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Welcome to Her Health Code, the podcast that helps women in midlife feel better in their bodies without the confusion or overwhelm. We’re two health coaches sharing real talk, personal stories, and our best coaching tips that help you reconnect with your body’s wisdom. Think of us as your health-savvy girlfriends, here to help you crack the code to feeling vibrant and strong again.
Jess & Michele (00:00)
Welcome back to Her Health Code. I'm Jess and I'm Michelle. And today we are going to be talking about cabbage, which is the honorary food for St. Patty's Day that is coming up here in March. And we are going to give you some of meal ideas that we incorporate cabbage with and why we like to incorporate cabbage in a regular basis and other cruciferous vegetables. And so Jess, why don't you get us started talking about why cabbage is so good for us?
Cabbage and cruciferous vegetables, learned when I started having hot flashes very regularly. I learned about the phytoestrogen rich foods being one tool that you can use to help minimize or reduce the amount of hot flashes that you have. And this was my very first sign that I was entering this time of life. And not only did they come on, but they came on with a vengeance. Like I was getting them day and night.
That's a lot of hot. It was a lot of hot. And I am a cold person normally, so it was really overwhelming. And the first thing I did was dive into a book about how to manage your perimenopause and menopause symptoms with food. And so I started eating tofu a little bit more regularly. But something that I didn't know was that cruciferous vegetables also were a huge factor. And I love coleslaw. So that's usually what I do with my
cabbage intake, but I feel like that gets old and it's a little boring after a while. so we're going to spice it up and use it this month in different ways because, you know, let's just face it, it is a versatile food and we just don't give it credit for more than, you know, maybe a little bit of a garnish for adding it to a salad or making it into a coleslaw. And that's really about all.
Yeah. All I've been doing with it lately. So let's get out of the doldrum. Yes. You had some really great ideas that you were sharing. Yeah. So what I am going to be using coleslaw for this month is first of not coleslaw, cabbage. Sorry. It's all good. Oopsie. So there's that brain fog sometimes happening and pops up. in every now and then. So for me, cabbage is going to be two ways. I'm going to make cabbage rolls, stuffed cabbage rolls.
And I don't really have a recipe for that, but you can take pretty much any like mixture that has like a grain, a meat and vegetables and some sauce and some seasonings and you saute that all together and you stuff it in a cabbage roll and then you put a little marinara sauce. leaf, To make the roll. Yep. You use a leaf and you can soften it by putting it in a little bit of water so you can actually fold it a little bit easier. So you do that first. Yes, you do that first. And then you like dip it in a little boiling water.
And then you kind of put your filling in whatever meat choice you want again and whatever vegetable choice and grain and you kind of put that in the cabbage leaf, roll it up, place it into a baking pan or nine by 13 usually is what I use. And then I like to just put like a like a tomatoey, brothy kind of sauce over the whole thing and then you bake it and there's your stuffed cabbage rolls. Easy. It's so easy.
user friendly for a weeknight when you're like, what am I gonna do? Yeah, and you can even do it plant based if you don't want to use meat, you could use mushrooms and tofu as your meat as your protein source and and then just mix it in with some rice and some seasonings and that's all you need. Yeah, super easy. Very easy and sounds delicious. My mother-in-law makes a dish with cabbage and I always just thought to myself like that I couldn't do it because it just seemed,
a little too complicated. Like you would need the recipe from your grandmother and your mother's mother's mother. Yes. Actually, It's pretty user friendly. Taken the mystery away from. Yeah. A little more accessible. And just not anything that ever crossed my mind is something that I would want to do on a regular night. I always thought, this needs to be something that I slave away in the kitchen with my mother-in-law's mother.
mother's ⁓ recipe and it's gonna be maybe for a holiday and then I never do it yes in fact I give everybody you know encourage you all to try it a little bit more because not only is it a very versatile you know vegetable but it's also very inexpensive and it lasts a long time in your fridge so you can literally forget about it
and then come back to it and it's still good. Right, like you could use half of it. Yes. Just for the big leaves on the outside to make this dish and then later come back to it and maybe do little things like just chop it up for a salad or a garnish or you can actually use that in your filling with something. In fact the other recipe I was going to tell you about is a more sauteed cabbage version where you saute cabbage and carrots and mushrooms
and then you mix that with leftover rice and a bean of your choosing and you can make little veggie patties and then you saute those and that's another great way that you can incorporate your cabbage. Yeah, that sounds like a perfect meal as well because you have your veggies and your bean, which is your protein, and your grain.
