the same as putting the full flesh into my mouth. When I was patient and waited for the husk to fall off which is important for the drying of the kernel, I'd be rewarded with a delicious round easy to remove kernel just right for eating.

It's easy to get impatient waiting for a macadamia to dry, but it is really worth the wait. When I was young there were few macadamia farms. Now they are grown in northern New South Wales and south east Queensland and further north to Bundaberg.

My new novel, Kate's Choice, due for release on 4 April 2016 is set on an experimental macadamia farm at Giru, south of Towsville. One of the main characters, Alex Mitchell is a research scientist. He is keen to continue Kate's father's work of developing an experimental macadamia orchard. Kate's father planted the trees ten years earlier and they are just beginning to yield enough nuts so that they can make a living. When Kate's father dies, Alex is keen to continue his work on the farm helping Kate while her husband, Alex's brother, Dusty struggles with PTSD.

Macadamias are a delicious versatile food that can be prepared to make savoury or sweet dishes. As Christmas is only eighteen days away, I am looking for ways to serve this delicious nut this summer. Watch this space and my Facebook page for some recipe ideas. They are extra delicious when coated with chocolate. You get double the buttery taste.

How about you, have you had an opportunity to munch on this delicious treat?  

New Release - Kate's Choice

My latest novel has taken a while to come. A lot has happened in my life including a lot of words written since Web of Lies on future projects including Kate's Choice and the sequel to African Hearts. I am really excited about the future of electronic publishing and where it may take me. 

What I particularly like about e-publishing is that it allows me to experiment outside the norms of genre publishing enabling me to offer my readers something that is different to entertain and wow them.

I have studied editing to help me get this one woman show off the ground allowing me greater flexibility in the writing, editing and publishing process. I have a wonderful marketing lady, Leanne on team who knows so much more than I ever will about marketing. She is definitely an asset to this author's business.

My new book, Kate's Choice, went up for pre-order yesterday on Smashwords and will be released on 3 April 2016. If you pre-order you will receive a discount and a free book if you sign up for my newsletter.

Kate believes life is all about making choices. All she ever wanted was a loving husband who comes home every night, a family, and time to paint. When she gets her much desired wish, Dusty is broken physically, mentally and spiritually. She dreams of a life that might have been. Fate steps in. Can she trust herself to make the right choice for the sake of her husband and her family?

Migraine buster for 1 billion people

Debilitating migraine.

Along with 1 billion other people on this planet, I have suffered with migraine. This debilitating condition started when I was fourteen years old. One morning I walked to school as usual. A couple of seconds after I had placed my school bag in the port racks I started losing my peripheral vision. At first, I chose to ignore it thinking it would go away, but the brown squiggly shapes began to grow and they started to block out more and more of my vision until I could hardly see. At the same time the right side of my forehead started tensing, I felt nauseous and a tingling sensation was forming in my mouth. Within twenty minutes I had excruciating pain in my head, my tongue and the left hand side of my body were numb and the brown squiggles had turned to jagged shapes of black, red, blue and grey. What was happening to me?

The pain was so bad I couldn't stand up. My friends took me to the school sick bay and I stayed there all day with my head feeling as though it was going to explode. There was no way I wanted to live that day. I thought I was going to die. That night a doctor's visit confirmed I had migraine. He gave me an injection and I went home and slept for the next twelve hours. I awoke feeling washed out. It was as if someone or something had stolen my vitality. With another twenty-four hours of disturbed sleep, I woke feeling more like me.

This pattern of migraine occurred at erratic times and I was unable to isolate a trigger for them. When I was pregnant with my son, I had them every day from the fourteenth week of my pregnancy until he was born. That was definitely no fun. The gynecologist told me the migraine was triggered by hormones. If that was the case why didn't I get them the same time every month? Also, I could eat all the supposed foods that caused migraine and I didn't get one. There was no way I could find a reason for these debilitating headaches.

Last August, the migraines started coming every day, and some days I was having two a day. Writing just wasn't happening and I was ready to jump off the balcony of my fourth floor apartment. Life was no fun and if I was to continue living, something had to be done about these wretched headaches. I googled "Migraine Headaches". There were heaps of links to help in the USA. I wanted help on the Gold Coast. I persevered and finally found The Brisbane Migraine Clinic. I was elated and was ready to travel Brisbane.

It is now 21 October and I haven't had a migraine since 29 August. How incredibly amazing is that! I have my life back. My treatment started with lots of questions about my migraine history. Bertrand was thorough in his questioning and I felt confident he covered every aspect of my migraine before he started my treatment. He asked me to lie down and the first thing he did was bring on a migraine. Ouch!! But within minutes he also was, to my relief, able to turn it off. Bertrand was de-sensitizing my brain stem. There was no manipulation only pressure that created a migraine which he held for several seconds until the pain gradually disappeared. This treatment continued for about twenty minutes. It was painful, but manageable. Bertrand gave me homework. I had exercises to do four times a day. It took a while for me to get into the rhythm of doing them but a reminder on my iphone helped me remember. Thankfully, I travelled by train to Brisbane for my appointment. On the way home I got another migraine and continued to have them for the next few days until my next appointment.

Was this treatment working? Was I wasting my money? The guiding voice inside of me said keep going. I continued my exercises and my appointments twice a week for several weeks and as the migraines became less frequent so did my appointments. I am now attending Bertrand's clinic once every three weeks and I have been migraine free since 29 August.

What a life changer!

I am continuing with my exercises. I believe they are working. Even my tension headaches have disappeared. So now I can say I am no longer one of the 1 billion people who suffer with migraine.

How about you? Have you lost productive hours because of migraine? Have you lost leisure hours because of migraine? Have you suffered with migraine for too long?