Some of us are al­ways look­ing for a way to cut ex­tra calo­ries from our di­et but it's a dif­fi­cult chal­lenge to give up our Tri­ni sta­ple dish­es like dou­bles, roti and fry bake. To sat­is­fy those crav­ings, we have a de­li­cious fry bake recipe that in­cor­po­rates whole wheat flour. The bake re­mains soft while pro­vid­ing a hearty boost that you do not achieve with white flour alone. Try it out and share with your fam­i­ly and friends. Make sure to try it out with your favourite talka­ri, we rec­om­mend this fry bake with buljol on a Sun­day morn­ing.

This month of Jan­u­ary marks a new year on the cal­en­dar, a month to make res­o­lu­tions for a bet­ter and health­i­er you. Jan­u­ary is al­so des­ig­nat­ed as In­ter­na­tion­al Cer­vi­cal Can­cer Aware­ness Month. This is a great op­por­tu­ni­ty to make a res­o­lu­tion where women’s health is con­cerned.

At the be­gin­ning of every new week, month or year, many peo­ple make a prac­tice of tak­ing time to re-eval­u­ate their lives, by mak­ing lists of goals and things-to-do while crit­i­cal­ly as­sess­ing where they are as op­posed to where they would like to be.

My first en­counter with Cur­tiun was such a mem­o­rable one. He was shy, soft spo­ken and very ar­tic­u­late. He was mak­ing bead­ed chains and rub­ber-band bracelets. I lat­er found out he sat the SEA ex­am­i­na­tion and was not sur­prised with the re­sults.

Women who have had a to­tal hys­terec­to­my (re­moval of the uterus and cervix) should stop screen­ing (such as Pap tests and HPV tests).

The Ox­ford Dic­tio­nary de­fines self-care as “the prac­tice of tak­ing an ac­tive role in pro­tect­ing one’s own well-be­ing and hap­pi­ness.”

In­fluen­za comes from the Ital­ian words for “in­flu­ence.” It goes back to the 1500s when peo­ple did not know what caused these epi­demics of cough­ing, headache, mus­cle ache and even death. So peo­ple be­lieved their health was be­ing “in­flu­enced” by the stars.

So you go to the gym sev­en days a week and yet you have trou­ble main­tain­ing your de­sired weight. What am I do­ing wrong you ask. Sounds fa­mil­iar?

Christ­mas is here and it’s the most won­der­ful time of the year. It is al­so the busiest sea­son, al­so re­ferred to as the “sil­ly sea­son,” be­cause, in­ter­est­ing­ly, while it is a very fes­tive and jol­ly time, Christ­mas is al­so when many in­ci­dents and in­juries oc­cur. And many peo­ple bring in the new year with pain and dis­abil­i­ty, while some are un­avoid­able, ma­jor­i­ty could be pre­vent­ed and save your­self ad­di­tion­al spend­ing on re­cov­ery or less time out of work (es­pe­cial­ly for self-em­ployed) in the new year.

Be­ing in love with fash­ion and see­ing the need among fe­male friends for swimwear items, Vanes­sa Mo­hammed set out to open her very first swimwear bou­tique, Biki­ni Ca­bana, in 2014. Since then, life has been a com­bi­na­tion of jug­gling the en­tre­pre­neur­ial lifestyle and al­so hav­ing a man­age­r­i­al day job at Green Sol Chem­i­cals. On two op­po­site ends of the spec­trum, Vanes­sa al­ter­nates be­tween op­er­at­ing a fash­ion busi­ness and man­ag­ing a port­fo­lio of oil­field prod­ucts and in­dus­tri­al chem­i­cals for wa­ter treat­ment. She de­scribes the hours and re­spon­si­bil­i­ties as “pret­ty de­mand­ing” since Biki­ni Ca­bana has blos­somed over the years in­to more than just a swimwear bou­tique. When she is not work­ing, she loves spend­ing time with fam­i­ly, friends and loved ones do­ing the things that tru­ly mat­ter—find­ing a bal­ance, so­cial­is­ing and stay­ing true to her fam­i­ly tra­di­tions. In an in­ter­view with the WE Mag team Vanes­sa shared more about her­self and this jour­ney, here’s what she had to share:

Anelia Daniel, the first of four chil­dren, is a lover of all things eco­nom­ics (ex­cept Econo­met­rics) and a pas­sion­ate ad­vo­cate for women’s em­pow­er­ment. Pro­fes­sion­al­ly, and in align­ment with her pas­sion for eco­nom­ics, she’s an Eco­nom­ic Sup­port An­a­lyst at the Min­istry of Fi­nance while at the same time she is the founder of the She Is Foun­da­tion, an or­gan­i­sa­tion fo­cused on the men­tor­ship and em­pow­er­ment of young women. Her mis­sion is to cre­ate a safe space for young women to heal, learn and blos­som.

Mes­sages of self love, self care, pre­serv­ing one’s peace and pro­tect­ing one’s space rip­pled across so­cial me­dia in 2018 in tsuna­mi-like waves. From skin care to med­i­ta­tion, trav­el, ad­ven­tures in­to na­ture, and every­thing in be­tween, this re­dis­cov­ery of self love and tak­ing care of one­self was the ul­ti­mate kum­baya. As I be­gan to nav­i­gate the whole con­cept of pre­serv­ing one’s space and peace, I re­alised that there is a down­side to a lot of what is be­ing preached.