Tag: Healthy eating

The Happy Buddha Bowl

Greetings all! I’m finally back to full strength and enjoying the explosion of colour that marks the appearance of summer. The season is always a joy: filled with floral extravagance and the freshest, tenderest produce.

My own attempts at growing have been somewhat stymied by the voracious appetites of our garden gastropods, but I have some hope for my fruit trees and bushes and perhaps my squash. We’ll see.

Luckily for us, the supermarkets and grocers are fully stocked and we can choose any number of delicacies. Taking advantage of this abundance, Mariia and I (and now my husband too, who takes a lunchbox) have been enjoying the most delicious lunches composed of the season’s offerings.

Food for health
Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Gut health

It is also rather rewarding to discover that we have been doing exactly what is necessary for our guts (and our immune systems) to thrive. The Overcoming Multiple Sclerosis programme has been advocating this for years, and it seems that the world has caught on.

Eating lots of raw and unprocessed foods, in a rainbow of colours and varieties, ensures that our guts work at their best. One of my favourite chefs, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, has just written a cookery book on How to Eat 30 Plants a Week based in part on the work of Tim Spector (who also has a book and co-founded Zoe). I’ve referenced them so that you can find out a bit more about the science (Tim Spector) and additional ideas (Hugh). But if you want an easy entry to the topic – read on!

Through feeding our bodies with fresh, healthy foods, we can help diminish the chances of succumbing to any number of nasty health conditions: the auto-immune ones, which include cancer and MS; heart disease and all the horrid embarrassing ones like IBS.

I credit the OMS diet – plant based with a wide variety of foods – as an essential part of my keeping my MS stable. It also ensures that I look well – healthy skin, nails, and hair are all reflections of a healthy diet.

Buddha bowls for beginners

When I first embarked on making Buddha bowls regularly, I began with a salad and then went from there. A delicious, green salad is the perfect base for your meal and, when made in bulk, lasts at least a few days in the fridge.

The base Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

My family has always loved an interesting salad and there are no holds barred when it comes to ingredients. These are things that might get thrown in: salad leaves, pea shoots, cucumber, broccoli, avocado, apples, mint, marjoram, dill, parsley, chard, spinach, rosemary, onions and carrots for a bit of colour. Whatever you have in the fridge, or enjoy, should form the base of your bowl. I use loads of herbs, as they are superfoods and grow in my garden – but they are equally easy to grow on the windowsill.

Grains

I’m not sure that I could survive with just a green salad. Something a little more substantial is called for. My go-to choice would be couscous, cracked bulger wheat and quinoa.

Gorgeous grains Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

All of these can be cooked with vegetable stock and/or dressed with oil and vinegar or lemon. For tabbouleh, add chopped fresh mint, spring onions and dried fruits.

Though I invariably make a huge amount, it never seems to last long. Luckily, they only take minutes to cook. By using the residual heat method (add liquid, bring to boil, cover and leave with lid on and heat source off) it could not be easier. Any left-overs will improve in the fridge where they take on the flavour of the dressings.

Bean there, done that

Another way to ensure that lunch will keep you going is to add beans and lentils to the bowl. I especially love giant butter beans, chickpeas and beluga lentils.

Many of us are put off these, as the ones we get in a tin are seldom very toothsome. For chickpeas, I always buy them in jars and the beans and lentils, I cook in bulk from dried.

From dried bean to ready to use Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

Again, do not despair in anticipating lots of preparation. Beans need soaking overnight in a large bowl (they expand exponentially). Lentils just need rinsing. Despite what many of my cookery books advise, a pressure cooker or hours standing over the stove is not necessary. Most beans and lentils will cook fine if you add the required water, bring to the boil and then leave off the heat with the lid on until the water has cooled. If your beans need an extra blast to make them soft, simply repeat.

I tend to cook my beans and lentils 500g at a time (dried) and when everything is cooked and cooled, put them into little recycled bags and freeze. (Aim for about a tin drained weight and they will be perfect for all your recipes.) With salad dressings, mayonnaise or plain, they add a delicious bit of protein to your meal.

Extras!

My family are total foodies for whom the expression, ‘If less is more, imagine how much more would be,’ is especially apt. Our bowls may start with the basics of leaves, beans and grains, but they soon turn into a cornucopia of deliciousness sourced from whatever is in the fridge or on our shelves.

As these are all premade or long life products, it allows us to vary our bowls without much extra effort. Hearty additions include houmous, olives , pickles, nuts, fruit and left-overs.

Is there a little dollop of houmous in the fridge? Drop it in. One lonesome veggie sausage from last night’s dinner? Slice and add. Many fruits, dried or fresh can add a bit of zing to your bowl. Those non-vegans among us can turn to the trusty staples of tuna and cheese.

Not just for summer

Though these salad days are the perfect time to get into the Buddha bowl vibe, they are equally good during the cooler months. Choose leaves that are in season where possible or create scrumptious slaws with cabbage, carrot and apples. The options are endless.

I hope that you will take the opportunity to try this wonderful food concept and enjoy nourishment and enlightenment in one.

