Anti-food additives & pestiside awareness

Uggghhh!!!!

After writing a long blog piece yesterday about the anti-food additives wave finally reaching Sweden I walked into the supermarket and saw DN's headlines -

Green Tea Found to have high levels of insecticide.

I drink a couple of cups of green tea a day and the thought of drinking insecticide made me feel ill. Needless to say it has put me off my tea today. I drank coffee, organic coffee.

According to the online article high levels have been found in (green) tea bags - even the so-called organic tea bags which were immediately taken off the shelves. I don't use bags, but neither do I drink organic tea - I haven't been able to find any I like. But I'm guessing there are high levels in all teas.....

Will there ever be an end to the garbage that is put in our food and beverages. And we wonder why so many people get cancer???

I do trust the Swedish KRAV certification process, but obviously there are loopholes.

Is it Swine Flu?

Asks a 7 year old as we walk in to school to have a "development talk" with Makaila's teacher today.

She has been off school for two days and spent the day in bed yesterday sweating it out. 30 hours of fever seems to have broken the worst of the virus and she was much, much better today, just a mild cough and a few sniffles.

Weird how we have lost our ability to have a cold, much less a normal flu without everyone wondering.

Oh, and if you're wondering about this "parent teacher interview" as it was called in my day and part of the world I can inform you that everyone is happy. When asked by her teacher she said she loves everything, she's pretty good at drawing and English and she'd like to be better at writing her numbers. Pretty good at English?? Ha! Got to love her modesty! She's a keen student, at least at the tender young age of almost 7, and takes any chance she can to practise her reading and writing - Swedish or English.

It is lovely to see her enthusiasm, lovely to see her blossom.

Breakfast Muffins

After popular demand and much nagging, I am finally publishing my recipe for breakfast muffins - they go like hotcakes in this household. They are healthy and nutritious and a lot faster to get down a child when in a hurry on a school morning than anything else!! Much better than the @^!#€%*&! in most cereal boxes.
The best way to make them is to have a digital scale so you can put a bowl on it and zero it each time you add an ingredient, add the wet stuff and Hey presto! another batch is made.

Double batch from original recipe - makes about 30.

Put the oven on 200 C (175 C if fan forced)

Mix all dry ingredients in a bowl
90 g (grams) plain flour (I use spelt to increase protein content)
110 g wholemeal flour (spelt again)
3 tspn bicarb soda
1/4 tspn salt
2-3 tspn ground cinnamon
60 g bran flakes (I prefer quinnoa flakes - available in health food shops if not elsewhere and even cooked quinnoa and used that this week - made them even more moist)
170 g dried fruit (anything goes here and have also substituted for fresh fruit or 50/50, apple bits this week made them more moist again)
120 g dark brown sugar
100 g white sugar
50 g seeds (I mix sunflower and pumpkin and even some linseed and sesame - great for calcium, zinc and iron levels)
30g chopped whole rye (optional - gives little crunchy bits in muffins and adds a little more roughage)

Mix following in separate bowl
3 eggs
500ml buttermilk (add juice of 1/2 lemon to sour = buttermilk)
100g melted butter (sometimes use good canola oil but that makes final batter more liquidy)

Mix wet and dry ingredients but be gentle with them.
I leave them to sit for 5-10 minutes so wet soaks through dry without over-mixing.

Pour into prepared muffin tin - either greased or paper liners.

Bake for 15-20 minutes.

Hey presto they are done! Good wholesome muffins that you can give your kids without thinking twice. Mine float them in yogurt for a little variation.
Notes:
You can reduce the sugar level.
You can add vanilla too - add 2 teaspoons to liquids or vanilla sugar to dry ingredients.
Make sure the mixture isn't too liquidy - if it is just add more flour - should not be runny but if it is bake it longer so everything sets.
Experiment! Add more seeds or fruit - the recipe can take it.
Each batch I make is different depending on what flour I have available and what dried fruit I use - the dried cherries, apricots and cranberries have been very popular.

Welcome to good, wholesome and yummy breakfasts that can be eaten on the run if need be!

Edited to say they should be baked in a muffin tray because the mix is initially very runny.

