Brussels Sprouts. The poor vegetable that has been demonized by our society! I hadn’t even tried Brussels sprouts, but I knew I didn’t like them because….wait, I didn’t actually know why.
So when a few years ago I received them in my vegetable CSA I was actually pretty stoked to give them a try. There were so many foods that I either used to not like, or had simply pre-judged, that I now love, that I was pretty sure I was in for a treat.
And boy was I right!
Roasted brussels sprouts are so delicious! They caramelize against the pan, which leads to an incredible smokey flavour, with a hint of sweetness. In this recipe, I’ve taken both of those flavours up a notch. I used maple syrup and roasted carrots to compliment the sweet side, and smokey bacon as a delicious contrast!
Bonus: Brussels sprouts are part of the brassica family. These vegetables – which include broccoli, kale, cauliflower, collards, cabbage, arugula, mustard greens and bok choy – are anti-carcinogenic by way of a powerful little molecule known as indole-3-carbinol (I3C). I3C modulates estrogen uptake by cancerous cells that rely on estrogen for growth and proliferation – namely breast, endometrial and cervical cancers. They also contain very high levels of sulfur (which is why if you overcook them, they get stinky!) which is a crucial building block of glutathione – one of our critical detoxification molecules.
Note on Brassica Veggies & the Thyroid
Many people with low thyroid function, hypothyroidism or Hashimoto’s thyroiditis have been warned against eating brassica vegetables. While it is important to remember that I’m not a doctor, it is equally as important to understand that the research simply isn’t there to support this. Moderate consumption of brassica veggies, even with subpar thyroid function, especially if they have been cooked, are not only safe, but may be beneficial to thyroid health. Now, if you’re downing a green juice made of raw kale, on a daily basis, you could potentially get yourself into trouble – especially if you have a selenium deficiency. As with any and all foods, overdoing it on one, will inevitably cause problems. Everything in moderation my friends!
Enough science, back to the yummy stuff. Today’s recipe, which is perfect for a regular fall/winter dinner, and is especially timely for our neighbours to the south since Thanksgiving is next week, is Maple Bacon Brussels Sprouts and Carrots. First time cooking brussels sprouts? Rest assured this is easy! Simply combine all ingredients together in a roasting pan, on a cookie sheet or even in a cake pan and bake until crispy. Drizzle the maple syrup for the final 10 minutes. Enjoy!
Maple Bacon Brussels Sprouts & Carrots
2014-11-20 14:51:37
A delicious side dish for a fall meal, including Thanksgiving! Gluten-free, dairy-free and paleo. Full of flavour!
Prepare Brussels sprouts by slicing ¼ inch off the bottom and peeling off the outer few layers. The leaves should be bright green and tightly packed. Slice in half from top to bottom. Place in pan.
Wash carrots and chop into pieces about the size of the brussels sprouts. Add to pan.
Drizzle with 2 tbsp cooking fat and season liberally with salt and pepper. Toss to combine.
Chop bacon into small pieces and spread on top of the brussels sprouts and carrots.
Bake for 35 minutes. Stirring 2 or 3 times.
Drizzle with maple syrup and bake for 10 more minutes.
I recently was engaged in a conversation where I was informed that vegetarianism is what will feed the world, and while I was making a better choice by choosing ethically raised meat, I was sacrificing the environment for trying to achieve optimal health. And boy did that get me thinking. (UPDATE I wish I had this article then: Letter to a Vegetarian Nation). I do not claim to know everything about nutrition, in fact anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely LOVE to learn, and continue to do so on a daily basis. I spend hours every day (non-paid since I’m self-employed) reading and studying every piece of information I can, trying to be as unbiased as possible (which I’ll admit, can sometimes be challenging), to make the best choices I can. I also try to take science and knowledge out of textbook scenarios and apply them to my small life/community, my country and the world in its entirety.
Why do I do that? Because that is how I was raised.
We had 2 rules in my family growing up:
Family comes first.
Always do the best job you can.
There were never any asterisks on those rules, they simply were, as they are. Honest, grounded, foundational rules. They provided the framework on which every one of my achievements was built. I nailed job interviews. Got solid grades (not perfect, but the best I could) which opened up doors. Prioritized my family and my (now) husband’s family, who in turn support us through thick and thin and without which, we would not be where we are today.
Always do the best job you can.
