Oven Roasted Tomato Soup

I am still chasing the colours and flavours of summer even as temperatures drop and snow begins to fall across Canada and not just on top of the mountains.

This recipe is fibre rich and fibre is a midlife womans best friend.

One of the best ways we can get self-responsible and make changes to our food and nutrition to reduce our symptoms of menopause is by adding more fibre to our plate every day; or in this case our bowl!

During peri-menopause, the (up to) 10 year season of hormonal fluctuations before menopause, we experience all of our hormones in spikes and crashes. Take a look at the graph below showing a 6 month snapshot of the hormones that manage our menstrual cycle and compare a regular cycle to perimenopause. YIKES!

During perimenopause, we will experience higher levels of progesterone in our bodies than we did in pregnancy; and progesterone is the hormone that supports the viability of our pregnancies! We will be flooded with higher levels of estrogen than we ever experienced within our menstrual cycle and not shown on this graph but threatening to amplify our symptoms of hormonal change is cortisol our stress hormone.

Cortisol is a hormone stealer! Due to adaptations for survival, your body will build cortisol, your fight, flight, freeze or fawn hormone, before it builds your ‘juicy’ hormones of estrogen and progesterone.

If you are experiencing weight gain around the middle, aching shoulders, sugar cravings, waking at 3am and feelings of overwhelm, it is likely that cortisol is dominating this crazy hormonal dance that is peri-menopause.

Excess hormone is removed from the body by one means only…poop, or what I like to call our ‘daily detox’.

To simplify a complex process: Hormones are built by the body each with a cholesterol tail. Fibre in your diet hooks onto that tail and carries excess estrogen out of the body.

The more fibre you can include in your diet at midlife, the more you will have opened up the pathway for detoxifying excess hormone from the body and the more you can reduce your uncomfortable symptoms.

To the recipe!

I pulled fibre rich vegetables, sun-shiny flavour and colour out of my refrigerator, tossed them in extra virgin olive oil and roasted them together on a baking tray.

Once softened, I blended this roasted beauty with mineral and protein rich bone broth to make a soup.

Bone broth helps to build strong bones and joints at midlife and supports the health of the lining of the digestive tract.

If you are a woman who is experiencing gassiness and bloat at midlife, who used to be able to eat dairy and good bread but now experience diarrhoea when you accidentally eat those foods, your digestion needs support and bone broth is perfect.

Packed with easily absorbed amino acids and collagen, bone broth helps to rebuild the gut lining - bonus! You will notice improvements to your skin, hair and nails too.

This soup has a decadent creamy texture without using dairy, courtesy of egg yolks whisked with Balsamic vinegar.

If you are looking to add more nutrition to a dish, egg yolks would be perfect. They are rich in vitamin D, iron and folate. Egg yolks are packed with choline ,which is used by the body to make acetylcholine and supports brain health. Egg yolks contain lutein and zeaxanthin which directly support the health of our eyes and our vision as we age.

If we make it our goal to ditch diet industry thinking and instead deeply nourish our bodies through perimenopause, the creamy texture created by the egg yolks and vinegar are a must for this recipe.

As my oven was on and I had old bread in the house, I tossed cubes of bread in Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Mediterranean herbs to make croutons.

Pro tip: I use baking parchment to line my aluminum baking trays as i want to reduce my toxic load at midlife and keep aluminium out of my diet… Especially acid foods like tomatoes.

Ingredients

1 punnet cherry tomatoes (250g)
2 medium sized tomatoes quartered
1 medium carrot chopped into small chunks
1 small red pepper seeded and chopped into eigths
2-3 large garlic cloves chopped
3 tbsp extra virgin olive oil
1 pint chicken bone broth
2 egg yolks
1 teaspoon red wine or Balsamic vinegar
Salt, freshly ground pepper and fresh basil to taste.

For the croutons:
Stale read cut into cubes
Extra Virgin Olive Oil to coat
1 Tbsp of dried Italian or Mediterranean herbs

Instructions

Toss the cherry tomatoes, chopped tomatoes, red pepper, carrot and garlic and place in a bowl to toss with olive oil.
Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and scatter the oiled up vegetables onto the paper.
Bake in the over for 30 - 40 mins at 375F or until soft and roasted.
If you are making croutons, cut the bread into cubes and toss in the same bowl in olive oil with the dried herbs.
Put the croutons on a separate lined tray and bake until toasted.
Whilst the tomatoes, vegetables and croutons are roasting, place the egg yolks and vinegar into a small bowl and whisk together to make a cream before placing on one side.
Put the roasted vegetables into a blender and add the chicken bone broth.
Blend until smooth and pour the soup into a saucepan.
Place the soup on a low heat and warm through. Season with salt and freshly ground pepper.
Once the soup is warmed through to a simmer, add the egg yolk and vinegar cream and whisk vigorously to form a creamy soup.
Tear up the leaves of fresh basil and add to the soup.
Serve in a warm bowl with the croutons.

