Mexican Hot Chocolate

So you have wrapped all the presents, made all of the food and been outside in the cold for a hike, skate or ski.

Here is a soothing and delicious go-to recipe for warming up your gorgeous self, from the inside out. A hot chocolate recipe that instead of giving you sugar laden empty calories, supports your body with minerals, provides nutrition for the lining of your digestive tract and boosts your metabolism all in one delicious mug.

Raw cacao is rich in our relaxation mineral, magnesium and helps to boost our iron stores. The addition of digestion-soothing ground ginger, blood-sugar-balancing cinnamon and just a pinch of cayenne to kick start you metabolism is what elevates this beverage from being your average hot chocolate to a health supporting elixir.

I added collagen to support optimal gut health and add a dose of protein to this hot chocolate and topped with coconut milk so that a mug that is normally full of nutrition depleting sugar and milk powders becomes rich with nutrition and healthy fat.

Hot Tip: If you know that you are fatigued with a poor functioning thyroid gland or exhausted adrenals, add a pinch of sea salt to support your adrenal health and intensify the chocolate flavour of the drink!

This hot chocolate is self care at Christmas. Eat smarter not less ladies.

So delicious and soothing that even Santa wanted some!

Ingredients

1 tbsp raw cacao
2 tsp grass-fed collagen powder
1/2 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/8 tsp cayenne pepper
2 tbsp coconut milk
1 tbsp maple syrup

Instructions

Put the raw cacao, collagen powder, cinnamon, ginger and cayenne into a large mug.
Add boiling water to the mug 3/4 of the way full
Top the hot chocolate with coconut milk and maple syrup and whisk until frothy and completely blended.
Sip before Santa gets to it!

If chocolate is not your thing! Is this possible? Then you might enjoy this delicious recipe for an immunity boosting, high vitamin C, mineral dense tea. Click here for my recipe for Kukicha Tea.

Immunity Boosting Kukicha Tea

The Holiday season is a busy time of year and so when we do get five minutes to ourselves it is helpful if we make that time count.

My guilty pleasure every year is to take time to watch Love Actually the movie. It is a ritual for me. This is the space I create to do nothing and to just revisit all the scenes I know and love at a time of year when I HAVE SO MUCH TO DO! During Love Actually, I take a breathe! (Also, London, at Christmas time!)

This ritual has worked so well for me each year that I am actively looking for new ones that will benefit my health and well being at the darkest time of the year when I am often feeling stressed out by my to do list and may also be stressing my body with additional alcohol and sugar.

Making and sitting to drink Kukicha Tea is a new favourite ritual of mine. Again I can take a deep breath!

Kukicha or twig tea is a blend of green tea made from four different stem, stalk and twig parts of the Camellia sinensis or tea plant. It is rich in nutrition because the growing part of the twig and stem is included in this tea with all of the nourishment that a plant would need to sprout a new shoot, included in your teapot.

This stem and twig tea is low in caffeine and rich in antioxidants and polyphenols which prevent free radical damage and support beautiful skin; but I love it for it’s vitamin and mineral content.
Twig tea contains minerals such as Zinc, Selenium, Copper, Manganese, and Fluoride and six times more Calcium than cows milk, making it perfect for supporting bone health as we move through menopause and our bones lose their estrogen protection. (Yes! Your hormones affect your bone strength!)
This tea also contains vitamins B1, B2, Niacin, vitamin A, and two and a half times more vitamin C than an orange so it supports your immunity, tissue health and the health of your nervous system during the Winter months.

It also replaces valuable vitamins and minerals that are eroded and leached from the body by alcohol and sugar, the two best friends of the Holiday Season.

I like to make a ritual of drinking this tea and to double down on its immunity boosting content.

I add fresh ginger and a cinnamon stick to my teapot and squeeze in the juice of a fresh orange. Then I add the twigs and stems of the tea and brew for ten minutes with filtered water that has just come off the boil. I then top up my pot with gently warmed pomegranate juice to boost the antioxidant content of this Christmassy beverage.

Then I sit. And enjoy. And breathe for a moment as I feel grateful for this direct action of self care.

Why not try something new and make Kukicha tea one of your Winter self-care practices?

