We advise preparing over the weekend to give yourself a chance to approach the cleansing week slowly and have certain things ready in advance. For example, if you are working all week, it might be good to make some batches of soup and freeze them so you can have a healthy light meal easily. Or if you don’t normally cook brown rice now is a good time to practice – rather than Monday night when you are tired and hungry!
Read more…
Beef tomatoes are great for this recipe because of their size however any large organic tomato will do. You can play around with the fillings changing the cheese and herbs and veggies to suit you tastes and what you have available at home.
Read more…
Organico Bantry is now on Facebook, and during the week starting the 17th of April we will be putting up daily cleansing meal ideas and menu plans. If you would like to follow our suggestions for 3 days or the full week become a fan or look on our website. We will also give the information out instore during that week. It’s much easier to do a cleanse with a little support!
Modern life tends to burden our digestive system. We eat unhealthy foods, we eat too much and we don’t give our bodies a chance to recover and flush out the toxins we ingest from our food, the environment and the alcohol we consume. Traditionally many cultures had fasts built into the year, like Lent or Ramadan. Unfortunately the tradition of fasting has waned in Ireland and this means that our digestive systems need a little break. Read more…
I hadn’t heard of Chia Seeds until about a month ago. My excuse is that I was out on Maternity Leave and this new ‘craze’ has all blown up in a very short time! However, Chia seeds have a rich history and a lot going for them so I think they are around to stay.
They originate in Southern Mexico, and were a significant component of Mayan and Aztec diets. They were used as a source of energy as well as a treatment for joint pain, sore skin and as a way of stimulating saliva flow.
From a nutritional perspective, they are an excellent source of Essential Fatty Acids, even more so than flax seeds. And because they have such a high antioxident content the oil stays fresh for a long time and unlike flax, they do not need to be ground for the oil to be ‘available’ to our bodies.
For the digestion, Chia seeds provide a rich dose of fiber, and when soaked quickly in water (5 minutes or so) they form a gel which is very soothing, and helps relieve constipation.
This gel also seems to slow down the absorption of carbohydrates which makes Chia invaluable to athletes, people trying to lose weight, and diabetics.
Added to water with lemon or lime juice they make a drink known in Mexico as ‘Chia Fresca’. They have a mild nut-like flavour and can be sprinkled on cereal, baked in bread or just downed in water.
I have found them to be a pleasant addition to my diet, and we are working on a new Health Bread with Chia, Spirulina Flakes, and other exciting ingredients! I’ll keep you posted – Hannah
This is a light, tasty salad that I make variations of all throughout the year, substituting different seasonal vegetables for the broccoli and green beans. It is a great salad to bring to a barbecue, to serve as a starter or to serve along side your main meal with some slight variations. For example, if you increase the amount of mint and leave out the cheese you could serve it with spring lamb, or just leave out the cheese and it is delicious with some baked monkfish or fresh mackerel. Topped with marinated lightly fried tofu it makes a dairy-free, vegetarian and yet high protein meal. Read more…
Hi I’m Rachel (the one who you never see because I’m always in the kitchen!) and I would like to share my passion with you for healthy food that tastes great and doesn’t cost the earth. In Organico Café our aim is to provide tasty, healthy food that is really good for you (and to serve it along side indulgent treats to comfort and spoil you). There is a very important link between the food you eat and the way you look and feel. We have always been told that a healthy diet is important but as I discover more about what it means to eat healthily, I realise how different everyone’s interpretations of “a healthy diet” are. Read more…
Daily nuts may help boost health!
We often reccommend that our customers eat good quality (preferably organic) nuts on a daily basis to help stabilise blood sugar – nuts are a protien rich food source which is digested much more slowly than, say, toast. Hence they make good night time snacks for people who wake in the night, and good day time snacks for everybody.
Recently I recieved an email which confirmed all of this – thanks to Catherine from A.Vogel for the information!
”Adding nuts to a healthy diet may help release people from a dangerous combination of health problems. Up to 25% of people in the UK and Ireland are thought to have “metabolic syndrome”, which includes obesity and high blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar.
‘A Mediterranean diet of vegetables, fruit and fish plus daily nuts boosted health in more than one in eight at-risk volunteers, a Spanish study found. 13.7% of those eating their daily bag of nuts as well as the Mediterranean diet had improved. Even though none of the participants’ weight had dropped significantly over the year, waist circumferences had diminished in the nut-eating group, and cholesterol and blood pressure levels had dropped. The research was published in the Archives of Internal Medicine journal”.
Nuts also contain great sources of minerals – for example almonds for calcium and Brazils for selenium.For anyone who doeswn’t know the mediterranean Diet is a diet rich in fruit, veg, grains, olive oil, fish, and small amounts of meat and dairy. And red wine of course!!!!
This is a quick, easy, healthy and economical soup that tastes great. For the best taste and health value use organic carrots. There are 2 ways if making this soup – the first is quicker and heathier, the second perhaps a little more tasty!
Read more…
In season, gluten and dairy free!
250g Wild garlic – mix of leaves and flowers
50g toasted sunflower seeds
50g cashew nuts
3 generous tsps of miso
Olive oil
1 tbsp lemon juice
salt and pepper to season
Toast the sunflower seeds and leave to cool. Roughly chop the wild garlic. put all the ingredients in a blender, starting with 4 tbsps of olive oil and adding further depending on consistency, blend till a dark paste is formed. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Put into a container and cover with a thin layer of ollive oil to preserve.
Pesto tip – If when making pesto it turns out really bitter and you cant seem to right it add a small bit of boiled potato. It can often be the quality of olive oil, or the nuts being slightly rancid, but the potato rights all!!
Recipe Thanks to Jessica Mason – Cheers Jess!
This soup is a favourite with adults and children alike, and is a quick and easy receipe for a winter’s lunch. As with all our receipes we reccommend the use of organic vegetables and pulses for their superior nutritional qualities and taste.
Read more…