Egg Drop Soup - when you need real fast food!

I write repeatedly on this blog about the benefits of bone broth for reducing inflammation in the digestive tract to resolve Leaky Gut Syndrome and for supporting tired adrenal glands. Think anxiety, lost sleep and powerful feelings of overwhelm. It would be unfair to talk about the benefits of bone broth without also mentioning how supportive this mineral and collagen dense elixir is for midlife bone health and in the prevention of joint pain and osteoarthritis .

I often get asked the question, “what do I do with bone broth once I have made it?” and my answer to that is …Put It In Everything!

Make a great soup, add to casseroles, cook rice in broth and put it into a tea cup with a big pinch of sea salt and drink as a healing beverage.

This recipe is one of my go to quick fixes for a simple breakfast or lunch when I am wanting to get more bone broth into my own diet and it is to be commended for both its simplicity, speed and flavour.

A simple ingredient list of quartered cherry tomatoes, a handful of kale, green onion and flavoured eggs are cooked quickly in bone broth to create a delicious and aromatic bowl of goodness. Literally 15 minutes flat is all it takes to get this dish of easily absorbed amino acids, mineral dense vegetables, vitamin C rich tomatoes, and choline dense eggs onto the table and it takes less time than that to get it into your belly!

If you are a women experiencing issues with your bone health or arthritis, have unexplained gassiness and or bloating when you eat or are exhausted on a daily basis, this is a dish you need to include into your diet.

This ladies, is REAL FAST FOOD!

If you are looking for more ideas for easy and nutritious dishes that fit into your hectic schedule or just want to learn about what is happening to your body during midlife, you will love my Private Facebook group The Nourished Midlife Woman. Come join our community!

Ingredients

2 cups bone broth (any flavour)
1 handful of cherry tomatoes quartered
1 big handful of kale finely chopped or baby leaves
2 green onions finely chopped
2 farm fresh eggs
2 tbsp gluten free Tamari Soy Sauce
2 tbsp toasted sesame oil

Instructions

Warm the bone broth in a medium pan over a medium heat
In a small bowl whisk together the eggs, Tamari soy sauce and sesame oil until combined
Once the broth is simmering add the quartered tomatoes, finely chopped green onion and kale
Once the broth begins to simmer again, take chopsticks and whisk the broth and vegetables rapidly into a whirlwind in the pan
Whilst the broth is spinning in the pan, gently and slowly pour the egg mixture into simmering liquid
Within seconds the eggs should be cooked and the soup is ready
Serve with shredded toasted seaweed to add more minerals and especially thyroid supportive iodine.

Blueberry and Flax Breakfast Muffins

So you are feeling like you are losing control of your body in midlife and the biggest culprit is your uncomfortable and out of control hot flashes and night sweats.

You keep having embarrassing moments during the day where you turn hot and beet red with perspiration dripping from your top lip and your just have to tear off the layers, and you are sick and tired of waking in the night with your sheets drenched and heart racing from a night sweat. It is draining and you feel exhausted and have lost trust in your own body.

Hot sweats and night sweats are the most recognized symptom of peri-menopause and are an indicator that your estrogen levels are beginning to fall as your ovaries move into a resting stage. You are moving towards the later stage of your peri-menopausal experience and other glands such as the adrenal glands will pick up the load and micro dose your body with estrogen in your post menopausal stage.

You need this trickle flow of hormone as estrogen is:
1. Bone protective
2. Brain health protective
3. Heart health protective
4. Prevents vaginal dryness and atrophy.

When our ovaries rest we need our adrenals to kick-in and take over this role.

Not all peri-menopauses are the same and we hear and read a lot about how women in the Western world experience a more symptomatic and medicated journey towards the hormonal balance of menopause.

I have a theory: Modern life is just so stressful and we are all so exhausted and run ragged that our adrenal glands just do not have the capacity to pick up where our ovaries have left off.

So where does that leave the midlife woman who wants to support her very best health?

Well there are are foods that help to boost estrogen levels in the body and alleviate symptoms of hot flashes and night sweats by introducing phyto-estrogen into our diet.
Phytoestrogens are plant-based, estrogen-mimics which circulate in the body and ‘trick’ the body into thinking that the trickle flow of estrogen is flowing and thus reduce symptoms of estrogen deficiency such as hot flashes and night sweats. Below is a list of foods that are rich in phytoestrogens and which you should load into your daily meal plan if you are waking hot and sweaty at night or hiding in the washrooms pulling a damp t-shirt away from your sweaty skin waiting for a hot flash to pass.

If you are curious to know more about what is happening to you body if you are experiencing hot flashes you can click here to join my private Facebook Group The Nourished Midlife Woman and watch a Facebook live training on just this topic.

And… so here is a fabulous place to start!

Breakfast muffins that are rich in ground flax and anti-oxidant rich blueberries that begin to bring in the foods that mimic estrogen in the body and calm those unpredictable sweats down.

I substituted the sugar in this muffin recipe for MONK FRUIT sweetener, a sugar substitute that does not raise blood sugar levels or spike insulin in the body. These muffins are sweet but sugar free and there is not the aftertaste that you sometimes get with the sugar substitute stevia. This is the brand I can buy easily in stores in Canada.

I made these muffins on a Covid 19 quarantine day when I could not get hold of plain flour so I played with the recipe and added the same quantity of a healthy pancake mix I had in the cupboard and the end of a bag of gluten free buckwheat flour. (This is why my muffins are so dark in the photo provided.) I also lazily added all of my ingredients into one bowl, but the quality of the muffins is much improved by adding the wet ingredients into the dry. My point here is that this is a very forgiving recipe so you can make it your own. Hello, my name is Louise, I am a food lover and very lazy cook!

