Prior to conception your body needs to be nourished for optimum fertility, so that implantation can take place.
This is true for both men and women. Nutrition features ever more prominently when trying to create a human. Once implantation has taken place, the placenta needs to be ready to act as life support and nutrient provider that enables your baby to form vital organs in the first trimester.
I have created a delicious winter dish that is perfectly balanced for both men and women. It will assist in shaping up for their pre conception fertility. Lentils and spinach are fabulous foods that provide so much to a mans fertility. The amino acid L arginine from lentils enhance sperm production and motility in addition to high doses of folate from both foods. The soup also packs in Vit A, B6 and Vit C all combined to enhance male fertility. Ladies it’s become common knowledge that folate is essential for a growing baby, it is also essential for pre conception and preparing your placenta to be ready to be an optimum life support unit. Just 100gm of lentils and 100gms of spinach will give up to 90% of your daily requirement. Folate lowers your homocysteine levels, which is great for keeping your blood pressure lower.
Tip: remember this for 3 trimester. In addition lentils how been found to lower insulin levels, very important to pregnancy. A good does of iron is found in both the lentils and spinach, which is great if your a vegetarian. A very important source of oxygen to the blood and for red blood development. It is loaded with Branched Amino Acids for tissue and muscle repair and noted by Cancer Research as beneficial to reducing metastases. It is also high in protein, Low GI and Gluten Free. This is the perfect after workout meal.There are just so many things going for this one-pot dish, but the best news is how delicious it is and yes you can freeze it, so make up a double batch.
Winter Warming Lentil & Spinach Soup
Ingredients for the Pot:
- 2 brown chopped onions (I like to mix it up with one red, one brown. (its your call)
- 1 celery stick, chopped
- 4 to 6 cloves of garlic chopped (to your liking)
- 1 chilli (optional)
- 2 tablespoons of fresh thyme chopped
- 1 tablespoon of fresh rosemary chopped
- 2 tablespoons cold pressed olive oil
- 1 tablespoon grass fed butter
- Lots of ground pepper
- 2 tablespoons of tomato paste
- 3/4 cup red wine ( I like putting in the good stuff, don’t worry the heat cooks the alcohol out)
- 750ml bottle of passata (pureed tomatoes)
- 4 cups of organic beef stock ( lots of goodies such as vital B12 or vegetable stock if your Vegan)
- 2 bays leaves
- 400gms lentils, rinsed
- A good handful of Spinach, Chinese broccoli or Coy Sum, finely sliced for each bowl and mix through
- Parmesan to serve, if you wish you can scatter the top with bacon bits. (I like using nitrate and sulphite free bacon)
The One Pot Method:
Chop or blitz in a food processor all ingredients, except for the wet ingredients, butter, lentils and bay leaves..
Heat oil & butter to a large heavy pot, add the onion mix over LOW heat until glasslike….do not brown.
Add tomato paste and cook out for 2 mins, then add wine, turn heat up and reduce liquid by half.
Add Passata, stock and bay leaves and bring to a boil, then add rinsed lentils and reduce heat to low.
Stir every 10 mins for approx one hour or lentils are still formed but a soft to eat.
Then ladle into bowls and add spinach and stir thru, and let sit to cook for a few mins and add parmesan and more pepper.
Guest article and recipe by Dane Chatani
Dane Chatani is a Cordon Bleu-trained chef who passionately believes well-cooked food – using fresh produce and prepared with love – is an essential ingredient for health and well-being. Much of her childhood was spent alongside working chefs in family-run hotels such as Thredbo’s Alpenhorn Lodge where, at the age of 16, “I was cooking crepes for skiers watching the torchlight descent”. In 2001, Dane founded Muriel’s Muesli which produced five scrumptious and organic breakfast cereals designed to improve intestinal health. Seven years later, she founded The Nutritional Chef, and is currently completing a degree in nutritional medicine at Nature Care College, Sydney.“My clients are often dealing with challenging health conditions, but they don’t know what they should be eating or what to cook,” she says. “My role is to take the pain and confusion out of healthy eating by designing delicious personal meals that are specific to individual health needs and goals.”
Her philosophy is simple: healthy food should be enjoyable food. Like the French, Dane believes the key to healthy eating is portion control, fresh ingredients, the absence of additives or chemicals, but above all else – taste.
Most of her clients are individuals with varying weight, diet or health issues. “Everything I do is evidence-based practice,” she says. “I also like collaborating with GPs as an allied health provider. GPs don’t have the time or the expertise to recommend what to cook, how to deal with food. I do.