So you don't have to overthink a whole lot of side dishes with this. Exactly. a sauce. Yeah, you could do a special like tzatziki sauce or a special like a ranch dressing. mean, you could really do anything. sauce again. You could do the red sauce again if you want to. But I mean, I think, you know, a nice ranch dressing would be tasting very good with that. And then you're, know, if you're, if you have kids, this is a great thing because it's like a finger food and they can dip and you know, it's. Yeah, they could probably even dip it in ketchup.
Yeah, I think out of all, I think out of both, you know, both recipes, my kid would definitely like the veggie burgers versus the stuffed cabbage leaves because, it's just, it's easier, it's more fun, it's more kid friendly. Yeah, it's not like the vegetable is on the outside. Yeah. Which I think once they get past it, my son ate my, my mother-in-law's, cabbage rolls
And he enjoyed them. Yeah, he enjoyed it. He didn't think much of it. He always eats what other people serve him without complaining. And so that's good that he's already gotten past that initial like, is this? Yeah. So I think if you serve that to him this month, I think he'd be like, ⁓ okay, I've had this before. Right. Exactly. And sometimes it just takes other people to introduce those new foods that might otherwise get a pushback.
So that's a little tip. Send them to someone else's house for dinner every now and then then have other kids come over to your house every now and then and serve the healthy foods that your kid is okay with eating. And they see their friend eating it and it's being served by someone else. So I'm going to probably just go ahead and eat it and be polite. I think that they do it out of, I asked my son like, why do you eat that for them without pushing them? And not for me. And he's like, well, just to be polite.
And you know if you didn't like something you could just not finish it and just say you're full But least you try you know give it a try and be polite have good manners. Yeah, but cabbage really is pretty good I just think people Forget about it. So what are you gonna try to make this month with cabbage since we've been discussing? I'm going to go back to ⁓ something that my mom would always make cabbage soup
for St. Patrick's Day. She would make this with just vegetables, so potatoes and onions and the cabbage and carrots. And I'm just gonna chop up a little bit of kale as well to add that bright color because I feel like it kind of is just a dish that besides the carrots, everything's white. Yeah, so can be very bland. It's a little boring looking and so I like it.
adding kale to it just for that extra bit of pop of green and so it's more festive for the occasion. and also adds in a few extra nutrients. You can always, I always used to sneak little chopped kale into all my sauces just to add that extra little bit of nutrients to foods when my son was young and I'm familiar with things like kale.
I'm actually gonna do, instead of corned beef, ⁓ I'm going to add
It's just kind of a, I'm a little intimidated by corned beef because it's not something that you cook a lot ever. Yeah. Ever. I have never cooked corned beef. Yeah. Again, my mother-in-law has done it in a pressure cooker for us before and it's amazing. I just, I don't want to ruin it. It's like a very expensive, you know, if you get a high quality grass fed, you know, all that, and I don't want to ruin it. So I bought,
grass-fed beef sausages and they're andouilles so they have a little spice to them and I'm just gonna slice them up and throw them in. So it'll add that little bit of like extra spice and flavor to it ⁓ and I'm also going to do half of a veggie broth and half of a chicken bone broth to add that extra little bit of protein because it's not a ton of sausages.
It's just enough to kind of give you that little bit of something in there, more than vegetables and a little more flavor. ⁓ But you know, it's not a lot of protein. having a broth that has, that's one of my hacks in general is using a bone broth for ⁓ any soup broth to bump up the protein content. Because you know, with growing kids and teenage boys, you just need to always be thinking, and even us,
Yeah, we need a little more protein than we definitely need our protein. So yeah, yeah. Well, that sounds delicious. I'm excited for it. And now we finally have a little bit of cold weather. yeah, appropriate. Yes. Well, it sounds like we'll be having some yummy cabbage meals this month. And hopefully you like to try one of our meals, whether it's the cabbage soup, or veggie burgers, or the stuffed cabbage rolls. And hopefully we've given you some inspiration to try this vegetable that you may have not
been looking at lately. And if you're having hot flashes, we hope that this will help to minimize and alleviate just the discomfort of having them so often. I know that it really did make a notable difference when I started adding cruciferous vegetables and eating more cabbage was an easy one for me because you know, just a full slaw. But
Again, this is just our veering away from coleslaw with cabbage. Yeah, ⁓ our meal of the month for March. hope you enjoy. Thanks for joining us and until next time. Thank you. Be well.