VAB, swine flu and the Swedish medical system

I have a sick boy. He lay on the couch for two days with a temperature, dozing on and off, watching tv and hardly eating a morsel. Monday, day 1, he was a bit sniffly and complained every now and again of a sore throat and sore ears, only later to announce when questioned that No, they didn't hurt. His main symtoms have been tiredness and a fever.

Then on Wednesday he fell asleep under the kitchen table just after 5pm and slept through to the next morning. Thursday he slept for almost 3 hours during the day and was still tired. So today, Friday I decided that perhaps I'd better ring the doctor and get him checked out - perhaps it isn't just a virus but something more serious.

To get a doctor's appointment on the day you need to ring the nurse at the local clinic and she calls you back - which they did after almost an hour. I outlined his symtoms and she asked what it was I was wanting(!) Of course I was wanting to make an appointment for him to be checked out. She then went through a questionnaire that she had in front of her and clearly it was a "swine flu screening questionnaire". They don't want anyone in there who has shown swine flu syptoms in the last 7 days, she informed me. She would leave a message for the doctor to ring me back sometime today.

Sweden is reaching the peak for the outbreak of Swine Flu, according to an article today in The Local, and the government hope to vaccinate some 90% of the population. Ever since it was announced that the vaccine would be freely available to all I've been pondering this attempt to thwart a local pandemic and I can only put it down to the cost of VAB and sickness benefits.

VAB stands for Vård Av Barn - or child care - the type of caring for a child when they are sick, the type of caring I've been doing this week. You see the government pays me 80% of my salary up to a certain amount when I am "vabbing" or caring for my sick child. They pay it every day I am at home with my child and there is no need for a doctor's certificate unless they are off for longer than a week. Their only demand is an explanation and a signed document from school or daycare saying that the child has been away. And there is no limit to how many days a year a child can be off sick. It must cost the state an absolute fortune. Compare that to a system where the parent gets nothing for staying home with a sick child - how sick must a kid be then to justify a day without pay??

Adults also get sickness benefits. The first day off is without benefits but after that they receive 80% of their salary. A doctor's certificate is needed after a week and again there is no limit on the number of sick days a person can have off in a year, although questions do get asked after a while.

We have a long winter in this country and for six months of the year viruses run rampant and both kids and adults are regularly at home with colds, coughs and flus. If the swine flu hits Sweden like they are anticipating it will it will without doubt lead to a serious budget blow-out. Add that to the already high unemployment levels (also get 80% of salary with exceptions) and the Swedish economy is going to take quite a beating!

No wonder the Swedish government is both willing and hoping to vaccinate 90% of the population - I just wonder how anyone will get a doctor's certificate when the doctors clearly don't want anything to do with those of us who are sick!

More information available in English from Försäkringskassan http://www.forsakringskassan.se/sprak/eng

Reproduced from the Live In Sweden Blog!

Our brush with H1N1

wow.... it has been a while, almost two whole months since I last blogged and even then there wasn't a whole lot of activity from me.

May and June were busy with relocation work and getting www.liveinsweden.se live, June also saw a number of loose ends being tied up with odd clients and classes, packing, and preparing our home to be enjoyed by others over the summer.

Then came our departure week and a close call with the infamous H1N1. Days before we were due to head to Canada we had a friend and her daughter come and stay only to leave the next day, be admitted to hospital, and then be diagnosed with H1N1. The day the results came through will be remembered as one of the most stressful in my entire life (mmmm.... now what does that say about my life?). I spent the day on the phone to the local doctor, the children's hospital, the infectious diseases institute etc etc etc.

In cases like this it is always interesting to see how others react. My friends who survived the Tsunami blew it off, hugged us and said have a great holiday - let us know if we can do anything - they said. Then there are those who really panic.

The doctors finally decided to test Kieran as being under 5 he is high risk and we decided that all four of us would take Tamiflu as a preventative measure. None of us had any symptoms so we were given the all-clear to fly to Canada and told that unless we developed symptoms we were free to move around as normal. You have to love the doctor's attitude at Karolinska hospital who noted that we were at least flying to a country where the flu was running rampant!!

