Primrose’s Kitchen recipe

Primrose Matheson explains how a naturopathic diet can benefit you and shares one of her favourite recipes

Having had a youth of chronic fatigue, M.E and poor digestion, I set out on a mission to understand my body and what was needed to maintain it in perfect health. This led me into Naturopathic and Complementary health studies and a degree in Homeopathy, the knowledge of which I’ve used to design natural and wholesome food. I started with muesli, as breakfast is, as a nation, our favourite meal of the day, due to its quick assembly. I had a desire to make it into a healthy food for any occasion, not just first thing in the morning.

By including ingredients you might associate more with lunch or dinner, such as beetroot and carrot, I wanted to create a versatile health food that tasted great and could be eaten as a healthy snack whatever time of the day. Ideally for a more balanced diet we should be eating as much or more fruit and vegetables than we do grains.

From this, it seemed logical that if I was going to add a healthy ingredient like vegetables, why not add other nutritious ingredients not found in breakfast muesli that support good health?

By incorporating beneficial and thoughtful ingredients into these muesli’s we at Primroses kitchen hope to make keeping a balanced diet easier. For more details of what our products include, visit our ingredients see the ‘Ingredients page’ on the website.

Since then, I’ve developed new products in order to make healthy eating a little easier and encourage my customers to empower themselves through the food they eat and listen to their bodies.

We’re constantly told what we should and shouldn’t eat, I ask people to listen to their body. If something makes you feel good and energised then eat it, if it does the opposite then don’t. It sounds simple but we have forgotten how intelligent our bodies are and when we listen to our bodies and make changes to our life, we feel empowered. Everything in our lives offers us an experience to grow – when we find the answers within ourselves I believe we have found the root of happiness.

The principles of Naturopathy

A naturopathic diet follows the six guiding principles of naturopathy:

- Trust that the body can heal itself

- Identify and treat the cause

- Treat the person as an integrative whole

- Use non-harming and non-invasive techniques

- Focus on overall health, wellness and disease prevention

- Use education to allow people to take responsibility for their health

To find more delicious food ideas like this, visit www.primroseskitchen.com

Roasted Root Vegetables with Caper Dressing

This tasty roasted treat is a great addition to any meal and is bursting with goodness.

Ingredients

- 4 medium parsnips

- 4 medium red onions

- 2 medium sweet potato

- A handful thyme and rosemary

- 3 tablespoons of coconut oil

- 1 head of garlic

- 25 cherry tomatoes

- 2 tablespoons of lemon juice

- 3 tablespoons capers chopped roughly

- ½ tablespoon honey

- ½ tablespoon Dijon mustard

- 2 tablespoon olive oil

To make

- Preheat oven to 190 C or gas mark 5

- Peel parsnips and cut into 2 segments, then cut each piece lengthways into two or four

- Cut onion into 6 wedges

- Place parsnips and onions in a bowl and combine with the thyme, rosemary, garlic, salt and pepper

- Place coconut oil in roasting tin before and allow to melt, then add all ingredients from the bowl to the tin and spread out and roll around. Cook for 20 minutes

- While the parsnips are cooking cut the sweet potato into similar sized segments as the parsnips. Add potatoes and cook for a further 50 minutes

- When all the vegetables look cooked and tender, add and stir the halved tomatoes

- Roast for a further 10 minutes

- Whisk the lemon juice, capers, maple syrup, mustard, olive oil and a pinch of salt

- Pour over the vegetables

- Optional: toast cashew pieces and sprinkle over the top once cooked