Spicy quinoa and halloumi salad. Thoughts on motherhood and the year ahead.

January is always about intention setting for me. By the same token it's about looking back at the year that's just been, reflecting on what happened and why. What were the seeds planted and what may be learnt. One very important seed grew into a beautiful baby girl that's sitting in front of me right now, falling asleep happily while staring at the fairy lights. She's just wonderful and has opened my heart in unexpected ways. I was never sure if motherhood was for me, but an unplanned pregnancy and miscarriage in 2014 revealed a part of me that was ready to be a mother. It's funny how different things look in hindsight, when you're not longer just a bug in a rug, but can appreciate the whole tapestry. Even very painful events can be useful. Motherhood is a whole new world. You learn new things every day on this journey and I will compile a list of the more useful stuff I've learnt shortly, for people that are about to embark on it.

Another reason why last year was so important was my cookbook, due to come out next Summer. The world of publishing is new to me and getting book deal has been both a dream come true and a challenge. It reminded me that things worth having don't necessarily come easily, yet also that if something is meant to be then those doors do open for you. That its always better to be swimming with the tide. So this year I will focus on swimming along, being kinder to myself (and therefore others) in the process, trusting what happens, being more conscious and present in the moment while gently shaping my future. The book will definitely still be a focus this year and this is an example of what it will feel like. It will be a whole new perspective on Polish food, and show another side of my homeland, a side that's dreamy and romantic. We're not all about meat and potatoes, you know.

The world of motherhood brings with it many anxieties, many unresolved feelings and issues from one's own childhood. It's an ideal opportunity to face oneself and to let go, if you take it as such. I am therefore very focussed on being conscious and calm right now, to not take too much on. Yet I am enjoying cooking. Nothing elaborate, just simple, healthy food like this quinoa and halloumi salad.

Ingredients (about 4 portions)

250g Quinoa
2 Corn on the Cob, cooked with the corn taken off the cob
1 Avocado, chopped
1 Courgette, shaved
Halloumi, sliced

Dressing

Juice of 2 limes
3 tablespoons of good quality olive oil
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1 teaspoon Ghanan Shito sauce (or some chilli oil and fish sauce)
Salt and pepper to taste

Cook the quinoa and allow it to cool, while you prep all the other vegetables. Do use corn on the cob rather then the sloppy corn in the tin for this salad, it's worth the effort. Mix everything together with the dressing once cooled and allow to stand for about 15min while you fry the Halloumi until golden. Finish off with some black pepper. This salad benefits from standing around for a while, while it infuses with the flavours and its even better the following day.

Six recipes with six dates for pregnancy

I've been eating dates religiously since finding out that they could potentially lead to a shorter labour. My life has been so busy recently with TV work, writing my book (manuscript's due in September) and travelling - I am currently in Greece - that at times I forget the even bigger changes and challenges ahead. Eating a few dates a day has been something simple that I can do to prepare every day. Whether it actually works or not is yet to be confirmed but the mere act of eating dates brings my mind back into focus. It's something that I can still find time to do (mostly), even if other things such as friends and blogging have fallen by the wayside. Sorry about that, by the way, if you've been affected. I won't bombard you with false promises, let's just agree to some time apart and I will resume my previous blogging schedule once I have handed in my cookbook, agreed?

I'm in my third trimester now and my passion for dates has also waned somewhat, so I decided to find new (or old and lost) ways of ingesting this lovely (and potentially miraculous?) dried fruit. 6 is the magic number when it comes to dates apparently. Here are my favourites:

The date breakfast

300g oats

18 dates, pitted and chopped

1/2 litre almond milk

10-20 pecans halves

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

1 tablespoon honey

Boil the almond milk, pit the dates and chop the pecans into smaller bits. Once the almond milk has frothed, take it off the heat, add all the other ingredients, cover and leave overnight. The next morning put it in the fridge, and eat for breakfast for the next 3 days.

The date shake

6 Dates

250ml spelt milk 

Banana

1 tablespoon lucuma powder

Spelt milk makes everything taste amazing and lucuma powder is my favourite pregnancy replacement for maca, which you should avoid during pregnancy. Just blitz all the ingredients together.

The date flapjack

You will find the recipe for these here

The date snack

Dates

Mascapone cheese

Pecans

Stuff each pitted date with a teaspoon of mascapone and a couple of pecan halves.

The date dessert

6 dates

Greek yoghurt

1 tablespoon good quality honey

1 tablespoon crushed pistachios

Enjoy and happy labouring!

Red amaranth, enoki mushrooms, cashewnuts and black quinoa on a hot hotday

London is sizzling. No, I don't mean 23 degrees C going down to 10 at night, I mean a proper heatwave. Though they do say we'll be going back down to our usual, civilized 23-with-showers in the coming week. Thank god. That's not an ironic "thank god" either - the pregnancy means I'm really sensitive to everything and massively overheating. It took three tries to get into my lido. I'd trundle up there like a man in a desert only to find my cool oasis swarming with hipsters, forming an unmanageable queue. I finally managed to get in yesterday after getting up early, but it was still much busier than usual, even at 9.15am, a lot of idiots, a lot of road rage. Not your usual, calming "isn't this nice?" atmosphere at all. Luckily, in this weather I am not craving sausage sandwiches but things like this...

This was a particularly attractive and successful version of the kind of dish I usually throw together; a combination of whatever I have lying about my kitchen cupboards and whatever I pick on my way home. I stopped off at my favourite Vietnamese supermarket on this occasion and bought fresh red amaranth and enoki mushrooms. I cooked the black quinoa separately and used a wok to toast the cashewnuts slightly before adding the amaranth, enoki mushrooms, light soya sauce, a little bit of oyster sauce and Ghanian shito paste (basically a chilli oil).

After all my moaning about the heat, I leave you with what I love about London in the summertime. The luscious, wild nature all around. Now, if I could just get wild flowers to grow in my garden...

Sesame flapjacks (no sugar)

My apologies. My aim is to blog at least once a week, a commitment I've been neglecting of late. I am in a period of restructure. I am restructuring my timetable, my habits, my priorities, my social life and my mind. That's basically my whole life come to think of it. I have 5 months to hand in the manuscript of my book. This sounds like a long time but I know it isn't, because I've been writing my book. For 5 years. Yes, granted - that wasn't full time - but still, there's no room for complacency. This is my dream project, and I don't think I have ever cared about something work-related this much before. That's not to say that I haven't cared, only that this is very, very important, you get me? Everything else will need to stay on the backburner for the time being. Happily, cooking is a big part of my dream project. Also, I have to eat and keep my energy levels up. Flapjacks are always good at times like these.

This is because oats release energy slowly, as do sesame seeds. As usual, I avoided sugar and used good quality honey instead. I also substituted some of the butter for coconut oil. It made them more crumbly, but this was not a problem for me.

Ingredients 

100g oats

100g sesame seeds

150g butter

200ml honey

50g coconut oil

50g almonds

Melt the butter and oil in a pan. Add the sesame seeds and fry until golden. Add the honey and the almonds. And anything else you fancy really. Pour the mixture into a greased baking tray and bake for 25min at about 180 degrees C.

Sugar-free chocolate-coconut truffles and the power of gratitude

In 2015 instead of New Year's Resolutions, I decided to have a monthly focus that helps me bring new habits into my life. The April focus is gratitude. Gratitude seems a bit meaningless. Everyone knows they should be grateful for what they've got, because there are people out there that have a lot less... blah blah blah. If we are grateful only when comparing ourselves to others then I think we're missing the point, because every person is on a different journey. I'll explain why I'm finding gratitude to be a truly transformative force in my life. When you are grateful for something and you make time each day to have this realization, then you simply can't abuse, mistreat or even take for granted what you are grateful for. For example, if I'm grateful for my body, then it follows that I treat it well. Gratitude almost immediately alters your mindset, you see. All of a sudden not eating processed sugar isn't a struggle, but something that I want to do. So with that in mind, here are some sugar-free, gracious chocolate truffles I made.

