This past week was filled with a new adventure (and being a little nervous about this new adventure). On Tuesday I did ten hours of travelling to visit my an island a bit North of Stockholm where I have enrolled as a student. I’ve now officially embarked on a journey to become a dietary adviser and health coach along with roughly 30 other students. It’s a distance course with a few meetings spread across one year and so far it’s been a bunch of fun. I had forgotten how wonderful it is to learn and how enriching it is to sit in a group of people with different life experience and hearing their thoughts on a subject.
Since sharing that I was going to start studying again a lot of you have commented that it’s brave and that pride and an idea of oneself can come in the way of following such a path. I just want to address this quick before I move onto talking about food, I hope you’ll bear with me. Just like many of you might have been was very hesitant to start studying again. I already have a BA in my backpack along with years of studying leading up to that degree. It cost me money and time and it should in theory have brought me to a place in life where I found my path in life, satisfaction and maybe even success. For me this was not the case though and I think for many others it is not the case either.
I was rather young when I decided to study at university and to add to that I chose to study something very specific; dance and theatre in both practice and later theory. Following an injury and a lot of confusion I had a BA in performance studies but no idea of how or desire to work in this field. For many years after I felt rather lost and like I didn’t want to spend even more money and time studying. Sometimes I even felt like I had failed at life. This may sound silly but I’m sure some of you will recognise this feeling of when everyone seem to be moving on and you’re just stuck in one place. Of course I wasn’t stuck in one place though and life is not a linear journey, I have learnt that now. And I’m sure I’ll forget and learn it again at some point or a few.
Having started this course now and having pushed through the hesitation and doubt has brought me renewed energy and empowerment. I took the leap and started something, I showed up for myself. I took one more step to learning more about what my heart desires and how this can lead me to being a more fulfilled person which in turn will lead me to being able to show up for others as well. I think I’m starting to understand that prioritising my own learning and development I can be more of service to others. If I am more loving and understanding towards myself I can extend this to others. There’s a connection between you and me but I have start on my end to be able to show up fully with high spirit.
I hope that you’ll find this short story of my way to a new chapter in my life useful in some way and know that I truly believe in the power of change and that it’s within each and everyone of us.
Now to a little chat about food to lighten the mood! (And a little rhyming to break that serious session, haha.) The recipe on this page was inspired by a cooking show I heard on the radio on the way home from the grocery store a couple of weeks ago. They were making a salad with raw beets and carrots and I thought that’s perfect because I had a whole bunch of them growing in my garden. I decided to recreate it from memory and it turned out scrumptious enough that I wanted to share it with you in all it’s simplicity.
This salad is truly a five minute job and works as a side to many dishes, especially ones inspired by certain parts of Asia since the dressing I threw together is heavy on the soy sauce and sesame seeds. You could of course try another type of dressing to make it suitable for a more Nordic or European spread, maybe a simple vinaigrette or maybe a drizzle of balsamic glaze?
Either way I decided to give you a serving suggestion with an equally quick and simple noodle bowl. I love them because you can throw almost anything in there and it tastes good. That’s just what noodles are to me; a vessel for whatever leftover veggies I can find in my fridge and freezer when I’m hungry but want to spend about ten minutes in the kitchen. Do you guys have any dishes like that? Any life savers for when you’re starting to get hangry but don’t feel like toast? I’d love to add some of your dishes to y repertoire because believe it or not this is a reoccurring state in my life, haha.
Now I hope you enjoy the recipe and get to cooking some yum food this coming week to nourish and blow some life into those ideas at the back of your mind. It’s good to be courageous and take a skip and a hop in a new direction sometimes. Maybe that time is now in your life, maybe not. I’ll keep you posted on my new exploration anyhow!
Much love x
RAW CARROT AND BEET SALAD + SIMPLE NOODLE BOWL
YIELDS: 2 servings / TIME: 20 min
Salad:
2 medium sized beets (I used different colours), peeled
2 large carrots, peeled if not organic
3 tbsp sesame seeds
1/2 cup soya sauce or tamari
1/2 cup brown rice vinegar (or sub rice vinegar)
1 tbsp toasted sesame oil
1 tbsp maple syrup (or sub other liquid sweetener)
1 tbsp ginger, grated
Noodle bowl:
Rice noodles, enough for two servings
1 cup frozen edamame beans
1/2 cup fresh or frozen green beans
4-6 lettuce leaves
Nori crinkles or other seaweed for sprinkling
Salad:
Toast your sesame seeds in a skillet over medium heat. This will only take a few mintes until they start getting a little colour and become fragrant. Let them cool for a minute while you prep your vegetables. Then mix them with the remaining ingredients in a jar or small bowl to complete your dressing.
Use a mandoline to slice your beets very thinly and a vegetable peeler to shave the carrots into ribbons. Place in a colourful mix on a serving plate and drizzle with the dressing.
Noodle bowl:
Follow the instructions on your noodles to cook them and then rinse with cold water.
Steam your green beans and edamame beans for roughly five minutes. If using fresh beans this might take a little longer and I’d recommend placing them in the steamer basket first giving them first contact with the steam, and the edamame beans on top which need less coking and more thawing here.
Either place your lettuce leaves whole in your bowl like I did which gives you the opportunity to make little lettuce cups as you eat your meal or cut it up in bite sized pieces.
Plate up your lettuce, noodles and steamed vegetables and then go ahead and add your raw beet and carrot salad. Use any extra dressing to dress the rest of the bowl and sprinkle with nori crinkles if you wish.
oh jummy! I have to try this 🙂
I am happy to read that you like your choice to study again. I think there are a lot of othe people out there who feel with you and studied something for years, made their degree and then had no clue what to do with it. I am about to start going to university soon, I am pretty exited. 🙂
xx
Nathalie
http://dreamsaremadeforliving.blogspot.de/
yes, I hope you do and enjoy it! 🙂
good for you going off to university.
I hope you have a great experience and learn a lot!
x
Dear Malin,
Greeting from France 🙂
I’ve discovered your videos and your website last month, and since i’m completly addict 🙂
I have a problem which is soooo annoyying for me, maybe you would have some advise.
I’m vegetarien, not vegan yet, i’m eating a lot of veggies every day, I realy love it. The problem is that I have all the time stomach pains, i’m blowed all the day long, i hate it.
On the other hand, i know that maybe it is because I eat so much veggies and raw staffs but why am I the only one who has this problem? You never seem to be blowed or have digestion problems. What is the ‘secret’ ? 🙂
I’m realy discouraged those days, I would appreciate your help our advise.
Take care and thank you for your great videos!
[…] some purpose my recipe crushes this week are all fairly summery, beginning with this awesomely easy raw carrot and beet salad with sesame dressing and noodles from Malin over at Good […]
[…] some reason my recipe crushes this week are all pretty summery, starting with this awesomely simple raw carrot and beet salad with sesame dressing and noodles from Malin over at Good […]