Welcome to the first episode of the Restorative Nourishment Podcast! If you're a Nourishing Meals® member, you know that we have over 70 different diets and food allergens to help you create your own unique dietary profile, however, diets can be limiting. Therefore, the purpose of this podcast is to help you go beyond the constraints of a diet and help you tune into this innate wisdom you have to choose the foods that are right for you in each and every moment. We all have this innate ability to tune into this inner wisdom of our bodies and consume a diet that keeps us healthy, balanced and whole. 

The definition of the word whole is “a thing that is complete in itself.” When we eat foods in their whole form we get all nutrients, carbohydrates, proteins, and fats in perfect balance. These compounds act synergistically to orchestrate all reactions in our bodies. When some nutrients are missing, the body cannot function properly, and when many nutrients are missing for an extended period of time, the body can become diseased. Obesity, chronic inflammation, food allergies, infertility, and many other diseases stem from the body being starved of essential nutrients lacking in a processed foods diet.

Your body is composed of over 30 trillion cells, each of which is continually listening and responding to environmental signals. Your cells have antennas embedded in their cellular membranes. This is how your cells listen, relay messages to your DNA, and respond to your environment by activating biochemical processes. The food you eat carries information, which the antennas sense, and then tell your cells how to behave. You either turn on your anti-aging, disease-prevention, and anti-inflammatory pathways or you turn on your inflammatory, aging, and disease pathways with every bite of food.

If you could make one dietary change to set yourself onto a new trajectory of health, it would be to consume a nutrient dense breakfast consisting of high-quality protein, fiber, and healthy fats. A nutrient-dense, high-protein and fiber-rich breakfast will help you curb cravings for foods you are working to stay away from, boost your metabolism, balance your blood sugar, help regulate your circadian rhythms, keep your mind sharp during the day, and increase satiety.

Roasted root vegetables make the most quintessential side dish to a holiday meal, however, with the addition of a brightly flavored, antioxidant-rich parsley-basil pesto, the root vegetables are elevated to the next level! Celeriac (celery root), carrots, parsnips, and yellow potatoes form the base of this recipe. After they are cooked, the roasted vegetables are tossed with a flavorful dairy-free pesto.

Yesterday evening I taught another live cooking class on the anti-inflammatory diet. It is always wonderful to connect with so many people in person and share information and recipes to help them shift into a new level of health and well-being. But how does one actually shift into a new level of health and well-being? It starts with a single step towards restoring health. Every time you take a new step towards your future self and the resolution of your health condition, you are in the process of restoring your inherent well-being.

Chicken soup with dumplings is a classic meal that has its origins in Germany. Growing up, my mother would make large pots of chicken soup with dumplings all winter long, using the lengthy process of slow-cooking a whole chicken to make a nourishing broth, and then removing the meat for the soup and adding spoonfuls of the dumpling dough to the simmering broth. I still remember standing at the stove, watching the dough puff up as it cooked in the broth!

It's peach season! Yellow peaches, white peaches, and nectarines are all in abundance right now. What better way to use them than in a galette? Galettes are rustic, free-form single-crust pastries with either a sweet or savory filling. They are much easier to make than pies, which require a bit more precision. This gluten-free and grain-free galette uses a slightly sweetened version of my wildly popular flakey grain-free pie crust recipe and is filled with fresh peaches that have been tossed in a small amount of maple sugar and ground nutmeg.

Looking for an easy, nutrient-dense meal you can make at the end of a long day? This simple sheet pan meal uses garden vegetables and wild salmon, and it can be prepped and cooked in under 30 minutes! Salmon is a rich source of a carotenoid called astaxanthin. This potent compound is also found in crab, shrimp, lobster, krill, and salmon eggs (roe), however, wild salmon contains the highest concentration of this potent anti-inflammatory compound.

Nettles are one of the first wild foods to emerge in the spring, and, undoubtedly, one of the most nutrient-dense wild plants! They thrive in rich, moist soil, and in sunny locations. You may find them blanketing a deciduous forest floor in early spring before the tree canopy emerges, or in an open, mowed field.