I too am super keen on raising our consciousness around the food we stock, the dishes we prepare and share, the items we grab on the go.

I would love to see our society value quality, nutritious produce, the stuff that contributes to our growth and vitality.  I would love more and more people to make those connections between food and health, and for fresh, sensitively cooked food to be more widespread.

I SO want to see my wishes realized, and therefore I am running a VERY special healthy new year offer right now because I want to give YOU the opportunity to train in the next cohort of Pure Cook’s beginning this coming Monday.  

The online Pure Cook’s Training gives you the wisdom, application and expertise to use natural food cookery to enhance your life, the lives of your loved ones, your community and the wider world.

Graduates have gone on to lose weight, exclude sugar, heal imbalances, anxiety and chronic conditions, transform nourishment for children and families, set up natural food restaurants and enterprises, land dream jobs in pure food cookery, and grow nutrition and health coaching practices.

What is it that you really want to grow and focus on right now?  

When we give this thing the focus and attention and support, then we grow ourselves and our growth manifests as gifts to the world.  We can activate and own our own nourishment, we can propel others to do so and we can play bigger from our authentic selves.

My online Pure Cook’s Training is beginning this Monday 28^thJanuary.

The very special healthy new year offer is a saving of £250, taking the course from £345 to just £95.

Seven modules of video demonstrations and materials take students on a journey of wellbeing.

In each module I present ingredient selection and health benefits, food preparation tips and delicious recipe videos that support vegetarian, vegan, macrobiotic and natural diets and lifestyles.

Modules are released every 2 weeks and there is no need to be in at a certain time – you can look at the material and video demos all in your own time and at your own pace.

You will receive:

• Over 40 fantastic video recipes which you can recreate with ease and enjoy with family, friends and clients
• Shopping lists and essential toolkits
• 7 Cookbooks
• Over 150 pages of learning resources
• Free copies of my two books
• Pure Cook’s private forum access
• Bonus and live Q&A sessions
• Further bonus gifts

I would be thrilled to welcome and train you on Monday.

Enrollment is at  http://www.wholefoodharmony.com/pure-cooks-training

Please be in touch with any questions and I very much hope to be sending you the shopping list and preparatory material to get you stocked up with right ingredients ready to thrive as a pure foodie.

Yours,
Anna

Ps. Have you seen my new venture and new book bridging food, health and positive parenting?  Check out www.annafreedman.com and the Gaia Gang and Gaia Retreats.

Simple, light, easy to prepare and oozing with an incredibly fresh and relaxing quality.  The pears are glazed in healing kuzu, which strengthens the membranes around each cell, and aids in digestion.  Garnished with candied (yet sugar free!) pecans and orange zest, your guests will certainly be in for a festive treat.

Serves 2-3

 2 pears peeled and halved, with core removed

1/2 cup apple juice

1 tsp kuzu diluted in a little cold wate

Rice syrup

Handful nuts – pecans/ hazelnuts or walnuts

Zest of one orange

Optional – Oatly cream

 
Toast the nuts in the pan for a few minutes, adding a little rice syrup and mixing well.  Then set aside, separate the nuts and let cool.

Place the pear halves in a pan with just enough apple juice to cover the bottom of the pan.  Bring to a boil, then reduce the heat, cover and simmer for 10 minutes, or until pears are soft.

Garnish with orange zest and candied nuts, and serve with oat cream.  Enjoy!

Sky production and camera crew filmed alongside our live class, then dined on the glorious feast, followed by interviewing me.

The menu was abundant as usual, and all left with a full repertoire of dishes they would recreate again, coupled with plenty of learning, confidence and inspiration to enhance their healthy eating.

Thank you to all class participants for your willingness around the camera and crew that day.

“Anna is a fabulous teacher and host.  She makes you feel comfortable, confident and hungry.”  Linzy Attenborough, Producer of Different Kind of Woman.

Brimming with goodness from healthy miso paste and sea vegetable minerals, this broth will certainly revive and make you feel energised.

Enjoy this Autumn with seasonal vegetables for an immune strengthening and kidney loving tonic.

