recipe

Spicy Cauliflower Zucchini Coconut Soup Recipe

January 18, 2019 By Trudy Scott 10 Comments

This recipe – Spicy Cauliflower Zucchini Coconut Soup – is my new favorite because it’s nutrient-dense, creamy (because of the cauliflower), lasts well in the fridge for a few days, freezes well, and is oh so yummy!

I tend to create my own recipes after being inspired by a recipe in a book, blog or eating something similar. I knew I wanted something creamy and went searching and found this recipe – Zucchini Soup with Fresh Mint – in The Complete Gut Health Cookbook by Pete Evans and Helen Padarin (on page 147 in case you have this book or end up buying a copy. It’s a great book by the way!).

The beautiful green color caught my eye. Cauliflower is one of my favorite vegetables and I had never made a soup with cauliflower before! Pete and Helen’s recipe calls for 2 handfuls of spinach leaves which are problematic for with my oxalate issues so I improvised with bok choy. The end result is not quite a green but it’s still pretty and is really delicious.

I also LOVE all things coconut and can’t resist adding coconut milk to soups for the added creaminess and to provide a good healthy fat. And with that coconut I just had to add some Indian spices for all the goodness and flavor they offer. I’m a mild spicy kind of girl so it’s not too hot. If oxalates are an issue for you reduce the quantities of the higher oxalate spices or leave them out (more on this below the recipe). Here’s the end result:

Spicy Cauliflower Zucchini Coconut Soup (serves 12)

6 large zucchini (or courgette if you’re in the UK or South Africa)
1 large cauliflower
2 large bunches of bok choy
Approx 16 cups /3.5 liters/4 quarts of liquid (home-made chicken broth and enough filtered water to cover the vegetables, leaving room in the pot for the coconut milk)
1 can coconut milk

Spices

1 tablespoon turmeric (extra high oxalates)

1 tablespoon cumin (very high oxalates)

1 teaspoon curry powder (very high oxalates)

1 tablespoon coriander (high oxalates)

1 tablespoon ginger (low oxalates)

½ tablespoon sea salt

¼ tablespoon black pepper

(this is a mild combination of spices; you could add more curry powder to make it more spicy)

Chop the zucchini and cauliflower and add to the water in a large pot. Chop the white stalks of the bok choy and add to the water with zucchini and cauliflower. Reserve the green leaves of the bok choy and slice finely for later.

Bring to a boil, cover and simmer slowly for about 20 minutes until the vegetables are tender.

Open the can of coconut milk, reserving a few tablespoons for drizzling over the served soup. Pour the remainder into the soup pot, together with the spices and cook for a further minute, stirring to blend everything. Add the finely sliced green leaves of the bok choy and cook for a few more minutes.

Blend until smooth and add back to the pot to reheat. Serve with a drizzle of coconut milk.

Some other serving options:

add half a chopped avocado to the serving bowl (I like the chunks) and some MCT oil (for more of a keto-friendly soup and to help with blood sugar stability)
add chunks of cooked organic chicken or slices of cooked grass-fed beef
or simply serve before the main meal

Enjoy!

The pot should be almost full of liquid and vegetables

The blended soup can be stored in the fridge for a few days and re-heated for lunches and dinner (in a pot and not the microwave), or even enjoyed cold. Be sure to store in glass or pyrex containers.

It also freezes well (and again, use glass or pyrex). When you’re ready to use it, either thaw ahead of time or place the frozen glass/pyrex container in warm water for a few minutes in the sink. This thaws the edges just enough so it’s easy to tip the frozen soup into a pot to finish thawing and reheat. Use low heat while it’s thawing in the pot.

If you have food challenges with oxalates, autoimmune triggers or SIBO:

1) It’s low oxalate with the bok choy instead of spinach but you could use could use 2 cups of baby spinach if oxalates are not an issue.

