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.

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

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.

By Guestblogger Carlota Ribeiro Sanches,

Carlota shares one of her yummy recipes from her final cooking project on the Pure Cook’s Training.

I wanted to create a menu that could be used daily, using organic seasonal vegetables, easy to prepare, with a lot of different flavours and textures – rich and wholesome dishes that would contain all the nutrients necessary for a balanced meal and diet.

Also, since I have been focusing on ways to substitute refined sugar, I intended to make the dishes slightly sweet to prevent any unhealthy sugar cravings!

The chickpea cakes were one of the best accidents I ever had. I was going to make a chickpea and beetroot hummus, however I didn’t have any beetroot at home so I decided to use sweet potato instead.

The chickpea cakes are lovely and soft and the easiest thing to make.  The recipe also generated the sweet taste that I was craving.  I knew my chickpea cakes would prevent me from looking for unhealthy sugar.  The recipe includes many natural sugars that are slowly released into the bloodstream and help ensure a balanced source of energy – now I wouldn’t feel sluggish or tired after eating, and I have found a great snack to eat in mid-afternoon.

I added dried oregano to add something of my cultural background, this time related to Portuguese cuisine. Dried oregano is very aromatic, and combined with the toasted sesame gives the cakes a more exciting feel, both in texture and flavour.

Ingredients

• 1 sweet potato
• 1 cup of cooked chickpeas
• Sesame seeds
• Sea salt
• Dry oregano leaves
• Cumin powder
• Cayenne pepper

Preparation method

• Peel the sweet potato and bake it in the oven until very soft
• In a food processor mix the chickpeas, the baked sweet potato, a pinch of salt, 1 tea spoon of cumin powder and a pinch of cayenne pepper. The mixture should be soft but dry enough to make the cake shape.
• When the mixture is ready shape the dough into cakes, round and flat is a good option, and sprinkle them with toasted sesame seeds.
• When the cakes are ready place them in an oven tray to toast, leave for about 10 minutes. The outside should be toasted and the inside tender and soft.
• When ready add more sesame seeds if needed and some dry oregano for flavour.

I really enjoyed thinking about something that could be seasonal, beneficial, balanced, exciting but easy to prepare; something that I could share with others. I also wanted to add a personal touch to it, using ingredients that we hadn’t used in the cooking classes.

The experience made me want to learn more, research and overall cook even more. There are so many important things, details to creating and preparing a dish that it makes it a very powerful and wonderful challenge.

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 31st January.  Enrol today

 1. Go For Greens

• Delight in seasonal, fresh, green vegetables.  Veggies carry pure live energy for complete nourishment and a healthy radiance.
• Leafy greens are a great tool to cleanse your body, detox your liver and dissolve away any accumulation.
• Variety is key to achieving balance, so embrace diversity in the vegetables and cooking styles you enjoy.

Try servings of kale, cavelo nero, spring greens, cabbages, leeks and broccoli prepared by stir frying, blanching, steaming and water sautéing.

2. Eat Whole Food

• Select whole and natural ingredients as they restore balance and regulate health, acting by healing, cleansing and strengthening the body.  
• Whole grains offer important dietary fibre to support the functioning of your entire digestive tract.  When the digestive system operates optimally, your energy levels soar.
• Whole foods are natural and carry a complete nutrient content. They have not been afflicted by processing or tarnished by additives, preservatives and sugar. Whole foods are therefore of the highest quality and they provide an abundance of minerals and nutrients the body requires for full health. 

Use an array of whole grains and pulses such as brown basmati rice, millet, barley, quinoa and chickpeas, lentils and adzuki beans.

3.  Snack Well

• Prepare yummy, healthy snacks and treats with ease and remain nourished during the day and at work. 
• Go for foods with more complex molecules and no added fat.  Such snacks are digested slowly and facilitate more stable blood sugar levels and steady concentration than the simple sugars that for example chocolate and biscuits provide. 
• In addition use whole grain sweetners such as rice syrup as an alternative to sugar.

 Enjoy toasted seeds & nuts, rice krispy treats (made from rice syrup), oat cookies, seasonal fruit, homemade humous & veggies, polenta cake, cabbage wraps, sushi, spring rolls.