If this creamy Roasted Tomato Soup is your idea of comfort food, you might also want to try my Macaroni and Cheese recipe which also adds fibre to foods we know and love!

Mama Bears Breakfast

At midlife, when we nourish our bodies with dense nutrition using whole foods, we have the power to reduce and sometimes eradicate uncomfortable symptoms.

We truly are what we eat and when we shift from an inflammatory Standard American Diet, full of processed foods and empty of nutrition, our body stops sending us the messages that it is struggling and starts to do its job.

Menopause is a process of natural hormonal change. It requires us to pull on our big girl panties to start fuelling our bodies right, take rest and prioritize pleasure! This is how we support our bodies to stay symptom free as we shift from fertility to a new chapter with the choice of a different kind of creativity.

I decided to experiment with my food and build a breakfast bowl with ALL of the foods that have the most impact on our beautiful midlife body with their dense hormone balancing nutrition.

Let’s look at what we have got!

Raspberries (fresh or frozen) - Rich in phytoestrogen to top up your depleting juicy hormone and packed with fibre to support your liver health and help your body to detox symptom inducing excess hormones. Anti-oxidant rich and cancer preventative…also juicy and delicious!

Ground Flax - The queen of fibres for midlife women because of its high phytoestrogen content, because it is rich in anti-inflammatory omega 3 fatty acids and because it is just the right balance of soluble and insoluble fibre to help you with your daily detox (read poop!) You need to be pooping daily in perimenopause to excrete excess hormone from the body. You cannot sweat or pee out hormones and circulation of excess hormone in your body is going to drive your uncomfortable symptoms. Constipation is going to increase hot flashes. Let’s keep all our detox pathways open at midlife!

Hemp seeds - packed with omega 3 fatty acids and antioxidants this fibre rich (think daily poop plus) , this plant based protein helps you to boost your protein intake to support your ideal weight and prevent muscle loss at midlife. We need to be taking action and eating to prevent bingo wings and increasing our protein intake in a healthy way is a part of that process.

Pumpkin seeds - Fibre rich (POOP) and packed with minerals such as thyroid supporting zinc and magnesium our relaxation mineral, pumpkin seeds provide us with the micronutrients we need for hormonal change. (More coming on the thyroid gland in a minute)

Walnuts - FIBRE! Full of healthy fats to balance blood sugar levels and curb appetite, walnuts are brain and heart supportive as they are rich in vitamin E. Vitamin E has been shown in clinical trials to reduce hot flashes in menopausal women. Your food IS your medicine at this point and there is a clinical trial backing up the science.

Brazil nuts - Listen, as you move through perimenopause, your thyroid gland is going to need the utmost TLC. Responsible for your metabolism, menstrual cycle, circadian rhythm and bone health, our thyroid gland STRUGGLES when everything starts changing with our hormones. Why do you think so many of us midlife women take thyroid medication? We need to be reducing our stress, finding our voice and eating anti-inflammatory foods at midlife to protect this master gland during the rough seas of perimenopause. The thyroid gland also loves minerals and needs sufficient zinc, iron, magnesium and selenium to effectively convert our thyroid hormone T4 into active T3. It is a process and we need to support our beautiful bodies in that process with nutrition you do not find in processed foods. Brazil nuts are the highest source of selenium, (a mineral depleted from our soils by chelating chemicals such as Round-Up, but don’t get me started!) so we only need 3-4 a day to support our best thyroid health. Let’s eat that at breakfast!

I topped this nutrient dense mix of nuts, berries and seeds with goat milk kefir, a fermented milk product similar to yoghurt, because I am wanting to support my microbiome.

Your microbiome is your unique constellation of gut bacteria that support your gut health , positive mood (these friendly bacteria are busy making your serotonin sister so help them out!) and immunity. During perimenopause, our gut bacteria changes and it has implications for our metabolic and heart health. Eating fermented foods is another nutritional baby step to reducing your perimenopausal symptoms and creating your most vibrant midlife health. Hello kefiir, sauerkraut, kimchee, kombucha and naturally fermented pickles! You can read more in this clinical trial here.

