Eating the rainbow with tips from Chef Bern

Before I start, just a quick note about potatoes. Your usual spuds should be immune from the fat chip price rises and shortages - it’s the particular potatoes grown for the deep freezer that become deep fried in food production that are facing the cost inflation and shortages – not the ones we buy for home. While the world around us gets back into the day-to-day routine, it’s helpful to start some forward planning to get the most out of what free time we have!

We love holidays as they bring change bring and extras of fun and celebration. But perhaps for our wellness, our waistlines and our budgets, it’s best to get back to the good old dependable planning and routine.

It’s at this time of year that we get to look forward to autumn and apples, mushrooms, root vegetables and rhubarb. While we still have plenty of sunshine being absorbed in our fruits and vegetables, make the most now of stone fruit, berries and melons, along with sweetcorn, tomatoes and leafy greens. Eating the rainbow is a superb challenge to keep us well.

Berries, melon and passionfruit for breakfast tick off reds, blues, orange and green straight off the list.

Including avocado, rocket and tomatoes with either a salad, in a sandwich or tossed through a pasta gets two more greens and a red on the chart.

Roasted peppers, onions and garlic combined with sweetcorn, fish or seafood, beans or your choice of proteins along with a handful of parsley, basil or mint, for dinner, add roasted pumpkins, carrots or kumara for your vitamin A.

If you can include a juicy slice of pineapple, an orange or a banana during the day for the yellows means you are winning in the coat of many colours race!

I love to think of my fruits and vegetables as the building blocks of meal planning, then I add in protein and carbohydrates.

Include quality dairy products. I’m focused on my calcium intake these days as well, and the varieties are endless. Yoghurt with breakfast comes with gut loving enzymes and probiotics. Fresh cheeses such as ricotta, goat curd, cottage cheese give me easily digestible options such as cheese on toast with fresh ripe tomatoes. Grated cheese like cheddar, havarti and mozzarella love melting over broccoli, cauliflower and potatoes, so they join in the party every other day.

If you don’t eat one or two vegies or fruit because you don’t like them, it’s no big deal just get more of the stuff you do like.

See if you can make a daily color challenge for February, your incentive is the vitamin and mineral power house you’ll become before winter.