Per the spreadsheet in the TryingLowOxalates facebook group run by Susan Owens, a biomedical researcher and the founder of the Autism Oxalate Project, the spices above add up to about 20-24g of oxalates.

turmeric (extra high oxalates)
cumin (very high oxalates)
curry powder (very high oxalates)
coriander (high oxalates)
ginger (low oxalates)

As I mention above, if you have a problem with oxalates you may need to reduce the quantities of the higher oxalate spices or use more magnesium citrate or calcium citrate with this meal.

On a personal note, I’m very sensitive to oxalates (too much and I get really painful hot-coals-burning/shards-of- glass type pain in my feet and very scratchy eyes) and I seem to tolerate the above amounts of spices in a large soup like this, provided I’m not eating other high oxalate foods at the same time.

2) It’s AIP-friendly (Autoimmune Paleo)

3) It’s FODMAPS-friendly as is or feel free to add garlic and onion if tolerated

Let me know if this sounds yummy and ask away if you have any questions. If you make it be sure to come back and let us know how you enjoyed it. And let us know if you made your own variation.

Trudy’s coconut seed bread recipe (modified from The Real Meal Revolution)

July 21, 2017 By Trudy Scott 25 Comments

My favorite “bread” and the only one that I can actually eat right now is a coconut seed bread that I bake myself. I adapted a recipe from Tim Noake’s wonderful book The Real Meal Revolution, a recipe book from where I grew up – South Africa.

Why I modified the recipe

I opted to leave out the sunflower seeds and almond flour because of the higher levels of oxalates in these seeds and nuts. I have an oxalate issue right now but I’m also concerned with all the nuts that I see in Paleo recipes. Another possible issue for someone with anxiety and low zinc is the high copper levels in nut flours.
I typically don’t add sugar or anything sweet to baked goods so just left out the stevia/xylitol
I love coconut anything so why not try all coconut flour – it worked out great!

The ingredients and recipe for my version

0.5 cup ground flax seeds (freshly ground)
1.5 cups coconut flour
2 tablespoons psyllium husk
250g / 1 cup plain Greek yogurt
6 organic or pastured eggs
10ml /2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
0.5 teaspoon sea salt

Grind the seeds and mix all the dry ingredients in a bowl.
Mix the wet ingredients and combine with the dry ingredients using a wooden spoon.
Pour into a loaf pan that has been greased with butter.

Bake at 350 F/ 175 C for 50 minutes. I check it at 40 minutes and then take it out at 50 minutes once it starts to look brown on top and on the sides (I use a glass/pyrex loaf pan).

How to enjoy it?

It’s lovely eaten right away, warm and with loads of butter. I slice it thinly and keep a few slices in the fridge and freeze the rest in batches to use as needed through the next few weeks. It freezes really well and needs about 30 minutes to thaw at room temperature.

A few days a week I’ll have a slice with butter (I love butter!) and soft-boiled eggs, topped with whatever fermented vegetables we have on hand, and a side of avocado and left over vegetables from dinner the night before.

In case you’re curious, on this particular day, I used Kehoe’s Kitchen Fermented Paleo Mustard Pickles (it has a lot of cauliflower) and Kehoe’s Kitchen Beetroot & Ginger Sauerkraut. Both of these products are firm favorites in this household!

Similar products in the USA are made by The Brinery or FireFly Kitchens (just search online for “organic fermented vegetables”). Or make your own!

Remember if you buy fermented vegetables make sure to get them in the refrigerated section of the store. They need to be RAW in order to get all the benefits of the good bacteria for gut health and balancing your microbiome, and ultimately helping with reducing anxiety and depression.

The original recipe

Here is the original recipe from Tim Noake’s book (I don’t have the recipe book in hand right now as it’s still packed away with our move but I think this is the original)

0.5 cup ground flax seeds (freshly ground)
0.5 cup ground sunflower
1 cup almond flour or coconut flour
2 tablespoons psyllium husk
250g / 1 cup plain Greek yogurt or sour cream
6 organic or pastured eggs
10ml /2 teaspoons aluminum-free baking powder
0.5 teaspoon sea salt
Pinch stevia or teaspoon xylitol

Optional: Cinnamon, caraway seeds, pumpkin seeds, various chopped nuts and/or cranberries/raisins

Tim Noakes and anxiety and depression success stories

Here is some additional information about The Real Meal Revolution. It started out as a Banting recipe book and has grown into a movement in South Africa. Banting is similar to Paleo but does include dairy. My darling sister gave me a copy of this very popular book on one of my trips back to visit family and I really like it! It is fastest selling cook book in South African history with over 200,000 copies sold and is now available internationally in the UK, Australia and New Zealand.