Look at all of this beauty and deliciousness.

I talk often about nutritional switches for midlife women and here is one right here.

Switch your muffin, toast, box cereal and skipped breakfast for this bowl of dense nutrition to feed your body the nutrients it needs for it to pass through hormonal change with minimum symptoms and zero medication and in the process, know that you are building your best vibrant health for MORE active yers in the next chapter.

Ingredients

1 cup fresh or frozen berries

2 tbsp hemp seeds

1 tbsp ground flax

1/4 cup pumpkin seeds

1/4 cup walnuts

3-4 Brazil nuts

1/4 cup yoghurt or kefir

Instructions

Pile all of this goodness into a bowl and enjoy! Expect to feel full until lunchtime with no carb cravings because you gave your body the nutrition it needs!

Summer Squash Soup

Hands up!

Anyone else find themselves with a glut of zucchini and summer squash as the plants are just loving the heat this summer?

I cannot resist the beauty of a shiny summer squash or zucchini whenever i see them in the store or t the City Farm and found myself with over 2lbs in my refrigerator.

I needed a recipe fast.

I adapted this recipe from online vegan recipe creator, Debra Klein, to create a protein rich, nutrient dense soup, creamy but dairy-free and packed with flavour. The soup is no longer vegan but conatins all that gut-healing bone broth collagen and mineral dense goodness that we need to support our bodies through hormonal change.

Did you know that there is no word for hot flashes in Japan?

So few women experience this symptom of peri-menopause as they pass through hormonal change so there is not a descriptor in the language. This is changing as wheat heavy foods become more popular in Japan and the Standard American diet and subsequent fast foods are enjoyed by the culture, but, a traditional Japanese diet heavy in fish, fermented foods and soy support a woman through a symptom free peri-menopause.

Let’s talk about the phyto-chemicals in soy beans that mimic estrogen in he body and help to reduce symptoms of peri-menopause.

They have had a bad rap and there has been scaremongering that these foods can create a risk of breast cancer.

When we drip feed our bodies gentle plant based chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body we are supporting our vaginal health, brain health and libido. These gentle estrogens attach to beta estrogen receptors in the breast that slow down the turnover of cells, making them breast protective.

Make sure that you buy organic soy products as this crop is heavily sprayed with glyphosate, it was genetically designed that way and glyphosate is extremely damaging to our gut lining…it was designed that way, it is how it kills pests.

The big benefit of using soy in this soup is that it creates a creamy texture without needing to add inflammatory dairy products such as milk and cream. Don’t get me wrong, I love the occasional creamy dessert or scone with cream and jam and I LOVE butter but in my everyday cooking I shy away from dairy heavy recipes.

So, we have a high protein, plant heavy soup with a creamy texture, that helps to prevent menopausal symptoms and is rich in all the mineral dense nutrition and gut healing properties for bone broth.

How does the soup taste Louise? Am I going to love it?

Creamy and herby in flavour, this soup has a deep umami taste due to the 2 tbsp of miso paste added at the end. Miso paste is found in the refrigerator in your food store or an Asian grocery and is made from fermented soy beans. Because it is fermented the nutrition from protein, iron, magnesium our relaxation mineral and the B group of vitamins that support our nervous system and boost our energy are easily absorbed.

Above all else Miso Paste benefits for your microbiome, you inner constellation of healthy bacteria that impact so many areas of our health from mood to yes you guessed it, menopausal symptoms in a positive way. The Miso Paste is added at the very end of the recipe once the soup has been taken off the heat and in this way the healthy bacteria in the Miso can stay ‘live’.

What a gorgeous way to include this stunning summer vegetable into your weekly rotation of nutrient dense meals.

Ingredients

2lb summer squash and or Zucchini diced
1 large onion diced
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
2tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 cups chicken broth
8oz silken tofu
1 cup peas frozen or fresh
1 bunch fresh basil
2 heaped tbsp miso paste
Salt and Pepper to taste.

Instructions

Put the olive oil in a large soup pan and add the onion, garlic and squash.
Sauté very gently with a lid on the pan for 15 minutes or until the squash are softened.
Add the chicken broth, tofu, peas and whole bunch of basil.
Using a hand held blender or in batches in a food processor or standing blender, whizz the soup until it is smooth and return to the pan.
Bring the soup back to simmer and turn off the heat.
Add the miso paste once the soup has cooled a little so that you keep the fermented ‘live’ properties of the miso.
Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Serves 4-6