Super Natural Every Day - Free eBook

If you peek inside my kitchen cupboards you’ll probably notice I prefer my rice brown, red, purple, or black; and that I keep a spectrum of golden honeys close at hand. You’ll see soba noodles are allocated a good amount of real estate in the cabinets to the right of the stove, and heirloom beans have taken more than half-a-metre of shelf space on the left. You might (rightly) suspect my favourite section at the health food store are the bins containing grains, dried beans, and flour.

I tend to cook with whole, natural foods wholegrains, wholegrain flours, minimally processed sweeteners, and fresh produce ingredients that are as seasonal and nutritionally intact as possible. I’d be misleading you if I said I don’t look forward to moments when I happen upon something new and special: a raw, vanilla-scented Fair Trade Certified cane sugar from the Philippines, or giant, golden salt grains from the Menai Strait in Wales. Those sorts of ingredients aside, a good portion of the food I buy is grown or produced locally. I find local ingredients taste better and often have a glow and vitality you don’t see in ingredients that have travelled long distances, particularly when you are talking about produce or perishables. And while I run the risk of sounding a bit preachy, supporting good ingredients grown or produced by people who care about our health and the health of our environment is something about which I feel strongly.

Some of you might be confused by the term “natural foods.” It is used in many different contexts, and it means different things to different people. By “natural foods,” I mean ingredients that are straight from the plant or animal. Or that are made with as little processing and as few added flavourings, stabilisers, and preservatives as possible, keeping nutrients and original flavours intact. For example, wheat berries ground into flour, grated coconut pressed into coconut milk, cream paddled into butter, or chopped tomatoes simmered into tomato sauce (passata). For me, focusing on natural ingredients also means doing my best to avoid genetically modified and chemically fertilised crops, as well as dairy products that come from cows treated with growth hormones. I want each meal I eat to deliver as much nutritional punch as possible, and focusing on a range of real, minimally processed foods is the way I go about it.

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