West Norwood Therapies
  • Home
  • Therapies
    • Gift Vouchers >
      • Gift vouchers
    • Massage
    • Acupuncture
    • Reflexology
    • Reiki
    • Tibetan bowl sound healing
    • Videos
    • Links to classes
  • Practitioners
    • Erika Zettervall
    • Laura Devonshire
    • Lauren O'Sullivan
    • Mihaly Rosta
    • Philippa Summers
    • Tessa Glover
    • (Jennie Duck)
    • Schedule
    • Contact details
  • Contact and Booking
    • Find Us
    • Covid 19
    • About
    • Ts & Cs
    • Privacy Policy
  • Blog

Blog                                  

Wholesome Bone Broth

2/24/2022

0 Comments

 
Acupuncturist and wholesome food enthusiast Philippa Summers shares some of the benefits and uses of bone broth and advises how to get a good batch going with insider tips and ideas to make it tasty and nutritious.
I have always had an interest in cooking wholesome food for both enjoyment and health and am guided away from processed foods by choosing ingredients that ‘ran, swam, flew or grew’ in their most natural state. Like many people I have in recent years leant towards a more heavily plant-based diet with an emphasis on a wide variety of colourful fruit and veg, wholegrains and plant-based protein like lentils, pulses, beans and tofu. However, I do still eat fish and meat, buying far less but of higher quality, higher welfare - by trying to choose largely wild fish and meat that is free-range, grass fed, preferably organic - and using every last bit which brings me to the wonders of bone broth.
 
It has been revered for its potent nutritional and medicinal properties by various cultures across the globe for thousands of years from ancient Greece, throughout Africa and Asia, to the infamous recuperative ‘Jewish Penicillin’.  A South American proverb states ‘Bone Broth will resurrect the dead’. It had a reputation within Chinese Medicine stretching back over 2,500 years for its ability to support digestion and reproductive health – pre-conceptually for both men and women to support egg and sperm health, during pregnancy for mum and baby, and post birth to help mum rebuild her strength.
 
Bone broth is packed with easy to digest gelantinous protein and amino acids from the collagen in cartilage, and minerals such as magnesium, calcium, phosphorus and potassium from the bones, extracted by long slow cooking. Wide ranging potential health benefits include helping to support skin, bone and joint health, soothing gut issues like ulcerative colitis and leaky gut, supporting immune function, helping recovery from upper respiratory infections and it may also help to promote good sleep. The combination of skin, joint and sleep effects likely make it beneficial for women post menopause, a time when increasing protein and reducing carbs can be helpful.
 
We can get a bit caught up about what’s in food and what it is good for. Sometimes it is good just to let go of that and enjoy the wholesomeness because you know in another more intuitive way that it is nourishing. For me bone broth is one of those things. A warm soothing elixir!  It is delicious drunk on its own, makes a great base for soups and stews.
 
For convenience you can buy bone broth ready-made, conveniently packaged and delivered frozen direct from the farm to your door but it is far cheaper and satisfying to make your own.  It cooks for so long that it is more economical on fuel to cook up a big batch so I collect any chicken bones both raw and cooked in the freezer until I have a good supply, supplementing them with some chicken carcass bones from the butchers to fill a stock pot.
 
Chicken Bone Stock Recipe
 
This recipe uses chicken bones and cooks for 4-6 hours.  You could make a fish version substituting the chicken for fish heads and bones usually discarded by the fishmonger so very cheap – use about 1kg per litre of water - and simmer for one hour. Strain through muslin to remove all bones.
Picture

You’ll need a large stock pot with a tight fitting lid.
 
Ingredients:
  • Good Quality Chicken bones (legs but especially wings and whole carcass are good, preferably organic). Equivalent of 4-5 carcasses.
  • Spices for flavour: Your choice of whole peppercorns, fennel seeds, coriander seeds. About 1-2 tsp of each for a large stockpot.
  • Vegetables and herbs for flavour: Your choice of celery, carrot, leeks, onion, garlic, parsley and coriander stalks, a few bay leaves and fresh ginger. Peelings and ends are fine.
  • Cider vinegar. About 4 tablespoons for a large stock pot.
 
Method:
Optional: Before making the stock you can roast the bones for an hour in the oven until they are golden for a richer flavour.
 
  • Place the bones in the stock pot.
  • Add spices and vegetables. Veg can just be added for the final hour if you prefer.
  • Cover with water (boiling from the kettle is quicker than heating on the hob).
  • Add cider vinegar to help extract the minerals from the bones.
  • Cover with a tight fitting lid and simmer gently for 4-10 hours (with the extractor fan on unless you like to live in a soup scented sauna!) checking and stirring every now and then to ensure it is still covered with water and not sticking.
  • I cook it until the cartilage on the ends of the bones softens and dissolves which usually takes 4 – 5 hours but some people cook it for much longer which will extract more minerals from the bones.
  • Strain off all the liquid, discard bones and veg and then reduce it to a manageable quantity.  For 5 carcasses I end up with about 1.5 litres of concentrated broth. You could concentrate is down even more and freeze in ice cube trays.
  • Pour into portion sized pots (I use metal Indian thali bowls) and allow to cool. It should have a thick jelly consistency when cold. The fat will rise to the surface which you can then scrape off if you wish, I usually scrape off some but leave some for flavour. Freeze in a suitable container or bag and use as needed. As it is so concentrated you can dilute it as needed.
 
