The reason I could never be a raw foodist is winter. Warming things just slightly or adding lots of spice to my food and drink to make them more ‘warming’ for my system is not something I have ever warmed up to.

The Croatian in me loves hot things which you can eat with a spoon, but without slurping (Eastern Europeans love to slurp!) and raising my body temperature when those winter chills kick in.

Luckily in Ibiza we do not have a very cold winter period but man, when it is cold, it is cold! The majority of houses and apartments are not equipped with heating systems to keep us pleasantly warm when it is oh-so-cold outside. My air conditioning unit at home is ok.  I switch it on and it is super hot within minutes.  But when I switch it off it gets cold again in minutes – even before you can say minestrone.

So at my home and in my Passions I make sure that hot stuff is on hand! I have an impressive selection of teas (I love my Teapigs!), but I also love making my own tea from herbs, roots, citrus and spices. Recently, one of my favourite teas has been rose tea, which I’m so proud we will be serving in all Passions. Just a few rose buds, add hot water and voila!

By now maybe you have noticed that I’m huge fan of orange blossom, rose water, dates, halva, and other middle eastern inspired ingredients. I am quite simply obsessed with the flavors, textures, and exotic ingredients of the orient.

But, back to winter warmers..!

Our customers love to keep warm, as shown by the endless chai teas and chai lattes we have been selling in Passion, along with hot turmeric tonics, matcha teas and lattes, gojichinnos, lemon, honey and ginger teas, and my absolute winter favourite hot apple juice with cinnamon (it’s just like drinking apple pie!)

We have been having lots of fun in our new Passion Pantry with the creation of our deli plate and the soups that go with it. Every day we come up with a new concoction. Day one – red lentil and pumpkin, day two – cauliflower, curry and coconut, day three – creamy peas soup or simply a chunky mixed veggie soup with chickpeas and day four – one of my favourites which is fennel and oat milk soup.  We make a mean kale stew too. All so inspiring and so very good!

As far as I am concerned, winters are for soups and I could live on them. We normally make a huge pot and you can see me going back to the kitchen every couple of hours or so, picking up the bowl and loading up a ladle or two for yet another bowl.

As I don’t cook at home, I have been eating in my restaurants constantly for three years now.  Our homemade winter soups are feeling really good as we are not so busy in the winter months and I can eat in peace and really savour the flavours. You may say lucky me, eating in Passion all day long, and I do agree.  We have superbly fresh food from high integrity ingredients but I hardly ever eat in peace as my mouthfuls are interrupted by people talking to me, answering e-mails, all while swallowing my broccoli without chewing it!

Sometimes I push my plate away half way through my meal, fed up with chewing because I have so many things to do! I’m serious. I get bored eating and chewing… so much for people thinking I must be a real gourmand. Not at all! I eat because I have to, but I like to create food so this is all it matters, I create, you eat! I hope we have good deal 😉

Wishing you lots of nice hot stuff, warm socks and fluffy snoring dogs (or another form of human hot water bottle) in those long dark winter nights.

Peace, love & warmth

 

The first time I tried raw food was actually in Ibiza, believe it or not!

Those of you who have been in Ibiza for a few years might remember a little deli on the roadside next to Bambuddha Grove. I loved that place. I still miss it! There was a sweet couple running it and I have to thank them for allowing me to eating raw courgette pasta and trying raw wraps for the first time in my life. I spent a lot of time there drinking my acai smoothies and absorbing the whole super natural atmosphere and the food alchemy that was so new to me. I remember seeing them spreading orange paste so thinly onto plastic sheets (they were making carrot wraps), totally bewildered. I was like, whaaaat? How do you do that? What’s in it?

I used to go there often with my boyfriend at the time, who was only happy to accompany me, but every time upon leaving the place he would put his arm around my shoulders and sweetly ask me, “OK, that was nice, but where are we going for a lunch now?” The meat and potato Portugeezer didn’t even consider this type of food as a starter but more like an appetizer! Lots of guys still look at raw food as such. My brothers are first in line to laugh at the whole concept. You can go and influence and inspire thousands of people you don’t even know to change or upgrade their diets, but you may not ever succeed with your own family. And this is my true story to this day. My brothers are laughing at my business of ‘selling grass’ – that’s their way of looking at Passion salads.

Afterwards, the restaurant Parawdiso opened in Santa Gertrudis (not to the amusement of my ‘handsome-gym-going-carrots-don’t-give-you-muscles’ Portugeezer). It was here that I discovered raw desserts. Even though their raw carrot cake hardly matched the Passion carrot cake, it was ‘interesting’ to me. I looked on in horror at the already pre-juiced concoctions in the jugs, thinking, ‘they pre juice! Ugrh’! But I was kindly informed those juices were juiced using a slow extracting juice machine that kept all their nutrients intact. Hmm, I did not buy that instantly, but I was totally clueless at the time about the whole concept. And so the (raw) Pandora box was opened for Lana Love…

I was intrigued, I wanted to know more, I liked the concept, I liked nut balls! I decided to go on a raw diet as back in those days my diet of coffee and croissants was getting out of control. I was so ‘sorry’ to bin any unsold croissants at Passion at the end of each day, I though it made sense for me to eat them all. Oh my dear God! Imagine!

So, the nice people in Parawdiso were supplying me with their awesome onion bread, raw crepes and those nut balls. I did not even attempt to try and make anything myself in those days, it was just too alien to me and the whole ritual of driving to Santa Gerturdis from Playa d’en Bossa and picking up my raw goodies was awesome. I started losing weight like crazy. It was almost like one kilogram a day! It was a great change and new outlook on the way I was eating. And the rest is history… I discovered David Wolfe, I discovered superfoods, I discovered raw food recipes and voila! Now I make raw food free handedly without even following recipes anymore. Nut balls are now the famous Passion power balls… don’t you just love them?

I have never been a raw foodist, I love oven-roasted veggies and sweet potato mash way too much, but I do love having as much as raw food possible in my diet: fresh, simple, without too much seasoning, vibrant and colourful.

Peace, love and power balls!