healthy food - Choice of Magic

Creamy Cauliflower Soup with Cannellini Beans

January 29, 2024

This creamy cauliflower and Cannellini (white) beans soup has bran on repeat in our home this winter, and I swear that it’s not just because of how easy it is to make (yes, I used canned beans, guilty as charged). I think I love it so much because beyond the delicious taste, it is also super nutritious – high in fibre and a great protein source due to the beans and high in vitamins C and K due to the cauliflower. This soup is basically the perfect comfort food for a cold winter day, or for a sunny day when you need to prepare something super quickly. I’ve iterated upon recipes I came across online until reaching this one, so without further ado – here goes.

International Dinner Food

Summer Salad with Quinoa, Radishes, Cucumber and Feta

June 14, 2021

For someone who doesn´t like quinoa, I sure am persistent in trying to find combinations that will work with it. That´s how this #homemadeMonday edition came about. Me, myself and I, strolling around the farmers´ market in the search for veggies that would work well with this earthy seed. I came up with radishes (oddly enough, one of my least favourite veggies), cucumber and of course – feta cheese. What resulted is a fresh summer salad, with earthy tones, that makes for a great light, yet rich in vitamins lunch or dinner. Read on for the recipe.

International Dinner Food

Rainbow Salad with Mango and Blackberries

November 9, 2020

I should perhaps start this #homemadeMonday recipe with a confession: I am one of those insane people that likes pineapple on my pizza. I mean, I don´t love it, but I don´t mind it either. What I do love though, is fruit in my salad. And while I rarely post salad articles on the blog, when I made this salad, I felt I really wanted to share it with you all. A little bit of unsolicited context for when I first made this salad: I was reading Marissa Peer´s book Perfect Weight Forever, and was working on bettering my food habits by not associating heavy comfort food with feeling better when I was down. I instead decided to stick to eating well and healthy when I was feeling sad and not try to fix these moments with fast food. So I made this salad and it was so delicious that I swore never again to order a way too greasy cheeseburger to stop me from crying. Here´s the super simple recipe:

International Dinner Food

Nonna´s Secret Beetroot Starter

July 27, 2020

For Choice of Magic´s second chef series edition, I´m bringing you someone really special. Nonna has been my foster grandma for over two years and she is the single most remarkable woman I´ve ever met. Thins tiny 96 year old fairy grandmother lives in a castle, speaks six languages, has been a WWII spy and is one of my best friends. Every Sunday morning for the past two years Nonna and I have sat down in her room or her garden, having tea and speaking about everything. She´s taught me Renaissance art, I´ve taught her about escape rooms, and we have never run out of subjects. Recently I asked her about the dinner parties she used to throw in her youth (nowadays it´s mostly lunch parties) and I tried to imagine what they would look like in that palace. That´s when she gave me her secret beetroot starter recipe. It´s as simple as it gets, and yet I couldn´t find anything similar to it on the whole wide web. With her permission, I decided to share it with you for this #homemadeMonday.

Food Lunch

The Recipe that Will Make You Love Quinoa

April 27, 2020

Quinoa – one of those newly popular foods that no one knows exactly how to pronounce and half the people sound like pretentious pricks when they say it out loud. It looks good in your brunch, cause it comes in many colours and it´s said to be super healthy. According to Wikipedia, it is richer in protein, dietary fiber, B vitamins, and dietary minerals than other grains, making it some kind of super food. The only problem I have with it is I really don´t like it. That is, until one of our chefs at work cooked us a spin-off of this recipe. It had two things I really hated – quinoa and spinach. And it was de-li-ci-ous! I adapted the recipe slightly, taking out the spinach, adding some spices and changing the measures and out came the recipe that will make you love quinoa. Here goes this #homemadeMonday .