About Anna
How a burnt-out line cook ended up on a yoga mat
Hello, I'm Anna
I was born in Malmö in 1987, in a flat where the kitchen was the only warm room in winter. My grandmother Ingrid cooked there every day — pea soup, rye bread, pickled everything — and she is the reason I still think a good meal is mostly patience and a bit of salt.
At nineteen I moved into professional kitchens because I thought that was what loving food meant. For eight years I worked the line: sixteen-hour days, coffee for breakfast, dinner standing up at midnight. I was very good at feeding other people and remarkably bad at feeding myself.
The year everything stopped
In 2015 my back gave out during a Saturday service. The diagnosis was undramatic — an overworked body, a chronically stressed nervous system — but the recovery took a full year. A physiotherapist sent me to a beginners' yoga class mostly to get me moving again. I hated the first six weeks. Somewhere in week seven I noticed I had stopped clenching my jaw.
During that year I also had to cook for exactly one person for the first time in my adult life. Small, plain, vegetable-forward meals. It turned out that was the food I actually wanted to eat — and the food that made me feel human again.
I did not find health in a plan. I found it in about two hundred unremarkable dinners and a mat I kept rolling out anyway.
Anna, on the year she stopped cooking for restaurants
Berlin, blog, studio
I moved to Berlin in 2017 with two suitcases and a cast-iron pan. HealthyFoodie started as a notebook of what I ate while I was getting better; people kept asking for the recipes, so I typed them up.
In 2021 I completed my 500-hour teacher training in Hatha and restorative yoga, and a year later I opened Studio Grünkraft in a former bakery on Sonnenallee. Today I split my week between three things:
- Writing — recipes and health notes for this blog, published most Thursdays.
- Teaching — two courses per term plus open drop-in classes at the studio.
- Cooking — seasonal vegetarian workshops, usually with far too much garlic.
What I believe
- Vegetables first, dogma last. I am vegetarian; you do not have to be.
- A recipe should work on a Wednesday, in a small kitchen, when you are tired.
- Strength and softness are the same practice seen from two sides.
- Rest is training, not a reward for training.
If you want to say hello, argue about lentils, or ask a question about a course, write to hello@healthyfoodie.example. I answer everything, eventually.