If there was ever a time that made us pay attention to our health, it has been this past year. Eating well is important as your body needs energy, protein, vitamins, and minerals. Having a good intake of protein and energy-rich foods supports you with rebuilding muscles, maintaining your immune system, and increasing your energy levels to allow you to do your usual activities. It also promotes a healthy mindset.
Here at Cooking 4 All, we hope to inspire you to switch up your diet, one small step at a time. This week, we come equipped with a restaurant recommendation: Los Angeles’ Botanica. A restaurant/market turned wellness brand, Botanica inhabits both an actual space and a virtual space and includes a website and magazine.
Launched in 2017 by friends and food writers Heather Sperling and Emily Fiffer, the brand has amassed quite a fanbase over the past year. “We believe that healthful cooking can be vibrant, creative, and wildly satisfying,” they write on their website. “We believe that hospitality should be nourishing. We’re big into color and flavor; we’re not into rules. We serve food that makes you feel good.”
The duo’s restaurant serves meals that are made from all-local vegetables, fruits and dairy; a rainbow of grains and legumes; spices and vinegars from across the world; healthy fats (local and organic when possible); wild Pacific seafood, and sustainably raised meat. Refined sugars, processed foods, and products of industrial agriculture are nowhere to be seen.
“This isn’t rocket science, but eating many pounds of green things, drinking lots of water, and getting ample fats on the daily,” explained Fiffer in an interview with Golubka Kitchen, where she talked about her diet plan. “Supplements aside, being happy is the number one glow weapon. You can slather on all the oil in the world and eat well but if you’re feeling crummy it’ll show.”
“The beauty of cooking with no rules is the ability to call on any number of ingredients to make something taste more delicious,” she went on to say. “The result is a menu with dishes that are vegan, vegetarian, meaty, gluten-free, glutinous, dairy-free, yogurt-laden, etc., etc. We like to think we can make almost anyone happy—there’s something for everyone.”
Dishes include the Heirloom Melon Salad (composed of melon, sheep’s milk feta and cashew-chive sour cream), the Cherry Gateau Basque, and the tomatillo, heirloom bean, spigarello and feta shakshuka – an absolute favorite. But you don’t actually have to be in LA to enjoy what the brand has to offer. Sign up for their online publication or follow them on Instagram for a boost of energy.