You simply blitz all the ingredients in a blender, then roll the resulting mush into balls. Roll them around in more cacao powder to finish and press the nut of your choice into the top. These ingredients worked very well but you can of course mix them up with whatever you have available. I have many things to be grateful for right now, but even before all this incredible luck came my way, I had plenty - we all do. I am even making a point right now of being grateful for things that haven't happened yet but I would like to happen, in advance, to encourage them into existence.

Ingredients (6 big truffles)

75g good quality, pitted dates

50g brazil nuts

2 tablespoons desiccated coconut

2 tablespoons coconut oil

3 tablespoons organic cacao powder and a bit more for rolling

Almonds and walnuts to go on top

Purple carrot celeriac salad with sprouts and the curse of washing up

Washing up feels like my curse. I cook a lot therefore there always seems to be a pile of dirty dishes waiting for me. One day I will have a dishwasher - this is the dream. Until that day comes I am forced to deal with it, unhappily. A couple of days ago I read this post on Zen Habits and it has inspired me to try to change the way I think about washing up. Perhaps I'm being lazy, perhaps it's too easy to think of washing up as a massive chore and myself as a modern-day Sisyphus doing the same action over and over again. For now, washing up is a necessary part of life for me, so perhaps I can learn something from it? I am more than happy to entertain these notions, yet I've noticed no change so far in how I feel about it. Today, the pile of washing up made me feel positively depressed. Still, I love to cook. In this book I'm reading Desikachar states that yoga teaches us that there is a positive and negative side to everything. Therefore, I must bear my burden with grace. This purple carrot celeriac salad was delicious, yet caused a massive purple mess and my hands looked bruised after peeling it. So much so that it gave me an idea for next year's Halloween costume. You can easily replace it with a normal carrot, I just wanted to see if there was any difference in taste (not much, it was a bit sweeter)

We ate it with roasted yellow courgettes with roast pumpkin oil and pumpkin seeds, black quinoa and frying halloumi cheese. Just grate the carrot and celeriac very finely, combine with the sprouts (I used a mixture of sprouts) and the sauce (soured cream and mayonnaise one-to-one with a little bit of mild olive oil). Season with salt, white pepper and some freshly grated nutmeg and mix really well. This should chill in the fridge for at least a couple of hour, to allow it to "bite together" as we say in Poland.

Ingredients:

Half a celeriac
Large carrot
Mixed sprouts
100ml soured cream
100ml mayonnaise
1 tablespoon olive oil
1/4 teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
Salt and white pepper to taste

Superfood breakfast or how to make Nigella seeds palatable

The short answer to the question posed is: by adding a lot of other stuff. I first tried Nigella seeds about 5 days ago. I was handed a Nigella seed flapjack by a certain curious confectioner. It was an unusual taste that I fell in... interest with immediately. I was going to say "in love" but it was more of a fascination really. My friend told me that they were a bit of a challenge to work with and he was not lying. They are really, really bitter. But so, so good for you.  They say the only thing Nigella seeds can't cure is death.

Once you balance out their bitterness with lots of honey and a bit of salt, they actually taste quite nice. I pounded them first with a pestle and mortar then used the method of boiling the milk first then adding all the ingredients and allowing them to fuse together and cool overnight in the fridge. This also preserves all their beneficial qualities. I must say that on eating that breakfast you see up there, I was... Invigorated. Truly. I realised it whilst packed into the tube train like a sardine, and I though "I feel pretty good considering my circumstances". I can't say for sure though if it was the Nigella seeds, or the red maca or maybe even the large dose of turmeric.