The effort will more than pay off for the ease with which you can prepare a tasty meal or quick warming drink that nourishes you deep to the bone.  Enjoy!
Picture
0 Comments

A Winter Breakfast: Warming Porridge with molasses, cinnamon, berries and seeds

2/2/2022

0 Comments

 
Acupuncturist and kitchen dynamo Philippa Summers shares some guidelines for a hearty winter breakfast of champions that will warm you from the inside out and stoke your fire for the day ahead. Yum!
Picture
 
What do you have for breakfast? Do you even have breakfast? It’s often a meal that people skip or habitually go for something quick like a cold bowl of cereal or a couple of slices of toast on the go but when the temperatures drop there is nothing like a comforting bowl of porridge to start the day and get the warmth going from the inside. It is quick to prepare, will sustain you all morning and is a gift to your whole digestive system.
 
Try a water-based whole oat porridge, flavoured with a small spoonful of blood-nourishing molasses, and maybe some cinnamon and ground flax seeds.
  • Use whole oats to get the benefit of their blood sugar controlling, cholesterol lowering and anti-inflammatory properties.
  • Add the molasses at the end of cooking to prevent it sticking.
  • If you are prone to feeling the cold then add a couple of generous pinches of cinnamon for extra warmth and flavour.  It is used in traditional Chinese Herbal medicine to aid digestion, warm the channels and improve circulation. Avoid it if your tendency is towards feeling the heat.
  • Add in some ground flax seeds for extra Omega-3s.
 
Top with a sprinkling of pumpkin, sunflower and sesame seeds for extra goodness and a couple of spoonfuls of berries. I use frozen summer berries out of season and just warm them gently. For speed, and if you don’t mind a strangely coloured porridge just add them to the porridge towards the end of cooking. I like a splash of milk to finish it off when it’s in the bowl for that that combo of thick porridge and liquid milk. Delicious and nutritious!
 
If you skip breakfast you may find yourself going for less nourishing alternatives as your blood sugar drops. It can precipitate a vicious cycle of sugar spikes, drops and unhealthy snacking.  Starting the day with nourishing breakfast gets your eating habits off to a healthy start and one suggestion to prompt an appetite at breakfast time might be to replace supper with something very light late afternoon or early evening for a night or two, just to kick start a breakfast habit.
 
Finally, try to make time to sit and enjoy your meals, including breakfast. The digestive process begins when we look at the food, anticipate it and the digestive juices start to flow.  And we are more likely to chew our food well, another important part of the digestive process,if we are relaxed and not in a rush.  Good digestion is as much about how we eat as what we eat. 
 
Enjoy!
Picture
0 Comments

    Author

    Blogs from the WNT team. For our blogs from before June 2020 please see individual profile pages - it's a good way to get to know practitioners too.

    Archives

    February 2023
    January 2023
    October 2022
    August 2022
    July 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    March 2022
    February 2022
    January 2022
    December 2021
    October 2021
    September 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    May 2021
    April 2021
    March 2021
    February 2021
    January 2021
    November 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020

    Categories

    All
    Acupuncture
    Advice
    Environment
    Erika Zettervall
    Exercise
    Fertility
    Guest Post
    Holistic Health
    Jennie Duck
    Laura Devonshire
    Lauren O'Sullivan
    Local
    Massage
    Mental Health
    Mihaly Rosta
    Nutrition
    Outdoors
    Philippa Summers
    Pregnancy Birth And Beyond
    Recipes
    Reflexology
    Reiki
    Seasonal
    Self Care
    Sleep
    Small Business
    Sound Healing
    Sports Massage
    Stress
    Tessa Glover
    Wellbeing
    Yoga

    RSS Feed

Visit us - by appointment only please - in the office block in the Access Self Storage premises at 443 Norwood Road, London, SE27 9DQ

info@westnorwoodtherapies.com
Phone - please contact practitioners directly, or if not in a rush you can leave a message for us to call you back at 07931876931.
Picture
  • Home
  • Therapies
    • Gift Vouchers >
      • Gift vouchers
    • Massage
    • Acupuncture
    • Reflexology
    • Reiki
    • Tibetan bowl sound healing
    • Videos
    • Links to classes
  • Practitioners
    • Erika Zettervall
    • Laura Devonshire
    • Lauren O'Sullivan
    • Mihaly Rosta
    • Philippa Summers
    • Tessa Glover
    • (Jennie Duck)
    • Schedule
    • Contact details
  • Contact and Booking
    • Find Us
    • Covid 19
    • About
    • Ts & Cs
    • Privacy Policy
  • Blog