Shakshuka is an easy, creative dish with such an incredible depth of flavour it's hard to believe this is a dish that is essentially a can of tomatoes with eggs. Traditionally, it's an Israeli/Tunisian breakfast dish with the eggs are baked in, but sometimes you have fussy eaters, i.e. one prefers the richness of runny, verging-on-raw yolks mixed in with the sauce while the other prefers their eggs very, very well-cooked with no chance of salmonella thanks, so it can be somewhat easier to cook the eggs separately. The result? A dish way too easy and delicious to save for weekend brunches alone. Bring on the brinner. 

½ tsp cumin seeds  1 tBsp coconut oil 2 large onions, peeled and sliced 4 red peppers, cored and cut into 2cm strips 2 bay leaves 6 sprigs thyme, picked and chopped 2 tbsp flat-leaf parsley, chopped 1 bunch fresh coriander, chopped 1 x 400g canned tomatoes ½ tsp saffron strands Pinch of cayenne pepper 4 free-range eggs

Balsamic vinegar

Salt and pepper

In a large saucepan, dry-roast the cumin on high heat for two minutes. Add the oil and sauté the onions for two minutes. Add the peppers,  bay leaves, thyme, parsley and two tablespoons of coriander, and cook until the peppers and onions have started to gently caramelise. Add the tomatoes, saffron, cayenne, salt and pepper. Cook on low heat for 15 minutes, adding water if needed to keep it the consistency of a pasta sauce. Taste and adjust the seasoning. It should be potent and flavoursome.

Place the saucepan to the side. Cook the eggs however you like them - poached, fried, whatever. To serve, place a generous amount of sauce on a curved plate, with eggs on top. Drizzle with balsamic vinegar and a dash of olive oil - although sesame can also provide an unexpectedly delicious twist - and sprinkle with coriander and some freshly cracked black pepper. 

Adapted from Yotam Ottolenghi.

This is Downward Dog with a detox twist, literally: Revolved Downward-Facing Dog, also known as Parivrtta Adho Mukha Svanasana. As energising and rejuvenating as its famous cousin, this asana also has the added benefits of stretching the ribcage and abdominal obliques, and bringing a deeper stretch to the hamstrings. The 'twist' part also tones and massages your internal, stimulating detox, metabolism and digestion.  Don't believe us? Try doing this after a rich meal. Your digestion will thank you. 

But that's what also makes this pose perfect in spring, a time of awakening from the stupor of winter and detoxing and re-energising the body. Start in Downward-Facing Dog and press through the palms and ankles, fingers spread wide, weight distributed evenly between the both hands. Inhale, bring your left hand to the outside of your right ankle, allowing your torso to open to the right. If you can't reach the ankle, rest your hand on the outside of your right shin or upper thigh. 

Relax the neck and take the gaze under the right side of the body. Hold for 5-10 breaths. Exhale. Inhale and twist back to Downward-Facing Dog. Repeat on the other side and enjoy. 

Spring tea #1 - Steep ginger, cinnamon and black pepper for a stimulating, cleansing detox tea in the mornings. Compliment with chamomile at night. 

Spring tea #2 - Anti-allergy tea with nettle, red clover, fennel, spearmint, peppermint, eyebright, yerba santa, calendula, lemongrass and lavender. Too many ingredients to list the amazing things they do, but basically calendula, red clover and fennel help ward off infection while nettle is a natural antihistamine, and everything else compliments them in properties/taste.

Teapot + mag / Kinfolk

Paris sports style

Do the twist. 

Milan sports style

Undone sexiness with a subversive intellectuality to it? Grazia, Milano. 

London sports style

Urban, gritty, underground - this is London, or more specifically, East London, the heart of London fashion. It's where the cool kids hang; where London fashion darlings such as Christopher Kane, Christopher Raeburn, and Erdem Moralioglu get creative; where even posh ol' Burberry has its London outlet, E9-way. It's also where the workouts invoke Prince vs. MJ and the yogis DJ and rave their way into the morning (hands down the best way to start your morning - even coffee can't make your morning this much fun). If there ever was a place to make a statement while you sweated, this is it. Enjoy the rest of London Fashion Week, folks. 

x

Bunker up, folks. It's polar vortex/rain storm time, and the only really appropriate thing right now is slow, warming foods. 

Get the slow cooker out and braise some beef shin with soy sauce and spices till the meat and collagen melt in your mouth with every bite oozing with flavor. Marinate some shiitake mushrooms with ginger and sesame; savor the bitter-sweet-salty flavors of Hugh Fearnsley-Whittingstall's radicchio, shallots and legal crack (aka bacon); or turn the pace down with some slow-cooked kale with garlic and smashed onions. Or, keep it simple but sexy with pepper freshly cracked over the perfect soft-boiled egg. 

