Knowledge of the energy characteristics of food is necessary to make balanced combinations with flavours, colours and nutrients in harmony.
A direct relation exists between food quality, health and human behaviour.
Not by chance, every season has its products.
The growth of some plants and not others is a key for choosing and following natural inclinations for certain foods and for cooking them in the most appropriate way: for longer in winter and less in summer, in order to maximise energy and flavour. In designing a menu, I seek quality above everything: fresh, local, whole, organic, largely from plants, combining variety and light condiments that bring out flavour and facilitate digestion.
Food is a central point in our lives.
It is the basis of the evolution of life, enabling growth and adaptation to the surrounding world.
In 1979 and 1980, during a long journey in central America, I was struck by the force of nature and by the traditions and rituals of the Mexican people.
I recovered from hepatitis under the effects of sun and steam, poultices of volcanic earth, and diet. .
It was a strong physical and spiritual experience.
In 1984, after studying macrobiotics at the East-West Centre in Florence, I began to work with food, cooking for groups, acting as consultant and doing curative cooking in private houses, cooking in a macrobiotic restaurant, teaching, speaking at health conferences, lecturing on natural cooking at the Rimini Cookery School, and writing an article for Tarantini-Pinardi’s book “Awakening of the Body”.
I currently run a small hotel “Ecoturismo La Casa Gialla” where I continue to cook for myself, friends and guests, creating recipes, integrating personal experience and Mediterranean and regional culinary traditions with the universal principles of yin and yang. My approach to cooking is wholistic.
The interests behind my work are many: the pleasure of eating combined with food for healing.
I love to invent food. I hardly ever follow recipes but use whatever is in the garden, following seasons and moods.
Food has many implications: biological, sensory, emotional, social, intellectual.
Opinions are exchanged at the table; the pleasure of eating and drinking together facilitates communication.
The film “Like water for chocolate” eloquently described the power and poetry of cooking.
Like any art, it takes creativity, practice and inspiration.
And let us not forget that a natural diet is a carefree way of eating in which wild plants and fruits, simple foods that the season offers, are tried, cultivating organically or buying fresh local products, both plant and animal.
Nature does not care about human criteria; the aim is not to cook rigidly but to understand in order to become free to eat anything and evolve spiritually, abandoning fixed ideas.

Paola Turchi - Individual Counselling and Lessons.