Ingredients

500ml almond milk

8 tablespoons of oats

2 tablespoons of pounded Nigella seeds

2 tablespoons white chia seeds

2 tablespoons red maca powder

1 teaspoons turmeric

1 teaspoons cinnamon

4 tablespoons raw honey

1/4 teaspoon sea salt

Ginger, lemon and honey for warmth

It's weird to think now that there were times in my life when I was unhappy with my body. I have been within a couple of kilograms of my perfect weight for many years now, and I eat and drink pretty much whatever I want. Looking back, there is one tiny thing I did that solved all my food and weight issues: I stopped worrying about it. It was a difficult thing to do, as from a young age I felt that being even slightly overweight made me a complete failure. This sort of reasoning is invariably going to cause imbalance and unhappiness. Then I made the conscious decision to stop beating myself up about it and I gradually lost weight and grew to be happy with my body.  The decision came at uni, when I first came to London. I met so many great people and started having such a fun time that food didn't matter as much anymore and the self-hated just didn't make sense. Like everything in life, this was a process - it was a complete battle at times, yet instinctively I knew that I was fighting the good fight. There were many things that helped me along the way - good friends, family, meditation... above all, my own honesty and openness probably. You can't get anywhere in life if you are hiding and lying to yourself and others. Eventually, I grew to love food all over again, but this time it was a mature and pure kind of love, rather than the confused, childish, all-or-nothing kind. Once this sort of change happens in your mind, you want to be good to yourself and eat in a way that nourishes and heals your body

 This is my favourite drink for when the weather turns cold and, randomly, a magician taught me how to make it. It builds up your immune system and digestion, as well as curbing sugar cravings. You peel and simmer a couple of inches of fresh ginger in plenty of water until it colours slightly. Stir in a tablespoon of honey and squeeze in half a lemon. Drink this within 20min for the full benefit of vitamin C from the lemon. I like to drink this from my wooden sake box, I don't know why but this feels like the natural thing to do

The new detox rules

If you are looking for a detox where an Absinthe cocktail on the second day is allowed and you don't need to spend two weeks miserably brewing herbal infusions while your friends go out and have fun, then you've come to the right blog. My detoxes having been getting more and more relaxed over the years until finally we've come to this - Absinthe on the second day. I simply refuse to give up my life just because I want to get myself back on the healthy wagon, it's too short. So these are the new detox rules

Eat oats with fruit, yoghurt and honey for breakfast

Have 2 Nakd bars as snacks throughout the day

Eat various vegetables and grains for lunch

Eat Fish/Turkey and vegetables for dinner

Enjoy 1 alcoholic drink every 2-3 days

Drink 1 small coffee a day 

Drink as much Japanese roasted twig tea and green tea as you can

Avoid all processed sugar and foods

Snack on fruit, nuts and vegetables

Eat goat's cheese only 

Drink a glass of pomegranate juice daily

Take selenium (100 micrograms)

Meditate and Stretch every day

Walk in the fresh air

Bathe with tree tree oil and sea salt

De-clutter your living space

Do your paperwork

Superfoods salad aka The Best Salad in the World possibly

I have been on my detox for less than a week and I haven't been entirely faithful. I've had a swig of coke, a glass of Pinot Grigio, a couple of oaty biscuits that looked healthy but actually had many ungodly things in them like "inverted sugar" (whatever that it), a bite of sausage, some delicious white bread and a pill of codeine. Many would have given up by now, concluding that their detox hasn't worked out this time, yet I persevere. Why? Because it would be easy to give up, to go out and have fun and forget all about it, but if I do that I will destroy my own trust in myself. If I continue, then despite the setbacks, by the month's end I will feel amazing and the odd glasses of wine and naughty bites of sausage will be forgotten, because they meant nothing anyway. Today has been a fantastic detox day, because I have invented "The Best Salad in the World possibly"

 Ingredients

Watercress

Pearl barley

Turkey (free-range)

Pomegranate (Half per portion)

Linseeds (or pumpkin seeds perhaps)

