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.

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.

“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.

I am delighted to welcome guestblogger Ana.  Here, she shares her very personal story of how whole foods healed and brought her life back.  Ana runs fantastic yoga and nutritional programmes, visit her site for next events; www.anamuriel.org

The art of taking care of my body started long time ago as a battle when I found myself fighting against a complex Anorexia Nervosa. A disorder well known nowadays that takes the mind into a place of starvation and the body into a place of complete depletion.
I endured a complex processes and medical intervention but survived.

Something was left after that significant combat between mind and body: a sense of wonder in my spirit.
I kept asking to myself, why, how and what can I do to empower others to live better lives, to acknowledge and have passion and true joy in the experience of living.

During those days of fighting with the disease, I suffered a very clear disconnection from life, a disengagement with reality. I felt a constant sense of lacking and detachment. I wanted others who were going through similar experiences, to have a way out.

The small steps with medical treatments and allowing myself to be nourished with true whole foods, started to give me an understanding and some kind of empowerment towards embracing a new life.

As I ate more nutrient-dense foods, I started to feel life was back. The life force that proper nutrition gave me, took me into a journey of many years of seeing how food was truly a healing medicine and then, how my body became a temple through which then movement was expressed with joy.

So forwarding this story 22 years later , I am now a healthy woman and mother of 2 beautiful boys. A Health Coach and Moving Arts practitioner. I teach people how to live great lives. I´m all about moving the body in creative ways, all about making life tasty, luscious and gracefully elegant.

I keep learning from teachers that inspire me and resonate with my passion from all over the globe so that I keep my flame for knowledge alive. The Pure Cook’s Training program with Anna Freedman has given me the tools, inspiration and empowerment, to gain more ideas, to study deeper the nutritional aspects and connections between energy and food. And more so, the possibility as a mother to pass this onto my boys with fun and delicious recipes.

Thank you Anna you are certainly an inspiring woman, teacher and amazing cook!

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 27th June. Enrol today.

Seasons not only have a great impact on soil and crops but they also have a profound impact in our minds and bodies.

Chinese ancient traditions say that we are greatly influenced by the changes in climate and therefore should respect and live according to them.

We adapt naturally to each season but preparing for these changes can make these transitions more balanced and harmonious.  Choosing and cooking your food according to the seasons can be a  great way to take on this process.

Now is the time to store fuel, food to get all the energy to embrace the long and cold winter.

Pickling is a very easy and accessible way to store food during the Winter.  You don’t need many ingredients and it won’t take much of your time.  This year I have made pickles for the first time using cucumbers grown in our now stripped and empty polytunnels, some of our own shallots and some purple carrots that I had got in my own vegbox.  This made all the content in my jars look bright pink in just two days of fermentation.

I used a very simple recipe that I received while attending the Pure Cook’s Training at Whole Food Harmony. Basically you just need to boil one liter of water with two tablespoons of salt.

While the water comes to a boil cut all the vegetables and place them in jars.  Season your future pickles with herbs such as thyme or rosemary, you can use vinegar, lemon, garlic as well, or even cumin seeds and mustard seeds. Take the water of the heat and let it cool down to a lukewarm temperature before pouring it into the jars. After pouring the water close the jars as tight as possible and leave them to ferment for at least one week.

The list of the benefits of fermented foods it’s a long one  – they can be a great contributor to a healthy digestive system helping the formation of healthy bacteria, like for example Lactobacillus acidophilus, into the intestines, they also help the absorption of nutrients into the blood and regulate the levels of acidity in the stomach and intestines. Also, pickles can contribute to breaking down fat after heavy meals.

I wanted to make my pickles pungent and sour so I added garlic, ginger, rosemary and vinegar to the vegetables.  The sour flavour in foods will help in digestion to improve the dissolution of minerals, it can also serve as a solvent to break down protein and fat. As for the pungent aromatic flavour, this can be used to stimulate blood circulation and as a protection for the common colds so closely related to the season.

I’m really excited about launching this E-Course and have have been super busy filming the cookery demonstrations and teaching lessons for this dynamic course.

Plus I am putting together all the course material across a wealth of areas:  Creative Cookery, Food & Health, Practical Wisdom, Ingredients For Life & Your Assignments.

There are 7 training modules packed with multi media tools for learning.

More Wholefood Cooks Training E-Course details are here

“NOURISHING YOUR BODY, MIND & SPIRIT”

Treat yourself to a half day workshop including an in-depth  yoga practice focusing on  postures , breathing, relaxation and meditation to restore and stimulate the flow of energy throughout the body and organs . This will be followed by a  delicious, freshly prepared  2-course lunch  made from high quality  organic, natural, vegan and sugar free ingredients  including a variety of grains,  pulses and seasonal fruit and vegetables  (food intolerances catered for).

dates: Sunday 8 June; Sunday 13 July;  Sunday 14 September;  Sunday 5 October; 

Sunday 9 November; Sunday 7 December. 

time: 10 am – 1.30pm

at: Kings Langley Community Centre, The Nap, Kings Langley, Herts WD4 8ET

cost: £50  each (or £45 if booked at least 2 weeks in advance)

Lunch prepared by Wholefood Harmony

_______________________

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-09/store-bought-baby-food-offers-little-benefit-to-milk-diet.html

Commercial baby foods offer little nutritional benefit over breast milk and infants would get more from homemade purees than from a jar when transitioning to a solid food diet, a study found.

