The most important thing when it comes to making amazing and healthy dishes is the ingredients you use.
The dream is to be able grow and make everything from scratch. This is the most sustainable way of living, but obviously not possible for everyone to do with todays fast paced lifestyle. This is why we’ve tried to bring as much locally grown and made products into Jo’s Pantry.
Organic ingredients are important where you can. A lot of mess and destruction has been caused by chemicals in agriculture. Many of today’s allergies could have something to do with the amount of chemicals that are put on our food when it’s growing, or after to clean it.
The soil these days has been depleted due to years of chemicals and livestock ruining the top soil. This causes our produce to have less nutrients than it used to.
We source our fresh produce from farmers who really care about their land, they avoid chemicals and sprays and most of it is picked the morning of delivery. The fresher the better.
There are so many different ingredients available to us with the import/export system getting bigger and bigger. As much as we’d like to, we can’t avoid imported food as it’s just not all available from Australia and there are things that people need/want that are grown in other parts of the world, such as India for spices, Sri Lanka for coconut goods, and Peru for cacao products. Although this is the case, for best health practices it would be wise to eat within a 100km radius of where you live, it makes sense to eat things that grow in your surrounding climate as that is where you are growing.
We’ve tried to keep our recipes simple and efficient, for those a little short of time, but still wanting to eat well and nourish themselves and their families.
Preparation is absolutely key. There are many ways that you can prepare food that will help your body to absorb the nutrients more efficiently.
Activating nuts, seeds, legumes and grains prior to eating them aids with digestion. This can be easily done by soaking them for at least 6 hours or even overnight they can then be dehydrated either in a dehydrator or in a really low oven, only just turned on and with the door slightly open. may take 10-12 hours for them to dehydrate without cooking them. They taste a lot better and your belly will thank you.
When it comes to cleansing and nourishing, raw foods cleanse and detox your body, whereas cooked foods nourish and feed you. This is the case whether you are vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, eat a ketogenic diet, a paleo diet or you are an intermittent faster.
A mixture of both raw and cooked foods are beneficial to your body, it keeps us balanced and clean on the inside. We must keep in mind that everyone is different and we all react differently to things, if someone you know eats all raw food and looks and feels incredible and you try the same without getting the same results, then this is not for you. It’s so easy to get sucked into other peoples habits and ideas hoping for the same results as they get, but we all function differently. Trial and error is the key to finding what works for you. Although sometimes frustrating, at least it is a way to create a lifestyle of eating in a way that is perfect for you.