Oven Baked Risotto: Make It Your Own

When I started my health journey to manage my peri-menopausal symptoms, I was aged 46, and I was drained, fried, exhausted, chewed up and spat out by life!

I had just been gaslit by my doctor that I should ‘expect to feel this way at my age’ and I was desperate to find a solution for my anxious broken sleep, my daily sense of dread and overwhelm on waking and my sweaty and exhausting sudden weight gain, which left me feeling like I was dragging my body around all day and rang the death knell for the cardio workouts i relied on to ‘stay thin!’.

I enrolled in nutrition school, as an act of desperation and a need to save my own health, then I started making changes to the food I ate each day, as fast as I could… believe me these were just baby steps in the beginning because, did I mention, I was already in overwhelm!!!

One thing I knew for sure was that I did not have the energy to drag my sceptical husband and three, stroppy teens along with me on my health journey. So, I took and two pronged approach to this problem.

1. For the first time in my family life, I started making food just for me. Easy to prepare, nutritionally dense smoothies and elixirs, snacks and soups, that I could eat for/in addition to my breakfast, lunch and daily snack, so that I was nourishing my midlife body to balance my hormones and regain my energy around our family meals.

2. I started compiling a list of family friendly meals, easy to prepare, with accessible flavours and/or cheese, that I knew my family would love. Meals that contained dense nutrition, so well disguised and hidden that not one of my little lawyers would start a debate about eating it!

Full disclosure, This was not easy!

Enter the baked risotto, in all of it’s beautiful iterations.

The recipe below is perfect for Spring and contains peas and asparagus but I encourage you to riff off the method and through a risotto containing Italian chicken sausage and cherry tomatoes into the oven or go rogue with softened leeks and bacon or diced sweet potato and leftover rotisserie chicken.

Basically, whatever vegetables your family will eat and be chopped and thrown into this basic recipe.

So why is this recipe such a nutritional power house?

1. The back bone of this dish is bone broth. The mineral dense elixir that supports your adrenal health at a time when your adrenals are taking on the additional task of drip feeding your ‘juicy’ hormones after you ovaries get some rest. Bone broth, packed with collagen for digestive, joint, bone and skin health, (good-bye gassy bloat, wrinkles and aching hips). Bone broth, packed with the amino acids, glycine and arginine which are anti-inflammatory and support your liver to manage and breakdown the spikes of excess hormone we experience in peri-menopause thus reducing our symtoms.

2. This recipe is a vehicle for vegetables and studies show that women who eat more fruits and vegetables daily experience fewer symptoms of menopause. Fibre is the midlife woman’s best friend as fibre supports a healthy microbiome and helps you to poop. 95 % of all women in North America are deficient in fibre. AND WE WONDER WHY MENOPAUSE IS SO UNBEARABLE! Both the health of your microbiome and pooping daily will directly reduce your uncomfortable symptoms of peri-menopause. COME ON! If we do nothing else when we feel our symptoms of menopause, can we please just switch things up to eat enough fibre?

3. You can add more mineral-dense, live, green nutrition to this dish and call it a garnish! A risotto is just calling out to be garnished with parsley, basil or oregano. It’s what your Nonna would do! Every-time you go the extra Italian mile, you are adding even more mineral dense, gut-healing fibre to your meal.

And then don’t forget the CHEESE! I could always guarantee a meal would go down easy with three teens if it was smothered in cheese. Grate a ton of cheese and let them help themselves, then try and keep a poker face when you see your family chowing down on all the nutritious goodness, underneath the cheese on their plate!

Oven baked risotto, an EASY and deeply nourishing recipe for the peri-menopausal woman and also a recipe for happy family times!

Ingredients

1 leek finely chopped
1 bunch asparagus cut into 1' lengths
1 cup frozen peas
2 slices of back bacon
2 cloves garlic finely chopped
3 tbsp organic butter
11/2 Arborio rice
3 cups organic beef or chicken bone broth
1/4 cup pecorino cheese grated
1/2 bunch parsley finely chopped
rind of 1/2 lemon grated
salt and pepper to taste.

Instructions

Pre heat the oven to 400F, 200C or gas mark 6
Add all of the ingredients into a frying pan that can be placed in the oven. (no plastic handles) and sautés the vegetables gently in the butter.
Add the rice and toss it in the buttered vegetables until it becomes a little transparent.
Add the broth and place the vegetables and rice that are swimming in the broth into the preheated oven.
Cook for 20 -25 minutes or until the rice is cooked through.
Stir through the cheese, parsley and lemon zest and season with salt and pepper.
Serve with a tomato salad drizzled with olive oil.

