When things change

So Torgerstuen, my favourite cafe in Oslo, is no more. Well i say no more, but that's not strictly true because to all intents and purposes it's the same as it was before. The full contents of the cafe and the concept were sold along with the building to new owners this month, but sadly for now i feel that there the resemblance ends. The cafe really is not the same without the original owners and creators, sisters Mette and Trine, and their wonderful friend Bruno who was the chef there. They created a place that was warm, welcoming and completely unique because they made it so and i don't just mean because of the decoration or the food.

The new owners have kept the menu the same and the look of the place too with flowers in jars and jugs all over the cafe, but even though they are trying to emulate the idea of what used to be for now it just seems like a hollow replica and no longer the haven that it once was without Mette, Trine and Bruno to flesh it out. For this reason i feel that somehow it was not such a wise thing for the new owners to have bought a concept, despite it's success, when it doesn't seem that they are at totally at home with it or have the imagination to flesh it out into something real.  Of course i am being harsh because i felt that this place was a home from home, a place where i could go when i first moved to Oslo to be seen by lovely people when i was very much alone all day with my baby son. I loved going there and i loved the people that ran it. To be fair i know that it will take time for the new owners to find their feet and really make the place their own, but for now i will mourn the loss of my favourite cafe and hope that the new one will eventually come up trumps,  but in it's own way.

Picture from Christina Skreinbergs Blog 

Thank you for those two lovely years Torgerstuen!

Update: I have since been back many a time to the new Torgerstuen now called Det Grønne Kjokken ( The green kitchen) and they have very much made it their own. The owner Omar is charming and i think the food continues to be delicious. It is still a lovely cafe to hang out in and i recommend it highly.

Baby Love

I hope my son never has to guess how much we love him, i hope it's entirely obvious just how much we adore him from the amount of love and hugs that my husband and i wrap him in every day. We also definately tell him enough verbally and in turn he has started to say "luv you mama, luv you papa", which makes us both melt. But it is of course about so much more than that, it's about time spent with him, just being together and being there for him. I think it's such a privilage to be with children and your own children in particular, they give you so much and you learn such a huge amount from them. They are completely in the moment and so honest in their communication. What fun to have the excuse to run through puddles together, play pooh sticks, build camps, play hide and seek in the dark, read bedtime stories by torchlight and roll around on the floor giggling until your tummy hurts. 

It doesn't mean it's all heaven, infact there are hard moments when you can feel stretched beyond your limits, but it's a learning process from day to day being a parent and you can only do your best in each moment, because as a great book says raising our children raises ourselves.

After working for so many years with children who haven't had love and care from the beginning it makes me feel how crucial it is that children have a loving stable environment and know just how much they are loved.

The most telling way that a child can show that they've soaked up a lot of love is by how happy and secure they are and we felt that from the beginning the attachment way of parenting would help Theodore have that sense of security. It meant that i breastfed Theodore on cue, we wore him in a sling ( for a good 6 months before we bought a pram and then we've continued to wear him in the sling off and on since then) and we had him in our bed at night, it was much easier and more relaxing to breastfeed that way as it meant neither of us had to wake up fully and we would both fall asleep again quickly. Even now that he is in his own room, when he wakes up in the night he comes into our bed. It is heavenly to cuddle up with him and share those sleepy moments especially in the early mornings when kisses and hugs come thick and fast.

Guess how much i love you?Nah it should be felt in every pore just how much one is loved. But of course the book is utterley cute, so do check it out!

Taken by Trees

My sister discovered this beautiful song called "My boys" whose video and nostalgic overtones brings back delicious memories of our childhood. Memories of climbing trees, roaming the fields and woods around my parents house and the general sense of promise and freedom of those days.

The song is part of  new solo collection called Taken by Trees from the singer Victoria Bergsman and there are several gems in there including "Watch the Waves", "Anna" and "Lost and Found" . Each time i listen to them they just get better and better.

Three cheers for nostalgia!

