Apple Ginger and Pumpkin Soup

The nights are drawing in, Halloween is approaching and we are well into soup season.

We are also in the middle of a global pandemic and heading towards a challenging time for our personal health.

What power do we have in this situation?
What can we do to take care of ourselves ?
How can we support the health of our families?

One way we can improve our health and indeed our outcomes should we fall foul of ANY virus is by using the power of food and nutrition to boost our immune response and support our optimal health.

This gorgeous bowl of sunshine is rich in beta-carotene from pumpkin. Beta-carotene is the precursor to vitamin A which helps to keep all of our tissues healthy. This includes the mucous barriers in your eyes, lungs, gut and genitals which help trap bacteria and other infectious agents.

Vitamin A is also involved in the production and function of white blood cells, which help capture and clear bacteria and other pathogens from your bloodstream.
Stephensen CB. Vitamin A, infection, and immune function. Annu Rev Nutr. 2001;21:167-92. doi: 10.1146/annurev.nutr.21.1.167. PMID: 11375434.

This soup is flavoured richly with ginger which contains the powerful medicinal properties of gingerol. This means that ginger may actually fight harmful bacteria and viruses, which could reduce your risk for infections.
Chang JS, Wang KC, Yeh CF, Shieh DE, Chiang LC. Fresh ginger (Zingiber officinale) has anti-viral activity against human respiratory syncytial virus in human respiratory tract cell lines. J Ethnopharmacol. 2013 Jan 9;145(1):146-51. doi: 10.1016/j.jep.2012.10.043. Epub 2012 Nov 1. PMID: 23123794.

Alongside the pumpkin, I sliced four large new season apples into this soup. Apples contain pectin, a type of fibre that acts as a prebiotic. Pectin feeds the good bacteria in your gut and the healthier and more diverse your good gut bacteria remain, the stronger the immunity of your body.

Antioxidant-rich apples may also help protect your lungs from oxidative damage.

A large study in more than 68,000 women found that those who ate the most apples had the lowest risk of asthma.
Hyson DA. A comprehensive review of apples and apple components and their relationship to human health. Adv Nutr. 2011;2(5):408-420. doi:10.3945/an.111.000513

Any food that supports lung health is helpful at this time.

The base of this delicious soup is bone broth, often named colloquially as ‘liquid penicillin’.

There are no clinical trials on bone broth but we know that it provides dense nutrition rich in minerals, easily absorbed amino acids and gut supportive proteins. Bone marrow, when used in making bone broth, gives you vitamin A, Vitamin K2, omega 3 fatty acids, omega-6s and minerals like iron, zinc, selenium, boron and manganese. Bone broth is also rich in the amino acid glycine which supports your liver health.

Whenever we are eating bone broth we are deeply supporting the overall health of our bodies.

Don’t let anyone tell you that you cannot support your body and your personal health at this difficult time. You have the personal power to wake-up and move your body daily to promote your health, to get outside into daylight and maintain your vitamin D levels, to write a gratitude journal and re-wire your brain for happiness and to dive into a delicious bowl of this nourishing soup.

Now is the time to empower yourself with knowledge around food and nutrition.


Ingredients

1 medium pumpkin peeled and diced

4 tbsp olive oil

2 carrots roughly chopped

2 onions roughly diced

6 cups chicken bone broth

4 new season Honey Crisp apples sliced

1 tbsp turmeric

2” fresh ginger sliced

1 x14 oz can coconut milk

Instructions

1. Place the olive oil, onion, garlic, ginger turmeric and carrot in the Instapot and sauté until the onion softens and becomes opaque. Stir as you sauté so that the turmeric does not burn.

2. Add all the other ingredients apart from the coconut milk.

3. Close the lid and hit the setting for soup.

4. Allow the Instapot to lose pressure and remove the lid

5. Blend the soup using a hand blender to get a smooth consistency.

6. Add the coconut milk and blend again

7. Pour this liquid sunshine into a bowl and enjoy!

Turkey Quinoa and Apple Burgers

Turkey is not just for Thanks Giving!

Here is a recipe for a flavourful summer burger that does not load your plate with saturated fats or stress your digestion with a mountain of animal based protein.

Packed with herbs that balance your microbiome and support immunity and juicy apple for added fibre and vitamin C, this burger ‘stretches’ organic Turkey meat with quinoa so that you get a bigger bang for your buck.

But let’s be clear that all of these ingredients = flavour!

Turkey can often be the meat that we only eat once a year when in reality it has a valuable place in the diet as it is packed with tryptophan, the amino acid that is a building block for our happy neurotransmitter serotonin.
Without sufficient tryptophan in the diet you might be feeling low and blue and explaining these emotions away as ‘just your hormones’.

Can we outright ban the phrase ‘just your hormones,’ for midlife women?

With research showing us the frequent hot flashes earlier on in menopause being related to heart issues as we age and new research on the microbiome telling us how important a low sugar/high fibre can be for our mood and cognitive function, explaining away a low mood, uncomfortable sweaty waves over our bodies and mood swings as ‘just being hormones’ is abandoning our very best midlife health!

