How It All Began

Chapter 1 - Raising Kids

20 years ago when our son was a mere tyke, we had to watch what we fed him. Too much sugar and he would be like a bee in a bottle - up one wall, across the ceiling and down the other side. What they called hyperactive. Back then it wasn’t yet all the rage to turn kids into zombies with mind altering psyche drugs because the parents didn’t... ...oh, don’t get me started on THAT one!

I can distinctly recall going through the supermarket with my wife Julie, looking earnestly for foods that had no sugar, artificial colourings, flavours and preservatives added to them. We got to the end of the groceries and there was scant all in the shopping trolley! That week we lived on fruit, veges and meat\chicken\fish.

Of course these days it’s even more diabolical what you have to be alert for on food labels, MSG in its many guises, genetically modified foods and all sorts of manufactured sugar substitutes and other unnatural additives that who knows what the long term effect is on a body.

Sorry, we do know. The average weight is going up, the health level is going down, people are working longer and getting sicker. I happen to think that’s going the wrong way up a dead end alley.

Anyway, this activity is my attempt to do something about producing a product to help reverse that trend.

Chapter 2 - Fruit Smoothie

A programmer from South Africa stayed with me for some time a few years ago. He was in the habit of having a fruit smoothie for breakfast and I took up the practice from there.

I add a half a handful of 6 or 8 different nuts, an apple or pear or peach, kiwi fruit, banana and some frozen berries and cacao powder to the blender, cover with apple juice and blend.

When done it fills 4 or 5 large (250 ml) glasses. One goes down the hatch with a handful of vitamins for breakfast, one in the fridge for the following morning and the others into the freezer because if left in the fridge, sometimes it would tingle on the tongue on day four. Each day when I pull one out of the fridge for breakfast I just make sure to pull one from the freezer and put it in the fridge for the next day.

Chapter 3 - Apple Pie

I don’t recall how or why I became the dessert chef at home. Maybe it has something to do with having a sweet tooth. But the apple pie is always a hit.

I put a piece of pastry into whatever sized baking tray that is required and put it into a medium oven for fifteen minutes while I am getting the rest of the ingredients together and prepared. This ensures we don’t have a soggy base.

Next I open an 825 gram can of apricots in juice and drain the juice.

Then I empty the contents of an 825 gram can of unsweetened pie apples to a mixing bowl, add some cinnamon, a generous helping (two handfuls) of sultanas or incas (South American raisin type dried fruit), some crushed pecans and stir. As well as adding a strudel like touch, the sultanas\incas soak up some of the apricot juice so it’s less wet.

When the pastry base is starting to rise I whip it out of the oven, tip the apple\sultana\cinnamon\nut mix into it, add four strategically placed cloves, then tip the apricots on top and round off with a sprinkling of frozen berries. Put the next sheet of pastry on top with a sprinkle of nutmeg and back in the oven for an hour.

Chapter 4 - Fruit Cake

When my youngest daughter was about to be married we said to Geoff, the groom to be, “We’re doing all this organising for Cadienne, is there anything special you’d like?”

Geoff replied, “You know what I’d really like?”

“What?” I asked.

“An old fashioned fruit cake, with marzipan icing.”

“It shall be done!” I said.

So Julie went looking for a wedding cake shop. Finally found one, ordered a cake, bought a rice custard and left. When she opened the rice custard to eat it there was a layer of mould on the top!

Needless to say, Julie returned the rice custard and cancelled the wedding cake order.

She came home and said to me, “It’s less than a week to the wedding, what are we going to do?”

I said, “I’ll make it then. Get me a cake tin and a recipe.”

So Julie brought home a large cake tin and a recipe from the Womens Weeky Celebrations cookbook.

Well. I over cooked it by 100 degrees for an hour longer than I should have. It turned out as black as the ace of spades and as hard as bell metal!

No time left to cook another. We needed to decorate it and you cannot ice a hot cake.

I turned it on it’s side, took the bread knife and sawed of the top. (It didn’t quite need the circular saw!)

Iced, it went over a treat and was a great hit.

After that I started making fruit cakes for my family and software clients for Christmas.

Chapter 5 - Food Bars

My youngest daughter, Cadienne, affectionately calls me a “health nut”. (Seems if you exercise, take vitamins and eat well you’re entitled to that mantle.)

Cadienne is mostly a vegetarian and works unusual hours. She is provided an evening meal but if it is a lamb stew it goes over like a lead balloon with her.

I took it on myself to do something about this so I started experimenting with different ingredients I had around the kitchen with the intention of creating a really healthy meal replacement\snack.

I started with coconut, sesame and sunflower seeds, cashew and macadamia nuts, apricots and raisins, cinnamon, nutmeg, cacao and maca powder and bound it together with honey. You’ll laugh at this. I added some water to the first batch, thinking it would otherwise be too dry, but it needed Viagra after that :-) so I dropped the water from the next batch.

After some experimentation I got a stable recipe that she liked. Cadienne then started telling others about it and pretty soon I was making quite a few kilos of this each week. I then thought,“If lots of people are going to consume this, I’d like to make it as healthy as I can.”

So I went to the site from where I purchased the Maca, Cacao and Gojis, http://www.raw-chocolate.net/, spent a couple of grand and got a whole bunch of other ingredients and created a maxi nutrient version of the bar that has 36 ingredients.

The results to date from the people eating it have ranged from filling to nothing short of spectacular.

Sleep Better

Some people notice an immediate improvement in their energy levels and a fair percentage find when they eat a bar or two a day they sleep better at night - me included! So I have reaped a personal benefit out of the whole exercise.

One night I had a call from someone for whom my wife does the books. He’s been having the bars for a while now. He said,“I don’t feel much different when I have the bar but when I don’t, I don’t sleep well.”

I said,“I’ll send some around with Julie.”

He said,“No. I’ll come round and get them now!”

The next day I had a call from about the 6th person who has handled his sleep problem with the bars and he said he gave one to his coach who also slept very well after having one. So they are pretty consistently resolving sleeping problems and I am keen to test how general is this effect.

Energy Level

Several people swear by them for keeping their energy levels up or boosting them when they are low.

One consumer of the bars has a day job where he works physically as well as a night job that requires he climb a few flights of stairs quite often. Some days he does not get a chance to have a proper meal between his day and evening jobs. He was in the habit of grabbing a chicken burger. The next day his body did not have the energy level he needed to do his job and of an evening, going up the stairs was a real chore.

My daughter suggested he try some of my food bars and he now has one or two every day. In his words, “I eat a bar and 10 minutes later I’m belting up the stairs two at a time.”

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