Making Healthy Eating Easy

I want to live a healthy lifestyle, but I also want to make it EASY. Ben and I raised our kids to grow up with healthy habits that feel completely natural to them. We don’t want them to spend their adult years unlearning poor eating patterns and jumping from one diet to another.

Our family plans meals and shopping trips together, and we all help make good food — but we don’t want to live in the kitchen all day. I don’t own many appliances, but there’s one I recommend over and over again.

We bought a Thermomix TM5 while living in Australia and we absolutely loved it! It’s a beautiful, state-of-the-art German machine. It made life so much easier — chopping onions, carrots, and other veggies in seconds. Even better, it cooks and stirs for you! We could add a little olive oil, start it up, and it would sauté everything right in the same bowl. Then we’d add liquids for soup, walk away, and it would cook and stir until it was perfectly done. Mashed potatoes in 20 minutes — boiled and ready to eat!

The kids loved using the touchscreen to make their favourite meals. We almost always had a healthy salad or homemade staple in the fridge. We made our own mayo, nut butters, and vegetable stock. There are hundreds of recipes available, and you can even get extra recipe chips.

The $2000 price tag puts a lot of people off, but we felt it was worth every cent. When we moved to the USA, we had to sell our Thermomix because of the voltage difference. Many of our Aussie friends still own one and love it too.

As soon as we settled into our new home in the USA, one of the first appliances we wanted was another all-in-one machine. After some research, we discovered the Bellini. It’s not as fancy-looking as the Thermomix, but it claims to be more powerful, just as tough, and equally versatile. It doesn’t have a touchscreen, and the price was about a quarter of the Thermomix, so we decided to give it a try — knowing we could return it if it wasn’t good enough.

We’ve now had our Bellini for over a year and we use it every single day. It lives on our counter and never gets put away. While it doesn’t have a touchscreen or built-in recipe chip, we’ve learned to use it so well that we rarely need the recipe books anymore.

In the morning, Ben or I whip up a healthy shake.

At lunch, we make a quick soup or heat up leftovers — just throw the ingredients in, chop them, then set it to a lower speed and walk away. It beeps when it’s done! Sometimes we even make a fresh salad by adjusting the speed and time.

At dinnertime, it helps us create our meals. Our younger girls love being in charge of guacamole — it’s so easy in the Bellini. My middle daughter enjoys baking; she melts chocolate in the bowl, then adds the dry ingredients and mixes everything together in one go. Ben loves making his homemade “ice cream” called Fruity Dream for dessert.

It feels like we can eat whatever we want because we can quickly make a healthy version of it. The powerful thing is not restricting yourself or denying fun foods — because eventually you’ll subconsciously rebel. Self-discipline only lasts so long before most people break down and go back to old habits.

To stay healthy long-term, you need a sustainable lifestyle. That means eating well day in and day out. Our Bellini helps us do exactly that — we feel free to enjoy food, but our options are almost always healthy ones!

As you detox and cleanse your body, your taste buds will change. You’ll start to enjoy the natural flavours of real food more, feel satisfied faster, and naturally stop overeating.

Back to the Bellini…

It’s super easy to clean too! Just add a little dish soap and water, turn it to maximum speed for 6–10 seconds, and it basically cleans itself. The blade is blunt and pops out easily. A quick swish with a soft brush, a rinse, and it’s sparkling clean in seconds.

I also love that the Bellini is safe for the kids to use. Our youngest started helping at age 8. It won’t start unless the lid is locked, it shuts off automatically if it gets too hot, and it has sensors that know when to pulse for kneading dough. Of course you still need to teach basic kitchen safety, but it lets the kids be part of the cooking experience in a fun and confident way.

I highly recommend the Bellini — five stars from our family! 🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟

Eat well, stay well!