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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.

29/09/2026

For me, getting you back in the kitchen isn't only about the brain food you eat. One of the best things you can do for your aging brain is to sit at the table with other people.

That very idea turned me into a lady who lunches. Well, minus the lady, minus Manhattan, minus the Martini.

Hmm. My Dordogne variant looks more like this: a tea party I hosted at the lovely Manor & Maker château in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Thank you Sara and Steve for the gorgeous setting, and the bone china. And thank you, sweet friends, for coming and sharing the table.

Social isolation is on the Lancet Commission's list of things that raise dementia risk, one of the factors we can actually do something about. Company keeps the brain switched on in a way eating alone never does.

The catch is that company doesn't come knocking. You have to go looking for it. That's what hack 9 is about in my 10 hack Brain Food series, finding ways to share the table. A coffee at the end of the weekly market counts. The community center, the sports club, la fête des voisins, the lone diner you ask to join you, the long table at the nuits gourmandes you ask to sit at.

More on this, with the science behind it, is in my Substack.

https://sandravantongerloo.substack.com/p/share-the-table?r=6xkjvd&utm_medium=ios

21/09/2026

Is your supper getting later and later? Mine did.

After 25 years in France, dinner crept up and up to 8, 9, 10 even (oh those long summer nights).

So I've gone back to the habit of my Dutch upbringing: eat early.

Not for nostalgia. For my brain.

Your body handles the same meal better at 6pm than at midnight, that's your master clock, your circadian rhythm. Eat late and you're digesting when you should be sleeping, and sleep is when the brain does its overnight cleaning, clearing out the very gunk linked to Alzheimer's, and probably to brain fog too.

So my tenth and last Brain Food hack is the one that sounds like it undoes my whole job: close the kitchen early.

Nine hacks brought you into the kitchen. The tenth is knowing when to walk out of it.
It's live now, with the science and all.

https://sandravantongerloo.substack.com/p/close-the-kitchen-early?r=6xkjvd&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

05/09/2026

Proust dipped a madeleine in a cup of linden tea and a whole novel poured out of the memory.

I'm not writing a novel, but I'll take the memory-boosting effect.

So this week's Brain Food hack is the easy one: drink your plants.

No cooking required, which means even on the tired, uninspired, no-time days you can still get the plant compounds that fuel your memory into a cup.

Tea drinkers, across a study of nearly 400,000 people, had lower rates of dementia. Coffee too, in moderation.

Or a herbal tea: linden, ginger, fig leaf, blackcurrant, rosemary and rosehip, to name but a few. Just the plant's own chemistry, the flavonoids, doing you a good turn.

Because you're missing out on them by drinking sodas. The diet soda that's sold to you as the healthier choice might be the worst thing in your fridge. The sweetener is a forgery. It trains your tongue, and your brain, to expect a sweetness few real foods can match, and makes you crave the next sugary hit. And what would that be? Another soda.

Full hack here 👉 https://sandravantongerloo.substack.com/p/drink-your-plants?r=6xkjvd&utm_medium=ios

Tell me: what could you be drinking more of?

01/09/2026

Lobster & vanilla. White chocolate & black garlic. Coffee & blackcurrant.

Get your brain working with my latest hack: in your kitchen, make a combination you've never made.

Tongue and nose finally team up, and your brain has to build something it's never built before.

I give you my cheffy three, and I can tell you very ripe Camembert with tomato is horrendous.

Read it here 👉 https://substack.com//note/p-210328567?r=6xkjvd&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=notes-share-action

Cook. Your brain will remember.

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.

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