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Cooking 4 Cognition

The Brain Food Chef | I help you feed your brain. French cooking for memory, clarity and joy. Free ↓

For women 40+ concerned about cognitive decline.
10 Brain Food kitchen must-haves.

20/08/2026

Variety is the spice of life, and both give life all its flavor.

I'm Dutch, so I know. I inherited the spice craze, I have it in my bloodstream. The Dutch traded Manhattan for a spice island. They gave up what is now New York to keep a tiny nutmeg island in Indonesia.

My dad was so crazy about spice that at 13 he got an apprenticeship at a bakery just to learn how to make speculaas. My grandmother wouldn't dream of making stock without mace.

When we think something is expensive we still say peperduur: as expensive as 18th century pepper.

So when I say spice matters, it's a lived experience. But it turns out it's also science. A teaspoon of a herb-and-spice blend on dinner, every day for four weeks, lowered inflammatory markers and blood pressure in a clinical trial. The blend also shifted gut bacteria toward beneficial species.

That dusty powder in your jar that's been sitting in your cupboard for ages isn't doing any of this. The essential oils left months ago. Whole spice, crushed fresh, is a different thing entirely.

New piece up on Substack: Add a Spice Blend. https://sandravantongerloo.substack.com/p/add-a-spice-blend?r=6xkjvd&utm_medium=ios

If you're in the Dordogne on September 6, I'll be at the Good Health & Wellness Day at La Feytaud in Coutures, letting you smell the difference for yourself.

31/07/2026

Most women I meet can rattle off what everyone in the house won't eat. Ask what they'd choose for themselves and the room goes quiet.

My mother could have been a wonderful cook. But she cooked for my father, who fished every piece of garlic and onion out of whatever she made, acting personally offended by the poor bulbs. My brother wouldn't touch cheese, so cheese left. So, the interesting things got voted off the plate, and she let them go to keep the peace.

The one who cooks for everyone eats the narrowest. And variety is one of the things the brain feeds on.

No time? My Hack 5 takes 30 seconds. Cook the family their dinner. Then, before you sit down, claim your own plate. Herbs torn over the top. A squeeze of lemon. A tin of the good sardines. The spring onions nobody else was brave enough for. Thirty 'selfish' seconds.

The whole thing, science and all, is on my Substack. Hack 5 of ten, and all ten are the backbone of my free Brain Food Bootcamp, September 7th to 11th. Subscribe and you'll get the hacks as they land, and your spot when the doors open.

https://open.substack.com/pub/sandravantongerloo/p/cook-with-yourself-in-mind-first?r=6xkjvd&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

18/07/2026

One of the amazing brain foods is melon. For its nutrients, yes, but not only that.

Picture a French market in summer. People at the melon stall. They pick one up, turn it over, put it to their nose, wiggle the stem. Then they either put it in the bag or set it back on the pile and reach for the next one.

That whole rather funny smelling ritual, I always imagine Louis de Funès doing it, is actually doing something for the brain.

Loss of smell is a sort of canary in the coalmine when it comes to memory. It's one of the things that goes first.

But here's the kicker: you can train your sense of smell.

Smelling, deliberately and regularly, seems to do the brain good.

So, next time at the market, don't be intimidated by the vendor who does the smelling for you and hands you the one with a no-objections face.

You'd be missing your chance to do the smelling yourself.

More on training your nose, with the science-backed arguments if you ever needed those, is in my Substack. I call it hack four.

https://substack.com//note/p-207524938?r=6xkjvd&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

12/07/2026

The three things I miss at my holiday address. Well, sort of. It’s 40 degrees after all.

Because lunch still happened: a jar of white beans, one enormous heirloom tomato, burrata. Garlic, lemon zest, good oil, five minutes, no kit.

A refusal to cook still counts as cooking. Assembling real food is cooking, and the act itself is one of the most underrated things you can do for your brain.

Brain Food Hack 3 is up on my Substack: the three small tools I sort of miss, including my microplane. Link in comment.

11/07/2026

Cooking can be such a drag.

