
Cooking and good eating in 2020
Here we share with you some peeks into what we use to eat. I have been changing my diet and started experimenting with different nutritional styles in 2013 when I was 26, Jan in 2006 when he was 44, all between raw veganism to paleo-ketogenic diet, both of us because of immense health issues.
Independently from each other, before we became a couple, we both started loosening up with our fanatically healthy eating after moving to the Azores. We have been invited quite regularly by the generous Azorian people here, and there are just so many new foods to try, and how to connect better with people and receive from the heart than over a tasty meal?
On the other side, now we for the first time had our own garden, Jan already making great strides with his clayhouse-garden! So at home we are quite focused, eating clean, no sugar, no gluten or alcohol in the house. Weston A. Price or Bulletproof diet would mostly describe how we are eating. This first year in our Quinta and for me being completely in the Azores was a great experience, to learn to go with the season and mostly use what nature gives, what we grow, what we can pick somewhere else or what friends give us.
But of course we also go shopping, like for fats and oils (mostly the good yellow Azorian butter, coconut oil and organic virgin olive oil, sometimes lard, hemp and black cumin seed oil), white rice, oats, nuts and seeds, gluten free flours, goat cheese, seafood, meat, and also some eggs, for the chickens that came with the house were already some years old and not giving so much anymore.
Here I present you some of our dishes, quick and simple it has to be for a busy Capricorn-Virgo couple, on the same time nourishing on the micro- and macronutrient level. I always compose my meals in the way that I have a a source of starch, of fat, of protein, and some green and colorful veggies (cooked and raw) for the vitamins and phytonutrients, to create a physiological satisfying meal that satiates and provides stable energy and blood sugar for 4-5 hours, normally no cravings for snacks, except maybe for a fruit.
I hope I can make your mouth water and inspire you at the same time! I feel like eating freshly from Mother Graciosa also connects me more with Her on a molecular level.
I’m not so good at providing specific recipes, my apologies. I really have it in my muscle memory now how much I need to satiate two good eaters in which ratio. Usually I opportunistically use what is in the house and garden; when I have some rare time for extra creativity I might look up some interesting recipe and go shopping for it. Leave me a comment if you have any questions or share your own experiences!
Quinoa with veggies and herbs served on a banana leaf with a fresh salad I enjoy cooking on gas (our kitchen is open and thus well ventilated) or even on our fire stove Detox tea: Mint, nettles, blackberry leaf, artichoke leaf Always good: Throw a mix of veggies in the pan with a few eggs (each of us eats up to two dozen eggs per week) Cheese breads: Rice flour, eggs, cubes of goat cheese, herbs, seasalt. The first fresh artichokes of my life! Just sooo good! Vegetable cleaning and cutting, a daily labor. Fried green banana (I am eagerly hoping to get plantain plants to grow on our land!) Always good in the winter time: A healthy veggie soup. I also make lots of bone and meat broths. Veggie pan with butternut squash Shredded raw potato quickly roasted in the pan Elder flours A simple dough made from eggs and sweet potato flour Elder flour pancakes Elder flour pancakes The Queen of the Kitchen! I always say, it is not so much that I love cooking, I mostly love EATING Also always good: Mix some eggs and throw in a good load of chopped up veggies of the season. In a metal pan it can be baked in the oven, very low maintenance. Kind of tarte flambée. Made with rice flour, leeks and cream Easter eggs. Best color was the fresh curcuma, while spirulina did not work well. Nice to infuse the drinking water with fresh lemon grass and mint Always a highlight: A cooking gathering in our Quinta kitchen Fresh fish from our friend Paulo, made into filets by Jan In the summer almost every morning: A rich green smoothie with banana and lots of greens from the garden, good fats from additive free coconut milk, rice protein and maca powder. Rice à la Jan (first fry some garlic in olive oil, then the rice and then add the water), salad with grated red beet, veggie pan raw salad with pine nuts and borage flowers Limpets are typical for the Azores, real nutritional bombs (in fact, snails and shellfish is what REALLY makes the Mediterranean diet so healthy, and of course the veggies, not so much the olive oil) Limpets (lapas), salad, grated carrots and beet, green soup, curcuma rice, omelette… Normally no leftovers. We eat so much, and burn everything. Salad of the season to bring to a friend´s birthday party Kale chips – Always a good, nutrient dense snack and a tasty surprise to bring to a party. Just rip of the soft leafs from the hard stalk, discard the stalk, in a bowl mix the leafs well with olive oil and some sea salt. Delicious options to add are finely grated garlic, chopped sunflower seeds and turmeric powder. Spread on a baking tray and bake at 100°C for around 30min. Check and turn the chips once in a while. They are finished when they are dry and crispy (don’t overbake them to safe the vitamins). Dehydrating on 42°C is also possible if you have a dehydrator and lots of time for a raw version. An other green smoothie Cucumber salad with black cumin seeds and safflower petals Pumpkin soup with seed crackers Eat your greens! It makes you beautiful and keeps you young… Porridge with fresh blackberries and mint Icecream from frozen bananas (just throw it in the blender with some coconut milk or raw egg yolks, maybe carob powder, and directly serve it) with sage (mint is also fantastic) All this deliciousness would not be possible without this dream man at my side – I wouldn’t have thought that such a man exists and some women might be understandably jealous now *g* Potato fritters with a fruit sauce Gluten free sweet potato blackberry muffins Egg, onion, rice, carrot, fennel… These aracas will become a pudding Veggie pancake with homemade liver paté (loaded with Vitamin A, zinc, copper, glycin… budget-friendly meat and the healthiest and easiest digestible part of the animal) Cevada with carob and cacao butter Yes, we love popcorn from time to time *g* The slightly bitter but nicely crunchy flower from the Aloe arborescens we have in the garden Butternut squash baked with a vegetable filling and goat cheese Warm and filling blackberry porridge with coconut milk for lots of brain-and-immune-system-healthy ketone bodies Ketogenic fatbomb candies made of cacao butter and coconut cream as a base, filled with almonds, pistachios, spirulina, sweetened with Stevia & Erythritol Fatbomb candies Lentil soup, salad, gluten free cookies and fig-banana purée