In this blog post about anxiety and depression success stories when eating Paleo and grain-free, Alice shared this about her change to a Banting way of eating:

Three days after I stopped eating grains, my chronic depression lifted and has never returned (it’s three years later now). I had been a vegetarian most of my life, discovered in my early 50s that I was gluten intolerant, went off grains, started banting (Cape Town craze!) and have never felt better. Gut, mood, bones, energy, skin … all better!

Let us know if you try this recipe and enjoy it and do share some of your favorite fermented vegetable companies or recipe books.

And do let us know if you do better on a grain-free diet.

Healthy Mind Cookbook and pomegranate olive mint salsa recipe

April 3, 2015 By Trudy Scott 12 Comments

healthy-mind-cookbook I’m excited to have had the opportunity of interviewing Rebecca Katz for season 3 of The Anxiety Summit. She has a new book The Healthy Mind Cookbook and I can’t wait to share our great interview.

Until then I’m sharing why I love this book and a wonderful recipe from her book, the pomegranate olive mint salsa.

Let me share why I love this recipe book:

It’s all about food for the brain and how to have a healthy mind and great mood!
I really appreciate the Culinary Pharmacy where the science behind the ingredients is shared. If you’ve been following me for awhile you know I love the science!
Rebecca’s focus is on yum! The recipes are delicious and the flavors just pop! I would have to say that one of my favorite sections is the Dollops chapter. Rebecca says “these dollops are snazzy surprises, acting as delicious high notes” and “many of the dollops contain healthy fats, which work to make brain-boosting vitamins and minerals more bioavailable” (the recipe below is from the Dollops chapter)
The food photos are positively mouth-watering (my only complaint is that there is not a photograph that goes with each recipe)
She has a section on Reducing Recipe Reading Anxiety, where she shares how to use these recipes as a blueprint and how not to get overwhelmed when there are ingredients you don’t recognize, can’t find or don’t really like. I’ll share below how I modified this salsa recipe to my liking and how it still turned out great.

Pomegranate Olive Mint Salsa

1 cup finely chopped flat-leaf parsley
¼ cup finely chopped mint
½ cup Kalamata or green olives, chopped
½ cup finely chopped fennel
¼ cup pomegranate seeds
¼ cup chopped walnuts, toasted
2 scallions, minced
1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
2 tablespoons freshly squeezed lemon juice
½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
A pinch of sea salt

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and stir gently to combine. For optimal flavor, cover and let sit at room temperature for 15 minutes before serving. For taste, you may want to add another squeeze of lemon or a pinch of salt.

Makes: 2 ½ cups.
Prep time: 15 minutes.
Storage: store in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days.

healthy-mind-recipe1 — The picture from the Healthy Mind Cook book

My comments and modifications to the recipe:

When I read the ingredients I was surprised about the quantity of parley and mint but used this amount anyway and the end result is incredibly yum!
We didn’t have all the ingredients so we left out the pomegranates and used raisins instead, we replaced walnuts with almonds and I’m not crazy about raw scallions so just left them out – and it was still amazing! This all ties back to the section on Reducing Recipe Reading Anxiety.

healthy-mind-recipe2 — The first time we made it – served on salmon

We LOVE this recipe – it has become a standard in just a few short weeks. We have had it with both salmon and with lamb chops (it’s the best mint “sauce” for lamb)
The salmon above was also one of the recipes in the book: Roasted Ginger Salmon, and was delightful. In this one we left out the cayenne pepper and doubled up on the ginger – I love ginger! I’ll share this recipe in a future blog post.
And now we need to make it with the pomegranates!

