JulieBhosaleAchive

This time three years ago I officially launched my new business as ‘The New Mum’s Nutritionist’ which became Dr Julie Bhosale once my thesis was complete. March 24th to be precious, at midnight! I believe that calls for a celebration! I feel that here in New Zealand we have such a ‘tall poppy’ syndrome and do not celebrate our wins or our mile stones nearly as much as we should. My personality certainly does not like to either so I am breaking my own mold with a business birthday celebration week! Three years of blogging, posting, coffee group presentations (which are now national tours), writing books and most importantly working closely with many families, mums, dads and little ones! The heading of this blog should really say 3 years plus another 10 behind the scenes…..to mark the time I started my own nutrition (and then also personal training) consulting and three ‘failed’ business attempts with this! A story for another time I promise…. But one thing I can say with absolute certai...

Do you have any foods or meals that are on your bucket list? By bucket list I mean that list of 'it would be nice to try and make some day when I have more time, energy and kind of know what I am doing?'. Well ribs has been one of my 'bucket list' meals. My husband loves them and the boys have always enjoyed them when we have eaten out together. As a #mumofboys I thought it high time that I had a crack at making them. Oh the slow cooker. Seriously one of my life savors in the kitchen. In fact I have even written blogs about just why I love them so much before! There is the misconception that you always need to have liquid in with meat in the slow cooker but here the ribs cook in their own juice! Simple, sugar-free (or at least low sugar) and ribs do not often seem to feature much. In particular I really did not want to add sugar to the rub or use a sauce laden with refined sugar. So I created a bit of my own recipe using spices I like (these can be easily adjusted) and...

Ah the lunch box! As both our boys go to day care centres which provide lunch (cooked lunch actually!) I have thus so far avoided the daily need to make them a lunch box....while I still make a lot of snacks for them I am fast realising that a pre-prepared lunch box every single day is quite a different food challenge. Our big boy starts school in October (seriously how did that happen) and while I am in slight denial about this still his day care does a 'Lunch-Box Friday' once a month to start this preparation process....which is clearly just as much for the parents as it is for children. So I am on a bit of a mission to have quite a few options in my repertoire in time for this! It is hard to find packaged snack options which are high in healthy ingredients. This is one of the primary reasons I am a huge fan of the Nairn's Oatcakes and Oat Biscuits. You can read my full review of these here .  Healthy, versatile and very easy to pop into lunch boxes here are five lunch bo...

We are just starting to get onto 'official' lunch box making. In preparation for this time I am trying to create as many lunch box snack options so I have them up my sleeve. This recipe makes great use of the original Nairns Oatcakes ( read my earlier review on these here ). In addition this recipe is also nut free and wheat-free (can also be made dairy-free!), using a little bit of honey and raisins for some sweetness. There is something very enticing about the smell of apple, cinnamon and oats...you will have little people checking out the oven for sure! Ingredients 2 apples 1 box of Nairns Oatcakes 1/2 cup of desiccated coconut 1 tablespoon of cinnamon 4 tablespoons of honey 100g butter (or coconut oil if dairy-free) 1/2 cup of raisins 1 egg Directions 1. Preheat the oven to 180 degrees and line a shallow brownie tin with baking paper. 2. Peel and roughly cut one of the apples. This is to make an apple puree. I just made this really fast in the Avent combined steamer blender...

It has been nearly a month from when I handed in the manuscript to my book. Since then things have flown by at lightning speed. We kicked off our National Starting Solids tour and had events in Auckland, Hamilton and we are in Wellington is this weekend. Following this we have two more events in Tauranga and Christchurch before preparing for the second half of the year. At the same time, everything that got put on the back burner while writing my book has came flooding in AND the university semester has kicked off as well. We have gone from one gear right into another! More over, this book gig is far from being done and dusted! While the writing is complete we are at the stage of pulling it all together – putting my vision into reality. This is both exciting and terrifying at the same time. My first cook book we self-published. This time the process is completely different as we are going through a publisher so it is very much a step into the unknown. Like with taking on anything new, ...