Pregnancy and hypothyroidism- a life changing discovery

Ok so if i am totally honest i have been avoiding blogging about anything really personal for a while, instead prefering to blog about delicious things in life, mainly because it is easier and more fun. But what i am about to write about today could equally fall into that delicious category, just in a different way and anyway one of the reasons for starting this blog was to write about what has been useful for me healthwise. So today i will write a little about what has been happening for me in this pregnancy and the discoveries about my health that have been life changing.

Back in april/may when i was just a few weeks pregnant with this, my second pregnancy, i was over in the UK visiting family and friends. Infact it was while at my parents that i decided to take a pregnancy test as the signs had been there from very early on (all day sickness, strong metallic taste whenever i ate, exhaustion etc and i just knew) and yeah i was indeed pregnant. Whoop whoop whoop. However despite the joy of discovering this, towards the end of my stay i began to experience excruciating pain in my lower abdomen and felt more and more run down and exhausted. I feared that a miscarriage was threatening. When i returned home the pain had become much much worse, so much so that i blacked out a couple of times with it, had developed a fever and my stomach felt so inflammed that i was unable to eat.

The doctor was unavailable that particular day so i took myself to the emergency room where, after a 4 hour wait, they finally examined me. They thought it could be an ectopic pregnancy and sent me for a scan, with a toddler in tow by this point in the day it was interesting trying to keep him entertained while i was doubled over, but at the crucial moments he behaved. Thankfully after an agonising wait they discovered that the baby was where he was meant to be and that he had a strong heart beat, gosh i almost cried with relief on hearing that!

They did discover that i had a huge amount of fluid in my abdomen that shouldn't be there which they thought came from a burst ovarian cyst which would have caused all of the pain, inflammation and fever. It was hugely lucky for me, and the baby, that it had burst when it did because they said that otherwise it would have interupted the baby's growth. So i was to go home and rest and to check things out with the doctor to make sure that there was nothing else going on ( it took a full month to recover but thankfully it got easier each day). I had an appointment anyway the next day with the doctor that i had booked a few days before to register the pregnancy and he decided to run a thorough battery of tests on me to cover every possibility. 2 weeks later they came back with the results to say that i was hypothyroid in rather a major way i.e my body was fighting the thyroid producing hormone in my body (An autoimmune disorder (Hashimoto thyroiditis) causing the immune system to produce antibodies which attack the body’s tissues, including the thyroid gland. This affects the thyroid’s ability to produce hormones causing hypothyroidism www.naturaltherapypages.com.au/article/hypothyroidism ) which meant that i was barely making any to function properly and i would need to go on Lavaxin, a synthetic thyroid hormone replacement drug in order for the baby to be safe and to grow properly ( i was also low in several energy enhancing vitamins, but thankfully everything else was fine).

Stupidly instead of being relieved that they'd discovered this i went home and stressed myself out about having to take a drug when my approach has always been a natural one. I consulted a naturopath at home in the Uk and was advised that although it could be treated naturopathically she couldn't advise against what the docotor had prescribed. So after many days of agonising about what to do i decided that it wasn't worth going down the natural route just because of my principles because i couldn't guarantee that the baby would be developing properly and i really didn't want 9 months wondering and worrying about whether i was doing the right thing. I felt that once i had had the baby then i could go down the naturopathic route without worrying. If i am completely honest i was also secretly a little intrigued after so many years of utter exhaustion and now being more than flawed by this pregnancy, about what effect the drug would have on my energy levels. We were going on holiday just a few days after i started taking the Levaxin and i can honestly say that it took just a few days (although in reality it took about a month to fully adjust and get the dose right) before i noticed a profound shift in my energy levels, so much so that it was as if i had been given a new body and my brain had been switched back on. The improvement was 100% and such a huge 190 degree turn around that i could not and still cannot believe it.

