Every year, I find Christmas conflicting, I hold two beliefs at once – in Psychology they call this cognitive dissonance. I love Christmas carols, the smell of fresh pine, and the endless opportunities to enjoy potatoes - but it is also often marked by unnecessary consumerism, which leads to more waste for our already suffocating planet.

Food is such a big part of the festive season and this gingerbread popcorn is a great, pretty healthy treat to make for friendship get-togethers and family occasions. With ginger and cinnamon, it gives a nod to gingerbread, but with a slightly milder flavour.

These Socca Bread Pizzas are surprisingly light and super easy to make. It’s the gluten free chickpea flour and fermentation with coconut yoghurt or apple cider vinegar which makes all the difference. Chickpea flour is a wonderful ingredient: it's full of fibre and folate, low GI and packed with protein.

Down here in the Antipodes, the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic have been somewhat mitigated. While there’s still been a huge impact on lives and livelihoods in Australia and New Zealand, as island nations, we’ve been able to avoid some of the devastation the disease has caused overseas. But it’s also left us to navigate a lot of uncertainty.

I hate the glorification of busyness. There’s nothing admirable about how far you can run yourself down before something has to give – but the reality is, most of us find ourselves juggling several commitments at once. Everyone experiences different levels of busy, and those tend to ebb and flow.

For many, 2020 has seen an overwhelming desire to go back to “normal”, how things were before the global pandemic. But I’ve seen viral tweets about how maybe this year was the wakeup call we all needed, to make change and to shake up the status quo.

Many parents and children have experienced restrictions on their activities due to COVID-19 over the last few months. The necessity of the situation has seen many kids less active and being on screens significantly more. With school holidays coming up and the weather improving it’s a great time to get the kids outside and get them moving.

Winter is a tough time for many of us to keep our health and wellness routines on track, but this year has been a real doozy. They say life happens while we are busy planning other things and I have to say, life really caught us off guard this time.

Spring is the time we think about the soil that’s going to grow our summer bounty. There’s so much advice out there as well as loads of good products and it can be very confusing. There are fertilisers, and there are soil conditioners and while they’re different from one another, they’re both essential for good soil health.

This Spring, we’re thinking about the ways we can help each other breathe a little easier, and improve our collective, long-term lung health, fitness and overall wellbeing. One way to reduce the impact of asthma on our everyday lives is to keep our homes as free from irritants and allergens as possible.