A healthy gut can boost the absorption of nutrients, speed up weight loss, prevent food cravings and balance out hormones.

If you consider your gut as a garden, you’ll notice that whatever you put into is ultimately going to affect your overall health and determine how much energy you have.

Healing your gut is all about getting the maximum amount of nutrient absorption, balancing out tricky bacteria and keeping things as alkaline as possible.


Nutrient absorption is based upon good gut permeability. Eating an unhealthy diet can lead to poor digestion of food, meaning that when food is broken down by enzymes within your stomach and pancreas, some food molecules can still remain in your small intestine.

The small intestine is the place where nutrient absorption occurs. These molecules are then able to pass through our gut wall into the bloodstream, causing bloating, irritation, inflammation, fatigue, aches, and low immunity to colds and flus.

A handy way to help maintain the integrity of the gut is to eat an easily digestible diet with foods that don’t aggravate and to include building block foods. (more…)

So excited to let you know that I’ll be hitting the road with the founders of Food Matters James and Laurentine and Jon Gabriel for Food Matters Live!

The Food Matters film was the catalyst for a health revolution in my own life, I wrote about it in a previous blog post and now I'm fortunate enough to be joining the team for this healthy and transformative roadshow.

We'll be stopping by in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth to share stories, some home-cooked wisdom, Supercharged recipes and tips on how you can live a healthy and happy life.

I’ll be doing some cooking with James and I'm going to pull it all back to simple and Supercharged Foods for the whole family to enjoy. We'll be demonstrating easy kitchen tricks and foods that taste great. We all believe that food really does matter and solutions to health problems don't involve fad diets, medication and strict exercise regimes.

It's a full day program and you'll discover;

• How to take control and live your healthiest life yet.
• Quick and easy nutrition and superfood cooking demonstrations.
• Modern day stress reduction for busy people.
• How the power of our mind and thoughts effect our health.
• How to boost energy and break free from the diet trap and processed food addictions and cravings forever.
• The latest up-to-the-minute tips for detoxing and natural weight loss.
• Myth debunking: That eating healthy is expensive. Practical and affordable solutions.
• The secrets and confusion of the multibillion dollar diet industry and uncover the truth behind “diet” “sugar-free” and “fat-free” products.

Come and watch us demonstrating kitchen tips, tricks and foods that taste great, and recipes which are simple and easy to bring to the table and made with everyday ingredients.

If you’d like more information and want to join in on an action-packed and inspirational day visit here. 

Photography by Kate Duncan

Apart from having the cutest name ever, pikelets are a practical and delicious food for both children and adults. Being smaller than a traditional pancake, kids will enjoy the fun finger food aspect and being involved in the prep work to fine tune their cooking, counting and coordination skills.

But you certainly don’t have to be a youngster to enjoy these healthy pikelets. Delicious served warm as a sweet healthy dessert, filling breakfast or packed into a lunchbox for morning or afternoon tea, pikelets are so simple to make and adaptable enough, to be stored in the fridge and eaten chilled with a dollop of yoghurt or cashew cream.

I’ve added a tablespoon of chia seeds to this recipe because of their nutritional virtuousness, and despite their pin-sized nature, being rich in antioxidants and packed full of fibre, magnesium, zinc, iron and calcium will help you to tick off your list of essential nutrients required by the body.  

Just a thirty-gram serving of chia seeds provides over ten grams of fibre, which is almost half the daily recommendation for a middle-aged adult. Check!

Chia seeds are one of the best foods to eat for digestion to help relieve stomach spasms and feelings of bloating by reducing pressure and inflammation in the colon. They really enjoy getting things moving, as they have an incredible ability to absorb water in the colon, and expand up to twelve times their size. That means feeling fuller longer and a boost to any weight loss efforts.

Chia seeds have a mild, nutty taste and a constitution that makes them flavour sponges for other ingredients. They behave well in an assortment of sweet and savoury dishes and you can enjoy them raw or cooked, sprinkled on cereal, yogurt, or porridge and in smoothies and juices.