None of that really lightened our load and we spent the next few days on edge. My mother-in-law, a sufferer of a lung disease was understandably, less than thrilled considering she is also in the high risk category. Nothing like getting a holiday off to a good start.

Finally Kieran's results came back as negative and we got word that considering we still didn't have any symptoms we could safely assume that none of us had caught it. That's not something I treat lightly considering our children spent hours together playing in a closed environment.

Had we not been flying I would only have had to worry about our health, especially that of my son who as a four year old is supposedly more at risk. And considering he had recently had strep throat followed by a vaccination his immune system would not have been at its best.

Flying from one country to another adds a whole new dimension to things. What are the repercussions if we say "to hell with it" and go? What happens if we have to cancel our flight? Who would pick up my mum and her partner 5 days later if we didn't make our flight, or couldn't get another? What if we go, symptom free and then get sick? What then if our insurance didn't cover us? Canada is one hell of a country to be in if you don't have travel insurance. But again our Tsunami friends reassured us that it would all be sorted out if needed. Experience is a wonderful thing.

In the end I decided to be upfront about coming in contact with H1N1, make the phone calls and get the run around. I spoke to all the doctors and I put Kieran through the horrid testing - a very, very, very long thing stuck up into his sinus passages, in the car park behind the clinic because they would not have us in the clinic, by a doctor in a suit that resemble Darth Vader's only it was clear. The poor kid was traumatized for days, Makaila too, who ended up hiding behind the loading bay so she didn't have to watch. But it did give us peace of mind, for what it was worth. We were given the go-ahead, told we could move about freely and a few days later found out we could put it all behind us. I just hope Kieran doesn't hold it against me the rest of his life......

People are saying all sorts of things about this pandemic and you hear words like hysteria, over-stated, under-stated, weaker strains, mutation, vaccination and concern for the coming winter being thrown about the place. The thoughts and theories, speculations and assumptions about H1N1 are plentiful.

But out of all this there is one thing that has really struck me, and that is how vulnerable the flight staff are as they move hundreds and hundreds of people around the globe every day.

A young boy was feverish and threw up in the seat behind us on our way to Canada. He and his brother were flying from Cambodia to see his grandparents in Toronto. The staff helped him as best they could. Then the man in front of us on our way back to Stockholm had a fever and felt like he was going to vomit. The staff took his temperature and helped him as best they could.

I can't help but think of our friend who works as a steward, and goes home after each stint to his wife, his four year old and his one-month-old baby. Our brush with H1N1 pales in comparison......

Spring Depression affects many

I looked at the clock tonight at 7pm and thought Wow, things change quickly! Its not just because we changed to summer time, or daylight savings a few days ago but because the days are now quickly becoming longer and longer - we're gaining 5 minutes a day, that is 35 minutes a week! You sure do notice that from one week to the next.

While you would think that we would be thrilled to have the light back after a looooonnnnngggg winter (winter in Sweden is always long) it seems the light sets off winter depression in something like 3-5% of the population. As many as one in five feel mild symptoms of spring depression or at least spring tiredness.

Depression is a word that gets thrown around a lot in this country and I'm not sure if it is because there is good reason for it, or if the whole things becomes a bit exaggerated and self-fulfilling. A friend of mine has always talked about her spring depression and it is only as I write this I begin to think about my own reaction. Most years I have managed to escape to Australia during the winter but I have noticed that the years I don't go, I have run out of energy come February. I have felt flat, tired and well, worn out. Spring depression perhaps?

A recent article in SvD suggests that the best way to cure, or at least ward off spring depression, is not through medication but through light. While daily exercise is generally considered the best cure for mild depression, daily light is best in the spring and I know a combination of the two has cured my friend. Once upon a time we would have withdrawn in the darker part of the year and not been our or performed as much. While that is no longer the case we still need to allow our body clocks some time to make the change, and accept that feeling a little flat or down is all part of our cyclical rhythms.

So if you too are feeling like your battery has completely run out of juice the advice is - eat well, sleep well, exercise and spend 30 minutes a day outside in the light.
How about you? Are you suffering as the days get longer or loving every minute of it?