Guest Blogs

Knowitall.ch often invites local experts in their field to contribute to their own blogs on our site. This means not only you will benefit from the useful recommendations that we make on our News pages, but you can also profit from some of the great advice and tips that these experts have to make on their favorite subjects. Whilst each of these bloggers has been recommended to us at some point during the evolution of Know-it-all passport and knowitall.ch, obviously we are not able to test out all the suggestions they make on their blogs, nor do we necessarily agree with all their opinions. So if you do find one of their tips useful (or not!), do let us know!

To make these blogs more accessible to you, we have now decided to group them altogether in one section, entitled Guest Blogs, accessible from our main menu bar. We will also post the most recent blogs on the home page of our site in the right hand column.

We are still building up this area of the site, and are looking for bloggers in a number of sections, including Your Home, Travel, and Leisure, so if you feel you have a useful contribution to make in either of these areas, and have the time to submit blog entries approximately every month, then please get in touch!

: Published: 23 December 2016

CDC Claire and Emmanuel 500

By Claire Doole, Claire Doole Communications

Emmanuel Macron, the French presidential hopeful, was getting ready to take the stage, and all I knew as panel moderator was that he was meant to sit in the chair second to the left.

He and I were taking part in the Women’s Forum for Economy and Society in Deauville. I had no idea what he would say on our panel discussion about the economic advancement of women. His PR team were nowhere to be found.

So when the makeup artist whispered to her colleague that she was about to go upstairs to do his make-up, I followed her into the inner sanctum.

I needed to know if he was willing to speak in English – a red line for some French politicians – or whether he would be speaking through an interpreter. I wanted to briefly introduce myself and the first topic for discussion – the gender pay gap between men and women. From experience, I know it is important to build rapport with high-level panelists, and to sense if they get my British humour.

He did – peering over my clipboard and asking what questions I would be posing – in perfect English.

: Published: 09 December 2016

milena fire2 500

by Milena McRae, www.milenamcrae.com

As we go through life, we distinguish as clearly as black and white between the good and the bad - we learn to do this from a very young age as we are trained by our well-meaning environment to become an individual who fits in with the expectations of the system and those around us. So our beliefs about what is good and what is bad are deeply ingrained in us and form the basis of our habits, behaviours and choices we make later in life.

Once established, we use this framework to navigate through life and make conscious choices. Habitually then, when we don't like our circumstances, we are prompted into action, focusing on the negative results in order to rectify them. This causes us to focus our energy and time on the negative side of things before the desired circumstances seem even possible.

: Published: 01 December 2016

susananderson abandonment

By Sunita Sehmi, Walk The Talk

Susan Anderson has devoted more than 30 years of clinical experience and groundbreaking research in working with victims of abandonment trauma.

Founder of the Abandonment Recovery movement, she is author of four books including Journey from Abandonment to Healing, Taming Your Outer Child, Black Swan: Twelve Lessons of Abandonment Recovery and a WORKBOOK: Journey from Heartbreak to Connection.

“Of all human fears abandonment is the most primal. Left unresolved, this deep personal wound can linger beneath the surface where it undermines self-esteem and interferes in our relationships from within.”

Tell us about yourself. I’m a psychotherapist specializing in helping victims of abandonment trauma, as well as other types of loss and heartbreak. I’ve spent the past 30 years researching and writing about the abandonment and related issues of relationship conflicts, attachment, separation, addiction, grief, and personal growth.

What got you into abandonment and healing? Twenty years into my career as a psychotherapist specializing in abandonment, I had my own traumatic abandonment experience. The love of my life – my marital partner of 20 years, suddenly up and left me for another woman. I felt overwhelming pain and devastation, forcing me to realize that the tools I had been using to help my clients were simply not powerful enough to overcome the lasting effects of this trauma. There was nothing in the literature of psychology or self-help that offered any true remedy, so to help myself and to help others, I began researching new ways to repair abandonment’s painful wound. The result is the Five Stages of Abandonment and Recovery.

: Published: 09 November 2016

hiba hummus

By Hiba Giacoletto, Healthwise

Growing up in an Arabic family meant that hummus was a staple in our home. Whenever we had to bring something for school events, my mother would make hummus.

Something wasn’t going well? Eat hummus. Something to celebrate? Lets make hummus.

So yes, I do like my hummus. And for a long time, I stuck to my mother’s traditional hummus recipe. Then one of my Food Coaching clients casually mentioned she had thrown in a few sun-dried tomatoes to my hummus recipe. Sun-dried tomatoes and hummus? I was intrigued but did I dare mess with such an institution?

Next time I made hummus, I tentatively added a few sun-dried tomatoes. It blew me away. Excited by the idea of re-creating hummus, I started experimenting. I added in zucchini in summer. Pumpkin in autumn. Some raw beetroot in winter.

And I discovered that there is no one way of preparing hummus - that there were endless varieties of this delicious dish.

I put together these recipes and guidelines to help you get started. Once you understand the building blocks, you will know what you want to add more or less of - keep tasting as you prepare food and trust your intuition!

Click here to download my Everything Hummus Guide and Video.

: Published: 19 October 2016

tarablog onions

By Tara Lissner, Swiss Gardening School

Well we’ve been on a roller coaster with the weather over the past few weeks. The Indian summer lasted beautifully through the end of September and with the arrival of October the temperatures dropped and the bise wind rose. The tomatoes hung on to the bitter end but it is all over, the green ones are now in the kitchen in the hope that they may turn red but I predict an afternoon of green chutney making in my future.

This time of year is always bittersweet for the gardener, the glory of the summer garden has come to an end, the perennials have all gone to seed and while the seed-heads look wonderful the colour is slowly disappearing before us. Dahlias continue to perform and until we have consecutive nights of freezing temperatures they will continue to shine. It is a time to think about the future of course because this is the perfect time to add plants to the garden, trees, shrubs, hedges and perennials can all be planted until the freezing temperatures arrive. Have you got plans for trees, adding perennials? Take advantage of dry days to get out and make plans and plant them up, it is never nice to garden in the rain.

I’ve been busy this week, harvesting all the beans, I’ll be drying them out, shelling and storing them for use in soups and stews over the winter. I aways cut the plants to the ground, throwing them onto the compost, and leave the roots alone until the spring, this allows the nitrogen nodules along the fine roots of the beans plants to augment the nitrogen in the soil. I then cover the bed with about a 10 cms layer of mulch and leave that to work its way into the soil over the winter. Home made compost makes for a great mulch but it should be well broken down and at least a year old. If you don’t have any ready to go there are a number of places locally where you can buy it by the “big-bag” or have it delivered. I’ve used BGS Compost SA in Givrins, although closed on Saturdays it opens from 07:00 Monday to Friday.