Mix one tablespoon of chia seeds with three tablespoons of water; let it sit for a few minutes, and presto! You’ve just created a binding gel that can be used as a vegan substitute for eggs.

In this recipe, the coconut milk gives the pikelets a velvety, smooth and creamy texture. In Sanskrit, the coconut palm is known as kalpa vriksha, or 'tree which gives all that is necessary for living' because nearly all parts of the palm can be used: the flesh, water, sugar, oil, and milk. Even the husks and leaves of the coconut palm can be used to create home furnishings and decorations. (more…)

Hello microbes.

I was actually going to say hello humans but considering we’re only ten percent human, as ninety percent of our body’s cells are non-human microbial cells, the human element to us all, is well, not so much.

There’s no doubt that eating a healthy diet can influence and feed our good microbes and as digestive worries are becoming more central to many health concerns and symptoms, eating delicious food to keep your gut happy is the key to less discomfort, a flatter belly, more energy and less internal disruption.

Did you know that cultivating a new gut microbiota, can be achieved in a short amount of time with the right food and drinks? Eating certain foods which help your good gut bugs to flourish will change the balance in your gut and help you to absorb nutrients from your meals more effectively.

By the way if you’re not keen on sport please keep scrolling…I am just about to make my very first sporting analogy.

So if you’re still reading, and you were to compare your gut to a rugby match and the microbiome are the two opposing teams, imagine your good and bad gut bacteria team players all having their own unique job to do and positioning within your intestines.

Now think about what the players are doing. Perhaps they’re a forward or a halfback; maybe they’re needed to attack, defend, stay back or are ready to go in for a tackle.

When it comes to being a good gut player, good bacteria are the heroes on the field. They act as halfbacks in our intestinal tracts, calling the shots and controlling the tempo of the game. Good gut bacteria rally together to help your body digest and absorb your food more effectively and unite against opposing forces. The good gut bacteria team as a whole can help boost your entire immune system and send messages to your brain to help regulate metabolism.

Not that we have the sporting talk out of the way, I’d love to introduce you to my good-gut microbe boosting and flavoursome watercress soup from my new book Heal Your Gut. It features two ingredients which turbo charge the anti-microbial action in the gut and are heavily loaded with beneficial fibre, in particular inulin, a fibre source that feeds the good guys inhabiting our digestive system.

This recipe screams springtime slurping, and strikes the perfect balance between being refreshing and light, yet creamy and decadent enough to leave you feeling fully satisfied. It features a combination of antioxidants, vitamins, minerals and healthy fats, and fortunately doesn’t taste like you’re mowing into a freshly cut lawn.

A dark, leafy green grown in natural spring water, watercress is the star ingredient in this dish. Gone are the days where watercress was used solely as a plate garnish. (more…)

If you’re one of those people whose earliest meal making memory is defined by bread crumbly fingers from chicken schnitzel preparation, you’ll be pleased to know I'm on a simple yet honourable mission today, to share two of my favourite schnitzel inspired recipes.

Schnitzeling is a serious family endeavor and whipping up a schnitz as a weeknight treat will leave every family member licking their fingers and feeling unanimously satisfied after a busy day of doing.

This hearty TV-dinner and next day lunch forms the base of a versatile chicken lover’s sequence from my eBook, The Renewable Table will which will see you right through to the weekend.

I’m sharing the first two recipes in the sequence, a chicken schnitzel with parsnip mash with garden salad and a filling schnitzel wrap with lemon and a slathering of parsnip spread.

When purchasing chicken to create this sequence, buy free-range chicken, organic is best. Chicken is easy to work with and can be stored in the freezer in freezer safe containers and pulled out as needed to add to a range of hearty main meals, snacks, soups and salads.

If you decide to buy whole chickens, you can use every part of the chicken – everything from the succulent breasts just like in this recipe, right down to the chicken carcass to create a nourishing homemade bone broth. In a Renewable Kitchen, nothing at all gets wasted.

