Spinach pesto

This simple dairy-free green-rich spinach pesto is great to have at hand for quick meals.  Tastes great with spelt pasta for a speedy, healthy meal. This simple dairy-free green-rich pesto is great to have at hand for quick meals.  Tastes great with spelt pasta for a speedy, healthy meal.

Beetroot pasta with walnuts

Beetroot is hard to use in recipes as it has such a particular taste and colour, but this vegetarian beetroot pasta recipe makes the most out of both of these.  My children love this tasty and healthy meal and it is often served to chants of ‘pink pasta, pink pasta’. Read more

Ma Po Tofu

Ma Po Tofu

Ma Po tofu.  I should probably put that in quotation marks ‘Ma Po’ tofu as it has been properly butchered since I first started making it (thank you Ai-Leng), to make it more Ayurvedic.  It realistically no longer resembles Ma Po tofu at all but it remains utterly delicious and, Read more

Lunch box

Packed lunches: Can they be healthy, easy, cheap, environmentally and child-friendly?

I think they can.  It’s a fine balance but it is possible. I often get asked about healthy packed lunches.  I try to tiptoe a wiggly line between health, ease, environmental-impact and child-acceptability!  I don’t get it perfectly right and I’m no Delia Smith, but for what it’s worth, here Read more

The 6 tastes of Ayurveda

Balanced meals, balanced person, that’s the concept.  Ayurveda has a delightfully simple way of devising a balanced meal; it’s all done through taste.  There are 6 tastes, and if you have a balance of all 6 in your meal, your meal will be nutritious and, importantly, satisfying (assuming that your Read more

Spelt Grain

What’s the story with wheat?

Why my obsession with spelt? What is wrong with wheat?  Nothing. The ancient texts of Ayurveda extol the virtues of wheat, as a nourishing, strengthening food.  Its properties are heavy, oily, sweet and cooling.  As it is fairly heavy to digest, it is best not to over consume.  Looking at wheat from a Read more

Sourdough – the bread that’s easy to digest

Fermentation has been used worldwide for thousands of years to produce foods and drinks of different flavours, textures and longevity.  An example of this is alcohol, and less obviously bread and soy sauce.  In Ayurveda, there are various slow-fermenting vinegars and medicinal ‘wines’ which have documented therapeutic uses.  This natural, Read more

Spelt Sourdough loaf in a bread-maker

Before you can make spelt sourdough bread, you need to first, make or obtain a sourdough starter.  If you are starting one yourself, you can use wholemeal spelt or rye from the beginning.  If you are getting some from a friend or another source and it is wheat, you can feed Read more

Ghee

Ghee

I let you know how good ghee was to cook with, so rather than leaving you in suspense, it makes sense to let you know how to make it! Ghee is a form of clarified butter. It is the butter fat without the milk protein so can be used for Read more

Oil

The myths of oils and fats

Oils and fats are a much misunderstood area of our modern diet.  We moved away from cooking with saturated fats (e.g. meat fats, dairy fats) as we were told they were causing us too many problems.  We started processing seed oils to replace them and jumped from the frying pan Read more