One way we can show up for ourselves at midlife is nourishing our bodies with delicious, dense nutrition that provides our bodies with the building blocks for our very best health.

When we are supporting our bodies to build serotonin, we are going to feel our mood lift.
As serotonin os also the precursor to melatonin, our sleep hormone and acts as a powerful appetite suppressor in the body, we are also going to sleep better and stand a better chance of losing that midlife muffin top and maintaining our ideal weight during peri-menopause.

That is the gentle power of food and nutrition ladies. When you do something right for one aspect of your health, you are going to feel the benefits in other areas too.

Health is holistic and our bodies are all connected.

Ingredients

                     1lb 470g ground turkey

                     1 apple grated

                     1/2 cup cooked quinoa

                     1/2 grated onion

                     2 cloves garlic minced

                     1 tsp rubbed sage

                     1/2 tsp dried thyme

                     1/2 bunch fresh parsley finely chopped

                     2 tsp salt

                     1/2 tsp pepper

Instructions

Wash quinoa in a fine sieve to remove saponins which may taste bitter.

Cook 2 cups quinoa to yield 4 cups cooked. Quinoa should cook for about fifteen minutes until the tiny 'tails' appear from the grain. Reserve 1/2 cup for this recipe and keep in refrigerator to make quinoa salad.

While quinoa cooks, grate apple and onion into a bowl.

Add garlic, herbs and spices.

Add turkey and cooked quinoa when ready.

Work with the hands to distribute all the ingredients evenly.

Form into 6 patties ready for cooking.

Cook on a griddle or barbecue on a medium heat for 7 minutes on each side until patties are cooked through.

Morning Detox Smoothie

This smoothie is adapted from a recipe by Dr Mark Hyman and is packed with dense nutrition. It is as thick as any thick shake you can buy form any diner and one hundred times more nutritious.

This Shake is a reset every morning to educate your taste buds and curb your sugar cravings.

Notice there is no banana in this recipe, no fruity mango or sweet dates.

Here the berries provide the sweetness and all other ingredient are mineral dense, protein rich or healthy fats to satiate your body and eliminate your cravings.

You are going to feel FULL after this shake, satiated, replete and will power through your morning without that sugar squirrel brain that keeps shouting muffin, candy or chocolate inside your head. It is a blessed release.

Let’s run through some of the gorgeous nutrition that is is this glass.
Berries bring the anti-oxidants, vitamin C and fibre
Avocado Loves us up with healthy fats, fibre and vitamin E, Avocado is also anti-inflammatory.
Almond Butter, Pumpkin Seed Butter, Brazil Nuts and Walnuts offer us health fats, protein and minerals.

When we do not get the minerals in our diet that we need, our brains start to get antsy and send us the message, via cravings, that we need to eat to eliminate our deficiencies. Often the only message we hear is sugar or salt, but the deficiency is far more subtle than that.

Pumpkin seeds are backed with zinc for healthy gums and tissues and to ensure a healthy immune system.
Brazil nuts are rich in selenium, a powerful anti-oxidant mineral that is highly supportive of our thyroid gland. Our thyroid gland is responsible for the big cycles in our bodies so a healthy thyroid gland means fired up metabolism which makes it ease to maintain our ideal weight, a smooth circadian rhythm with lots of great sleep and a regular menstrual cycle.

Minerals are important and are can be the reason why we are overweight but malnourished.

Hemp and Chia seeds give us a healthy dose of plant based protein, fibre and anti-inflammatory omega 3 fatty acids.

This shake is rich in anti-inflammatory nutrition because sugar is inflammatory to our bodies and the fat cells built up on our bodies by eating too much sugar in the diet release inflammatory cytokines into our bloodstream. Sugar creates a negative cycle that causes inflammation in the body when it is eaten and results in our bodies being systemically inflamed. You might call this depression, brain fog and physical pain.

The nutrition in this shake helps us to break that cycle.

Do you see what we are doing here?

This is not about cutting down on food to get yourself thin! This shake is all about deeply nourishing yourself in the morning to give your body the nutrition it needs so that you reduce your cravings for sugar and can finally stop beating yourself up inside your head for failing.

And as this is the case, this Morning Detox Smoothie is transformative.
Drink one each morning for a week and see how you are feeling, notice if your cravings have abated and recognize your body when it is fully and beautifully fuelled.

Ingredients

1 cup coconut, hemp. oat milk
1/2 cup filtered water
1 cup blueberries, raspberries, cherries fresh or frozen
1/4 lemon including skin and pith
1/4 avocado
1 tbsp almond butter
1 tbsp pumpkin seed butter (optional)
1 tbsp coconut oil or butter
2 walnuts
2 Brazil nuts
1 tbsp chia seeds
1 tbsp hemp seeds

Instructions

Add all ingredients to a high powered blender and blend until smooth
Use as a smoothie bowl base adding more fruit and nuts as desired or drink as a think shake