Serves 4

Ingredients:

Dash sesame oil

1 onion diced

1 courgette finely sliced

1 cup pumpkin/ butternut squash diced

1 strip wakame sea vegetable

2 carrots finely diced

Water

1 spring onion finely cut

Brown rice or barley miso paste

Optional: Juice from 1 inch of ginger root

Preparation

Heat the sesame oil and sauté the onions for a few minutes.

Then add the vegetables and wakame sea vegetable.

Add water to cover, bring to the boil.

Then simmer for 5 minutes, or until the vegetables are tender.

Allow around 1tsp miso paste per serving. Remove a little soup liquid, combine miso with the broth and return to the soup.

Please note, if you are making a batch of soup to last a few days, only add the miso to the portion of soup you are about to enjoy.  This is because the miso paste contains live enzymes and you will want to have this fresh.  Additionally too strong a heat denatures the miso so add at the end of the cooking.

Add ginger juice if you like and serve garnished with spring onion.

Radiate health, transform your life and enrich your wisdom about natural food and health.

• The Natural Kitchen cookery workshops will develop your repertoire of essential dishes to secure your healthy eating.  
• The professional Pure Cook’s Training Ecourse trains you over 7 modules to style plant cuisine into fabulous dishes, while integrating your learning for greater nourishment for yourself and others. Begins 17 September .

We can teach them about foods of the earth, allow their assistance in preparing meals, strive to nourish our own selves optimally by example.

All children delight in witnessing natures’ life cycle in the seasons, collecting trophies from the land, growing seeds and plucking the harvest.  They can join us in cutting fruit and vegetables (beginning with a safe salad knife!) and make their own meals.

If we seek to understand the connection between food and health, to stock and offer healthy food alternatives, surely this core value will infiltrate to our next generation.

We must secure health full meals our children will go for that we can prepare with ease, snacks and treats too that will be kind to our childrens’ health.

I encourage you to read this special book and check out my featured recipes.

(26MB download)

Thank you Lilian for this inspiring and beautiful read.

Radiate health, transform your life and enrich your wisdom about natural food and health.

• The Healthy New Year cookery course will develop your repertoire of essential dishes to secure your healthy eating.  
• The professional Pure Cook’s Training Ecourse trains you over 7 modules to style plant cuisine into fabulous dishes, while integrating your learning for greater nourishment for yourself and others. Begins 29 January.

Should you be hosting, here are some steps to help you plan your meal and support your spread.

Create a welcome feast by considering the balance of your meal.

The traditional turkey and roast potatoes are all heavy, long cooked baked dishes.   If you want your diners to feel great after eating, energised and even still awake, I advise including lighter side dishes as accompaniments.

Raw or lightly cooked vegetable sides give a contrasting quality of freshness and helps bestow balance on the meal.  Make the flavour ooze with a tangy sour tune, so much the better!  The sour flavour really lifts a meal, conferring even more fresh aliveness.  Dress your salad or greens with lemon or lime juice, or the zest from a citrusy fruit.

Suggested dishes to go alongside your traditional feast..

• Fast cooked greens of brussel sprouts, broccoli, kale or cavelo nero.
  Blanch the vegetables in a pan of boiling water with a pinch of sea or rock salt.  The salt prevents the nutrients leaching out of the vegetables and turning the water all murky.  Cook the vegetables like this until they are tender.  For leaves such as kale and cavelo nero they will simply need a moment to submerge in the water and turn a vibrant green colour.  For sprouts and broccoli they will need a few minutes until a fork can pierce them easily.
• A leafy salad
  Rocket and watercress have a pronounced bitter flavour which will be a great flavour contrast to the rest of the meal.  A small amount of raw onion serves to add a little pungent taste.  Incorporate a tangy scent from lemon or lime in your dressing.
• One of my acclaimed pressed salads of coleslaw, cucumber salad or beetroot, fennel & apple.
  The pressed salads foster the good gut bacteria and serve as a digestive aid assisting the assimilation and absorption of a meal.
• Pickles
  Pickles produced in the traditional lacto fermentation style, like pressed salads, also harness the lacto bacilli and help the digestion of the rest of the meal.

Here are three of my favourite dressings permeating with the freshness of lemon juice.

