Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie

It’s Fall/Autumn, leaves are turning colours and morning temperatures are beginning to cool.

Tis the season to drink pumpkin flavoured everything and lust after fabulous, knee-length leather boots.

When I had three children at home, I remember resenting September/October with a passion. It felt like going back into shackles when the school/extra-curricular/evening-Mom-taxi routine set in. I just so loved the relaxed and unstructured days of summer and never wanted to let them go.

I am now an empty nester and this year I am enjoying a more relaxed observing of the turn of the seasons. I do not have to get out of bed at 6am to drive kids to band practice and I am not on call for rides to the mall or extra curricular activities in the evening. I just get to watch the leaves change colour, wiggle into a soft roll neck sweater in the morning and lean into how much I love chai tea.

Interestingly, there are old routines and recipes that I still want to pull into my life in the Fall. Comforting foods that just ‘fit’ into Fall for me and enrich the season (spoiler: It does not come from Starbucks!) I have started making chicken bone broth on a weekly basis again so that I am ready for soup season and I a making my staple Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe that I used to lean on heavily for lunch boxes.

Chewy, dense and absolutely packed with nutrition, these cookies are not too sweet and more of a meal in a biscuit, designed to keep teens energized and satiated.

The beauty of making your own cookies is that you get to choose the nutrition you want for yourself.

I love pumpkin seeds because they are packed with protein. This slows the passage of sugar to the bloodstream. They also give me a healthy dose of zinc to support my skin and tissue health and boost immunity. This batch contains sliced almonds and goji berries but I encourage you to make this recipe your own and add nutritious nuts, seeds and berries that you love the most.

I also add blackstrap molasses for easily absorbed iron and this accounts for the dark colour of the cookie. We need adequate iron stores at midlife to support us when our periods get heavy or erratic, to boost our energy and to ensure the function of our thyroid gland. Our thyroid gland is more efficient at converting thyroid hormone T4 to active thyroid hormone T3 when our iron stores are fully stocked. Your thyroid gland is a master gland that has kept the rhythm of your menstrual cycle for decades, so it can get stressed when you move into the peri-menopausal dance. Give it some love and load iron, selenium and iodine rich foods into your diet.

The non-negotiable are the chocolate chips. Every bite of this cookie should be rich in chocolate.

After years of making these cookies weekly for my family, it is an absolute joy to make, bake and store in the freezer so that I can pull one out whenever I want the taste of Fall.

Ingredients

      11/2 cups whole wheat or spelt flour

                     1tsp baking powder

                     1 cup butter or 1/2 cup butter and 1/2 cup coconut oil

                     1 egg

                     1/2 cup unrefined sugar or Sucanat

                     1/4 cup blackstrap molasses

                     2 cups rolled oats

                     1 cup coconut chips or desiccated coconut

                     1/2 cup pumpkin seeds

                     1/2 cup pecans/ walnuts/ sliced almonds/ goji berries or cranberries

                     3/4 cup dark chocolate chips

Instructions

      Heat the oven to 350F/200C

      Put all the ingredients into a mixing bowl and mix thoroughly to a rubbly batter

      Drop batter onto a parchment paper covered baking sheet using a tablespoon and form into an oval

      Cook for 12 minutes until just done.

Berry and Hibiscus Smoothie

Many of the women I work with arrive on their Free 30 minute Zoom call feeling at war with their bodies and not knowing where to turn. Peri-menopausal symptoms are ruining their days, weight gain is crashing every shred of confidence and they are anxious and exhausted from not being able to sleep at night.

Many women have already turned to their healthcare provider, looking for a fix to their midlife symptoms only to be told that it is normal to feel that way, to be offered an anti-depressant or to hear the absolute worst advice for a midlife women; Eat Less and Exercise More.

It can seem like magical thinking when I reassure women who are having a really hard time in menopause that food and nutrition is powerful and because We Are What We Eat, they can improve their sleep, feel more comfortable in their bodies and release weight when we are working together.

This is because real whole foods provide nutrition that is recognized and absorbed easily by the body and what nourishes us in one area of our body will nourish us across the whole body having a compounding positive impact on health.

You get to feel better than you even imagined you could.

Let me break it down :

You decide to eat more vegetables to get more fibre in your diet, because fibre is the midlife womans best friend and helps you to detox excess hormone out of the body.
BUT
​​You notice that you feel less tense in your body and are sleeping better at night, your mood lifts and you feel more mental clarity in your day.

​​Whats up with that?

Let me break it down

From the vegetables you eat you are getting masses of our relaxation mineral magnesium which supports your nervous and cardiovascular systems, promotes sleep and helps your muscles to relax naturally. It even helps you to poop (your daily detox) and you feel less bloated and constipated noticing that your favourite jeans fit that little bit better.

Greens also contain tons of easily absorbed calcium which build strong bones for future you and are packed with non-constipating plant based iron and anti-oxidants which dampen down inflammation, promote longevity and help you to feel very much more energized daily.

See?

The compounded effect of more vegetables in you diet truly impacts your health across your entire body and you start to feel really good all over in a way that you did not think was possible.