Sunflower seeds

Spring onion

Honey

Soya sauce

Vegetable stock

Balsamic

Olive oil

Salt and pepper

It all started when I went out for lunch yesterday with some friends and I ordered the "Superfoods Salad" (along with the wine and the bread), in order to "be good". This contained pumpkin, lentils, goat's cheese, salad leaves and some kind of seeds from what I can remember. It sounds like nothing special, but I guess my body needed the nutrients because I wolfed it down with minimal food envy. I always have a minimal level of food envy, so this is normal. I am very greedy and always want some of what everyone else is having. The salad was so delicious that it inspired me to make my own version today. And, my goodness, that up there was the best salad I have ever eaten! I marinated the turkey in a bit of honey, soya sauce and pepper, while the pearl barley cooked in my home-made vegetable stock. Obviously, you can always use a stock cube for this. I toasted the seeds lightly on a dry frying pan. The one thing I would change about this salad in the future are the linseeds - I'd replace them with something less small and annoying. After taking the seeds out of the frying pan, I added some olive oil and fried the turkey strips, turning half way, for about 10min. While the sauce was caramelizing, I chopped the spring onions and took the seeds out of the pomegranate - my least favourite job. Finally, I added the pearl barley to the frying pan and removed it from heat. Mix it all in well so you don't waste any of the delicious honey and soya flavours. Add the pomegranate. Prep the watercress, and add the contents of the frying pan to the plate. Sprinkle with toasted seeds, chopped spring onions and an artistic flair. Now, I challenge you to make a better salad that this. Without blowing my own trumpet (that's a lie, but here in the UK it's unseemly to be seen blowing it, so we pretend not to), I'm not sure it can be done

Moroccan mint tea

If any of my neighbours looked out of the window this morning and saw me kicking the door of my shed, they'd be forgiven for thinking that I don't particularly enjoy gardening. They would, however, be wrong. Despite my momentary anger at the shed door, the fact that I only do it every month (at best) and my considerable lack of green-fingered talent, it is something that gives me great pleasure. Today, for instance I found that some mint was growing near the rosemary bush. Where did it come from?

I took it as a sign that it was time to make Moroccan mint tea. I have been making this tea, ever since I went to Morocco in 2001. Of course, I've developed my own method by now, and it has been transformed into something that perhaps isn't 100% authentic, but is, nevertheless, delicious and refreshing. The main difference is that I don't sweeten it with sugar, but with honey. And I don't make it anywhere near as sweet as they do. It's a matter of taste, I guess. You take a green tea bag and put it in a pot with about three sprigs of mint and a tablespoon of honey, before covering with freshly boiled water. Allow to brew for about five minutes, then pour into individual teacups. Or small glasses, if you want to be Moroccan about it. If I'd found some pinenuts, then I would have toasted them, and let a few float on top, just like they did in Quarzazante, on the edge of the Sahara desert

A few detox meal ideas

So these are the kind of things that I have been eating for the past week

That's some lightly smoked salmon with roast vegetable quinoa up there. I boiled the quinoa, and blanched the purple broccoli while the diced courgette and red pepper were roasting in the oven (with olive oil and chilli), adding the broccoli stalks to the rest of the vegetables for the last couple of minutes on high heat. The salmon was fried in some olive oil and served with a squeeze of lemon. This meal made me wonder why I don't just eat like this all the time - it's so easy and healthy

And here's my kale and mushroom bake. Sorry about the photo - I am still learning the art of taking good food pictures and my styling still clearly leaves much room for improvement. I blanched the kale and fried the mushrooms, then added the kale to the frying pan with a jar of chopped tomatoes, lots of fresh garlic, paprika and some garlic salt (my new BFF), and allowed to simmer for a bit. Finally, I put the whole thing in an oven-proof dish, cracked some eggs on top and baked in the oven until the whites were cooked, and the yolks runny - just how I like them

And here's some pak-choi with brown rice and smoked mackrel, in a tasty, citrusy broth. I stir-fried the pak-choi with garlic, chinese five spice and soya sauce, then added vegetable stock. Meanwhile, I cooked the rice, and grilled the mackrel (mainly the skin side so it would end up lovely and crispy) for about five minutes. I finished the whole lot with a generous squeeze of lemon. Can you see how big that bowl is? I think it may be a mixing bowl or a fruit bowl. It shows how much I can put away on one of my detoxes, and how little they have to do with fasting

And here's a guava, strawberry and oat milk smoothie, sweetened with honey - a nice breakfast idea!

