Black Bean and Sweet Potato Chili Sin Carne

Hot and healthy!

I've written of my regard for healthy Mexican food in the past.  

When its cool, I often make a Chili Sin Carne - usually with a three bean mix, tomatoes and whatever veg is in the fridge.  Unfortunately, although we're only in the second week of August, it is noticeably cooler than the past month or so.  Definitely too cool for a summer salad so today I thought I'd try making a super-fertility chili with sweet potato.  I'd never put white potato in a chili - it is too starchy, but sweet potato seems to cook without leaching anything so I thought it would work out okay.  And it did.

I normally buy dried beans and prepare a big pot, which I freeze in portions for later use throughout the month.  Because we are hoping for an Australian Visa any day now, I'm clearing out the freezer and cupboards and buying canned beans as we need them, rather than stocking up.

Because canned beans usually include salt and whatever it is that causes wind if you don't prepare beans properly, I drain and rinse my canned beans and boil in a pot for a few minutes (until they release the scum) and drain and rinse again before I use them. 

Fertility Focus

Black beans are a good source of non-animal protein, rich in antioxidants and also provide folate, B6, iron, and zinc.

Sweet Potato is full of antioxidants, vitamin C and Vitamin A as well as being a source of potassium, calcium and iron.
Quinoa is a plant based form of protein, and contains all nine of the essential amino acids needed for cell renewal.
Kale is full of antioxidants, vitamin A, vitamin K and is a good plant source of calcium.
Tomatoes are full of the antioxidant lycopene which boosts sperm health and also contain folate, B6, vitamin A and vitamin E. 
Avocado is high in Vitamin E which helps increase sperm mobility and keeps sperm from clumping together.

Ingredients

• Canned black beans
• Coconut oil
• Cumin seeds
• Onion
• Garlic
• Ground coriander
• Smoked paprika
• Fresh chilli to taste
• Sweet potato, chopped into 1cm cubes
• Canned tomatoes
• Quinoa
• Corn kernels
• Courgette, chopped
• Kale, finely chopped
• Fresh tomato and avocado, cubed and mixed into a salsa to garnish.

NOTE: For four servings, I used about a cup of each vegetable, except the corn and courgette, which made up a cup together and the quinoa, which was about 1/4 cup.

Method

1.  Heat the oil and cumin seeds in a large pot (I use my wok) until the cumin seeds are aromatic.  

2.  Add roughly chopped onion and garlic.  

3.  Saute until soft then add dried spices, finely chopped chilli and sweet potato cubes. 

4.  Saute for about 5 minutes.  

5.  Add tomato and enough water to ensure the sweet potato is just covered.  

6.  Cover pot and allow to simmer for 10 minutes.
7.  Stir in the black beans and quinoa.  

8.  Re-cover pot and cook for another 10 minutes.
9.  Stir in corn kernels, courgette and kale and allow to cook, uncovered for about 5 more minutes, until the kale is bright green and the corn and courgette lightly cooked.
10.  Top with a generous helping of tomato and avocado salsa.

I also added a touch of grated cheese.  I would have included lots of fresh coriander in the salsa had we had any.

L.
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Naming and honouring angels...

A lone flower among the lilypads

One of the few friends I can (and do) speak quite openly to about Poppy and Pipkin commented recently that she thinks it is so cute that I call my lost babies by those names.

Poppy is so named because the day I downloaded all the pregnancy apps for my iPhone, at all of 4 weeks pregnant, the What To Expect App told me 'The baby is as big as a... Poppyseed".   

And it stuck.  

It is useful to have a nickname to speak about the new life growing inside you.

Pipkin was named after the smallest rabbit in the book Watership Down, which Mr Duncan was reading aloud to me at bedtime around the time that Pipkin was conceived.

I have read a fair amount of information on loss and grieving since my first miscarriage and many suggest you name your lost babies to formally include them in your family and have a rite of passage, such as a funeral or memorial ceremony to acknowledge their loss.    

While I had certainly been looking at baby names prior to my losses, we had nothing like a short list.  

In fact it is unmanageably long.  

Maybe if they were older when we lost them, we would have had more of an idea, but part of me feels it is too early to decide before the baby is born and I actually get to meet him or her in person.