This is the biggest lesson I try to impart on my clients. Doing the best you can, with the resources you have available, with the knowledge you have right now. And when you know more and have more? Then do a bit better. It’s easy to get caught up in what my Coaching Teacher called “shoulding” yourself. You know, “I should do this…”, “I should be doing that…”. If we all stopped “shoulding” ourselves and simply started making the best choices we can, right now, the world would be an even more incredible place.
Optimizing Your Health = Sacrificing the Earth?
On the same train of thought, I began thinking about the definition of “optimizing health” and whether striving for that was inherently incompatible with being respectful to the earth and in turn, human kind. For a split second, I started questioning some choices I have made, but instantly shook myself out of that because when I look back to where I started, at the beginning of my personal health journey, I believe with every cell in my body that I am doing the best I can for myself, my family, my environment and my fellow humans. I tried very hard to be vegetarian – oh I wanted to be one so bad. I even started getting repulsed by meat, even though I had always enjoyed it growing up, because I wanted to be a vegetarian. I felt guilty eating meat because I was told it was destroying the environment. I was scared because I was told it would give me heart disease and cancer. And something else happened.
My body fell apart.
Very few people other than my husband truly know what I used to go through. More days than not I was levelled by a migraine by 4:30pm. Nauseated, in tears, writhing on the couch in pain. Nothing worked – alcohol, caffeine, NSAIDs, muscle relaxants, acupuncture, heat, ice…nothing. Digestive pain so excruciating it would wake me up in the middle of the night, I could barely stumble to the bathroom. Nothing would happen, but lying on the cold floor for about an hour was the only way I could tolerate the pain. Destructive self-talk that resulted in a sad relationship with my body and food. Crippling anxiety that threatened my relationships with friends, family and my amazing partner. Anxiety that threatened my relationship with myself and the incredible world I am so lucky enough to be a part of.
Over the course of 5 years, with the support of my incredible partner and family, I slowly recovered my health and found incredible joy and empowerment in the fact that predominantly through food, I was able to literally change who I was. Change what had come to define who I was. Change the path I was down, which was sure to end up in a very bad place.
What were the biggest changes I made?
Here are the foods I eliminated, in order. And not because any dietary philosophy told me to, or a book suggested it. But because over the course of 5+ years, I was an experiment of 1 and I could not ignore the results.
Dairy – which was causing epic digestive pain
Gluten – total body inflammation, puffy joints, not fitting in my clothes
Legumes – debilitating migraines, even in the smallest amounts (ie. rooibos tea, guar gum)
Whole grains – while I can still tolerate them in small amounts, anything more than a few bites results in damage to my digestive tract caused by constipation that lasts for 3-4 days (sorry if that’s TMI)
Corn and alcohol – again, in small amounts these are fine, but both trigger anxiety if I overdo it. Even a few glasses of wine will cause me to wake up the next morning with the weight of the world on my chest.
As you can see, with the exception of nuts and seeds, these foods make up all plant-based protein sources. The foods I was so desperately trying to eat for the sake of my own body and the environment, were slowly but surely breaking me and preventing me from being a contributing member of society.
I unintentionally stumbled into the paleo lifestyle out of necessity. And while many people condemn this lifestyle (and yes, I mean lifestyle, not just diet) for being a way to ease their conscience when eating meat, that could not be further from the truth in my case. When I look back to where I’ve come from, oh my goodness I am proud. I am so healthy, almost migraine-free, free from digestive pain, and my anxiety, while it still likes to rear its ugly head from time to time, hasn’t been in control of my life for a good while now. And that self-talk that was so destructive? It was kicked to the curb about 8 months after making the decision to jump in 100% into a lifestyle that makes me the best version of me possible. And now what is that allowing me to do?
Contribute to my community, help other people and make even better choices.
I had the confidence to become an entrepreneur.
I have the sympathy, empathy and experience to gain the trust of others to allow me to guide them to their own recovery.
I now have the financial ability to purchase ethically raised food to take better care of the environment.
I am able to spend time, creating free content for clients, friends, family and strangers, to help them be better versions of themselves, so they can be better contributors to society.
By living my truth, I am able to change lives.
All because I did the best job I could, with the resources I had at the time, which continued to grow as I continued to learn. So yes, I will continue to eat ethically raised meat, because aside from the fact that it is nutritionally complete (ie. no supplements are needed) it allows me to make a difference in the world.