New York sports style

Sport: the DNA of New York fashion, the tangible representation of the city's active heartbeat. Streetwise yet stylish, this city's style is all about slouchy silhouettes, edgy hardware and a largely monochrome palette, punctuated by color in the most unexpected of places. Here are the pieces inspired by the shows and streetstyle at NYFW to bring a bit of that Big Apple style to your yoga/pilates/workout.

For more info on classes in NYC, check out Well + Good for some seriously excellent recommendations. 

Dancer pose in Williamsburg, NY / via Pinterest

Happy Chinese New Year/Tết. Let the good times roll with some awesome food and, if you're lucky enough, a few red packets as well. 

Placing a cafe more than 10 minutes from the nearest tube station puts you into no man’s land in London, dangerous ground for a small business. Not for The Good Life Eatery, a casual, healthy cafe whose Chelsea location on the quiet side of South Kensington has done nothing to stem the crowds.

It’s a testament to the winning formula owners Yasmine Larizadeh and Shirin Kouros, a pair of young entrepreneurs influenced by the healthy cafes found in the US, predominantly LA and New York, have found. Their pitch is healthy, tasty food made casual, easy and accessible. Salads are virtuous - superfoods! - but they aren’t on the gluten-bashing train either, with gourmet sandwiches and spelt croissants on the menu. They do feature gluten-free items (the desserts on display are a celiac’s wet dream), but that’s the beauty of it - there’s something for everyone.

The Good Life Eatery is the culmination of months of hard work and research done by the girls, who are only now coming up to their “two-year anniversary of meeting”, as Larizadeh excitedly proclaims. Both come from experienced backgrounds - Larizadeh from property and finance and Kouros from an education at the French Culinary Institute in New York and training in three-Michelin-starred restaurants. Both have also done thorough, hands-on research - shortly after meeting, they took an “R&D trip to New York and Cali” and although Kouros had already had experience in restaurants, Larizadeh decided to do her own time in the kitchen and both say if they could give advice to anyone wanting to start up a restaurant, it would be to work in one first. “There are so many things that go on in the back of house of a restaurant that you are not aware of,” says Larizadeh, who then went on to manage the cafe for the first few months it was open. Luckily, they now have a manager.

The food, almost unexpectedly, isn’t 100 percent organic - it would be “unfair to the local farmers who are actually practising organic but they’re not able to go through all the paperwork,” says Larizadeh, who prefers to work with local farmers and suppliers than focus on labels. Reflecting her passion for sustainable development, the produce, meat and fish for the cafe are all supplied by the local businesses favoured by the pair, with contracts negotiated to accommodate for higher demand. The chairs were passed on from another restaurant, the tables are reclaimed scaffolding, and some of the lights were donated by a friend where they “were just lying around the house,” says Larizadeh. “We just, like, picked together stuff and it somehow worked.”

The result was a natural, earthy aesthetic, balanced by clean lines and a sophisticated black-and-white palette. It’s much like their business relationship, which works, says Kouros, because their  “roles are completely separate. [Yasmine] had no understanding of food and I had no understanding of finance but we can trust each other to do each other’s roles without having to doubt each other,” - in fact, the entire venture is characterised by this combination of opposites and then striking the delicate balance between them. Ergo, the food is quality but not pretentious; the vibe healthy but not hippie; the business focused on sustainability but not preaching. It’s Larizadeh’s minimalism to Kouros’ exuberance. Yin meets yang.

Perhaps their ultimate achievement though, is hitting that fine note between business savvy and authenticity. They are constantly re-evaluating what works and what doesn’t work, and already have an eye on their next venture. Yet they still spend what seems like every other day in the cafe, and know a lot of their regular customers. Tips are deposited in not one, but two, jars, asking customers to vote between nemeses from popular culture - on the day we visited it was Breaking Bad’s Heisenberg vs. Jesse Pinkman. They’re clued into the zeitgeist, but most importantly, they know their customers and like any good business owners, communicate with them. A lack of tube station nearby can’t beat that.  

Your neck: the source of many an ache. 

It's been through put its paces, thanks to awkward sleeping positions, poor posture and stress. It probably deserves better - no, it does deserve better. So you get a massage, go to Pilates, or yoga, in the hope it gets some love and feels a bit better. But sometimes, the body falls into well-worn paths; the shoulders, so used to hunching forward, love to stay there even during your practice.

During a massage, generally your therapist will stretch your shoulders down for you, releasing tension in the neck - but how often do we get to go? Meanwhile, during yoga or Pilates, teachers will often give instructions to try and encourage students to release their neck and shoulders. 'Relax the neck', obviously. 'Pull the shoulders away from the ears'. 'Lengthen the neck'. 'Grow taller'.