When I was in my 20s a close friend had his first baby and excitedly sent out the birth announcement to his friends that his firstborn was named Alexander.  Several days later we received another email, from his wife, saying that after a few days of living with him, it was clear that their son was not an Alexander after all, in fact he was a William.

So they remain Poppy and Pipkin, but I am so glad they both already had their names before I lost them.

Mr Duncan and I want to have some sort of ceremony for them before we leave to live in Australia (still crossing my fingers for the visa) - because they will of course be staying here.  

It would be nice to plant a tree or rosebush or something in our garden, but we're in rented accommodation so thats not really a possibility.  

I'll have to think about what would work for us...

L.
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Turkish Menemen brunch

A different sort of egg fry up.

Mr Duncan made this one pan egg dish known as Menemen or Shakshuka for our brunch yesterday morning. 

Given Mr Duncan's current ban on eating bread and dairy, his usual brunch specialties of poached eggs on toast or cheese omelette are no longer on the menu.  

Poached eggs on their own do not seem appetising, and while we will often have omelette with mushrooms or tomatoes, we don't have any of either this week.

I spent some time living in Istanbul teaching English in the six months between winning the green card lottery and actually moving to the United States.  

I knew the holiday entitlement in the US was only about 2 weeks a year and I figured I may never have the opportunity to live and work somewhere so exotic again.  

I like my adventures.  

In any case, I fell in love with Turkish food while I was there.  The dishes are generally super simple to make - and super tasty.  

Menemen - made either with this method where you poach the eggs in the tomato mixture or with the scrambled eggs method - makes a great eggy brunch with no bread or dairy required.  This is not to say you couldn't eat it with fresh crusty bread to soak up the juices, or topped with thick natural yoghurt.

The recipe Mr Duncan followed is one from a feature on the Modern Pantry restaurant I ripped out of the Times Magazine and tucked in my recipe notebook some years ago.  I've given the instructions per the original recipe below.  We didn't have any red onion, peppers, fennel seeds or mustard seeds so substituted finely chopped white onion and fresh fennel instead and used a bit of fresh green chilli from Mr Duncan's plants.

Fertility Focus

Eggs are considered to strongly boost fertility in Chinese medicine.
Cumin is good for uterine health according to Ayurvedic medicine.

Ingredients

• 3 tsp olive oil
• 1 tsp fennel seeds
• 1 tsp cumin seeds
• 1/2 tsp mustard seeds
• 3/4 tsp dried chilli flakes
• 1 knob ginger, minced
• 1 red onion, finely diced
• 2 cloves garlic, finely chopped
• 1 large red pepper, diced
• 6 large vine ripened tomatoes, diced, or 375g tin tomatoes
• 4 large eggs
• extra virgin olive oil, to serve
• fresh parsley, chopped, to garnish

Method

1.  Heat the oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet.  (Mr Duncan used our new Le Crueset grill pan, which I don't recommend as the ridges make it tricky to dish the food when it is ready).

2.  Add the fennel, cumin and mustard seeds and the chilli flakes.  

3.  Saute for a couple of minutes until the spices are aromatic, then add the ginger, onion and garlic.  

4.  Continue to saute until softened then add the red pepper and tomato.  

Cover with a lid and gently cook for 10 minutes.  The sauce should be aromatic and beginning to thicken.
5.  Check for seasoning, then crack the eggs on top and leave the sauce to simmer away gently until the eggs are cooked to your liking. (I suggest you make little 'holes' in the thick sauce to crack the eggs into and cover with a lid otherwise the bottom of the egg gets overcooked while the top is runny).
6.  Remove from heat, sprinkle with olive oil and plenty of freshly chopped parsley and serve in the pan with tahini yoghurt alongside.

L.
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Talking about miscarriage and loss

Something that surprised me when I had my miscarriage was the information that one pregnancy in three ends in miscarriage. 

I think that means statistically, for every three women I know that has a child, one of them will have had a miscarriage.

I realise that many losses are very early, often before a woman knows she was pregnant, and I wonder if the slightly late period I had the month before we conceived Pipkin was one of these early losses or 'chemical' pregnancies.  

This is why I don't test early.  

But why don't people talk about it?  

Given how open people are about every other aspect of their lives on facebook and twitter, it seems strange that miscarriage is such a hidden subject.  I recently read an article from Stylist which discusses why miscarriage may be the last taboo.

The material I had read on miscarriage said it would be like a heavy period.  So I was in no way prepared for the actual experience and I had no one to talk to about it!  

