All About Andrea

I am Andrea Kalvach, born and raised in Hungary and currently living in The Netherlands.

I have lots of nice memories from my childhood growing up with my parents and grandparents in Dunakeszi.  Since my grandma was a housewife I did not have to go to a nursery or kindergarten and she took care of me. During the day I just watched what she was doing and learnt to bake and cook from her.

She had a sweet-tooth.

We never went to the pastry shop, as she could make a variety of both sweet and savoury goodies: pound cake, puff pastry, shortbread, and the list goes on. When we invited guests over, the table was always full of good food.  Eating has always played an important role in our family.

When I moved out of my parents’ home, I still cooked mostly Hungarian dishes. Later when we had the chance to travel to a lot of different countries, I got to know other cuisines. I would regularly end-up in the kitchen, if the chef allowed it of course, to get more insight into the delicious meal I just had. Some chefs were very kind and happily shared their recipes with me. Based on these experiences I’ve learnt a lot and now take inspiration from a variety of international cuisines.

In 2012 after our son was diagnosed with the autoimmune disease ulcerative colitis, we have gone through a major lifestyle change. After reading many scientific studies and watching presentations of medical conferences, we have made the decision to adopt a paleo diet and to start avoiding gluten, lactose, refined sugars, soy and processed foods. We wanted to stay away from foods that stimulate inflammation in the body; however, it was a big lifestyle shift after the traditional diet. Lot of people ask me what we eat if we avoid wheat flour, pasta and milk, as they think that this is the most difficult part of the diet.

They are wrong.

I use at least ten types of flour instead of wheat flour; at least three types of nut milk instead of cow milk and I found a lot of delicious, natural substitutes for other foods that we have cut out of our diet. The most difficult part was to read every single food label, as this was something I did not do earlier. I was really surprised how many artificial preservatives, colourings and flavours enhancers there were in everything.

After talking about food and showing him some pictures of my dishes, the first person who suggested that I make a blog was a Chinese acupuncture doctor, Dr. Woen Tjoen Lie. Later my friends have encouraged me to share the recipes and help other people as well. I started to rethink and recreate old and new recipes from my travels around the world according to the principles of the paleo diet.

My passion and one of my hobbies are to create healthy and yummy home-made food.