It’s January. Cold, dark, a little gloomy for the heart, the soul and the bank account after the festive season. But fear not, help is at hand to get you through this tough month as we hail the return of our “New Year, New You” season. The aim of this cluster of features for January is to help you rev up your health, fitness, wellbeing and style quota and feel great for the upcoming year.

To kick us off we sent Beauty Editor, Amelia on a bit of a health kick to learn all about something that is very common at this time of year, detoxing.

Nosh Detox – Feel Fabulous for 2012

At the beginning of December I was lucky enough to be invited to a cookery class, courtesy of a company called Nosh Detox. This couldn’t have come at a better time for me, as I’d been trying to get a head start on my New Year’s resolutions by eating more healthily and exercising more. Part of my healthy eating plan has been to really educate myself about nutrition, instead of just blindly guessing what will work and what won’t. And you know what? It’s 2012. The fad diet is DEAD, folks. Still thinking of cheesecake as the ‘devil’? Sipping from your maple syrup, cayenne pepper and lemon concoction as you read this? Stop it. Now. It’s time to stop abusing your body with unsustainable starvation diets, and time to get smart.

Nosh Detox was founded in 2008 by the luminous Geeta Sidhu-Robb, after spending years fighting her son’s severe allergies. After struggling to find any solutions, she worked at providing him with a nutritious and balanced diet, alternative therapies and natural supplements. The results were astounding. Inspired by her experience, Geeta worked at setting up Nosh, and the company now offer a range of fantastic services, from detox plans delivered to your door, to personalised plans that help you beat whatever it is you want to address, to cookery classes. It’s the cookery classes that I’m going to talk to you about today.

Nosh Detox Cookery Class

I arrived at Geeta’s beautiful house in Kensington, and was greeted at the door by our teacher for the day, the very serene (and fantastically named) Tatu Bearcroft. We were asked to slip our shoes off at the door, which added to the delightful feeling of being real guests in the house, as opposed to just a group of people on a cookery course. The whole session had a brilliant, communal atmosphere. We were warmly welcomed by Geeta and Tatu as we perched around a gleaming metal counter in the kitchen and eagerly eyed up a table groaning under the weight of the freshest fruit and veg.

As I mentioned, Nosh Detox also send out prepared meals, and Geeta explained to us that all the produce used in those meals is shipped in every single day. You can be absolutely sure that when you order from Nosh, you’re getting the freshest of ingredients, prepared with care. Tatu explained the nutritional properties of the food she was preparing, and also gave us tips on good ways to serve it, or what to prepare it with for optimum health benefits.

I’m skipping ahead here, but the dessert she prepared for us was a gorgeous exotic fruit salad with coconut milk. Tatu explained to us that the coconut milk actually prevented the very sweet fruit from messing about with blood sugar levels, meaning you wouldn’t get a big crash about an hour later. Back to the main course, which was accompanied by roasted sweet potatoes with peppers and onions – I’ve never tasted anything so delicious. Spiced with cloves, ginger, thyme and paprika, the sweet potatoes are now the stuff of my dreams.

One of my favourite things about the Nosh class was the way that Tatu took great care to tell us how to make this a sustainable way of eating. So many healthy eating plans are reliant on you having access to a kitchen at all hours of the day, and involve you spending all your time there concocting meal after meal. Not so with Nosh – Tatu told us how easy it was to save leftovers from a meal the night before, or how to concoct a quick and easy lunchbox to take to work. Everything she prepared was quick and easy. We saw three courses: spinach soup, roast veg with quinoa tabbouleh and chermoulla turkey, and finally ‘unusual’ fruit salad. Nothing required an excessive prep time, or any really ridiculous cooking techniques, so banish all thoughts that you have to be a Masterchef wannabe to cook properly. In fact, all of the ingredients and tastes were pleasingly familiar; you’d easily locate everything in your local Waitrose.

Nosh cookery classes run at three levels: Beginner, Intermediate, and Expert. We had a ‘showcase’ so we saw meals from each level, and all were delicious. Nosh can cater for different dietary concerns too; I’m a vegetarian, so Tatu just made a quick substitution on the turkey dish. My one worry was whether I’d be able to make this myself at home. Tatu isn’t a big fan of following recipes: she prefers freeing yourself up and just enjoying making food, so the meal plans we got didn’t have quantities. The very next day, I went out and stocked up on the ingredients I needed, and made it for friends in the evening. And you know what? It was not only a joy to make, but it tasted FANTASTIC.

Nosh Detox cookery classes really help re-educate you on the food you eat – or should be eating. It helped kick a few bad habits for me – I’m a great one for over-salting everything and drowning my veg in olive oil. I learnt that using spices and coconut oil totally cancelled out the need for my over seasoning. I conquered my fear of spinach, coriander and parsley, purely because the spinach soup we learnt to make was so utterly yummy. I could attempt to tell you everything we learnt, but it would take up about 10,000 words, and it’s much better to be taught something in person than by just reading it.

I really can’t recommend Nosh Detox enough. I skipped out into Kensington feeling light and happy after just three courses of their recipes. The Nosh Detox website: www.noshdetox.com is a comprehensive resource for whatever you want help with, and you can always contact them directly to ask for advice. I would strongly recommend the cookery course if you want to make a positive lifestyle change. After all, we only get one body! Why not look after yours?

Nosh Detox cookery classes are priced at £71 each, and last two and a half hours. They are held on Wednesdays at 6.30pm, Fridays and Saturdays at 11am.