Turkey Herb Breakfast Patties

When our hormones start to fluctuate at midlife, there are long term health implications for us as women, outside of our midlife experience of menopause and it’s sometimes uncomfortable symptoms.

Hormonal change is not a cause, but a risk factor for poor cardiovascular health, dementia and Alzheimers disease.

Estrogen holds a protective effect over both our metabolic health and the neurons of our brain. As estrogen depletes we are pushed, incrementally, towards insulin resistance; which has implications for our brain and cardiovascular health and experience a pruning of our neurons; which has implications for our brain health and would explain our brain futzes and short temper at midlife.

This can feel horrifying to learn and can cause us to feel overwhelmed and helpless. Many women DREAD menopause and our perception of the process of hormonal change impacts our symptoms with negativity resulting in stronger and more uncomfortable symptoms.

It’s good to take a deep breathe, step out of fear and get some perspective as, in reality, the gold standard for protecting both our brain health and our cardiovascular health as we age is still nutrition, reducing stress and exercise.

Regardless of being women and experiencing hormonal change at midlife, we have all the tools we need to protect ourselves from future health complications.

One of the most impactful ways we can support our health for the future is to take great care with our diet to balance our blood sugar levels on a daily basis. No more sugar roller-coaster with its energy buzzes and crashes, mood swings and exhaustion. Just calm, consistent energy throughout the day.

Believe it or not, this can be challenging.

1. We live in a terrain that is OVERLOADED with sugar in every product we buy. It takes effort and stepping outside of the Standard American Diet to break-up with sugar.

2. If we are addicted to cortisol, our stress hormone, we REALLY enjoy the sugar roller-coaster and it is hard to let it go. Scan your life for clues and notice where you are drawing stress in…overeating for a sugar-high, an argument for no reason or a coffee to get amped up.

3. Our microbiome can become unhealthily overgrown with yeasts due to years of excess sugar in our diet (hello those with a sweet tooth!) and when we suddenly cut back on sugar, we experience nasty flu-like symptoms and off-the-chain sugar cravings as Candida yeasts demand sugar from our brain.

One of the ways we can release the grip of sugar from our bodies is by eating a healthy, sugar-free breakfast, packed with protein, healthy fats and fibre on a daily basis. These make-ahead Turkey and Herb Patties will help you to follow through on your health goals at breakfast.

The protein found in turkey is rich in the amino acid, tryptophan. Tryptophan is a building block for both serotonin and melatonin in the body. When we eat turkey we are helping ourselves to keep our mood balanced and our sleep consistent.

By adding herbs and garlic to this recipe, not only do we pack in deliciousness and flavour, but we are supporting a healthy microbiome and a reduction in our sugar cravings. Garlic and sage are toxic to Candida, the unhealthy yeast that can take hold of our microbiome. As Candida dies off, you may feel headachy and low in energy but, balance is being created in your microbiome for healthy microbes, that help you to metabolize excess estrogen from the body and will bring a reduction in menopausal symptoms.

By eating these patties with eggs and vegetables in the morning, you are increasing the amount of protein you ingest at the beginning of the day. Breakfast is the most important meal for balancing blood sugar levels and climbing off that roller-coaster.

When you ditch the unhealthy, but well advertised, box cereal breakfast, the muffins and the doughnuts, you give your brain and your body the steady energy it needs to get through your morning

Additional protein with your meals at midlife is also supportive of tissue health and with exercise, such as lifting weights, prevents muscle wasting as we age. When we maintain muscle in our glutes, thighs and hips, we are protecting our mobility and also our continence!

Make and cook these patties ahead and store them in a sealed container in the refrigerator for a week to make protein at breakfast a breeze!

Ingredients

1lb ground organic turkey thigh
2 tbsp chopped fresh sage or 1 tbsp dried sage (use fresh sage if you can, it’s delicious!)
3 green onions finely chopped
1 bunch parsley finely chopped
1 clove garlic minced
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp ground pepper

Instructions

Put all of the ingredients in a large bowl and combine using your hands
Go lightly and try not to overwork
Preheat the oven to 350F 175C
Line a large baking tray with parchment
Take a table spoon of the mix at a time and form a patty in your hands
Place the patties on the baking tray and bake for 30 minutes until cooked through
Store in an airtight container in the refrigerator to reheat at breakfast
Patties will keep for a week in the refrigerator and can be frozen for up to 3 months