While traditional chicken schnitzels tend to be anything but healthy – high in saturated fat and refined carbohydrates, this recipe substitutes white breadcrumbs with almond meal and coconut flour. These high-fibre flour alternatives combine with the eggs to create a light yet crispy coating that perfectly compliments the succulent melt-in-your-mouth texture of the meaty breasts. The crumble can also be stored in the freezer for later schnitzel making.

The paprika and sea salt bring the dish to life with zest and the parsnip mash makes an ideal healthy yet creamy accompaniment that closely resembles potato mash. The Mediterranean-inspired garden salad provides a crisp freshness to balance out the flavour of the schnitzels.

When preparing a family meal, to ensure that you have all of your nutritional boxes ticked, try and mix and match colours and textures. This schnitzel dinner for example, is a delicious nutritionally complete meal, rich in protein from the chicken, phytonutrients and antioxidants from the parsnip mash and garden salad, and healthy fats from the egg and coconut oil used for pan-frying.

There’s also nothing more cost effective and time saving than cooking a wholesome family meal and then transforming and repurposing the ingredients to use for other meals throughout the week. The meat and the vegetables are already cooked, so reusing them in new dishes, as in my filling wrap recipe below for day two, is a resourceful and effective way to bring home cooking to the office or school.

Saving extra portions to use for the next day is also a great way to avoid waste, saving you significant dollars in the long run. You’re much less likely to nibble on nutritionally poor choices if you have a full lunch box.

Children can benefit too, offering them fresh, health-promoting foods is a priority for mums everywhere and often one of the most challenging meals of the day is school lunches.

Kids will love the second day nutritious renewable wrap recipe. After enjoying a restaurant-quality chicken schnitzel for dinner, the next day you’re going to be giving the leftovers a brand new home. Repurposing it straight into a wrap, along with a generous smear of parsnip spread, this serves as an excellent margarine replacement, and finishing of with a handful of the pre-made salad.

Presto! With little effort you’ve created a balanced lunch filled with fibre, healthy fats and protein that can be transported to school or the office, and will keep everyone satisfied and focused well into the afternoon.

My gluten-free crepes are a high-fibre, low sodium and low GI alternative to highly refined white bread. These wrap-rolling fluffy crepes are so versatile they’ll instantly become a staple in your family’s lunchtime repertoire.

Using only a handful of nourishing ingredients, crepes can be used to make gluten-free wraps as in this recipe, or topped with berries and goat’s cheese for a fancy breakfast or healthy dessert even the kids will enjoy. They hold remarkably well too, so no more niggly doubts about ingredients from those pesky-thin commercial wraps causing havoc in lunchboxes.  

I challenge you to make regular pub meals a thing of the past and create affordable, tantalizing and healthy home-cooked meals cheaply and easily. You’ll be so caught up in the flavours that you’ll want to add these dishes repeatedly to your weekly meal planning and they get a thumbs up from the kids too. I recently test drove them on twelve hungry children who eagerly hoovered them up in a flash.

Continuum cooking makes renewable dishes so much more enjoyable, because you’ll feel like every meal is a fresh new dish. You’ll also save time for the more important things by not having to cook your chicken and vegetables from scratch on each occasion.

Time to finally get stuck into that book you’ve been meaning to read!

Chicken schnitzel with parsnip mash and garden salad

Serves 4

INGREDIENTS

Schnitzels

• 4 chicken breasts, sliced in half width-ways to form 8 pieces (4 for tonight’s dinner, 4 for schnitzel wraps.
• 1⁄2 cup arrowroot (or tapioca flour)
• 3 eggs, whisked
• 1 cup almond meal
• 1 cup coconut flour
• 3 tbsp coconut oil
• 1 tsp paprika (lending an extra hit of flavour and helping to produce a beautiful golden colour in the coating)
• Sea salt and pepper

 Mash
(There’s enough here allowing you to save half for a chicken wrap recipe or to nibble as a snack later)

• 1 onion diced
• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
• 8 medium parsnips, peeled and roughly chopped
• 1 tsp thyme
• 1 tsp oregano
• Sea salt and pepper to taste

