Did you know that heating your food (microwave, steam, boil, bake, wok, etc.) always comes at the expense of taste, health and nutritional value of your food?

The shorter you heat it, the better.
The shortest? Raw of course!

We eat our vegetables raw as much as possible and like to add “wild” to our meal.

Below I tell you how and why.

Cook less

What we cook, we cook as short as possible. Fairly cooked is cooked enough for us, we still have good teeth, so a little work while eating is not a problem. Besides, chewing well ensures that enough saliva is added to your food to make it more digestible.

When we cook, we use as little water as possible. Enough to keep it from burning, and so little that there is almost no “loose” liquid left in the pan after the cooking time. We never flush excess cooking water down the sink. Not only do you then not pour valuable nutrients down the drain, you also save on your water consumption.

Raw and wild vegetables

All vegetables are added to the cooked “base” raw. That base can be potatoes, sweet potatoes, Jerusalem artichokes, rice, grain products (pasta, couscous), beans, pods, lentils….
We cut hard vegetables a little finer than soft and leafy vegetables, like a red beet, cauliflower or carrot, for example.

That what you eat raw is so much more nutritious than cooked vegetables that you eat considerably less of them. And all of the nutrients and fiber actually get into your digestive system in an intact state. So you get much more benefit from them. And that your digestive system is happy with well chewed food goes without saying….

In addition, we like to add a good handful of “wild” vegetables. By this I mean leaves and flowers of plants and trees that we find in our garden or elsewhere in the wild.

On the menu today...

Today we ate a dish with a mix of spaghetti and mung beans as a base. To this we added the following raw vegetables: celery, dandelion (leaf and flower), yellow deadnettle (leaf and flower), cow parsley (leaf tops), ostrich fern (tops), wild garlic, chives, sorrel, lemon balm.
And herbs: basil, thyme, oregano.
For creaminess, a generous splash of olive oil, and to bind the last bit of cooking liquid, a handful of yeast flakes. Buckwheat flakes work great for that too, by the way.

How often do you eat your vegetables raw and wild?

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Read more about our Food Forest Garden on the pages What We Eat, What We Grow and Where We Grow It.

On the first page, I'll give you an overview of what we eat. After all, that determines what we want to grow, the fruits, nuts and vegetables in the garden.

Then I'll tell you what's in the garden, and finally where it is and the overall layout.

This will give you some insight into the start of the establishment of our food forest garden, the perennials and trees.