As you can, see the detox has been going really well. That was until Saturday night came round and I got a little too friendly with a bottle, or three, of rose. The headache I had the next day was out of this world - I couldn't figure out if it's always like that, or if the that fact I'd been detoxing made it worse. Nevermind,  I forgave myself, took a paracetamol and put that episode - fun as it was - behind me. Now, I am back to detoxing until Easter

A relaxed spring detox plan

I started my Spring detox yesterday. People always tell me that I don't need to do it and that detoxes don't work, but I can feel that my one one does. I feel crap for the first three days -even though I eat loads of good, fresh produce and never starve myself - then, slowly, I start feeling better and better until eventually I am on cloud nine- wholesome, pure with just a little bit of smugness and maybe a vague halo around my head. That's when you know it's worked. This bubble of well-being takes me straight into summer, when, of course, I retox with barbeques that carry on well into the night, picnics washed down with Pimms in the park, beers on beaches, and lazy afternoons in pub gardens.  But first things first - you need to go through the hard times to fully appreciate the good, and springtime is a time for cleaning and preparation before the extravagences of summer, therefore, it seems natural to me to start with my body. I kicked off the "hard times" by swimming and having lunch on the rooftop in Shoreditch House. As the lovely waiter delivered the wrong salad and the one he handed to me looked really tasty, I didn't have the heart to send it back, so my detox began with a chicken and pecorino salad. To be fair, it was delicious, tender chicken - you could taste that it had had a happy life - and there was only a minimal amount of cheese among all the leaves and avocado, so I didn't beat myself up about it too much (read: at all). I also managed not to drink alcohol and opted instead for a protein smoothie with lots of goji berries and other amazing stuff in it. It's not like I get invited to Shoreditch House every day and a heatwave in London is even more rare, so this was a perfect excuse to slightly break the detox rules on the very first day. It kind of shows you how relaxed my approach to detoxing really is - and I think that's the way it should be anyway, I wouldn't advise anyone to become a food bore! That, below, is the detox I am aiming for, obviously I go for one of the options below each meal, not all of them, and sometimes I do break the rules a bit, like today

First week:

Breakfasts:
Fresh fruit, with bio yoghurt, honey and seeds
Oat and fruit yoghurt pot

Lunch:
Freshly-prepared salads with olive oil and lemon juice dressing
Leftovers (see below)

Dinners:
Quinoa with roast vegetables
Vegetable casserole with pearl barley
Vegetable stir-fry with salmon
Dhaal with brown rice
Vegetable curry (homemade) with brown rice
Grilled mackerel with watercress and brown rice in vegetable broth

Snacks:
Dried fruit and nuts
Crudites with hummus
Oat cakes with guacamole
Fruit smoothies with oat/almond/soya milk
Sashimi

Other drinks: White and green teas, Ginger with honey and fresh lemon squeezed in at the end, peppermint and camomile teas, Moroccan mint tea with honey (fresh mint and white/green tea), lots of water with milk thistle extract

Obviously, all processed foods are categorically out for the whole two weeks. I also aim to avoid red meat (and not eat much of the white variety either), caffeine (argh!), dairy (although goat's milk products are allowed), wheat (but I do allow dark/granary bread in moderation) and alcohol for a week. After a week, I relax a bit on the alcohol rule, because, without sounding like a have a problem, a week is all I can manage. And I have to basically give up my social life too. So in the second week, I allow myself a glass of red wine here and there or a vodka with soda and fresh lime, or two, if I go out. There are moments when it feels hard, especially in the first three days, but I believe that this makes you mentally and physically stronger. Breaking bad habits is hard but it feels right, and when you form new, healthier ones it really improves your quality of life. I didn't manage to do a detox this time last year, as I had just broken up with my ex under really horrible circumstances, and was surviving on a diet of cigarettes and alcohol. This gave me a great figure for the summer but I have also paid for it with health issues, so this year the need to do a detox is even greater. I'm in a good place mentally and spiritually now, having gotten rid of so many issues that were plaguing me throughout that relationship, and no longer feeling like anyone is draining my energy or abusing me, so the time is definitely right. I am actually quite excited, as it signals a new phase of being more self-aware, conscientious and, I won't deny it, looking pretty darn good. Come on, it's a universal fact that everyone wants to look hot for the summer!