Comfort Food Macaroni and Cheese

How is everyone holding up during this Covid 19 pandemic and who is in need of some comfort.

I have taken a favourite childhood recipe and amped up the nutritional content by adding greens. This is how we feed the belly and the soul ladies!

Adding fibre rich, cruciferous vegetables to your favourite dishes will support your liver in detoxifying excess hormone from the body. Sulphurous compounds found in Brussels sprouts support stage 2 of the liver detoxification process, support a healthy gut microbiome and have been shown to help prevent cancer.

Cruciferous vegetables and leafy greens in general are one of the foods i recommend in my FREE downloadable E-book, The 10 Essential Health promoting Foods to Help Midlife Women Feel Nourished All Day.. Click here to get your copy.

I would not say no to bacon in this recipe either…if that is what you need right now!

Macaroni Cheese with Brussels Sprouts, Broccoli or Kale

This is comfort food with a dose of nutrition. Use whatever greens you have to hand but include the vegetable so that you are nourishing both your body and your soul! Dark leafy greens are rich in betacarotene that converts vitamin A in the body and supports your immune response.

Ingredients

½ pound twisty pasta of your choice (what was left on the shelf in your store? Is it quinoa?)

2 tbsp butter

1 tbsp olive oil

2 garlic cloves

10 ounces/ 4 cups finely shredded Brussels sprouts, kale or broccoli (Just use the greens that you can find)

Salt and pepper to taste

½ lemon zest grated

3 tbsp all-purpose flour

½ cups chicken or vegetable broth or stock made with a cube (what is in the back of your cupboard?)

½ lemon juiced

½ cup Parmesan

1 cup Cheddar cheese

1 cup Mozzerella

Or

Feel free to use any cheeses you may have in your refrigerator.(Use what you have!)

Instructions

Bring a pot of salted water to the boil and cook the pasta until just done.

Heat the oven to 400 degrees and butter the bottom and sides of a 2-quart baking dish

Heat the olive oil in the same pan as you just cooked your pasta and sauté your greens and garlic on a medium heat until bright green and just wilted. 2-3 minutes. Season with salt and pepper.

Add the lemon zest and 2 tbsp of butter and heat until the butter melts.

Add the flour and stir in until you can no longer see it.
Add the broth a glug at a time to make a sauce and simmer the sauce for 3 minutes. Remove from the heat and add the lemon juice and cooked pasta.

Add the combined cheeses and plenty of black pepper.
Turn the pasta and sauce into the buttered baking dish and top with the reserved cheese.
Bake in the oven for 20 minutes until browned on top.

If you are looking for a family friendly meal that is full of flavour, click here for my recipe for anti-inflammatory and vegetable rich Turmeric and Vegetable Thai Curry.

Boost Your Immunity with Sauerkraut

So often in nutrition I notice that everything old is new again and this definitely true of this recipe for Red Cabbage, Apple and Ginger Sauerkraut.
Preserving vegetables with salt is how my colonizer ancestors stored their home grown vegetables over the cold winter months right here on the prairie where I live. Their health throughout the winter would have depended on the bountifulness of your home garden and the time you dedicated to preserving the vegetables they grew.
The science of nutrition has moved on since these pioneer farmers first made their homes on the prairie across North America and there is now so much that we know about the vitamin content of fermented vegetables, our microbiome and the importance of vegetables and fibre in our diet.
Sadly in this same time we have seen our Western diet become eroded with the advent of fast food chains, processed foods, farming subsidies for wheat, soy and corn, chemical fertilization and the extensive use of glysophate in the farming and combining of crops We also live in a society where there is a general feeling that life is too busy to care for our own basic nutritional needs and we do not have time to cook. Our personal health has eroded over time in tandem.
So let’s bring these thoughts and timeline together and then jump into this incredibly easy recipe.

What have we discovered…

What our ancestors did not know, was the nutritional powerhouse that lay in the vegetables that they fermented to store through the winter. Science has told us that…

1. Vegetables that have been fermented increase their vitamin C content by 300%

2. Foods that have been fermented provide a powerful dose of probiotic friendly bacteria for our microbiome.

3. Our microbiome (the ecosystem of friendly bacteria that lives inside our digestive tract) is heavily involved in boosting our immune response, boosting our mood, promoting the health of our digestive tract, balancing our hormones and keeping us at our ideal weight.

So that is health benefits from easily prepared fermented foods that impact our immunity and resistance to bacteria and viruses, the joy that we feel life and the happiness we feel daily, the ability of our bodies to receive nourishment and digest foods without symptoms of gassiness and bloating and the impact of peri-menopause on our bodies in the shape of uncomfortable symptoms

What we have lost…

1. We have lost our collective palate for foods that are sour or acidic and crave the sweetness of corn syrup as it is an ingredient in most of our foods from the liquids we drink to our meat, breads and prepared meals.

2. We have eroded our microbiome as it has taken multiple hits from over use of antibiotics, from prescribed and over the counter medications, from excessive sugar and from the role of the digestive system disruptor, glysophate as a desiccant for grains on the stalk to improve yields for the combine, resulting in this chemical appears in our food in unhealthily large quantities.

3. The erosion of the nutritional content in general in the foods that we consume as our soil become depleted, as animals are raised in unhealthy systems and in general as we eat foods that impact our bodies in a negative nutritional fashion as they are so packed with chemicals and sugar that our bodies need a disproportionate amount of nutrition to cope.
   