Ingredients

113 g or 3/4 cup sugar

225g or 11/2 cups plain flour (spelt flour would be nice here or half and half plain flour and buckwheat flour)

2 heaping tbsp ground flax

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp bicarbonate of soda

rind of 1 lemon grated

pinch of sea salt

125g or 1 cup fresh or defrosted frozen blueberries

100g or 2/3 cup of coconut oil melted

1 cup live natural yoghurt

2 eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract

1/2 lemon juiced (optional)

Instructions

Heat the over to 200C 400 F or gas mark 6
Place 12 muffin cases in a muffin tin ready to receive your muffin mixture.
Place all of the dry ingredients from the sugar through to the sea salt into a bowl.
Toss the blueberries through the dry ingredients.
In a separate bowl add the eggs, yoghurt and vanilla extract and whisk gently to combine.
Stir in the melted coconut oil taking care not to ‘cook’ the eggs with the warm oil.
Stir the ‘wet’ ingredients into the ‘dry’ ingredients and mix lightly to form a batter. Do not over mix.
Load the muffin batter into the muffin cases.
bake in the over for 15-20 minutes until the muffins are cooked through…a tooth pick pushed into the muffins will come out clean.
Enjoy warm with butter for a truly decadent treat.

If you are interested in more healthy breakfast options that will help you to start your day with nutrition so that you power through your morning with energy to spare, you can sign up to receive my FREE downloadable e-book Breakfast Essentials. Click here to get your copy.

Heart Healthy Buckwheat Berry Bowl

For women over 40, heart health is important.

Heart disease is the number one cause of death for women in North America, but there is a misconception that this is a male problem.

As we pass through peri-menopause we experience a down grade in the amount of estrogen in the body. This is important because for all of our lives the hormone estrogen has been protective to our heart. We have an opportunity here to take heart protective foods seriously and upgrade the love we show our heart through the food we eat.

To keep your cardiovascular system healthy you need a diet rich in fibre, healthy fats and antioxidants and this breakfast bowl deliciously provides us with everything we need. If you want to read more about why breakfast is the most important meal of the day for the peri-menopausal midlife woman, click here to download my FREE Breakfast Essentials booklet.

Fibres can support us in lowering our cholesterol level, healthy fats help us to maintain a healthy lipid profile with high levels of healthy High density lipoproteins and low levels of the dangerous low density lipoproteins. Anti-oxidants scour our bloodstream for free radicals and help to prevent and repair damage to our cell walls that result in plaques being formed as the body pairs itself.

You can make this bowl with oats or buckwheat, but buckwheat is rich in the plant lignan, rutin, which supports the strength and elasticity in the walls of our veins and arteries. If you have varicose veins, then this food should be in your rotation.

I added the queen of fibres for the midlife women, ground flax, another fibre that is rich in lignan’s.
The lignans, which are a type of phytoestrogen in flaxseed, can change estrogen metabolism. In postmenopausal women, lignans can cause the body to produce less active forms of estrogen to balance hormones and protect against breast cancer. Ground flax is also rich in omega 3 fatty acids and should be stored in the refrigerator.

By adding raw cacao for a chocolaty rich flavour we are adding more antioxidants to our breakfast bowl coupled with a dose of Magnesium, our relaxation mineral that helps to reduce blood pressure. Magnesium is important in heart health as when we are deficient in this mineral in relation to calcium we are more at risk of calcium precipitating out of our bloodstream to form calcified plaques when there is damage to the cell wall of our veins and arteries. In this way a daily green smoothie is heart healthy also! I love a pinch of sea salt and a tablespoon of maple syrup every time to bring out the chocolate flavour.

I tablespoon of coconut oil gives a richness to this dish supports balanced blood sugar levels and helps to fire up our metabolism in the morning. Lady, coconut oil is going to give you the energy you need to get through your morning and supports your very best brain health.

Once we have the basics of our bowl, we can just play!

I added pumpkins seeds and walnuts as they are rich in vitamin E. Vitamin E impacts the cell wall of our red blood cells causing them to stay smooth and slippy so that blood slides more easily around our tubes. I also love Brazil nuts in this bowl as they are selenium rich, so supportive of my thyroid gland and again support my metabolism in the morning; the antidote to midlife weight gain!

Lastly, top your bowl with antioxidant rich berries and cherries. Packed with fibre, natural sugar and that beautiful dark red and purple colour that indicates that they are heart supportive and rich in antioxidants2
Berries are also loading the bowl with vitamin C

If you need a head start in the morning you can soak your grains overnight or better yet get all of the ingredients assembled and ready to go with your berries defrosted if they are out of season and everything to hand. Lady, food prep, even if it is just assembling what you will need the night before, is some of the best love you can show your heart!

Enjoy this chocolaty goodness!

1.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24013641

2.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26501271

Ingredients

1/4 cup Buckwheat porridge or grits

1 cup water brought to the boil in a small pan

1 tbsp ground flax

1 tbsp coconut oil

1 tbsp raw cacao

1 tbsp maple syrup

1 pinch sea salt

1/2 cup of mixed raw nuts and seeds of your choice. Walnuts, Brazil Nuts Pumpkins Seeds, Almonds, Hazelnuts, Pistachios

1 cup fresh or frozen berries and cherries.

Instructions

1. Add the buckwheat to the boiling water in a small pan and cook for 5-6 minutes

2. Remove from the heat and put into a bowl

3. Stir in the coconut oil, cacao, maple syrup and sea salt

4. Add the ground flax, nuts and seeds and berries

5. Enjoy!