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.

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.

The animals too come out of hibernation and the trees turn green again.

How can we harness the mighty energy of the sun and springtime within and reap the treasures of the season?

Today, I share 5 ways:

1. Spring Greens

Graze on the leaves of spring – spinach, spring greens, cabbages, watercress, broccoli, early lettuces.  These plants have caputured the sun’s energy through photosynthesis and give you a glimse of sunlight within, plus a host of nutrition, including Vitamin C, iron and calcium.

2. Spring Flavours

The flavour associated with spring, according to the Eastern philosophy is sour.  Sour has a sharp, light quality in contrast to the salty taste which is much heavier.  Bring a light touch to your food by including lemon wedges as garnishes in your soups, rice vinegar or lemon juice in zesty dressings, orange or lemon zest in desserts, sauerkraut, pickles and pressed salads as accompaniments to your main.

3. Take 3 Days

And record everything you are eating, drinking and snacking on over that period.  Then in the eyes of your higher self, and without criticism, look at your food diary, and notice how you are nourishing yourself.  What could you eat more of, less of, abandon or introduce?

4. Clear Out

Clear out and reorganize your kitchen and living space, and make new space for the fresh energy of spring, for abundance and health.  Discard ingredients that no longer serve you, and items that no longer bring you joy, as in Marie Kondo’s Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up.

5. Be Kind

Be gentle on yourself, even when the ice cream tempts you, or the chocolate has been devoured.  Relinquish the attack and instead savour the taste.  Know that next time you can pause and make a conscious eating choice.

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

• The Love Food Nourish Life 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 17th April.

I am often asked about combining foods and food groups.  This trendy way of eating certainly supports digestive health, however today I wish to focus on one of my favourite concepts, that of combining flavours.

For me, flavours bring excitement to your cooking and great joy to the eating.

You can nourish yourself in a deep way by knowing how to assemble flavours together.  

Combining flavours:

• Allows for perfect nourishment, here you stop eating before you feel too full.
  Tasting rich flavours enables you to experience feeling satisfied from a meal.  I term this perfect nourishment, since it’s a feeling of having eaten well, without feeling over full or of under eaten.  Students describe this as “feeling nourished and satisfied and in a very contented mood both physically and mentally.” 
• Curbs post meal grazing
  “Yesterday’s meal was amazing! It satisfied me on every level. I didn’t have any cravings in the afternoon and it also made me feel happier and definitely more energetic!” one student reported.  Cravings are mitigated by eating with the flavours in mind.

First you need to be aware of the five key flavours:

1. sweet
2. sour
3. salty
4. bitter
5. pungent

Then when you prepare a snack or meal, combine at least 2 different flavours together.

For example, combine nuts and dry fruits together for a balanced snack, in preference to over doing nuts solo.

Or, make your main meal sing with the flavours of the salty stir fry and dressing sour from the tang of lemon juice.

Go sweet and sour for your bean or tofu stew using shoyu (salty), rice syrup (sweet) and rice vinegar (sour).

Pungent
Go wild for a pungent flavour garnish using ginger, spring onion, mustard and raw onion.

Bitter
Vary your taste buds with a bitter combination of rocket teamed with a sweet miso dressing.

Salty
Generate saltiness from other means than ordinary salt, try rice or barley miso, bouillon, herb salt, shoyu, tamari, pink rock salt, sea salt.

Savoury Sweetness
Including sweetness in your main meal is very key.  I call this savoury sweetness and this flavour acts to both initiate digestion and support the avoidance of simple sugar indulgence.  Incorporating savoury sweetness is a critical step in coming away from sugar and sugary goods.

Achieving full, rich flavours using natural ingredients transforms health.

Which flavours do you like?  Which flavours are missing from your diet?  I would love to hear from you.

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

• The Healthy New Year 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 30th January. Enrol today.

“Now I understand how food affects my body and vitality.”  Naz, The Veganista, UK

“I am loving this learning journey I am on with all your material.  The content is easy to comprehend and the videos are so well presented.”  Paige, Health Coach, Australia

The e-course will enable you to:

• Learn healthy and delicious dishes using vegan, natural and macrobiotic ingredients
• Explore ingredients and cooking methods to enhance wellbeing, vitality, skin, digestion and detoxification
• Provide food and lifestyle insights
• Safeguard long term energy and health

You will receive:

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

Cooking, eating, selecting food, sitting down to eat, all are daily practices.  Just like any stretching, yoga or meditation practice.  You are probably eating at least 3 times a day, so that’s already 21 opportunities to practice healthy eating just this week.

For your radiance to emerge and grow, I invite you to taste the foods of health on a daily basis.  Regard each day afresh.  What happened yesterday is gone and tomorrow’s dining has not yet happened.  Today is when your practice is manifesting change.