   

And here we find ourselves in the middle of a global pandemic and needing to deeply nourish our bodies, especially with vitamin C, build our microbiomes, address chronic underlying health issues and fire up our immune response
At this point in time, everything old is new again and this recipe is practically a life line.

So let’s get our hands into a bowl of cabbage and salt and make like our wise ancestors!

Ingredients

1 small red or green cabbage or half of a large cabbage

3 tart apples

1 thumb sized piece of raw ginger

1 tbsp sea salt

Instructions

Remove the outer leaves from the cabbage and reserve on one side
Chop the cabbage finely removing the stalk and place into a large bowl.
Chop or grate in the apple and grate in the ginger
Add the salt and using your hands massage the salt into the vegetables and fruit until the cabbage become bright red or green and is beginning to release water. Keep massaging for another five minutes.
This process allows the healthy and friendly bacteria from your clean hands and present on the ‘bloom’ of the cabbage, that cloudy texture on the surface of the leaf, to come into contact with all of the cabbage and begin the fermentation process. These bacteria are more varied than any probiotic capsule you can buy in the store and will increase in number to become more powerful for your microbiome than a store bought probiotic.
Once the cabbage is beginning to run with released water pile all of the vegetable and fruit into a large clean mason jar and pour in the liquid.
Press a reserved cabbage leaf over the top of the vegetables and place a weight on top to press down the vegetables.
Put a lid on the mason jar and place in a dark warm place on your counter.
Check on your jar a couple of hours later and if the cabbage is not covered with liquid, make a brine with an 8oz glass of filtered water and 1 tbsp of salt and pour into your jar to cover.
Leave your sauerkraut out on the counter for 24 hours and then allow to mature for 5 days in your refrigerator.
Eat with cheese and crackers, as a side with meat dishes or served next to fried eggs for breakfast.

Try and eat a small portion of fermented foods daily to rebuild your gut health and microbiome. You will notice the inclusion of fermented foods in the softness of your skin and as the antidote to constipation.
If you are looking for other ways to boost immunity you can read about Kukicha Tea here.

Turmeric and Vegetable Thai Curry

Turmeric, such a powerfully health promoting spice with evidence from clinical trails to endorse its anti-inflammatory, anti-cancerous properties and the positive effect eating more turmeric can have on our mood, memory, skin, cardio vascular health and inflammatory joint pain.

For those of us who are used to eating the Standard American Diet however, it can be difficult to find a place where this medicinal spice fits into our everyday diet. Enter this delicious and flexible Turmeric and Vegetable Thai Curry.

The recipe for Thai Curry is based around a homemade Thai paste that is whizzed up with a hand blender and makes enough paste for two curries. Freeze the paste and you have a head start for the next time you are craving this flavour filled dish.

Let’s start with the Curry Paste!

Thai Curry Paste
Ingredients

1 lime juiced
3 cloves garlic
1 dessert spoon shrimp past or 2 tbsp gluten free Tamari soy sauce
1 stalk lemon grass cut into 3rds
1 thumb sized piece of ginger
1 tbsp coconut sugar
2 tsp ground turmeric
1 tsp ground cumin
1 tsp ground coriander
Stalks from 1 bunch cilantro
Fresh chilli or ground chilli flakes to taste (optional)

Instructions

Place all of the ingredients in the goblet of a hand blender and blend on high until you have a stiff paste. This can also be done in a pestle and mortar.
Once you have the paste made you can freeze half in a container to use to make a Thai Curry at a later date.

Once you have the paste made we can start to plan for what we want to include in our curry.
This paste is delicious with chicken, shrimp or beef and if you eat a plant based only diet then cubes of firm tofu would also be perfect as a protein source. Go easy on yourself and grab a rotisserie chicken to shred into your curry for a delicious meal in less time. I used ground turkey as it is a staple in my freezer. Turkey meat is rich in tryptophan the amino acid building block for our happy neurotransmitter serotonin.
Get creative and look at the different veg that you have in your refrigerator. carrots, cauliflower, broccoli, red pepper, green beans, collards, spinach, rutabaga, Brussels sprouts, red cabbage and kale are all perfect for this dish.

Ingredients

1 red pepper sliced
4 carrots thinly sliced on the diagonal
1 red onion sliced
2 cups broccoli florets separated and stalks peeled and sliced thinly
1 large handful of spinach
1 bunch cilantro leaves from the bunch used to make the paste.
1- 2 tbsp coconut oil
1 14oz can coconut milk
1/2 quantity of Thai Curry Paste

Instructions

Melt the coconut oil in a large pan on a medium heat and sauté the carrots , onion and red pepper stirring continuously for 2 minutes.
Add the Thai curry paste to the pan and sauté for 1 minute with the vegetables to activate the flavours.
Add the broccoli florets and your protein of choice and sauté for another 2 minutes to cook your meat or shrimp and being sure to move the ingredients around the pan so that they do not catch.
Add the can of coconut milk and reduce the heat to a simmer. Allow the curry to simmer with the lid on for 10 minutes.
Add the spinach leaves and cilantro and allow to wilt into the pan. if you are using cooked chicken you can stir your shredded chicken into the curry at this point.
Serve over cooked rice and enjoy all of the delicious flavours.