Paul's Corner

I have just finished filming four episodes of the Food Trail in Tasmania - well I finished almost a week ago but I came home with a nasty flu and so have only now felt energetic enough to touch base at the Corner.

I had a great time travelling around Tassie - it really is a wonderful state of Australia and has some fantastic produce and producers of quality product. We could certainly have done more than four episodes there so I look forward to going back there and shooting some more eps.

One of the highlights was going diving for abalone!!! water temp was about 8 degrees and outside temp was probably about 4 - 5 degrees. I had a wetsuit on that was 7mm thick and kept me as warm as toast. Only dived down 8 - 9 meters but as it was the second time I had ever dived I was happy. I breathed through a regulator attatched to a hose that went up to a air compressor on the boat - kinda scary but very liberating also. Caught quite a few abs which we then took to a deserted beach and cooked them up - pretty bloody good!

All up I was gone for about three weeks, had to fly back for a charity fund raising event which I MC'd (raised enough money to buy 4 ventilators for the Childrens hospital)then fly back again so I managed one day off over the three weeks so no wonder I caught a cold (off a crew member unfortunately!)

Lots I could tell you about but you will have to wait for the show.
in the meantime I have posted my menu's that I cooked for each of the four eps. I will be posting the full recipes on my recipes section when I get around to it - hopefull kinda sorta soona.

My sister Connie has been and remains rather ill at the moment - she has told me that she has come close to dying twice. Thankfully she has improved a little since those episodes but remains quite ill and to some extent undiagnosed. She has several things wrong with her and is trying to sort it all out so she can in fact get on with the process of healing

I would ask those who have a spare minute to send her some healing thoughts.

My thanks to you and my thoughts to Connie.

Over the last three months here in Australia I and my family have been involved in a TV campaign for Flora Pro Active which is a spread that has been proven to reduce the amount of cholesterol your body absorbs. I can say it has been proven as I recently took the Pro Active challenge - where by you consume 25 grams of flora pro active spread every day for three weeks - I had my cholesterol taken before I started and then again the day after I finished the challenge - my cholesterol had dropped 16% after three weeks. During those three weeks I was very careful with limiting my saturated fat intake and I walked 6 days a week for approximately an hour each day. I know of someone else who had a 25% reduction. If you stop using the spread then your body goes back to absorbing cholesterol the way it did before taking it so if you want to keep your absorbtion rate down you need to keep taking it. The approximation that if you take 25g every day you should lower your absorbtion rate by an average of 10% - so if you take 12.5g you will lower your rate by 5%.

Here is the web site if you want to find out a little more:

http://www.florapro-activ.com.au/index.asp

As part of the challenge I was asked to keep a bit of a diary which you may or may not be interesting in reading but I have posted it as I wrote it and if you want you can read it.