Mini Capsule

Welcome to My Mini Capsule, which is a new series on the blog. Whilst I love sharing my own kitchen stories, it is especially important to me to show that balanced and healthy food choices may look different for each of us. It is simply impossible to follow all the conflicting rules and suggestions about healthy eating.

In this series I’d like to introduce you to different people and what they whip up in their kitchen that makes them feel good. Let’s be inspired by having a peak into someone else’s kitchen!

It is possible to feel confident in creating your own Capsule Kitchen to live a healthy, happy and balanced life. Your kitchen, your rules!

Leesa Young, Naturopath & Holistic Nutritionist in Camberwell, Melbourne.

Who do you cook for in your family?

Myself, my husband and 7 year old daughter

What food challenges do you face in the kitchen (allergies and preferences that narrow down your meal options):

My daughter’s changing food preferences have definitely influenced how I cook. She won’t eat any legumes, prefers simple foods where everything is ‘separate’, prefers raw or lightly cooked veg and generally just tends to pick at her dinner … so I often feel a bit more restricted in my cooking because of these tendencies and have to work a bit harder to create things that we all will enjoy.

Breakfast

Breakfast is usually protein-based for me, with eggs playing a starring role.
My staple is scrambled eggs on spelt sourdough with a bit of whatever is handy on the side – favourites include sauerkraut, avocado, smoked salmon. I usually throw in a handful of veg when cooking the eggs – mushrooms, spring onions, spinach, whatever is floating around in the fridge.

Both my daughter and I love this for breakfast. It works all year round, is filling and keeps us going until lunch, and gets us started on our veggies for the day.

Our special-occasion take on this is French toast – we top it with natural yoghurt, blueberries (I just throw some frozen blueberries in a small saucepan with a splash of water and let them simmer while I cook the toast) and a drizzle of maple syrup. Delicious!

Lunch

Definitely my most challenging meal of the day, I often forget to eat until I suddenly realise I’m ravenous! I always tell my clients to make sure they eat a proper lunch – especially if they get hit with the dreaded 3pm sugar cravings – but am very bad at following my own advice.

I try to incorporate legumes into my lunch as I really enjoy them – plus they are fantastic for your digestive system, gut bugs love them!

In summer, some tinned beans mixed with lemon juice, pepper, chopped greens (spinach, rocket, parsley, coriander) and feta crumbled on top, with a drizzle of olive oil. If I’m extra hungry I’ll add one of those tiny tins of tuna and mix it through.
Simple, tasty, nourishing and satisfying.

In winter, I often make myself a quick chick pea curry (easy to do while making dinner) and keep this in the fridge so I can warm up a portion for lunches.

Leftovers also feature regularly, and I try to set aside a bit of the evening meal for my lunch the next day whenever possible. Doesn’t get simpler than that!

Dinner

Pesto Chicken Bake – find the recipe here!

Dessert

Self-saucing Chocolate Pudding – find the recipe here!

My favourite tool in the kitchen is:

A wide stainless steel saucepan with a glass lid.

I use it for almost everything (I think it’s probably a sauté pan?) I love it because it’s big enough to use as a frypan, totally oven proof so perfect for slow cooking in the oven, the glass lid means I can keep an eye on how fast things are cooking, and the stainless steel means I can cook in acidic sauces. Perfect for pasta sauces, slow cooking, poaching, searing meat, curries, you name it.
It’s certainly the hardest-working piece of cookware in my kitchen!

My fondest food memory is:

Eating traditional Ceylonese food with my grandmother & cousins.

My father was born in Sri Lanka and most of his family emigrated to Australia during his childhood. I have the best memories of eating this amazing, aromatic, incredibly tasty and totally weird food when we went to my grandmother’s house. I loved the little parcels of curry & rice wrapped up in banana leaves (lamprais), cool little concave pancakes with eggs wobbling around in them (egg hoppers), salty spicy sour sambal (pol sambal) featuring what my sister & I called “mouldy fish” (Maldive fish – tiny dried fish like anchovies), delicious curries of all varieties with beautiful long-grained yellow rice.

An ingredient I hate and never cook with is:

Offal!! Ugh.

I’ve always said I’ll eat pretty much anything, but learned my lesson whilst travelling and being served steak and kidney pie on my first night staying with friends in England. Try as I might, I just could not stomach those little kidneys, and they ended up in a pile on the side of my plate. So, now I am sure to say I’ll eat anything except offal. Needless to say, I’ve never even come close to attempting to cook with it, no matter how nutritious everyone assures me it is.

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Leesa is a practising Naturopath and Holistic Nutritionist with her practise in Camberwell, Melbourne. She stands for Wellness, Simplified and strives to help putting an end to the endless stream of conflicting information about health, nutrition and diets so you can experience the freedom that comes with understanding what your body needs.