Immunity boosting Kukicha Tea

Ingredients

4 cups of filtered water boiled and left for 1 minute
1 ounce of Japanese Kukicha, Bancha, Twig tea
1 cinnamon stick
1 thumb sized piece of fresh ginger sliced
1 large naval orange juiced into the pot
1 cup pomegranate juice

Instructions

Boil the water in a kettle and allow to rest for 1 minute
Whilst the water is boiling and resting, add the tea, cinnamon stick, ginger and orange juice to the pot
Pour the water into the pot and allow to steep for 10 minutes
Warm the pomegranate juice gently in a pan and add to the pot, or, if serving this tea to a child pour the pomegranate juice directly into a mug.
Pour the tea through a strainer and into your favourite mug or cup
Take five minutes of me time to just savour this seasonal health building tea!

P.S. If you love this tea, you will enjoy another decadent recipe for a nutrient dense winter beverage, Mexican Hot Chocolate. Click here to find the recipe and make this gorgeous hot drink your own.

The Benefits of Bone Broth (+ Recipe)

I generally shy away from the word ‘superfood’ as we live in a world with an abundance of healthy promoting real foods from arugula to zucchini, BUT for women feeling exhausted in their middle years, bone broth comes pretty close to the holy grail of nutritional content.

THE BENEFITS OF BONE BROTH

Contains Easily Absorbable Amino Acids
This help heal the epithelial cells of the gut lining alleviating feelings of gassiness and bloating that can become more common as we age and our digestive tract ages with us. Healthy digestion ensures absorption of nutrition from all the other energizing foods you include into you daily menu.

Mineral Dense
Meaning support for your adrenal glands. If you have been suffering from stress, exhaustion or anxiety then bone broth is for you. Not to mention your diet will appreciate the bump in calcium, magnesium and phosphorous content.

Packed with Glucosamine and Chondroitin
These are the building blocks for our tissues. Bone broth helps support strong bones, joints, hair and nails as we age.

Rich in Collagen
An important connective tissue which helps prevent osteoarthritis and general wear and tear on joints and bones (definitely something for my midlife athletes to consider). Collagen is also the perfect ingredient for smooth, young looking skin. After 40, the body naturally makes less collagen which is why, we start to notice those laugh lines and wrinkles. Collagen also helps to form lean muscle mass and promotes burning fat.

Detoxifying
During perimenopause, it is the liver that carries the burden of breaking down the excess hormones that accumulate in our bodies. Rich in amino acids, glycine and proline, bone broth supports your liver in building detoxifying glutathione so that she can do her detox job more effectively.

Anti-Anxiety
As a rich source of magnesium, bone broth can help you to relax and feel less anxious which will lead to better sleep. The amino acid glycine found in bone broth also supports the body to combat the stress-inducing effects of the heart-rate-accelerating hormone norepinephrine.

Bone broth is one of the foods that makes the list in my FREE guide The Ten Essential Foods For The Midlife Woman. You can get your copy here.

Bone broth is readily available in supermarkets today but it is easy to make this midlife superfood at home. I make mine in a slow cooker so that I can spend five minutes on preparation and forget about it until I find time to pour the contents of the slow cooker through a colander and discard the bones. This can be up to 48 hours later.

So what do you need to make this delicious and highly nutritious midlife elixir for yourself?

Bones from 1 roasted chicken – After you have enjoyed your roasted chicken or turkey dinner, pile all of the bones into a slow cooker for bone broth.

• 1-2 carrots

• 2-3 stalks celery

• 3-4 cloves garlic

• 1 onion halved, skin on or off

• 3-4 bay leaves

• 10-15 peppercorns

• 2 tablespoons apple cider vinegar.
  
  Add all of the ingredients into the slow cooker with the chicken carcass. Know that the apple cider vinegar will pull the minerals out of the bones to increase the nutrition of your broth. Also know that your broth will not miss an odd carrot or the celery stalks. It is not about perfection here but consistency…just get your broth started with what you have in the kitchen.
  
  Fill the slow cooker up with filtered water to cover the bones and cover and switch on low. Leave the broth to do its’ thing for 48 hours. Even in the summer I often have my slow cooker out on the deck making bone broth for a delicious limey summer chicken tortilla soup or gazpacho!
  
  After 36 – 48 hours, let the contents cool and pass through a colander into a large container in which you can store your delicious bone broth. Season with salt and pepper to taste.