I read through lots of online forums, but there were very few accounts of what to expect.  

I guess its true that every woman and every pregnancy is different.  

I finally found the brilliant pregnancyloss.info site which offers 'information, healing and hope'.  It gave me practical information while I was miscarrying and assured me that I was not as alone as I felt.  

And I felt SO alone.  

In many ways I still do.

Very few people knew I was pregnant when I lost Poppy at 10 weeks, but at 15 weeks, we had just started telling people about Pipkin.  

People's reactions to my sad news was fairly consistent.  

They said sorry and then changed the subject.  

But both my pregnancies and both my losses are part of my life - I don't want my babies to be guilty secrets or hidden!  I want to be able to talk about the pregnancy or miscarriage when it comes up and have people listen, not awkwardly turn away.

After my first loss I spent a lot of time reading about other people's losses.  I found it oddly comforting and it helped put my loss in perspective.  

Many women have gone through the experience of miscarriage or loss and many of their stories are so much more difficult than mine.  One very powerful site I spent a lot of time on was facesofloss.com.

I also started reading a number of infertility blogs from the amazing Stirrup Queen's Completely Anal List of Blogs That Proves That She Really Missed Her Calling as a Personal Organizer which reminded me that while I have experienced loss, I still have hope, and my journey so far has been comparatively straightforward.   

My favourite is Maybe If You Just Relax - it makes me laugh and I am impressed that the author has been able to write about her difficult journey with such honesty and humour!

I have written about the losses of both Poppy and Pipkin with the hope that these stories may in some way help other women going through this difficult experience.

And because I believe it is important that we as women talk about miscarriage and loss.  

We need to acknowledge and honour the short lives of our lost babies for the information and understanding of others, and for our own healing.

L.
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Sweet Potato, Kale and Quinoa Fertility Superfood Salad

Fertility super-food salad

"Every woman I know who has eaten sweet potatoes every day on my recommendation has either had a baby or is pregnant at the time of writing, having conceived within four months of being on the sweet potato-rich diet!"

So says Sarah Dobbyn on page 121 of The Fertility Diet.  She also says that sweet potatoes contain sixty minerals compared to the three in white potatoes and are much lower on the glycemic index.

I thought it was yams, but there are rumours on the TTC forums that sweet potatoes are so good for fertility it increases the chance of conceiving multiples.

Mr Duncan and I don't tend to eat that much in the way of white potatoes and substitute the weekly allocation in the veg box for something else every other week or more.  

Low GI is good for Mr Duncan's blood pressure diet and although I'm not sure I'm up to eating sweet potato every day, or up to having multiples, it seems like a good food to add to my arsenal, so I ordered some for this weeks veg box.

The weather is still nice and warm, so tonight I wanted something a bit lighter than your average roast sweet potato dinner.  Given I had a fresh delivery of kale and quinoa in the cupboard I thought I'd make a super-fertility salad for dinner.

Fertility Focus

Avocado is high in Vitamin E which helps increase sperm mobility and keeps sperm from clumping together.
Kale is full of antioxidants, vitamin A, vitamin K and is a good plant source of calcium.
Quinoa is a plant based form of protein, and contains all nine of the essential amino acids needed for cell renewal.
Sweet Potato is full of antioxidants, vitamin C and Vitamin A which is good for both cervical fluid and the development of your folicles

Ingredients

• Kale
• Quinoa
• Sweet Potato
• Avocado
• Cashew nuts

Method

1.  Soak the cashew nuts in water.
2.  Put the oven on to 180 degrees C.  

3.  Wash and chop the sweet potato into bite sized cubes.  

4.  Place on a baking tray, drizzle with a little olive oil, and toss so that most of the sweet potato is coated.  

5.  Bake in oven for about 20 minutes, raising temperature to 200 degrees for the last five minutes if you want a bit of brown/crunch.  

6.  Remove from oven and allow to cool.
7.  Boil the quinoa for 10 minutes/according to package instructions.  

8.  Rinse and allow to cool.
9.  Wash and shred the kale then use your hands to 'massage' it, so it softens.
10.  Peel and chop the avocado into cubes.  

11.  Rinse and drain the cashew nuts.
12.  Toss all ingredients in a large bowl with a little balsamic vinegar.

It was delicious!

L.
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