Do let me know if you have any questions at all and I wish you delicious dining over the festive break.

Radiate health, transform your life and enrich your wisdom about natural food and health.

• The Healthy New Year cookery course will develop your repertoire of essential dishes to secure your healthy eating.  
• The professional Pure Cook’s Training Ecourse trains you over 7 modules to style plant cuisine into fabulous dishes, while integrating your learning for greater nourishment for yourself and others. Begins 29 January.

Serving the soup with the so easily prepared garlic croutons is a must.  I also enjoy using a mix of sweet white miso and brown rice or barley miso, but of course you could use either light or dark miso.

Ingredients: 

• 5-6 white onions finely sliced
• Dash sesame oil
• 1.5 litres water
• 3 tblspn miso diluted in a little cooking broth
• Shoyu or tamari
• Bay leaf
• Fresh rosemary sprig
• 1 inch strip kombu sea vegetable
• Hanful green leaves – watercress, kale, cavelo nero work well (remove any tough stems)
• 1 cube sweet rice mochi grated for garnish – optional

 Preparation:

Heat the oil, add the onions.  Sauté for a few minutes until the onions begin to soften.  Add the water, kombu and bay leaf and bring to the boil, then simmer for 30 minutes.  Add the rosemary sprig and cook for a further 4 minutes.  Add miso and then shoyu to taste and simmer for another minute.  Remove the rosemary sprig and add the green leaves.  Cook for another minute and then serve with grated mochi and garlic croutons.

Garlic Croutons:

• 3-4 slices rye, wholemeal or sourdough bread
• 3 tblsp Sunflower oil
• 1 clove garlic, peeled and cut in half

While the onions are cooking, slice your bread.  Put oil on each side and a sprinkle of salt and bake in the oven turning each side, until crisp.  Cut a fresh garlic clove in half and use the cut half to rub over the bread. Slice the bread into cubes about 1cm wide.

Radiate health, transform your life and enrich your wisdom about natural food and health.

• The Healthy New Year cookery course will develop your repertoire of essential dishes to secure your healthy eating.  
• The professional Pure Cook’s Training Ecourse trains you over 7 modules to style plant cuisine into fabulous dishes, while integrating your learning for greater nourishment for yourself and others. Begins 29 January.

She is sucking on an ice lolly.  I see the remnants of the forage.  Packaged jelly pots, candie wrappers, sausages, chips and fried food.  Fresh fruit is present and broccoli, I am told was offered earlier.

She is three and a half and this is a first gathering without me.  A first great letting go of healthy food control for me.

I am aghast and immediately plan our exit.  I guess it’s not just the sugar intake that shocked me.  It was the weariness of the children, who otherwise are thoughtful, good natured souls.  The sugar coupled with high voltage activity in a small space created an energy that jarred and scarred me.

Over the return journey, my throat is tightening and I feel physically sick and teary.  That my child had indulged in sugar of so many forms felt akin to some sort of adult binge.  Now she is acting all loud and becoming violent with her sister.

The letting go was so much harder than I had imagined.  The after party display I had witnessed was etched in my mind.  I felt repulsed by the sugar intake and despair for my loaded Jemima, who I had sheltered from sugar for so long.

I knew I would have to repair my little one after her sugar high and regain my presence with her.  Once home, immediately I put her in the bath, and the demanding behaviour miraculously softens.  She becomes easier to be around again, save for the large, distant eyes yearning for sleep now.

I fill her with all things yang and good quality salty to neutralize the sugar affects.  She downs an alkalizing umeboshi drink of the pickled plum, tamari and kuzu to thicken.  Then I prepare fish poached with seaweed, miso and more tamari and kuzu.  I do feel a relief that she devours all this!

All the while I am feeling a huge despair and sadness not just for my Jemima but for all children, since sugar consumption is completely the norm.  How can we raise our children on regular overdoses of this toxic substance, and consider this a party?

What are we teaching at such a tender age, and which will be hard wired for life?  That fun times must be accompanied by sugar.  That crazy mood altering food binges are acceptable.  That caring for our health is of no concern.

These are some of the thoughts that trouble me for all our children.  And of course, I wonder how will I let go, again, of the sugar grip at the next party.