Here are 8 ways to help your new year healthy eating resolutions stick:

1. Start with small, realistic changes
   Perhaps breakfast can be tailored more towards health.  Or lunch choices amended.  Aim for changes you can realistically practice.
2. The items you avoid pave great transformation
   You know the culprits.  Sugar, processed foods, alcohol, caffeine.  Pick the one or ones that speak to you.
3. Stock up
   I am forever speaking about stocking up.  It makes such a difference to have a variety of healthful ingredients on tap.  Just today my bulk order arrived and although I haven’t used any of the produce yet, I feel such bounty that my cupboards are brimming.
4. Set aside time
   Commit time to your new practice.  Time to read, cook, shop and eat.
5. Green portion
   Add freshness to your diet with one serving of leafy greens a day.  Enjoy your greens as a salad, in a smoothie, juiced, blanched, steamed, boiled, fried or baked.  Or as part of my lovely Soba Noodle Bowl with Cavelo Nero & Ginger Miso Dressing
6. New recipes
   Develop your repertoire and add excitement to your diet by trying at least one new recipe each week.
7. Write daily in your notebook
   Journal what you ate and drank today.  Notice how you felt and how the food affected your body.
8. Let go of practicing perfectly
   Continue travelling on a balanced path of healthy eating without the setbacks and self criticism of your perfect aspirations.

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

• Natural Kitchen kicks off with a fabulous new year workshop on Saturday 23rd January.
• The Healthy New Year course begins 26th January and 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 30th January. Enrol today.

Pressed salads are made up of raw vegetables finely sliced and then pressed down to release their water content. This makes the vegetables more digestible and retains the vitality of the vegetables’ live enzymes.

Below is my favourite pressed salad recipe, a sample video from the Pure Cook’s Training course.   Read on for the low down on why these salads are the best for your digestive and overall health.

Favourite Pressed Salad of Beetroot, Apple & Fennel

Good Gut Bacteria Benefit

The act of pressing encourages a slight fermentation, promoting enzymes which aid digestion and support immunity.  In this lactic acid fermentation the good gut bacteria; the Lactobacillus bacteria proliferate and breakdown lactose and other sugars to lactic acid.  The lactic acid that preserves the vegetables and gives them their yummy tangy flavour.  Incidently, lactic acid is a natural preservative that inhibits the growth of harmful bacteria.

Lacto fermented foods were eaten as part of the diets of every traditional society. Today Europeans relish pickles and sauerkraut.  The Orient is known for pickled vegetables and kimchi.  In Africa, porridges are made from soured grains.

More Positives of Pressed Salads and Lacto-Fermentation

Digestive Aid

• Reintroduce good bacteria into the intestines
• Aid absorption of nutrients, since the good gut enzymes are harboured.
• Safeguards digestive health and conditions including IBS, ulcers and colitis
• Breaks down fat, so pressed salads are ideal for detoxing and to enjoy with a heavy meal.
• Good for opening the cells and bringing oxygen to them
• Regulate acidity of blood, making the blood more alkaline
• Pressing helps break down fibrous vegetables, making them easier to digest

Drive Health

• Studies show that fermented foods contribute to lower rates of skin problems, asthma and autoimmune disorders.
• The lactic acid helps lower fat in the blood stream, improves circulation and lower high blood pressure.
• Pressed salads aid bodily cleansing
• Protect us from harmful bacteria

Nutrition

• Vitamin content is higher than in raw vegetables
• Rich in vitamin B and C
• Helps absorb calcium
• Help open cells in body and bring oxygen to them

I am delighted to welcome guestblogger Lilian.  Here, she shares her surprises from taking the Pure Cook’s Training and a lovely recipe creation to enjoy this Spring.  Lilian is based in the Netherlands and runs a special exercise academy internationally; www.doinacademy.com.

I have always been enthusiastic about nutrition and energy balance, and I felt it was time to go one step further.  So I attended Anna’s online Pure Cook’s Training. Indeed, though I had already a solid base in nutrition and Chinese medicine, she definitely taught me a lot. And inspired me in trying plenty of new recipes. This enabled me to implement the macrobiotic principles into the life of my whole family, including my little daughter who loves the natural food kitchen.

In January while the course began, my husband felt inspired too and started eating miso soup every morning. A beautiful surprise unfolded – the eczema he had suffered since childhood disappeared within days!

The macrobiotic way goes hand in hand with my vision on health and wellbeing, which I share as a Do-In teacher and teacher trainer on a daily basis. Do-In is an ancient, yoga-like, art of movement which has its origins in Chinese medicine. If you’d like to try it out, here’s a link to an article I recently wrote, sharing the essential meridian stretches.

Spring Green Parcels with Shitake Mushroom & Kohl Rabi

Serves 6

dressing:

1. Start preparing the dressing:
   Warm the sesame oil, add the garlic and after a minute the ginger.  Cook for one more minute. Turn of the gas, mix the miso with the lemon juice, Tamari, and some water to get a good texture, add the lemon zest and stir. If preferred add some more lemon juice or rice vinegar to taste.
2. Now prepare the filling:
   Warm the sesame oil, add garlic and mushrooms, cook for a minute. Then add the carrots, kohlrabi and a dash of water.  Cook for five minutes. Add the sesame seeds and the tamari. Mix the miso and lemon in a bowl. Add to the pan, together with the shiitakes.
3. And for the greens:
   Steam the green part of the bok choi leaves. To fil them, place one leaf at the time on a plate, add a tbspn of the filling and fold and roll the leave into a nice little package.
   Serve with the dressing.

Radiate health, transform your life and enrich your wisdom about natural food and health. 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 25th April. Enrol today.