And my promise to the world, is to continue to do the best I can, to take care of this incredible planet we get to call home and to continue to help change lives to allow other people to do the same thing.
Banana muffins are my favourite. When I was little I used to always ask my mom to make “na-na muff-uffs”, which unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on how you look at it) means that’s still what we call banana muffins in my parents house! They may or may not have a home movie of 2.5 year old me baking “na-na muff-uffs” at my fisher price kitchen one Christmas morning…
Typical nutriton educators call muffins “cupcakes without the icing”, which is mostly true. Take a carrot muffin for example. Many people choose carrot muffins over chocolate chip, because they’re healthier! Would you choose carrot cake over chocolate cake for health reasons? No! Because you know it’s still cake! What ingredients are typically found in a cake? White flour, white sugar, eggs, butter and baking soda. And a muffin? Flour, sugar, eggs, butter, baking soda, oil… Same recipe, slightly different ratios.
There are a lot of “healthy” muffin recipes out there, but usually the focus is all about reducing the fat and cholesterol by eliminating the eggs and any oil that may be involved. Since we know that eggs have been wrongly demonized and that fat is crucial for health, suddenly those “healthy muffin” recipes are even worse than the original! White flour + white sugar + no nutrients. Well that screams diabetes in the making. Yowza!
Even I cannot deny how convenient muffins are. They are easy to grab for a quick pick-me-up, or a breakfast if you don’t have time to make a real one, or to throw in your kids lunch bags. So instead of saying all muffins are off limits, why not change the ingredients to make them work for you, instead of against? I was on the hunt for a recipe that did just this and was thrilled when I stumbled across this one over at The Spunky Coconut. Real, nutrient-dense ingredients that are full of health-promoting vitamins, minerals, fat and protein. This was a muffin I could get behind.
Of course I had to tweak it a bit – since that’s what I do! I didn’t have applesauce, so I subbed an extra egg and it worked great. I also started adding lemon juice and zest, because lemon blueberry is an awesome flavour combo. Then recently, I had a client request a banana muffin for her kids. Most grain-free, dairy-free banana muffins rely heavily on almond flour and/or nut-butter. Since all schools are nut-free in Ontario, that wasn’t going to work. So I used the shredded coconut/egg base from the blueberry muffin recipe as my inspiration. I hope you enjoy these muffins as much as I do!
UPDATE (July 2016): I now throw all of the wet ingredients into my blender instead of mashing by hand. It eliminates the need for super ripe bananas (which are great, but I don’t always have them on hand, so yellow banana work too now) and your eggs don’t have to be room temperature either.
UPDATE: (May 2017): I no longer add maple syrup! I forgot to add it a few times and didn’t even notice the difference. This makes me especially happy because my 9 month old loves these muffins now and I feel great about giving her these!
Banana Muffins (grain free, dairy free)
2014-11-13 09:40:42
Serves 12
An old-fashioned banana muffin made without gluten, grains, dairy or sugar! Paleo and vegetarian!
¼ cup honey or maple syrup (optional, I don't add it anymore)
½ tsp vanilla extract
2 cups mashed bananas
1 cup shredded coconut, unsweetened
½ cup coconut flour, sifted
½ tsp sea salt
½ tsp baking soda
Instructions
Preheat oven to 350F. Line muffin tin with silicon liners.
Combine wet ingredients in a bowl. (or add to a large blender, this eliminates the need for super ripe bananas or room temp eggs)
Combine dry ingredients in another bowl.
Add dry ingredients to wet and mix really well. It will thicken up after a few minutes.
Using an ice cream scoop, scoop a generous serving into each muffin liner. They don't rise a lot, so fill them up to the top!
Bake for 30 minutes, or until set and slightly golden.
Let cool and enjoy!
Notes
It is important to have the eggs at room temperature so they don't cause the coconut oil to solidify. If you don't have time to leave them out, simply place them in a bowl and cover with hot tap water for about 10 minutes, while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.
These muffins freeze really well so I always make a double batch and freeze half.
You could totally turn these into cupcakes by adding dairy-free chocolate chips and icing!
By Amanda Naturally
Amanda Naturally http://www.amandanaturally.com/
Do you have a favourite snack from your childhood that you’ve ‘healthified’? Share in the comments below!
Brussels Sprouts. The poor vegetable that has been demonized by our society! I hadn’t even tried Brussels sprouts, but I knew I didn’t like them because….wait, I didn’t actually know why.
