Letters from Bruges – Part 1

I’ll be combining my studies with my business again this coming school year. I’m going to pursue a specialization in sales and marketing and the WSET Level 3 Award in Wines. Both are online, which means I don’t necessarily have to stay in Belgium and that I can balance them with my catering work. I’ve also signed up for a number of competitions, and I very much hope to have the opportunity to participate in them. The decision to structure my schedule this way for the upcoming school year stems from a number of events that took place over the past year. 

I really just want to go back to Portugal so badly. Because of my internship, I spent 139 days there at the beginning of this year, and I also wrote most of my thesis during that time. In the end, I received the highest honors for both my internship and my thesis. I can definitely confirm that working on a terrace in the sun isn’t just much more pleasant—it also simply leads to better-quality ideas for me. I also really, really miss the incredibly kind people I got to know there. I miss the warmth of the sun and the beautiful view of the city you get after walking uphill for fifteen minutes. I miss the relaxed and friendly atmosphere that’s everywhere, whether you’re meeting locals or a group of tourists. 

And I even miss the quirky—yet somehow special—lifestyle that becomes the norm when you work in a restaurant. Every job in that industry is really about transporting your guests into the world of the restaurant. They step into a bubble where everything is so perfect that they almost forget the real world. That’s how you can make someone marvel at the taste of a fennel flower, the pattern in a slice of carrot, and the texture of an unripe strawberry that’s been pickled for a year—all while, at the same moment, somewhere else in the world, someone is trying to piece together the fragments of what was once their home. There’s something that people singing campfire songs amid the rubble and chefs working in fine-dining restaurants have in common. We need people who keep watering organic tomato plants while, at the same time, kilometers of wilderness are burning. It won’t save the world, but they provide exactly what’s needed to cope with the world. Art can’t save lives, yet it can be the reason you don’t lose hope. 

Gastronomy is perhaps the most accessible, sensually stimulating, and effective form of this. It’s a kind of “polished madness” that you could also describe as “hope.” And that fascinates me so much that I’m happy to spend an entire day cooking just to see that spark of joy light up in someone’s eyes. That’s why I always went home feeling fulfilled, even though nothing physical ever remained of my work. It’s hard to put into words, but I think anyone who’s ever experienced this will understand what I mean. 

That’s why owning my own restaurant is my dream, along with hosting a cooking show on TV. Being a good cook is only a fraction of the skills you need to excel in order to make a restaurant concept successful. You can learn to prepare the most complex dishes to perfection and complete internships at the best restaurants, but still make strategically ill-considered decisions for your business. That’s why I decided, instead of immediately doing another internship or rushing headlong into working at a restaurant, to focus on my fine-dining catering business and a few courses I still wanted to take. This way, I can hone all the skills needed to run a business without the pressure that comes with the costs of a physical location. By the way, I’m still learning more about cooking every day by analyzing recipes and continuing to explore why one recipe works and another doesn’t. This summer, I took the “Science and Cooking” specialization at Harvard, which approaches this from a very scientific perspective. I learned a tremendous amount from it, and I’m working on a way to share my key insights with you soon. 

So I’m still very busy, and because of that, I often find myself in the world of people who want to cook healthy meals but don’t have the energy left to do so after a busy day. I understand their struggles and frustrations, and above all, I feel that it really shouldn’t be this hard. That’s why, a while back, I created a system that has been helping me cook healthy meals for a long time now. I developed a weekly menu with recipes that you can easily and quickly prepare in advance. During the week, it takes no more than 10 to 15 minutes to finish preparing each meal. After that, all you have to do is pull up a chair and enjoy (the most important part of cooking!). Each recipe comes with a video where I demonstrate every step and share fun facts about the ingredients. It feels just like I’m standing right next to you in the kitchen. You can also easily adapt the vegetables in the recipes to the changing seasons. Think of it as a template that you can keep filling in endlessly once you’ve mastered the method. 

Usually, in posts like this, I share a recipe where the flavors and textures match the feeling I’m describing. I’d like to encourage you to try the recipes from my weekly menu. For every purchase, 1% goes to charity, and the rest supports me. I truly believe that my weekly menu can make healthy cooking extremely accessible, simple, and fun—especially if you feel like you’ve already tried everything and nothing has yielded lasting results so far. You can order it via this link.