Pumpkin soup -Just like in Blue Zones…

I recently ordered the cook book “Blue zones kitchen” to get some versatility in our home meals. In a family with kids you might end up in a situation where you repeat the same boring recipes day after day. We were in that spot. I was out of inspiration, didn’t know what to trial, limited time after work before bedtime didn’t allow three course French meals! The Blue Zone documentary series on Netflix really hit the nail with me. I have always eaten quite close to the Blue Zone diet without realising it but now with this new cook book I thought I would get some new recipe inspirations with the ingredients I love and also increase the vegetable quantity in our daily dishes. Needless to say it has been amazing.

All recipes I have tried so far have been fabulous and I also feel like I have gotten some recipe inspirations to create my own like for example this pumpkin soup recipe I am sharing below. It has been particularly nice to see both of my kids embracing the new flavours. Yesterday we tried Murasaki sweet potatoes, these are not purple sweet potatoes but sweet potatoes with purple skin, they are white in the middle like regular potatoes. We loved them. They were an interesting flavour combination of parsnip and sweet potato. It was similarly super sweet like parsnip but then it had that slight sweet potato flavour. Anyways enough of the babble..let me share the awesome pumpkin soup recipe now. You should try it, I have made it now twice in just one week and our family thinks it is super extra delicious! It is best served with rye and wholemeal bread. For those who live in Australia, Woolworths actually now has a German like sourdough rye bread that has 14% rye, it is like a sourdough loaf with rye and suits perfectly with this soup. My kids chose the rye bread over white bread when I offered both!

Blue Zone like pumpkin soup recipe à la Pia:

• 1l vegetable stock
• 1 onion chopped
• half a butternut squash in cubes
• 2 carrots chopped
• 1/2 capsicum chopped
• handful of coriander
• 1tsp dried parsley
• 1 tsp ground paprika
• 1/2 tsp salt
• hint of black pepper
• 1/2 dl (1/4 cup) cream

1.) Cook onion, butternut squash, carrots and capsicum in vegetable stock until they are nice and soft.

2.) Puree to make smooth soup.

3.) Heat up soup with spices and let simmer for a little while.

4.) Add cream, mix and turn off the heat.

This recipe is so delicious and the secret for the fantastic flavour is the capsicum in the pumpkin soup. It gives this very interesting sweet but spicy flavour. Serve with bread and enjoy!

Let’s talk about exercising..

I have always loved to move and exercise. I am not an endorphin junkie but I love the actual act of running or walking, particularly in a forest setting. It clears my mind, creates calm, helps to manage work stress and connects me with nature and my own thoughts. Japanese call this shinrin-yoku. Shinrin in Japanese means “forest,” and yoku means “bath.” So shinrin-yoku means bathing in the forest atmosphere, or taking in the forest through our senses. That is what I love doing.

A forest walk with dogs is fun even on a rainy day!

I have never really reflected on the importance of exercising to myself until recently when I listened to a podcast where the podcaster had a psychologist as a visitor who was explaining how you can gauge people’s values. There were three questions to ask:

• What you spend money on?
• What you talk about the most?
• What are you most disciplined with?

I played the game of assessing my values with my husband the evening after I listened to a podcast and for the third question my husband said I am definitely the most disciplined with exercising and health in general. That made me think more how important exercising and health related aspects actually are for me. Sometimes I wonder if it is part of growing up as an athlete that made me what I am or was it that something in athlete lifestyle including health and exercising attracted me. Honestly I don’t know. I do exercise pretty much every day whether it is 1h walk, 40minute run or a bit of core strength exercise or combination of these. Although if I am tired or I don’t feel like it I never push myself to exercise too hard as I want it to be always enjoyable and relaxing.

I do a very gymnast like circuit training repeating the entire circuit 3 times (see below). These are very basic core strength exercises but they build up the muscle -I have never been a gym person who uses weights at gym, not my thing, I like to move my own body weight and then stretch it by increasing exercises, again a very gymnast way of thinking 🙂

• Pushups X 15
• Sit ups X 15
• Side lifts left X 20
• Side lifts right X20
• Back lifts X 20
• Plank hold 20-30s
• Calf raises on stairs X 20
• Squads with a small weight X 15
• Light weight lift per hand X 15

Eating healthy is also very important to me. I have to say I am blessed as I naturally like healthy food. You could pile up McDonalds, lollies, cakes in front of me but if you have a nice fresh meal I’d rather choose that, however, I do not believe in full denial, I have a very central European approach to treats, I think you should allow yourself a treat every day so the craving won’t ever get you. My treat is chamomile team + chocolate before bed time!

So all in all, health and exercising is not only a value or important to me, it is me. What about sport outfits? Do I love exercise gear? No I don’t, you only see my in exercise gear when I am exercising never otherwise! Even though I love exercising I have always been that funny person who runs in very old exercising gear. I calculated recently that my running tights were roughly 20 years old. Being so, over the Christmas period when Boxing Day sales started I decided to upgrade my running gear. I know the biggest hit brands in recent years have been Jaggad, Lululemon, Adanola…but I am a NIKE girl at heart so I went and bought lovely NIKE running tights and tops from the sales + new Asics runners that are absolutely divine. Some of them were from the kids section but that is not unusual to me as I am quite petite 🙂 I have been so pleased with these clothes and felt happy to go for runs and walks in them!

I also got a Google Pixel watch over the Christmas and I enjoy wearing it. For runs and walks I can track my cardio health, it also gives me good data points on sleep quality with readiness score which is interesting. I am not a particularly good sleeper, I never have been and since becoming a mother my sleeping is ever lighter that it ever was!

Below my exercise gear clothing sales purchases:

• Nike women’s tights
• Nike women’s top
• Nike girls tights size L
• Google pixel watch
• Asics kids trainers

If you want to see the video I made on the same topic you can access it below: