Eating a plant-based or vegetarian diet takes a little more care and thought than an omnivore’s diet. If you’re not eating meat, the key to getting all the nutrients you need lies in variety. In order to truly experience vital health, it’s important to branch out, experiment, and discover what each of our wonderful, unique bodies requires. So go forth and graze widely!

This recipe for baked fennel enhances all the beautiful sweetness of the fennel bulb by paring it with orange juice and roasting it slowly to encourage the natural sugars to develop.

Preparing for labour naturally is a process and involves all levels of your being. It involves time and space. It involves giving in to the mystery and wisdom of the body. Acupuncture can help facilitate this process and get your body in good shape for a successful and empowering natural labour.

It took my husband and I a long time to become sauerkraut converts. We just didn’t understand why anyone would enjoy eating something so stinky and sour. Then a friend of ours served it up with a Hungarian beef stew and we suddenly understood; it’s all about context.

This is fantastic alternative to green tomato chutney; it’s just as zingy and delicious, but contains no sugar, and offers all the nutritional and digestive benefits of a ferment.

Here is the secret to making authentic pesto. Big thanks to author and chef Samin Nosrat, who shared her experience of making pesto with a Ligurian home cook in her fantastic series, Salt, Fat Acid, Heat. My version is adapted from Samin’s recipe.

Eggplants are at their absolute best in early autumn. The late summer sun gives these Mediterranean plants the kick they need to form fruit, which means they are still ripening right now as the autumn deepens. This is one of the ways we’ve been cooking them and I highly recommend trying it. These walnut-stuffed eggplant rolls are simple, yet absolutely delicious.

To me, autumn is a season of soft beauty and bitter-sweet nostalgia. I love the deep blue skies, gentle breezes, warm colours and the rusty-gate autumn call of the magpies. Autumn is a time of bounty in the veggie garden. It’s a time to celebrate the good things we find in our lives and to let anything that is holding us back fall away.

A healthy microbiome consists of millions of bacteria, some beneficial to humans and others less beneficial. We inherit our microbiome form our mother at birth. It has been with us since day one and has developed and changed with us throughout our life.

This is a fantastic summertime soup. It’s wholesome, mineral-rich and digestible, which is just what’s needed in the hot weather to keep the body cool and light, and to replenish minerals lost through sweating.