Herb Salad Dressing

There are some nudges/switches/changes that you make to the food that you eat that truly impact your health in an enormously positive way. The impact to your health is far greater than the effort required to make a change.

This is the low hanging fruit of health and wellness and when we see the recommendation we should jump straight on the train and implement.

I am thinking of simple changes to our lives like switching out coffee for Matcha to reduce cortisol in the body, increase the number of antioxidants in your day, lift your mood and reclaim your sleep; or adding coconut oil to a morning latte to calm the brain from anxiety, balance the microbiome, help with healing and sealing the gut lining by reducing gut inflammation, supercharge metabolism to burn calories more easily throughout the day and support the release of belly fat from the body.

Get it?

Small change/big impact.

I feel the same way about opening the refrigerator door and slinging all of your jarred and bottled salad dressings into the garbage can and vowing to make all your own dressings moving forward.

Simple action, big positives for health.

Let’s unpack this and find out why you need a jam jar of olive oil and lemon juice in your refrigerator more than you need anything with a label on it.

The processed food that we buy from the store is made with the cheapest ingredients and packed with sugar, additives and preservatives.

We know this, but why is it so important when it comes to an innocent jar of salad dressing?

The cheap seed oils used in bottled salad dressings such as cottonseed oil, safflower oil, corn oil, sunflower oil and canola oil are not only heat treated, bleached and striped of all scent and flavour using chemicals but are rich in omega 6 fatty acids.

Omega 6 fatty acids are detrimental to the body as they DRIVE inflammation and are actively pushing our bodies towards chronic disease when we are eating a ‘healthy’ bowl of salad!

It is understood that a healthy ratio of omega 3 fatty acids to omega 6 fatty acids in the human diet should be 1:4 but we live in a terrain packed with take-out, fast and processed foods and the majority of us in the western world have a ratio of 1: between 10 and 20.
Omega 3 fatty acids calm the nervous system, support brain health and contribute to a healthy cell wall in every cell of our body. They are essential for our cardiovascular, brain and tissue health.

When we make a dressing with hemp, pumpkin, walnut, flax or cardiovascular protective olive oil, we are kicking inflammatory oils out of our diets and loading health promoting, anti-inflammatory nutrition into its place.

Olive oil is especially beneficial as it is mono saturated and supports cardiovascular health by reducing inflammation, reducing the oxidation of bad cholesterol and lowering blood pressure.

Once you switched out the oil, it is just a case of adding even more nutrition to your dressing. Heart protective garlic, thyroid supporting sea salt and vitamin C rich lemon juice.

This herb dressing is absolutely packed with dense nutrition as you have a anti-inflammatory oil driving away chronic disease paired with microbiome supportive apple cider vinegar and the fantastic vibrant green of fresh herbs which bring, our relaxation mineral magnesium and a big dose of vitamin C and iron.

When you add the optional egg yolk and capers and anchovy you are not only amplifying flavour but adding choline for brain function from the egg yolk and MORE omega 3 fatty acids and a delicious umami taste as you throw in the anchovy.

Ingredients

1 bunch Parsley roughly chopped
1 handful Basil
1/2 cup olive oil
1/4 cup Apple Cider Vinegar
1 heaped tsp Grainy mustard
Salt and Pepper to taste

Optional
1 egg yolk
1 anchovy
1 tbsp capers

Instructions

Add all of the ingredients to a blender and whizz until you have a smooth and emulsified dressing.

Pour over EVERYTHING! Salad, potatoes, salmon and chicken.

Watermelon, Cucumber and Feta Salad

I don’t know about where you live but summer just heated up here in Victoria BC and we are sweltering under a ‘Heat Dome’!

I have a plan to stay hydrated and it involved the purchase of big ripe watermelon which I lugged home in a reusable market bag just before the temperatures broke the 30’s C.

I am drinking my water flavoured with watermelon chunks and crunching through the sweet slices on a daily basis.

Hydration is super important to us during midlife, regardless of a heat wave, as it helps us to support our hard working liver.

#nutritional nugget It is our liver that breaks down excess hormone in the body during peri-menopause and helps to quell our more uncomfortable symptoms such as hot flashes, night sweats and mood swings.

When we are:
1. Overwhelmed and exhausted in life and jump-start our day with caffeine (a big molecule that the liver works hard to break down)
2. End our day with alcohol (more work for the liver)
3. Eat processed foods often with additives and chemicals that stress our liver
4. Eat foods packed with unhealthy fats and oils
5. Take prescription or over the counter medications daily
6. Spend each day on a blood sugar roller coaster and stress out our liver

We work our liver hard, making the peri-menopausal dance of spiking and crashing estrogen, cortisol and progesterone hormones a burden it can no longer handle without help.