So get shopping and chopping and enjoy a delicious salsa for your brain and taste buds! Let us know how yours turns out and what you serve it with.

Cauliflower Garlic Bake

February 20, 2015 By Trudy Scott 27 Comments

Cauliflower-Garlic-Bake-1

1 head of organic cauliflower
1 organic garlic head (yes it’s a lot of garlic but then I’m a bit of a garlic lover!)
3 T dried basil (or a handful of freshly chopped basil could also be used)
3 eggs, organic or pastured/free-range
2 T olive oil
1 T sea salt
1 T ground black pepper
½ cup grated organic mozzarella cheese (optional)

And another ½ to 1 cup grated organic mozzarella cheese for the topping (optional)

Butter to grease the casserole dishes (enough for 3 of them)

Chop the cauliflower finely (or place in a food processor) and steam until well cooked (about 15 minutes – longer than you’d typically steam it, so it’s quite soft). Once it’s soft, you may need to use a potato masher to get it really mushy and soft. Remove the garlic bulbs, peel and chop and add to the cooked cauliflower. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix together: dried or fresh basil, eggs, olive oil, sea salt, ground black pepper and grated mozzarella cheese (if dairy is not an issue).

Grease 3 casserole dishes with butter and pour/spoon the mixture into them so it’s about 1 inch (or 2.5 cm) deep – this will make sure it sets nicely and has plenty of nice and crispy stuff at the bottom and sides. It’s purely optional to add some grated mozzarella cheese on top too.

Here you can see how deep the mixture should be to get the crispy stuff at the bottom and sides.

Place the 3 casserole dishes into an oven that has been heated to 350°F (175°C) and bake for about 25 to 30 minutes until the mixture sets, the bottom/edges start to brown and the topping turns a nice golden color.

This makes a lot and the left-overs can easily be put in the fridge as is (covered of course) and heated up the next day in the same casserole dish at the same temperature (about 10-15 minutes seemed to work.

I love this recipe because you prepare once and get a super dish for at least 3 meals, plus there’s not a lot of washing of pots and casserole dishes to do.

This is a new recipe I created based on inspiration from another recipe I saw. I often do this – see something fun and yummy and tweak it to suit my needs and likes. Brad says it’s the best cauliflower he’s eaten and I must say that I feel the same way!

I hope you enjoy making it and enjoy eating it as much as we did!

Coconut-Lemon-Garlic Cauliflower recipe

November 21, 2014 By Trudy Scott 19 Comments

cauliflower-1

Cauliflower is in the Brassicaceae family of vegetables together with broccoli, brussels sprouts, and cabbage. It’s one of my favorite vegetables!

Enjoy this yummy recipe that I adapted slightly from a recipe from Nourishing Meals: Healthy Gluten-Free Recipes for the Whole Family.

by Alissa Segersten and Tom Malterre, MS, CN. I always seem to do this with recipes 🙂

1 medium head of cauliflower (i.e. a whole one)
1 cup of full-fat coconut milk
½ cup of chicken stock or water
1-2 tablespoons of freshly squeezed lemon juice (the original recipe called for lime juice which I didn’t have so I used lemon juice and it resulted in a great taste)
6 large garlic cloves, crushed (the original recipe called for 2, I love garlic so added more!)
1 teaspoon powdered ginger spice (the original recipe called for 1-2 teaspoons grated fresh ginger – I didn’t have any on hand but will try it with this next time)
½ teaspoon sea salt
Garnishes: sliced green onions and chopped cilantro

Cut the cauliflower into small pieces and place in a food processor fitted with the “s’ blade. Pulse until it’s coarsely ground. If you don’t have a food processor, just chop it as finely as possible.

In in large pot, heat the coconut milk, chicken stock or water, freshly squeezed lemon juice, crushed garlic cloves, powdered ginger spice or grated fresh ginger and sea salt, over medium heat. Once the mixture is simmering add the cauliflower pieces.