My husband and I are off for a cultural vacation in Vienna next week. I wish you sunny days and look forward to writing to you again when we get back. x

Plat de Saison

Healthy eating is one of the pillars of good health, and eating seasonally aids us in maximising the benefits of the food we eat. It occurs from time to time in British periodicals as a side dish to the main course of exotic recipes, but it should really be at the heart of what we consume. When I checked the spelling of my title, I discovered to my delight that the French magazine, Marie-Claire, had monthly seasonal recipes. Could you imagine Cosmopolitan doing the same?

No, me neither! But considering how much type is devoted to food and cooking, we might try harder to bring seasonal eating into the mainstream. There are several reasons why, but the key one for me is that nature always knows best. Sophisticated beings though we are now, our bodies were designed to work in harmony with the earth. And in the wonderful symbiosis of humans and nature, she provides what we need, just when we need it.

A rainbow of produce Image: Alexander Schimmeck on Unsplash

Of course, those in less affluent parts of the world only eat seasonally – airfreighted strawberries not being an option, but assuming they have enough to eat, they are better off for it.

Just what you need

If we can align our eating habits to the season, we will be providing our bodies with the food most suitable for that time of year. During the winter, I crave heavy, starchy foods – pies and mash and root vegetables. In the summer, I am drawn to lighter foods – salads and fruits. Of course, these foods supply what we require at that time. During the cold winter months, we need energy to keep warm (and perhaps some comfort from the long, dark days.) In the warmer months, we need fewer calories, so a light salad will satisfy. In spring, the first vegetables actually give our bodies a spring clean removing toxins and restoring the healthy functioning of our organs.

Wild garlic appears in woodlands from March. With pretty white flowers and a distinctive scent it is easy to locate. Just follow your nose. Image: Anna Auza on Unsplash

How much ‘spring cleaning’ you wish to indulge in is up to you, but simply choosing a few more seasonal produce at your next shop will certainly do you good.

Better nutrition

Food, like any other organic material, deteriorates over time. So, the longer the food has been stored or in transit, the less nutritional value it has. In contrast, the closer to harvest, the better the nutrition. Foods that have been transported around the world have inevitably been hanging around. They are likely to have been intensively farmed and treated to ensure a long shelf life. I’m always a little shocked at how short the time is for the vegetables I dig from the garden, but it is a reminder of how quickly foods decline when left to their own devices.

Before you start to despair that you cannot get to a farmer’s market every day or grow you own, there are plenty foods that are very happy to be kept – especially when dried. Nuts, legumes, lentils, dried fruits and oils lose little when dried and equally, frozen foods are often a good choice for maximum nutrition. Peas packed and frozen within hours show little variation to the nutritional content of fresh. Tinned foods are a little less ideal as they often contain sugar, but they are still a great source of one of your five a day.

A matter of taste

It rather goes without saying, that fresher is better. Recently picked produce most definitely has a superior taste. While some produce is reasonably forgiving about waiting to be eaten (like carrots) others are positively diva- like. My favourite vegetable, that is only in season for a mere month or two, is asparagus.

Get it while its fresh! Image: Micheile Henderson on Unsplash

This little beauty needs to be purchased in season and eaten when you get home. The reward? A delicious and delicate taste that requires no other adornment than a little salt and olive oil. And that’s perhaps the most important thing about buying in season. Produce at its best doesn’t need any extra fussing in the kitchen. It tastes superb as it is. New potatoes and butter; fresh green beans and pepper; locally caught fish brought in that day – there really isn’t anything to beat it.

The best value

A basic rule of economics is that price will be determined in relation to supply and demand. The more abundant the supply, the lower the price. It makes sense then that produce that is in season and therefore abundant, will be cheaper than at other times of the year. Which makes seasonal eating a win: win. It is lower in price and higher in taste. And to make the best of both of these, you can buy in bulk at their peak and then freeze or preserve more for later.

Healing nature

Since nature has been so obliging in providing all that we need, it seems only fair that we make some effort to help her out too. Intensive farming, pesticides, excess wrapping and air miles all take their toll. Seasonal eating reduces all these. If we take our bags to the shops, buy seasonally, locally and ideally organic, we can do a great deal to reduce the pressure that food production places on the planet.

Getting started

If all this seems a bit like too much hard work, start small. During lock-down we’ve been buying groceries online and we were tending to go for the same old staples week after week. Our vegetable patch was resting and I was rather losing sight of what was in. Of course, winter is the time for root vegetables, so we added parsnips and swedes to our cart. I should have consulted the excellent BBC guide: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/seasonal-calendar which shows not only fruit and vegetables but the best times to buy meat and fish. The same site suggests seasonal recipes to whet your appetite. With spring on the way, our options are expanding. I’ve just picked some long awaited leeks and the broccoli finally promises to produce something other than leaves. There is still a little parsley (herbs are almost always in season) and I’m planning on using some of these ingredients for dinner with other, store bought, seasonal vegetables.

Spring harvest (plus resident snail) Image: Karen Costello-McFeat

As someone who is easily overwhelmed by too much choice, I rather like having what is available to decide for me. And if we follow the seasons, we will be constantly changing and expanding the foods we eat and diversity in eating is key to optimal nutrition. So as we move into the period of greatest abundance, I urge you to give seasonal eating a try. There is nothing to lose and much to gain. Bon appetit!