What are the essential Macrobiotic Principles?

The Big Life
Macrobiotic is a Greek word meaning ‘the big life’.  Macrobiotics originated from a traditional Japanese wisdom, which embraces a truly holistic approach.  The concept is not only about enjoying whole, natural foods and nurturing balance in the body, but also embraces other areas of life.

Variety of Whole Foods
Macrobiotics brings delicious, vitalising and seasonal foods together with Eastern medical wisdom that emphasises natural body balance.  The style is about enjoying pure, unrefined foods that enhance the body’s health and harmony.

Balanced eating
Macrobiotics promotes a balanced diet, with plenty of plant based foods across an array of whole grains, beans, seasonal vegetables and vegetables of the sea.  The ingredients are cooked for a perfect medley of flavour, texture and colour.

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 31st January.  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

I am a huge fan of plant proteins!

Protein from plants has so many great benefits.

Plant proteins contain all eight essential amino acids.

Animal meat and dairy is acidifying to the blood, and must be converted into toxic ammonia and uric acid, before being excreted.  However plant protein is alkalising and easy for the body to break down and use.  Plant proteins do not result in any toxic waste products and place no burden on the liver and kidneys in their conversion.

I enjoy eating plant proteins from different types of sources.  Here are my top 5:

1. Broad Beans
   This fresh legume is great over the summer season.  It cooks within minutes and makes a great addition to a salad.  I like double shelling my broad beans.  Infact I like giving my toddler the thrill of shelling the beans in the first instance, and then after cooking, I shell them once more.  This makes the beans so easy to digest and assimilate.
2. Black beans
   Dry beans require soaking but are well worth this foresight.  I love a black bean dahl or black bean soup.  These beans are protein rich, very strengthening for the body and help drive up energy levels.
3. Dried Tofu
   Dried tofu is a great source of protein and nutrition and is totally cholesterol free.  I find it has more of a bite than regular tofu and is great to add to soups, stews, stir fries and more.  I use dried tofu by reconstituting its structure by sitting the tofu blocks in hot water with some shoyu or tamari for 10 minutes before including in the cooking.
4. Quinoa
   Quinoa is a grain rich in protein, containing all the essential amino acids.  I enjoy making a soft quinoa porridge for the mornings using the whole quinoa plus plenty of water, or quinoa flakes which are super fast to cook.  Quinoa also makes a wonderful side dish, pilaf or risotto itself.  It’s light, fluffy quality makes for an easily digestable plant protein.
5. Tempeh
   Tempeh is derived from the fermented soy bean and is very rich in protein.  Tempeh is most nourishing and substantial and an ideal protein for everyone, particularly athletes, children growing, people recovering or pregnant women.  Tempeh can be flavoured with a yummy marinade or sauce.  I love biting into fried or baked tempeh.
   Do check out my favourite tempeh recipe, served on a bed of iron rich leafy greens.

My favourite protein and iron rich feast of a dish.  Plenty of dark leafy greens, alfalfa sprouts, sauerkraut and sumptuous tempeh.

Tempeh is the favoured fermented soy bean product, originally from Indonesia and often found in the freezer section of a health food store.  Tempeh is favoured for it’s top nutrition, protein, iron and B12 content.

For the Tempeh Platter:

Tempeh
Shoyu
Bay leaf
Kombu sea vegetable
Several ginger pieces finely sliced

Cut the tempeh into cubed pieces and simmer in water to cover, with a strip of kombu, 3 tblsp shoyu, sliced ginger  and bay leaf for 20 minutes.
Fry the tempeh on each side in sesame oil.

For the Bed of Greens:

1 Leek
Handful mushrooms
2 generous handful kale leaves
Handful alfalfa sprouts
2 tblsp sauerkraut

While the tempeh is cooking, slice the leek, mushrooms and prepare the kale.
Now using the same pan as for the tempeh, fry the leeks, and cook for4 minutes.  Add the mushrooms and kale, and cook until turning tender, about 3 minutes.  Then add sauerkraut, alfalfa sprouts, ginger pieces (from the tempeh marinade) and cook for another minute, before returning the tempeh to the pan and serving.

Note:  I like to keep the tempeh in the oven once it is fried.  This preserves is yummy, crispy texture!