I wonder now whether i had been suffering from undiagnosed hypothyroidism for all of these years without knowing it, although the doctor said that there is no way of knowing when i developed it and it is highly likely that it developed as a result of the chronic fatigue somewhere along the way, but it could also have just developed in this pregnancy. Anyway all i know is that i feel transformed and i am forever grateful for the burst ovarian cyst for uncovering this problem and making me feel so renewed, whole and back in the normal functioning world again after sooo long. Who knew that that would be the result. My husband says that if this was the only reason we moved to Norway it was worth it (worth every moment of heartache about leaving my family and friends etc.) and i would agree.  I don't want to be on the drug forever but for now it feels like the right thing to be doing and i feel relieved that while i am on it that i am being thoroughly monitored by the endocrinology department at the hospital and by my doctor. I cannot describe how happy i feel and just how miraculous the change. I am a new me!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Now i am just really enjoying this pregnancy and this new found energy and really looking forward to meeting our new baby BOY in January, due on 11.01.11, and having the energy to be there for him and for Theodore. How lucky is that! 

Update 2011: When Sebastian was 5-6 months old i began to feel that i needed to come off the drug, i started to feel like i was going rather mad on it. Luckily around the same time i had a Life Alignment session which had such a profound effect that i came off the drug the day after and haven't looked back. See my blog posts about Life Alignment here and here.

Heavenly apple cake for heavenly autumnal days

I love these autumnal days when the sun shines and the leaves show themselves off in their new golden and rust tones. Days that have been spent out in the forest with my son wading in the newly fallen leaves, picnicing with thermos' full of steaming hot soup and crispy gluten free pitta bread stuffed with veg and humus, exploring farmers markets and tasting all the free organic goodies and this weekend kayaking on a lake near here and lighting a huge fire on the other side to cook sausages and roast marshmallows. Heaven for all concerned.

On sunday i decided that the delicious baked apple that a friend had brought for pudding one night, needed to be used up. I did a quick search for an apple cake and found the wonderful La Tartine Gourmande 
blog with their delicious recipe for an Apple and Olive Oil Cake. It was moist and each piece was totally scrumptious. We kept ours in the fridge so that it would keep better, but it didn't survive more than a couple of days as we thought it was too delicious to let it rest for too long without taking another piece, and another and oh go on let's have another!

Apple and Olive Cake

•1 tablespoon unsalted butter/dairy free spread

•3 apples, peeled, cored and diced finely ( the more apples the moister the cake)

•1/2 cup blond cane sugar + 2 tablespoons for the apples (or 5 tablespoons honey/maple syrup)

•1 vanilla bean , split open and seeds scraped out (or 1 tsp vanilla essence)

•1 teaspoon finely chopped lemon thyme (optional)

•4 eggs

•Pinch of sea salt

•1/3 cup (80 ml) olive oil or vegetable oil

•100 g millet flour & brown rice flours*

•65 g (1/2 cup + 2 tablespoons) almond meal*

•40 g (1/3 cup) quinoa flour*

•2 teaspoons baking powder

*Or 200 g gluten free all-purpose flour replacing all the other flours and almond meal combined

Steps:

•In a frying pan, heat 1 tablespoon butter over a medium heat. When warm, add the diced apples with 2 tablespoons sugar, the vanilla bean and seeds and cook for 5 minutes, or until the apples are softer. Discard the vanilla bean; set aside. (you can also add cinnamon sticks as desired but remember to take them out afterwards)

•Preheat the oven to 350 F. Butter a 10-inch mold and set aside.

•In a bowl, combine the flours and baking powder and lemon thyme, if using. In another bowl, beat the eggs with the sugar and a pinch of salt. Add the olive oil and and then the flours. Fold the apples into the cake batter. Transfer the batter to the mold and bake the cake for 35 to 40 minutes, or until a sharp knife inserted in the middle comes out dry. Let the cake cool for 5 minutes before unmolding.

Heavenly food for these autumnal days

Inspiring ideas for lunchboxes

Whenever my son goes off to barnehage, which at the moment is 3 half days a week, i need to think of some delicious healthy things to pack in his lunchbox. Thankfully i've discovered a blog post that has done much of the thinking for me, with it's huge range of contributors placing their recipes for inspiring lunchboxes on show. It is a brilliant resource and i may see if i can print out each contribution so that i have inspiring recipes to use every day. See these great ideas here and also some others here.

Great ideas for adults too

It's these things that make our lives

Rob Ryans stunning designs say it all.