These instructions are pretty self-explanatory, but to get a better idea of what it actually feels like, try this: start in either a sitting or standing position, and push your collarbone forward, like you've got a brand spankin' new necklace and want to show it off (loving this macabre but elegant piece by Alexander McQueen). The shoulders will sink slightly; let them do their thing. Now float your arms to the side, to shoulder height. Turn your palms towards the ceiling. Feel the shoulders rotate within their sockets. How does it feel? Notice the shoulders relaxing down and back slightly? Try and keep that position throughout your poses/moves and notice how you feel afterwards. 

Happy weekend. Make it count x

Most Pilates teachers make you sweat with a stint of cardio or harder weights. Not Alex Coleman. Her classes will make you sweat based on pure Pilates. Not only does she throw in some fun and seriously different moves - you can use a reformer machine like that?? (Don’t think dirty) - she makes sure everyone is doing it properly, which means you’ll be working muscles and joints you didn’t even know you had. Tuck that tailbone in and you’ll see what we mean.

It was inevitable that Coleman would have a career in fitness - as a child she covered everything from state basketball to touch rugby and taekwondo. Born in London, her family moved to Perth when she was two, and now she's back in the UK, this time for some travelling - and maybe a bit of celebrity training. “[Training celebrities] is something that I’d really love to do while I'm here,” she says. “I don’t know very many people here at the moment so I’ve got to network a little bit, but it would be pretty cool to get into it.” Hint: if you have any connections, contact her stat!

“Growing up I’ve always been into sports and fitness. I played a lot of sport growing up, so naturally when it was coming time to think about what I was going to do for a career, it was automatically going to be [something to do with sports]. I was actually going to be a PE teacher and sort of through there I started to do personal training and taught that, and then I came across pilates and just sort of fell in love with it so swapped over to that.

“I first became attracted to Pilates through...the feeling that I got inside my body, when I did the class. When I did the workout, it was just different. I was finding at the gym I was always stiff and sore. Always. And you know, you sort of think you’re doing the right thing by doing a good exercise session at the gym, you feel sore the next day but you feel that it’s a good thing because you’ve been working your muscles and you’re stiff so it was hard. But I was feeling like it wasn’t right, like I was forever sore and stiff. And so I went and did this pilates class and I felt my glutes, my butt, my abs work so hard they were burning! After the class, I felt like I’d worked, but I felt great. I felt more mobile, I felt this energy inside me. And from there I just knew that that was what I needed to do, rather than gym work.

“And that’s what it’s about. We exercise to increase our function and to keep everything in good condition. And I think you've got to find a good balance of exercise. Too much gym and weights and things, it throws you out.

“At the moment for me, I love educating on movement. It’s about upgrading your function, upgrading your system. It’s about getting your body to function better. And with that you’ll tone. And you’ll look slimmer and healthier. The mentality is very much to tone up and look good and work, work, work to do that when really it’s not, it’s about upgrading your joints and your function, your bone mechanics, to work better. And then with that will come toning and sculpting of the body. It’s more about teaching how to exercise. It’s just like learning how to eat correctly.

“I try to do [teach and take classes when I travel]. It depends on where I go and who I’m with, like for example we went sailing around Croatia last summer and on the boat I taught about three classes over the week. We just got everyone together, for the first class it was mostly the girls who wanted to have a workout and stretch but by the end the whole boat was joining in and that was cool.

“When you’re meeting people and you’re travelling, you share each other’s stories. I just say 'I’m a pilates instructor, if you want, we can do a class,' and everyone’s always really interested. If I’m visiting friends, I make sure I’ll let them know we’ll be doing some pilates and they’ll bring some friends. Just trying to spread the good movement around!

“I’m working in my life to keep a balance and keep things simple. In the past I’ve opened studios, I’ve ran around town teaching, putting hours into the backend of a business like websites, advertising, all of that. But now I’m here, I want to keep it simple, keep developing my own pilates, my own knowledge and then slowly work up to celebrities and getting my name out there as me, not as a studio. So the world starts to know Alex. And from there I’m hoping this year to start online classes. Like Youtube, or like a video class, because I’ve got my client base in Perth that are asking me to come back and there's no way I’m coming back anytime soon!

So I thought, why not get a website up and running and put some mat classes online? And then maybe I can share them with my clients in London as well and get a bit of a thing going while I continue my travels. A little secret is I hope to do a class in every country I go to, so everyone will be able to follow me on the journey. That one I haven’t told anyone about this year, but that’s my goal for the year!”

www.facebook.com/getyourpilatesbody 

Instagram: @pilates_bodies

Twitter: @ToneUpPilates

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Oh how I miss the sea. Enjoy the weekend x