Yes. If the cleaning up afterwards takes longer than the eating itself, of course it is.

I have three tools that never leave my counter. Between them, the washing up takes about a minute. And what they get you making is real food, the kind that feeds the brain you're going to need.

They're in hack three, live now 👉 https://substack.com//note/p-206501019?r=6xkjvd&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Which one are you getting tomorrow?

04/07/2026

I've cooked in a lot of other people's kitchens, and nine out of ten have the same thing: a scratched non-stick pan on the hob, in daily use, and nobody thinks twice about it.

I think about it. Because I know what that coating is made of, and where it goes once it starts to wear. PFAS. The forever chemicals, linked to cancer, thyroid disease, immune problems.

In 2026 France banned them from make-up, clothes, even ski wax. Not from your frying pan.

Non-stick pans were cut from the law at the last minute, after the manufacturer lobbied to keep them in your kitchen. Not because they were judged safe. Because the lobby fought to keep selling them to you.

Scratch the pan or overheat it and the coating doesn't stay in the pan. It goes into your food. A pan that sheds its coating into your dinner is not a pan you want.

And it's not just the pan. It's the plastic cutting board shedding microplastics into your food with every cut. The black plastic spatula made from recycled electronic waste. The air fryer that promises you never have to cook.

Keep buying this, and they keep making it.

Hack two is about clearing the harmful stuff out of your kitchen, and bringing in the few good tools that will outlast you. It's live now 👉 link in comment.

28/06/2026

The Brain Food Chef’s spiceblend. She hadn't even tasted anything yet. Just the smell. And her energy shifted.

This is what the right spices do to your brain.

Vert Citron and Rouge Fumé, handblended, mostly locally sourced in Dordogne.

27/06/2026

The food industry burns out your taste buds on purpose.

Getting them back takes ten days.

Salt, sugar, fat, built together into one bite that doesn't exist in nature. It's engineered to be irresistible, and it works. Eat enough of it and a real tomato tastes of not much.

Your taste can come back in about ten days. And you'll want it back, to hold on to your brain longer.

Here's how, and why it matters after 40.

Hack one of ten is live 👉 https://open.substack.com/pub/sandravantongerloo/p/how-to-wean-off-ultra-processed-food?r=6xkjvd&utm_medium=ios

21/06/2026

Yesterday. Périgueux. 37 degrees.

Twelve women around a table at Nadine's. Six of them had already been to a previous spice tasting and came back.

Before the day was out, I had messages.

By evening, Dejana Naturally had put both Vert Citron and Rouge Fumé in her soya yoghurt. Juju said: "I could eat it straight from a spoon." Christine: "Each distinct and so flavoursome."

Michelle came in tired from the heat. She told me later that just smelling the spices, before tasting anything, gave her a lift. "It definitely fired my synapses. I felt that."

Kate had been cooking with herbes de Provence as her go-to seasoning her whole life. Yesterday she said: "I thought brain food was something I'd have to think about. But no. It's just delicious. It ups my game because it's something new."

Emma had spent years playing it safe. With food, with everything. Yesterday she tasted something she'd never tasted before and went home and wrote to me: "You challenged me not to play it safe. It feels like a metaphor for my life. I'm now unfurling."

That last one from Emma. I'm still thinking about it.

This is what happens when you put real food in front of people and get out of the way. Smell this. Taste this. Notice what it does.

If you want this at your table, message me. I travel.

18/06/2026

Domestic servitude? No.

I'm talking about cooking as the single most underrated thing you can do for your brain.

I spent 35 years in professional kitchens and six years watching Alzheimer's take my mother. These are my 10 hacks to get you (back) into the kitchen to nourish your brain.

1. Reset your taste buds
2. Make your kitchen work for you
3. You don't have to be a cook to use the tool. Using it makes you one.
4. Train your nose
5. Cook with yourself in mind first
6. Add a spice blend
7. Make a combination you've never made
8. Drink your plants
9. Share the table
10. Close the kitchen early, three hours before bed

Cook. Your brain will remember.

I'm Sandra. The Brain Food Chef. Follow for the deep dive.

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