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!
