Mini Capsule

Welcome to a new Mini Capsule!
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 introduce you to different people and the meals they whip up that make 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!

Tess Baverstock: mum, clinical nutritionist and chef from Busselton in Western Australia

Who do you cook for in your family?

My 3year old, my husband and myself.

What food challenges do you face in the kitchen (allergies, preferences that narrow down your meal options eg. vegetarian/vegan, anything you or someone in your family don’t eat)?

I’m currently breastfeeding our second daughter, who is 3 months old so I’m hungry a lot. I also have my 3year old, who keeps me on my toes, and my private clinical nutrition practice that keeps me busy. So getting dinner on the table can be a bit of a juggling act sometimes.

My 3year-old can be a bit fussy, so adapting the meal to a grazing plate allows her to choose what she wants to eat from a selection of foods that I have given her. It’s a win/win: she eats what I want her to, but she chooses what and how much. I’m a big fan of the one family, one meal rule it saves me time and stress.

To save myself time, I like to pre-prepare my produce in advance, as soon as I get home from the shop. Things like washing and cutting vegetables, roasting root vegetables or boiling potatos for cold salads or making a huge container of kale, cabbage and beetroot slaw mix. I put it in everything. Doing this food prep means that I have ingredients ready to go for quick and easy meals when I’m busy with the kids or get hit with breastfeeding munchies.

I love to cook and decided I wanted to be a chef when I was 8 years old and started working in kitchen when I was 13. I believe that cooking for someone is the greatest form of love and I carry that philosophy over into my nutrition practice.

Food is nurturing and nourishing, and I encourage people to view cooking for themselves and eating good quality, whole foods as an opportunity to express love and gratitude to their bodies. Eating is the greatest expression of self-care.

Breakfast

Bircher Muesli! My grandfather always made swiss muesli with grated apple in it. It was my favourite breakfast of his. My grandparents had their own little “capsule breakfasts”: boiled eggs and soldiers, swiss muesli and porridge are the three staple breakfasts I remember from staying with them as a child.

My go to breakfasts are:

bircher muesli
“wronglette” what started as an omelette, but we added more and more vegetables and eventually the omelette always went wrong but tasted great so we just stuck with it.
a green smoothie that always is a weird brown colour because I love putting raw cacao powder in it.
porridge with blueberries

Lunch

Lunch is often what I always called a “man salad” because its normally huge. But I should start calling it a woman salad because “who run the world?”. And women (especially breastfeeding women) need to eat substantial meals. It consists of pre-roasted vegetables (pumpkin, sweet potato, carrot, cauliflower, broccoli), the kale slaw mix mentioned above and one of my many fermented experiments such as kimchi or sauerkraut, nuts, seeds and a boiled egg or cold roast chicken.

Our other favourite lunch is a super simple spaghetti. We started making this when I was working in Rome as the personal chef to the Australian ambassador. It’s the most basic pasta and is ready in 15-20 minutes but it’s so satisfying. We will have it for dinner when I can’t be bothered cooking and it’s always a hit with my daughter:

Get your pasta water on.
Cover the base of a large frypan with olive oil and put on very low heat.
Add in 4 whole garlic cloves and 4 anchovy fillets.
Let these “melt” into the oil for about 10 minutes.
Add in 1 tin of good quality tomatoes.
Turn up the heat and cook the tomatoes out for another ten minutes.
Cook your pasta while this is happening – following the instructions on the pack.
Serve with fresh rocket (we normally have some growing in the garden) and Parmigiano Reggiano or Grana Padano grated on top.
Enjoy with a glass of wine.

Dinner

In cold weather, I always do lamb necks in the slow cooker. We eat it with lots of fresh green veg, peas and chopped mint. The pasta above, fried rice using left over steamed rice, the kale slaw mix mentioned above with an egg. The Woman Salad makes a feature at least once a week for dinner and I always have a tub of Bolognese sauce in the fridge or freezer – we use it for taco bowls, stuffed sweet potatoes, nachos etc.

Snack or Treat

A Square of 70% dark chocolate with a tsp of peanut butter on top. It’s like a snickers bar for when I don’t have a snickers bar.

Popcorn with herbal sprinkle on top or for something sweet, a couple of melted chocolate buttons mixed through.

My favourite tool in the kitchen:

My jarrah wooden spoon I was given when I was 17, it’s so smooth to hold and has a great slant on it for getting into the edges of the pot.
Functionality wise, I also love my big silver tablespoon, my flour sieve that is also a measure for two cups, my micro-plane and my 16cm Victorinox chef knife.

My fondest food memory:

Making the stuffing for the Sunday roast chook with Grandpop. He made the best roast chook and I remember making my own seasoning mix with a secret ingredient (lemon leaves) so I could cook him a chook when he came to visit. Grandpop taught me how to make fig or mulberry jam when the trees where fruiting. His ratio of 2:1 fruit to sugar and a squeeze of lemon juice has never let me down.

An ingredient I hate and never cook with:

Hate is a strong word…. But I dislike margarine, copha and artificial sweeteners. They are just not food.

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Tess believes nutrition is much more than just vitamins, minerals and calories in/ calories out.
“Holistic nutrition is about the food we eat, who we share it with, the place it came from, how it was produced and the feelings it stirs when we see, prepare and eat it. Treatment plans should work with the individual’s own abilities, preferences, constrictions and limitations.”

You can check out her website here.