November’s Theme: Spice Up Your Life
As we head into the cold and dark winter months, it's time to turn to all the warming spices for comfort and healing!
Spices don't just add incredible flavour to food, they have many health benefits, due to all the polyphenols they contain! Spices count towards our diversity score, ¼ of a point for each one we use, so it's quite easy to add a few extra points by sprinkling some warming spices into our food!
Most folks think of chilli and hot spicy food, but not everyone can tolerate hot spicy food, me included! I'm a chilli wimp but love adding a sprinkling of chilli flakes and using the milder gochugaru chilli powder in my homemade kimchi!
We will be looking at all the health benefits of individual spices, including turmeric, that ubiquitous yellow spice which beats drugs for literally everything. There have been numerous studies proving that the active ingredient in turmeric, curcumin, is highly bioactive. It's generally poorly absorbed, but massively increased by adding freshly ground black pepper, having it along with a quality fat source, and of course fermenting it adds even more value! Be sure to check out the vibrant and delicious Pineapple, turmeric and ginger Kraut this month!
We will be making an assortment of Spice Blends which are so easy to incorporate into our cooking! Having a few blends in a shaker to use in place of salt is a simple way to up our intake of these delicious foods!
Cinnamon is another favourite spice of mine, which has also been extensively studied for it's positive impact on metabolism, and is included in both my Festive Krauts. Check out the golden milk recipe which has a blend of turmeric, ginger, cinnamon, black pepper and coconut oil- it’s absolutely delicious!!
Our special guest this month is the Queen of Spices, the wonderful Summaya Usmani, author of not one but three incredible books, all packed with delicious recipes from her homeland Pakistan! Summaya really understands spices and how to use them, her food is absolutely delicious and she will be sharing one of her favourite recipes with us and all her top tips for buying, storing and using spices!
I will be exploring the many health benefits of spices and looking at all the evidence of the positive impact they have on our gut microbiome! Specifically the research by Dr Kanchan Koya, a microbiologist and spice expert who writes a blog spicespicebaby.com
In good health,
Janice x