I decided to compound the positive effects on womens midlife health when I created this smoothie and married Hibiscus Tea with that nutritional power house; Berries.

Both Hibiscus and Berries are packed with anti-oxidants that help to prevent cancer and prevent aging.

They both help to lower blood pressure, support heart health and offer important micro-nutrition to your liver to help with detoxification.

Fibre from berries helps with constipation, supports the elimination of excess hormone from the body and helps to balance blood sugar levels which the nutrients in Hibiscus can do for you too! Double the benefits!

More importantly, both Hibiscus and Berries contain plant based chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body so you are drip feeding your beautiful midlife body a gentle form of the hormone your body is missing. It is going to make you feel goooood, relocate your libido and protect the health of your vagina.

This smoothie is for women who have lost their mojo, are missing their juicy hormone, see sex as just another chore and are overheating with uncomfortable hot flashes.

Give it a try and enjoy ALL of the benefits.

Ingredients

1 cup Raspberries
1 cup Blueberries
1-2” Fresh ginger chunked
1 tbsp Coconut oil
2-3 cups Hibiscus Tea

Instructions

Add all of the ingredients to a blender and whizz up on high until smooth.
Pour into a tall glass and enjoy as a pick me up in that afternoon slump.

Summer Squash Soup

Hands up!

Anyone else find themselves with a glut of zucchini and summer squash as the plants are just loving the heat this summer?

I cannot resist the beauty of a shiny summer squash or zucchini whenever i see them in the store or t the City Farm and found myself with over 2lbs in my refrigerator.

I needed a recipe fast.

I adapted this recipe from online vegan recipe creator, Debra Klein, to create a protein rich, nutrient dense soup, creamy but dairy-free and packed with flavour. The soup is no longer vegan but conatins all that gut-healing bone broth collagen and mineral dense goodness that we need to support our bodies through hormonal change.

Did you know that there is no word for hot flashes in Japan?

So few women experience this symptom of peri-menopause as they pass through hormonal change so there is not a descriptor in the language. This is changing as wheat heavy foods become more popular in Japan and the Standard American diet and subsequent fast foods are enjoyed by the culture, but, a traditional Japanese diet heavy in fish, fermented foods and soy support a woman through a symptom free peri-menopause.

Let’s talk about the phyto-chemicals in soy beans that mimic estrogen in he body and help to reduce symptoms of peri-menopause.

They have had a bad rap and there has been scaremongering that these foods can create a risk of breast cancer.

When we drip feed our bodies gentle plant based chemicals that mimic estrogen in the body we are supporting our vaginal health, brain health and libido. These gentle estrogens attach to beta estrogen receptors in the breast that slow down the turnover of cells, making them breast protective.

Make sure that you buy organic soy products as this crop is heavily sprayed with glyphosate, it was genetically designed that way and glyphosate is extremely damaging to our gut lining…it was designed that way, it is how it kills pests.

The big benefit of using soy in this soup is that it creates a creamy texture without needing to add inflammatory dairy products such as milk and cream. Don’t get me wrong, I love the occasional creamy dessert or scone with cream and jam and I LOVE butter but in my everyday cooking I shy away from dairy heavy recipes.

So, we have a high protein, plant heavy soup with a creamy texture, that helps to prevent menopausal symptoms and is rich in all the mineral dense nutrition and gut healing properties for bone broth.

How does the soup taste Louise? Am I going to love it?

Creamy and herby in flavour, this soup has a deep umami taste due to the 2 tbsp of miso paste added at the end. Miso paste is found in the refrigerator in your food store or an Asian grocery and is made from fermented soy beans. Because it is fermented the nutrition from protein, iron, magnesium our relaxation mineral and the B group of vitamins that support our nervous system and boost our energy are easily absorbed.

Above all else Miso Paste benefits for your microbiome, you inner constellation of healthy bacteria that impact so many areas of our health from mood to yes you guessed it, menopausal symptoms in a positive way. The Miso Paste is added at the very end of the recipe once the soup has been taken off the heat and in this way the healthy bacteria in the Miso can stay ‘live’.

What a gorgeous way to include this stunning summer vegetable into your weekly rotation of nutrient dense meals.

Ingredients

2lb summer squash and or Zucchini diced
1 large onion diced
4 cloves garlic finely chopped
2tbsp extra virgin olive oil
4 cups chicken broth
8oz silken tofu
1 cup peas frozen or fresh
1 bunch fresh basil
2 heaped tbsp miso paste
Salt and Pepper to taste.

Instructions

Put the olive oil in a large soup pan and add the onion, garlic and squash.
Sauté very gently with a lid on the pan for 15 minutes or until the squash are softened.
Add the chicken broth, tofu, peas and whole bunch of basil.
Using a hand held blender or in batches in a food processor or standing blender, whizz the soup until it is smooth and return to the pan.
Bring the soup back to simmer and turn off the heat.
Add the miso paste once the soup has cooled a little so that you keep the fermented ‘live’ properties of the miso.
Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Serves 4-6