This is a question I get a lot from readers, health-interested acquaintances and people on-line all the time when I mention my juicer, my juices or tweet pictures of my green- or mud colored concoctions:

“Is there much difference between a juicer and a blender?  Which do you recommend? Is a juicer worth the investment?”

Short answers to these questions? YES, A JUICER, YES. Here’s why.

I totally like my blender. I like making green smoothies. A blender is multifunctional and I also use it to chop up the pumpkin when I’m making pumpkin soup. Green smoothies are easy on the tastebuds, require little prep time and are therefore a very accessible food to everyone wanted to eat healthy. Hence, green smoothies are great. You can switch things up endlessly. They contain fiber. Things like almond milk, bananas, soy yogurt, dates, avocados make it a heartier meal than green juice.

But. I may like my blender, but I love my juicer. You can rob my kitchen of every single appliance as long as you leave the juicer. Okay, maybe I’ll beg for the Nespresso too, but I’ll beg louder and harder for the juicer. And when people ask me how I got to where I am now I tell them three things: “Law of Attraction, Bikram Yoga, and Green Juice.”

For me, green juice is a key factor to my health, energy and general well-being. It’s instant nutrition and instant energy in a glass. Green juice gives me that amazing mental state, plenty more than green smoothies do. I have less unhealthy cravings, more and more constant energy, better skin (especially now that I’ve added beets to my juices) and just feel really good.

See, when you juice your veggies and fruits, you strip all the nutrients out of the casing, basically. This results in a glass or bottle filled with a buckload of necessary vitamins and minerals, that you can take in in a way that is super easy on your digestive system.

I happily drank green smoothies for about a year until I bought my first (then centrifugal) juicer. It was a 35 euros Tomado that’s no longer available anywhere — probably because it was shit, mine broke every 5 months. A centrifugal juicer is great to start out with and a little cheaper than the slow juicers: I used mine for about two years. When it broke I knew the next one was going to be a masticating juicer, and that’s when I bought the Matstone. Best 230 euros I’ve ever spent. I get a lot more juice, cleaning is less of a bitch and I can now make my own wheatgrass shots, which is awesome.

Yes, it was a (hefty) investment on such short notice, but it’s also a possibility to start saving up for it in the same way some people save up for shoes or designer bags, so that you can eventually buy it. If you save 30 euros a month (by buying one dress less, not going out one time on a Saturday, skipping one downtown dinner), you can have the thing within a year!

And like I said, I think it’s about transitioning. You’re transitioning to a greener version of your diet and yourself, and when you do it makes sense you drink green smoothies for as long as you like, and eventually you can add green juice to your diet. Which I think is a brilliant idea and greatly recommend.

I’m not a big winter fan. I don’t like snow. I don’t like wearing a million layers to stay warm. I am baffled by how crazy grocery and present shopping gets in December. Oh, and there is something in my auditory brain regions that makes me violently reject any Christmas song, especially Mariah Carey’s.

But, you gotta work with reality (some of the time anyway), and so I try to make at least a couple of my million layers fashionable, think lots of happy thoughts when shopping and I have declared Adele and Lana Del Rey perfectly acceptable alternatives to Christmas music.

Anyway. Winter is weird on me when it comes to what I (want to) eat. I’m eating like a trucker at the moment and my appetite and cravings are all over the place. I still eat some foods from my daily foods list but there is lots of new, extra cravings. Salads are a distant memory; I eat lots of bread, preferably right from the oven. I want warm things. Preferably spicy and rich and with a million calories.

Oh well. Another thing I have to try to work with, so let’s do it. There is lots of hot and healthy options that taste great, after all. Suggestions are very welcome, because I have a lot less variety than I would like.

Before I go into my food as it’s been the past month, I’m going to mention the whole cooling versus warming foods. This is according to Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine teachings but it’s also very common sense. I mean, really.

In summer to stay cool, you should eat foods like cucumber, lemon, mint and apple, have lots of salads. For winter, it’s good to eat less salads and eat more cooked foods. It’s also better to eat and drink things with warming qualities: Foods like beets, (sweet) potatoes, carrots, but also bananas and avocados, and herbs like ginger, cinnamon and cumin too.  ’Warm’ stuff. I’m not too strict with it, but this is how I try to incorporate that in my daily diet:

• Green Juice: I can’t not drink it. I love the taste and the easy way of getting energy and nutrients. This is my green juice that I’m more in the mood for in winter: Beet, carrot, spinach, broccoli stem, celery with orange juice and ginger.

• Tea: I drink cinnamon tea, the Yogi Tea classic, orange peel tea and Lipton’s Russian Earl Grey. I drink Lipton’s Green Tea with jasmine. And I still put ginger in the garlic press to mix with raw honey and a little lemon juice every morning too.

• Breakfast: What I do most mornings is chop some banana and kaki fruit, cook some buckwheat or quinoa and add some chia seeds and almonds. I drink orange juice or aforementioned green juice with that grain-concoction.

• Fruit: Thanks to Manfred, I’ve been on a real tangerine kick for the past month and I eat kaki fruit (vitamin C!) and bananas in between meals. I also snack on dates with my tea. That’s definitely new. It’s the almond-situation all over again.

