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Hemsley sisters find that ‘eat your greens’ sells cookbooks

MELISSA and Jasmine Hemsley are getting noticed for their style of cooking using wholesome ingredients, of which diners say “this doesn’t taste healthy” — and meaning it as a compliment.

Over the last year, their debut cookbook, The Art of Eating Well, has been translated into three languages and shortlisted for an award, while challenging traditional approaches to healthy eating.

This includes embracing “good” fats, like butter and coconut oil, and enjoying sweets without resorting to refined sugar.

The London-based sisters, who run a food consultancy business and write a blog for Vogue magazine, spoke about their newfound success and the importance of cooking food that tastes good.

Matilda Egere-Cooper: Did you anticipate that the book would do so well?
Melissa: No. We’ve never written a book before. The book came out last year and at that point we’d been Vogue bloggers and had our own blog for two years, so we thought our following on Vogue might buy the book. Our publisher said you’ll have the type of book that someone will buy and they’ll cook from it, then their friends will ask them about it — and that’s what happened.

How did you come up with the idea of the art of eating well?
Jasmine: Mel and I, we love food. We were brought up to eat our greens, not waste any- thing, try everything or you’ll be the first in the world to die, which was our mom’s favourite thing to say! But our experience wasn’t idyllic or romantic.

Why did you write the cookbook?
Melissa: The book pretty much wrote itself in that, a lot of the tips and tricks, we were giving our food clients on a one-on-one basis. Some of our clients would already have a diet plan that never felt good or tasted good. So that’s what they wanted — and with us, they found it enjoyable. The biggest compliment we would get is “this doesn’t taste healthy” — and that’s the whole point of our book. It’s a book sharing recipes we love that makes you feel good.

The book offers a lot of unusual recipe ideas such as black-bean brownies or rice made out of cauliflower — but your favourite ingredient in the book is bone broth. How do people respond to the idea of boiling bones?
Melissa: The kind of people who’d only eat chicken breast and wouldn’t eat anything with a bone in, for sure, they don’t like any thing of that side of things. But for me, I’d choose broth over a juice or a smoothie. It’s a really good thing, full of nutrients.

You both have created a new philosophy to healthy eating — but if you could narrow it down to one tip, what would it be?
Jasmine: Slow down. Chewing slowly all comes down to connecting with the food again. That word “mindfulness” has been bandied around a lot lately, but there’s a lot in it. Just by eating slowly, food is more satisfying. — Reuters

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This article first appeared in The Edge Financial Daily, on April 30, 2015.

 

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