Stir together and simmer uncovered for 10-15 minutes, stirring every few minutes or until the cauliflower is cooked to your liking. Garnish with sliced green onions and chopped cilantro. Serve hot.

Yields 4-6 servings.

Some of my favorite foods are coconut, garlic, lemon and ginger, and the combination of these ingredients with the cauliflower is just superb! It heats up nicely the next day and is actually delicious cold too so could serve as a “salad.”

I’m looking forward to trying other recipes in this book written by Tom and his wife Alissa. You may recall Tom’s interview from the Anxiety Summit: toxin exposures promote anxiety. We talked about the detox and health benefits, anti-cancer effects of sulforaphane in broccoli. And in my closing talk, I discussed broccoli sprouts and this study: Sulforaphane treatment of autism spectrum disorder. Well, cauliflower is a great source of sulforaphane too! So eat up and be sure to chew well.

Egg muffin recipe from Make It Paleo

October 17, 2014 By Trudy Scott 2 Comments

Low blood sugar can result in anxiety, mood swings, irritability and feeling easily overwhelmed, so it’s really important to get a good start to the day with good quality protein like eggs. And we’re seeing more and more research showing that eggs are ok, even the yolk!

Here is a deliciously simple and quick recipe from one of my new favorite recipe books called Make It Paleo: Over 200 Grain-Free Recipes for Any Occasion, shared here with permission from one of the authors, Hayley Mason.

If you’re on the go you will appreciate the simplicity of this recipe. These delicious little quiche-like muffins are easy to make ahead of time and grab at a moment’s notice. If you’re doing intermittent fasting, this delicious source of protein and veggies can be paired with a healthy fat like avocado and be eaten midday or later. When I travel I always make them ahead of time and take them with me for “padkos” (South African slang/Afrikaans for “food for the road”).

Egg Muffins

Ingredients:

½ tsp coconut oil
½ medium onion chopped
1 cup broccoli, chopped
¼ green pepper, chopped
¼ red pepper, chopped
8 eggs
Salt and pepper to taste

Prep time: 10 minutes; Cook time: 18-20 minutes
Makes 4 large muffins or 8 small ones

Process:

Preheat oven to 400 deg F
Grease muffin tin with coconut oil
Rinse and chop vegetables into ¼ inch pieces
Divide vegetables evenly between muffin tins
Whisk the eggs, then pour into the tins, dividing it evenly
Sprinkle with salt and pepper, then stir the vegetable and egg mixture briefly to evenly disperse the vegetables throughout the egg
Bake the egg muffins in the oven for 18-20 minutes

Here are some pictures of my attempt at these while on my recent trip to South Africa. We were getting ready to head to the Natal midlands for an overnight trip to the cheetah breeding project and needed some healthy “padkos” (South African slang for “food for the road”) so my niece Tamara and I whipped up a few muffins just before we left for the trip.

Since raw onions were not a favorite in my sister’s family, I pre-cooked the onions in a little coconut oil. I think you could lightly steam the other veggies too if you don’t like them crunchy. It’s going to add to your prep time unless you use left-over veggies from the night before.

In our case, we didn’t have quite enough veggies so we ended up with two egg-only muffins! They were all delicious!

Muffin pan ready to go with an assortment of veggies: broccoli, peppers and pre-cooked onions

My niece Tamara helps to pour the beaten eggs into the muffin pan

egg muffin 3 — A quick peek shows the egg muffins rising nicely in the oven

Tamara sampling one of the egg-only muffins right out the oven

Make It Paleo is a wonderful recipe book with many simple and basic recipes as well as some pretty fancy ones too. One quick caution – I do think there are rather too many desserts and baked goods featured – so be warned and keep to recipes in the front! Enjoy!

Authors Hayley and her husband Bill Staley are the dynamic cooking duo behind Primal Palate. Their lifelong passion for food and cooking has led them to write an internationally recognized blog, three bestselling Paleo cookbooks, as well as create a widely popular app and website.