Colourful - Smoothies* and Ilijana´s Tips for Everyday Life

Q: You (Ilijana Dedova**) are working with a farmer´s magazine – since some time they have a version for organic producers too in their program -, so I want you to ask your personal rules concerning organic products like food, cosmetics or cleaning agent?

A: There are some products I attend to buy organic, such as yoghurt, eggs, cheese and butter. Even deodorants, not the cleaning agent. Buying fruits and vegetables I prefer domestic traded products, exceptions: avocados (I cannot resist them), olives and bananas.

Q: Please tell us how does an ideal “healthy” day off look like? Are you doing sports and outdoor activities? What do you take for breakfast, lunch and dinner?

A: I like swimming, cycling and exercising. Regularly if possible. But I should be more often in nature. I try to diversify my meals what the ingredients concern. If you are asking for my favourite breakfast: it is a salad with tomatoes, cucumbers, feta cheese (grated) and olives with some slices bread. For lunch I take potatoes or sweet potatoes and other vegetables, fried in the oven, with salad and yoghurt with mint, for dinner salad or vegetable soup with bread. When I am very hungry I take potatoes or rice with vegetables or a veggie pizza, very often pulse such as lentils, beans and green peas to get the necessary iron. By the way, I take chili with every meal, even for breakfast.

Q: How can you manage to combine job and healthy lifestyle? Are you drinking enough during working time? How do you spend your lunch break?

A: I drink much tea, water and sometimes carrot juice. No coffee! No industrial produced drinks. Lunch break is eating time! It depends on how much time there is – sometimes I take lunch at an Indian restaurant nearby, they offer many different vegetarian meals, sometimes vegetarian meals in other restaurants. If there is only little time left I get bread from the bakery and dips from an organic shop nearby and take my lunch in the office.

Q: How do you manage a very stressful day to get your calm back?

A: For emergency reasons I have always “comfort food” in my bag: nuts! – they have often saved me in stressful situations. They satisfy and you can think quicker and clearer after you had some. Sometimes I take sweets. If the weather is nice it helps to go outside for some minutes and to get some sun.

Q: What are you eating in the evening?

A: That depends on how long I was working and how motivated I am to cook. Usually I am cooking potatoes or rice with vegetables and take it with salad. Very seldom, when I am really exhausted, I order vegetarian pizza or risotto with vegetables (this is not the rule).

*The red smoothie is made of apple, cherries, strawberries and aronia, the light red smoothie contains apple, carrot and cornel cherries, for the green smoothie you find recipes here.

**Ilijana Dedova is working in the marketing department of the “Landwirt-Magazin” which belongs to the Stocker-Verlag, a publishing house in Graz. Her favourite leisure activities are cooking, hobby gardening, travelling, hiking and playing parlour games.