Researchers looked at more than 450 products for infants being weaned off breast milk made by Danone SA’s, Cow & Gate, H.J. Heinz Co., Boots, Hipp Organic, Ella’s Kitchen and Organix Brands Ltd. Fifty grams of homemade baby food would probably have the same energy and protein as 100 grams of the commercial food, they wrote in the Archives of Disease in Childhood, which is published by the British Medical Association.

The main purpose of weaning food is to increase the energy children consume and provide richer sources of nutrients such as iron, the researchers said. Commercial foods with meat had the highest iron content though no higher than formula milk and not much higher than vegetarian-based commercial food, they said. Commercial rusks and biscuits had more energy and higher amounts of calcium and iron than homemade foods as well as more sugar, the study found.

“People buy processed food because of convenience, but people should understand what’s in it,” Charlotte Wright, a paediatrician who worked on the study, said in an interview.

Two-thirds of the commercial foods studied were classified as sweet and 44 percent were advertised for infants 4 months and older even though the recommendation from the World Health Organization, the U.K.’s National Health Service and the American Academy of Pediatrics is 6 months.

First Year

Health professionals should advise families to progress to homemade weaning foods prepared without salt and sugar, particularly later in the first year of life, the researchers said.

“Just as you wouldn’t live on McDonald’s every day, that’s how baby jars should be viewed,” said Wright, who is also a professor of community child health at the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

Some parents want to wean their infants before six months and Organix makes clear which foods are suitable for that age, Anna Rosier, managing director at the Bournemouth, England-based company, said in an e-mailed statement.

“All of our foods are complementary to breastfeeding, and we adhere to the regulations for complementary foods for babies,” she said. “We do not make foods with the purpose to replace breast milk as the primary source of nutrition before 6 months.”

Nutritional Needs

Organix products aren’t fortified with vitamins or minerals because it isn’t permitted with organic food, she said.

The European Union and the American Academy of Pediatrics say complementary food can be added to a milk diet as early as four months if the child is developmentally ready, Meike Schmidt, a spokeswoman with Vevey, Switzerland-based Nestle SA, the world’s biggest food company, said in an e-mailed statement.

“Nestle products for infants and young children are carefully prepared to ensure they provide the right balance of nutrients in appropriate amounts for infants and young children, they are safe and meet all regulatory requirements where they are sold, including labeling,” Schmidt said. “Levels of protein, carbohydrate including sugars, fat, vitamins and minerals in baby foods are strictly regulated by legislation which is based on advice from scientific experts.”

Danone doesn’t market complementary food for infants younger than six months in most countries where it operates, Charlotte Pasternak, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an e-mailed statement. The exception is Europe, where the European Food Safety Authority opinion says introducing complimentary food between four and six months is safe, she said.

Ella’s Kitchen supports breastfeeding for six months, “however, it may not always be possible or appropriate,” Emma Sykes, a spokeswoman for the company, said in an e-mailed statement. “As the study acknowledges, commercial weaning food is created to complement the nutrition gained from baby’s milk.”

Heinz products are prepared to meet babies’ nutritional needs with recipes that provide the right tastes and textures, the Pittsburgh-based company said in an e-mailed statement.

“Generations of parents have trusted Heinz baby foods as safe and nourishing,” Heinz said.

Change Happens In The Heart

I was privileged to join over 7000 people in the presence of His Holiness the Dalai Lama this week at the Royal Albert Hall.  I was really touched to be among such a crowd and moved by the true respect and admiration for the Dalai Lama overflowing the room.

He spoke of great sense and wisdom, his natural humility and comic humour embracing all.

He calls for change and dialogue in the 21^st century and has been addressing thousands of young people to facilitate this beautiful and necessary vision.

Change happens  through each individual and ‘real change happens in the heart’, as his address is titled.

Individuals belong to families, and families make up communities.  Communities impact on global values and can imprint a happier, more peaceful world.

Therefore, each individual is hugely powerful and has unique potential.

Healthy Body = Healthy Mind

The Dalai Lama recounted his health over the last 7 years.  Infact there has been no change to his health in this period, only a few more white hairs!  He spoke about the great connection between a healthy body and a healthy mind.

“It is my hope that this will be a century of peace, a century of dialogue – a century when a more caring, responsible and compassionate humanity will emerge.”
Beyond Religion, HH Dalai Lama, 2012