Salad 


(There’s enough here to create next day wraps as well) 


• 4 large handfuls rocket 

• 1 cup button mushrooms, halved 

• 1 cup cherry tomatoes, halved 

• 1⁄2 cup Kalamata olives 

• 1⁄2 avocado, diced 

• Small handful fresh basil leaves, torn 

• 2 tbsp extra virgin olive oil 

• 2 tbsp balsamic vinegar 

• Sea salt and pepper to taste

METHOD 


Mash 


• Sauté onion in 1 tbsp olive oil and 1 tbsp water in a large pot for 3-4 minutes.
• Place the chopped parsnips into the pot with enough boiling water to cover. Add herbs and seasoning. Stir to combine ingredients.
• Bring to the boil and turn down to simmer, cooking for 25 minutes, or until parsnips are soft.

• Turn off heat and carefully pour out the parsnip broth into a jar, leaving just a little bit of water in the bottom of the pot.
• Add remaining olive oil to mixture. Using a stick blender, or transferring to a food processor, blend until pureed. Set aside.

• The leftover broth can be stored in the fridge and used as a vegetable broth or you can drink it right away as a nourishing beverage.

Schnitzels

• To make the crumb mixture, add the almond meal, coconut flour, paprika, sea salt and pepper to a shallow bowl, mixing to combine.
• Place the eggs into a shallow bowl and whisk.
• Place the arrowroot flour in a separate shallow bowl.
• To tenderize, take the chicken and pound it into a uniform thickness if thin schnitzels are preferred the best way to do this is in a ziplock bag (goodbye chicken splatters!) This step is optional.
• Dip each piece of chicken into the arrowroot flour, then egg mixture, then the crumb mixture. Make sure that they are evenly coated.
• Pre-heat a large fry pan on medium-high heat with 1 tbsp coconut oil. Cook each schnitzel for 4-5 minutes on each side, adding a fresh tbsp of oil each new round of schnitzels (cooking 4 at a time, depending on the size of your fry pan).
• Set aside 4 of the schnitzels for your next recipe such as Schnitzel wraps below first allowing to cool to room temperature then placing into a sealed container and refrigerating for up to 3 days.

Salad

• Place rocket, basil, mushrooms, tomatoes and olives in a bowl and combine.

• Separate half the mixture and set aside in a bowl, refrigerating until preparation of continued recipes (this will keep undressed in the refrigerator for up to 5 days).
• With the remaining half, add avocado, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper and mix well to combine.

Day Two

Chicken Schnitzel Wrap with Lemon and Parsnip Spread

Makes 4 Wraps

INGREDIENTS

Gluten free Crepes:

• 1 1/3 cup tapioca flour

• 1 1/3 additive-free coconut milk
• 1 egg
• Pinch of sea salt

• 80g butter

Wraps:

• 4 chicken schnitzels, cut into thin diagonal strips 

• 4 gluten free crepes
• 1 grated carrot 

• Juice of 1⁄2 lemon 

• Leftover mash from schnitzel recipe
• Leftover salad from schnitzel recipe
• Sea salt and pepper to taste 

METHOD 


Crepes:

• Combine all the ingredients except the butter in a medium bowl and stir well.
• Heat one-quarter of the butter in a frying pan over medium heat. Pour in one-quarter of the mixture and swirl to cover the bottom of the pan
• After 2–3 minutes, carefully flip and brown on the other side.
• Repeat with the remaining butter and crepe mixture.

Wraps:

• Lay out the 4 crepes on your kitchen bench.

• Spread a heaped spoonful of parsnip mash down the centre of each crepe.

• Add all other ingredients evenly across the 4 crepes and season with sea salt and pepper. Squeeze a touch of lemon juice in each crepe.
• Roll into cylinders, curling in the bottom edge so filling doesn’t fall out.

• Cover in foil and store in the refrigerator until it’s time to take to work or school. Lasts in the refrigerator for up to 2 days. 

Happy Cooking 🙂

You can purchase the Renewable Table here. 