• Lunch: I only have a salad once a week with these temperatures, and when I do I add cooked grains (quinoa) or vegetables (broccoli). Most of the time though, I have some home-made soup or eat bread with avocado and sprouts or goat cheese. I occasionally change my sandwiches up with tuna salad or peanut butter.

• Dinner: I make curries (veggie or salmon) pretty much every other night. I also cook a lot with pumpkin and sweet potato, with lots of spicy stuff. I am personally responsible for the curry paste shortage in my supermarket and there is a mean-looking adjuma pepper that I use teenytiny bits of for most of my cooking. Nice and spicy.

How about you guys? Any new foods you eat more of now that it’s winter — I bet the tangerine kick is familiar? Recipes you make now that it’s this cold outside? Let me know because I’m guessing I’m going to need some more recipes to make it through winter. Now, I’ve put on Family Guy, using our new Nespresso machine (LOVE IT) and enjoying the smell of our Christmas tree. Have a lovely Sunday, pretties.

The first post about my almost daily foods has been quite a while ago now. Since seasons change, people change and daily foods change, an update was in store!

Some aspects of my food are still the same, while others are different or more season inspired. Take a look at the foods I eat now that it’s fall:

First up is the kale infused green smoothies I now have pretty much every morning. Before work, before yoga, before sitting at the dining room table to write. Now that kale is in season, I buy it every week. I juice it but also use it to make this bad boy. It has replaced the raw cacao pudding you saw in the first post about my daily foods!

It consists of almond milk, rinsed kale (as much as I’m in the mood for), a banana, some lemon or lime juice, chia seeds and a frozen soft fruit like raspberries or blueberries. If I’m feeling the superfood vibe I add maca-, lucuma and/or hemp powder.

Recommendation: Make this with frozen cherries and raw cacao. Delicious!

I still eat salads for lunch. My standards pretty much still consist of cucumber, sprouts, (baby) tomatoes and avocado. I regularly add bell pepper or zuchini and I keep salads interesting by alternating the following optionals: mozarella, goat cheese, pine nuts, hemp seeds, salmon. Favorites of late are nori sheets, feta and pumpkin seeds.

I started to eat yogurt again for both protein and probiotic reasons. I used to eat yogurt every morning and evening when I was little and came to miss it! The difference is I now eat mostly soy yogurt (unless we’ve run out; then I’ll have regular), organic cereal, chia seeds, raisins and dried fruits like cranberries or goji berries (I know people who are into food combining are probably in hysterics right about now. ).

Now that I have a juicer that can handle herbs, kale and wheatgrass my juices are meaner and greener than ever. I drink 0.5-1 liter of green juice pretty much every day. I even learnt to love the taste of cilantro (combine with lime) and parsley (combine with tomato) in my juices. That’s saying quite something because my friend, those are some strong effing herbs.

I FINALLY figured out how to eat almonds. Long overdue: I know they’re superhealthy but I just find them so bland and boring. I would try to eat them plain but always ended up going ‘ugh’ or falling asleep. I do like eating them in this magical almond-fruit combo.

So now I combine them with frozen fruit, chia seeds, some dried fruit and raw cacao nibs; I often bring this to work as a snack. The goji berries soak in the juice of the raspberries or blackberries and the chia seeds make it a nice sticky little package.

Okay, you will just have to envision the end result yourself but lately I’ve been getting into beets. More specifically, beet juice: It’s a great detoxifier and works wonders on your blood. So lately, I’ve thrown 1-2 beets together with carrot- and lemon juice and drink it. It’s my go-to  juice in the afternoon.

And of course, I still eat more bananas than an average monkey-family, drink lots of green tea and my indulge foods are still present. Less brownies, more cupcakes though. Alice in Cakeland has stolen my heart, quite rightly so as you can see from the picture. Cutest cupcakes ever.

Tell me, what do you eat almost daily? Since variety and lenience are integral parts of my healthy lifestyle, I’m almost looking for (not so) healthy inspiration. Let me know in the comments. In the mean time, I got a cupcake to kill. Kisses!

Editor Renee Audier of ‘Magazijn’ met years ago when she launched her on-line magazine with Mascha van der Spek, we had coffee, she interviewed me (lol I felt so famous) and I wrote my first article for her. I absolutely adore Renee; she’s smart, fun to have coffee with and she has one of the best qualities I could ever ask for: She lets me write in English. Bless.  For the past three issues I’ve been one of the main writers, and every time it’s launched I am increasingly happy with the pictures, the texts, and the care that goes into it.

This is the bit that I have written for this issue; if you scroll to page 30 you can read my article ‘The Art of Healthy Eating’, where I discuss the fact that healthy eating can be so effing confusing and how I personally try to work though all the conflicting messages and General Clusterfuckery.

This is the rest of the content and it is worth the browse. You can check out Chicks Love Food, the Raw Foodist, poetry, the interview with Richie Culver and the most ah-mah-zing photographs throughout the entire issue. Enjoy!