This is when you feel like you are losing your mind and have lost control of your body.

You can’t sleep through the night (hello 4am anxiety)

You spend all day either anticipating or experiencing a sweaty, embarrassing and uncomfortable hot flash

You feel your mood swing from calm zen to a shaky rage in a fraction of a second even with those you love most in the world.

You wake each morning feeling exhausted and overwhelmed by what you have to get through in your day.

You wonder why your body is breaking down as you feel achy like an old woman on a daily basis especially your poor neck and shoulders.

Okay, the big one…the one that hits our confidence hardest... middle age spread. You gain pounds around your belly and your waist is vanishing leaving you feeling deeply uncomfortable in your body. Regardless of how little you eat or how much you exercise nothing shifts this stubborn, midlife ‘hormonal weight’.

Truth is that helping our liver by eating real food and dense nutrition is one of the biggest ways we can reduce peri-menopausal symptoms, calm our mood and maintain our ideal weight. Hydration to cleanse the liver is a great place to start.

Educating ourselves around nutrition in midlife and loving ourselves enough to make the food we eat a priority is also an empowering and delicious journey.

May I present my first piece of evidence in this case!

Watermelon, Feta and Cucumber Salad
¼ small watermelon cubed to bite sized pieces
½ English cucumber or 2-3 baby cucumbers
200g/4oz sheep milk feta cheese
1 large handful mint finely chopped (use basil, parsley or cilantro if that is what you have)
Balsamic vinegar enough to drizzle
Olive oil enough to drizzle
Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to season

Add all ingredients to a big plate and toss lightly.
Enjoy all the cooling flavours and juicy bursts of these hydrating fruit and vegetable in your mouth knowing that you are eating to support you liver during peri-menopause.

Note: If you want to give you liver some extra love try this daily practice each morning…Daily Cleansing Lemon Water For Liver Health

Coffee Replacement Chocolate Morning Drink

One of the most beautiful things we can do for ourselves at midlife is to get to know ourselves without caffeine.

Each time we introduce caffeine into the body, we trigger our flight or flight response and your stress hormone cortisol spikes in your beautiful midlife body. We rely on this early morning jolt for daily energy and often do not realize that it is robbing us of our innate vitality and our sleep at the other end of our day.

As estrogen our juicy hormone and progesterone our balancing hormone are in decline during midlife, it is easy for our stress hormone cortisol to dominate our hormone profile leaving us anxious, losing sleep at night and feeling burnt out daily. Ironically this can cause us to lean more heavily on caffeine to jump start our day and we exacerbate the cycle down into exhaustion with our morning cup of joe!

Our job at midlife is to love on ourselves with dense nutrition and stress reducing lifestyle practices so that we support our bodies through hormonal change and reduce the uncomfortable symptoms of peri-menopause that come with changing and dominant hormones.

This may mean giving ourself healthy boundaries and a midlife break up with caffeine as we move through hormonal change. In this way we can get to know where our natural daily energy lies and ensure we can sleep like a baby through our forties and fifties and avoid feeling tires wired and frazzled.

Hot Take: you can always make up with caffeine later when your hormones are on an even keel!

This morning beverage is a recipe designed to nourish the body first thing in the morning.

It is rich in our relaxation mineral magnesium found in raw cacao and boosts our happy neurotransmitter serotonin to give you that lift in the morning that you enjoy from coffee. It includes anti-inflammatory spices and calms the brain early in the day by providing healthy fats from coconut butter and the omega 3 fatty acids found in protein rich hemp seeds.

Dates are rich in iron and the B group of vitamins and collagen provides the amino acids needed to build health skin, joints and a healthy gut lining.

Above all else, where coffee jolts the brain and leaches nutrition from the body as it dehydrates our skin, this morning elixir nourishes, calms and builds your midlife health.

Coffee Replacement Chocolate Morning Drink

Ingredients

4 tbsp raw cacao

4 tbsp hemp seeds

2 tbsp coconut oil

4 dates

1 pinch sea salt

4 cups boiled water

2 tbsp Collagen (optional)

1/4 tsp cinnamon (optional)

1/4 tsp ground turmeric (optional)

1/4' fresh ginger (optional)

Instructions

Add all the ingredients into a vented blender and blend until silky smooth.

Decant into mason jars and cool.

Top with lid and refrigerate until required daily.