Welcome to my brand new eBook The Renewable Table. I’m so excited to officially launch this book today.

The Renewable Table is a "loaves and fishes" philosophy that reimagines your original meals into two, three or even four more, delicious dishes.

I’ve been working on the recipes in the book over the past twelve months and I’m happy to report from the front line that the dishes are a far cry from reusing any old leftovers that you simply re-heat and then take to work in a container, although you certainly can do that if you want to.  

In this book I share exactly how to prepare creative dishes and reimagined meals in a fraction of the time.  For many people, cooking home cooked meals that are also nutritious can be time consuming and expensive and that’s where I come in.  

I've been at my most industrious in the kitchen, creating a series of hardworking and versatile dishes or "Stepford wife" meals that’ll enable you to save time and money without compromising on taste or quality. These are my absolutely delicious and hearty marathon meals that last the distance for you and your family.

The reason I wrote the book is to provide you with the perfect solution to the common problem of time, money and inspiration, which I’ve found over the years, is often a stumbling block to healthy eating.  

I present beautiful recipes and tips that I’m hoping will become your family’s greatest kitchen collaborator and ones that will reduce your shopping bills considerably. Hallelujah I hear you cry!

Individual Rhubarb Crumbles

The recipes are not only good for you, they’re also stress free and concocted with my favourite ingredients; simplicity, taste, affordability, sustainability and will make your time in the kitchen effortless.

Through my own experience as a busy full-time working mum, in the book I share efficient and practical ways to prepare mother-ship meals that can be reclaimed and renewed to continue on for another meal or four!

The book centres around the concept of ‘continuum cooking’, which I find is the most resourceful and environmentally friendly way to cook, and I can happily report that it’s a positive response to the ever-increasing problem of food wastage.

Continuum cooking saves energy, time and money and ensures you’ll always have a hearty meal at your finger tips, freeing you up to spend more time with and on the things that you love and enjoy. The whole purpose of The Renewable Table is for me to inspire and nurse families through how to begin a Renewable Kitchen and how to create their own continuum cooking routine with pantry and cooking needs sorted.  

Gluten Free Chicken Filo Pot Pies

Throughout the book I chaperone you with tips about how to buy in bulk and provide shopping lists to have on hand for store visits.  I show you how easy it is to cook a delicious meal with just the right amount of ingredients so that there’ll be enough on hand to renew the mother-ship recipe for your next breakfast, lunch, dinner and beyond.  I also unearth vital secrets for turning that next meal into new creations with different textures and flavours, herbs and spices.

What I've sought to do throughout the book is to do all of the thinking for you, and give you ways to make meal planning and recipe creating a breeze. I’m so thrilled to have been able to pilot a money-saving program which includes some fantastic dessert recipes to please people with a sweet tooth and savoury lovers too. The renewable meals also satisfy children and their lunchboxes as well as friends or guests at your next sustainable gathering.  

Over the years, I’ve come to learn which dishes are best for continuum cooking. I call these ‘renewable meals’ because family and friends rarely believe they’ve been created from a prior meal.  

I’m giving you a few examples of some of the kinds of recipes that you’ll discover in the book. There’s a breakfast and morning tea sequence that takes you from a scrumptious Apricot and Macadamia Granola and then breakfast is repurposed into a tray of yummy Apricot Muesli Bars
for the kids and then a nutritious Breakfast Smoothie Bowl the following day.

For chicken lovers there’s a perfect weeknight TV dinner sequence that carries onto lunch the next day and dinner the next night. You’ll begin with gluten-free Chicken Schnitzels with Parsnip Mash and crisp Garden Salad then this dish is reinvented into a wholesome Chicken, Broccoli and Mixed Leaf Salad, followed by a Chicken Schnitzel Wrap with Lemon and Parsnip Spread.

These are the kind of recipes that will bring families joy and nourishment and ones that will become an integral part of weekly meal plans. 

I hope you‘ll love the book just as much as I do.

Click here to purchase a copy.

Lee x